Michael Connelly: The Reversal

The voices over the com were hard to hear because of the background sound of waves crashing beneath the pier.

“This is Five, we’re in.”

“Steady the visual,” Wright commanded.

The focus on the video tightened and Bosch could see that the camera was aimed at the individual storage rooms at the rear of the pier facility.

“This one.”

He pointed to the door he had seen Jessup go through.

“Okay,” Wright said. “Our target is the second door from the right. Repeat, second door from the right. Move in and take positions.”

The video moved in a herky-jerky fashion to a new position. Now the camera was even closer.

“Three and Four are-”

The rest was wiped out by the sound of a crashing wave.

“Three and Four, say again,” Wright said.

“Three, Four in position.”

“Hold until my go. Topside, you ready?”

“Topside ready.”

On the upper level of the evacuated pier there was another team, which had placed small explosives at the corners of the trapdoor above the storage corral where they believed Jessup was holed up. On Wright’s command the SIS teams would blow the trapdoor and move in from above and below.

Wright wrapped his hand around the mike that ran along his jawline and looked at Bosch.

“You ready for this?”

“Ready.”

Wright released his grip and gave the command to his teams.

“Okay, let’s give him a chance,” he said. “Three, you have the speaker up?”

“That’s a go on the speaker. You’re hot in three, two… one.”

Wright spoke, trying to convince a man hidden in a dark room a hundred yards away to give himself up.

“Jason Jessup. This is Lieutenant Stephen Wright of the Los Angeles Police Department. Your position is surrounded top and bottom. Step out with your hands behind your head, fingers laced. Move forward to the waiting officers. If you deviate from this order you will be shot.”

Bosch pulled his earplugs out and listened. He could hear the muffled sound of Wright’s words coming from under the pier. There was no doubt that Jessup could hear the order if he was under there.

“You have one minute,” Wright said as his final communication to Jessup.

The lieutenant checked his watch and they waited. At the thirty-second mark Wright checked with his men under the pier.

“Anything?”

“This is Three. I got nothing.”

“Four, clear.”

Wright gave Bosch a wishful look, like he had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

“Okay, on my mark we go. Keep tight and no crossfire. Topside, if you shoot, you make sure you know who you-”

There was movement on the video screen. A door to one of the storage corrals flung open, but not the door they were focused on. The camera made a jerking motion left as it redirected its aim. Bosch saw Jessup emerge from the darkness behind the open door. His arms came up and together as he dropped into a combat pose.

“Gun!” Wright yelled.

The barrage of gunfire that followed lasted no more than ten seconds. But in that time at least four officers under the pier emptied their weapons. The crescendo was punctuated by the unneeded detonation from the topside. By then Bosch had already seen Jessup go down in the gunfire. Like a man in front of a firing squad, his body seemed at first to be held upright by the force of multiple impacts from multiple angles. Then gravity set in and he fell to the sand.

After a few moments of silence, Wright was back on the com.

“Everybody safe? Count off.”

All officers under and on top of the pier reported in safe.

“Check the suspect.”

In the video Bosch saw two officers approach Jessup’s body. One checked for a pulse while the other held his aim on the dead man.

“He’s ten-seven.”

“Secure the weapon.”

“Got it.”

Wright killed the video and looked at Bosch.

“And that’s that,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get your answers.”

“Me, too.”

They started walking up the beach to the pier. Wright checked his watch and went on the com, announcing the official time of the shooting as 7:18 P.M.

Bosch looked off across the ocean to his left. The sun was now gone.

Friday, April 9, 2:20P.M.

Harry Bosch and I sat on opposite sides of a picnic table, watching the ME’s disinterment team dig. They were on the third excavation, working beneath the tree where Jason Jessup had lit a candle in Franklin Canyon.

I didn’t have to be there but wanted to be. I was hoping for further evidence of Jason Jessup’s villainy, as though that might make it easier to accept what had happened.

But so far, in three excavations, they had found nothing. The team moved slowly, stripping away the dirt one inch at a time and sifting and analyzing every ounce of soil they removed. We had been here all morning and my hope had waned into a cold cynicism about what Jessup had been doing up here on the nights he was followed.

A white canvas sheet had been strung from the tree to two poles planted outside the search zone. This shielded the diggers from the sun as well as from the view of the media helicopters above. Someone had leaked word of the search.

Bosch had the stack of files from the missing persons cases on the table. He was ready to go with records and descriptors of the missing girls should any human remains be found. I had simply come armed with the morning’s newspaper and I read the front-page story now for a second time. The report on the events of the day before was the lead story in the Times and was accompanied by a color photo of two SIS officers pointing their weapons into the open trapdoor on the Santa Monica Pier. The story was also accompanied by a front-page sidebar story on the SIS. Headline: ANOTHER CASE, ANOTHER SHOOTING, SIS’s BLOODY HISTORY.

I had the feeling this would be a story with legs. So far, no one in the media had found out that the SIS knew Jessup had obtained a gun. When that got out-and I was sure it would-there would no doubt be a firestorm of controversy, further investigations and police commission inquiries. The chief question being: Once it was established that it was likely that this man had a weapon, why was he allowed to remain free?

It all made me glad I was no longer even temporarily in the employ of the state. In the bureaucratic arena, those kinds of questions and their answers have the tendency to separate people from their jobs.

I needed not worry about the outcome of such inquiries for my livelihood. I would be returning to my office-the backseat of my Lincoln Town Car. I was going back to being private counsel for the defense. The lines were cleaner there, the mission clearer.

“Is Maggie McFierce coming?” Bosch asked.

I put the paper down on the table.

“No, Williams sent her back to Van Nuys. Her part in the case is over.”

“Why isn’t Williams moving her downtown?”

“The deal was that we had to get a conviction for her to get downtown. We didn’t.”

I gestured to the newspaper.

“And we weren’t going to get one. This one holdout juror is telling anybody who’ll listen that he would’ve voted not guilty. So I guess you can say Gabriel Williams is a man who keeps his word. Maggie’s going nowhere fast.”

That’s how it worked in the nexus of politics and jurisprudence. And that’s why I couldn’t wait to go back to defending the damned.

We sat in silence for a while after that and I thought about my ex-wife and how my efforts to help her and promote her had failed so miserably. I wondered if she would begrudge me the effort. I surely hoped not. It would be hard for me to live in a world where Maggie McFierce despised me.