Michael Connelly: The Black Echo

Bosch walked into a short hallway that led to a bathroom and a bedroom. He said, “You pick the door?”

“Nah-it was unlocked. No shit, I knock a couple times and I’m fixing to get my pouch outta the car and finesse the lock when, for the hell of it, I try the door.”

“And it opens.”

“It opens.”

“You talk to the landlord?”

“Landlady’s not around. Supposed to be, but maybe she went out to eat lunch or score some horse. I think everybody I seen around here is a spiker.”

Bosch came back into the living room and looked around. There wasn’t much. A couch covered with green vinyl was pushed against one wall, a stuffed chair was against the opposite wall with a small color television on the carpet next to it. There was a Formica-topped table with three chairs around it in the dining room. The fourth chair was by itself against the wall. Bosch looked at an old cigarette-scarred coffee table in front of the couch. On it were an overloaded ashtray and a crossword puzzle book. Playing cards were laid out in an unfinished game of solitaire. There was a TV Guide. Bosch had no idea if Meadows smoked but knew that no cigarettes had been found on the body. He made a mental note to check on it later.

Edgar said, “Harry, this place was turned. Not just the door being open and all, but, I mean, there are other things. The whole place has been searched. They did a halfway decent job, but you can tell. It was rushed. Go check out the bed and the closet, you’ll see what I mean. I’m gonna give the landlady another try.”

Edgar left and Bosch walked back through the living room to the bedroom. Along the way he noted the smell of urine. In the bedroom, he found a queen-sized bed without a backboard pushed against one wall. There was a greasy discoloration on the white wall at about the level where Meadows would have leaned his head while sitting up in bed. Opposite the bed an old six-drawer dresser was against the wall. A cheap rattan night table with a lamp on it stood next to the bed. Nothing else was in the room, not even a mirror.

Bosch studied the bed first. It was unmade, with pillows and sheets in a pile in the center. Bosch noticed that a corner of one of the sheets was folded between the mattress and the box spring, in the midsection of the left side of the bed. The bed would not have been made that way, obviously. Bosch pulled the corner out from under the mattress and let it hang loosely off the side of the bed. He lifted the mattress as if to search underneath it, then lowered it back into place. The corner of the sheet was back between the mattress and the box spring. Edgar was right.

He next opened the six bureau drawers. What clothes there were-underwear, white and dark socks and several T-shirts-were neatly folded and seemed undisturbed. When he closed the bottom left drawer he noticed that it slid unevenly and would not close all the way. He pulled it all the way out of the bureau. Then he pulled another drawer completely out of the dresser. Then the rest. When he had all the drawers out he checked the underside of each to see if something was or had been taped to it. He found nothing. He put them back in but kept changing their order until each one slid easily into place and closed completely. When he was done the drawers were in a different order. The right order. He was satisfied that someone had pulled the drawers out to search beneath and behind them, and had then put them back in the wrong order.

He went into the walk-in closet. He found only a quarter of the available space used. On the floor were two pairs of shoes, a pair of black Reebok running shoes that were dirty with sand and gray dust, and a pair of laced work boots that looked as though they had been recently cleaned and oiled. There was more of the gray dust from the shoes in the carpet. He crouched down and pinched some between his fingers. It seemed like concrete dust. He took a small evidence bag from his pocket and put some of the granules into it. Then he put the bag away and stood up. There were five shirts on hangers, a single white button-down oxford and four long-sleeved black pullovers, like the one Meadows had been wearing. On hangers next to the shirts were two pairs of well-faded jeans and two pairs of black pajamas or karate-style pants. The pockets on all four pairs of pants had been turned inside out. A plastic laundry basket on the floor contained dirty black pants, T-shirts, socks and a pair of boxer shorts.

Bosch walked out of the closet and left the bedroom. He stopped in the hallway bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There was a half-used tube of toothpaste, a bottle of aspirin and a single, empty insulin syringe box. When he closed the cabinet, he looked at himself and saw weariness in his eyes. He smoothed his hair.

Harry walked back to the living room and sat on the couch, in front of the unfinished solitaire hand. Edgar came in.

“Meadows rented the place last July first,” he said. “The landlady’s back. It was supposed to be a month-to-month lease but he paid for eleven months up front. Four bills a month. That’s nearly five grand in cash he put down. Said she didn’t ask him for references. She just took the money. He lived-”

“She said he paid for eleven months?” Bosch interrupted. “Was it a deal, pay for eleven, get the twelfth free?”

“Nah, I asked her about that and she said no, it was him. That’s just the way he wanted to pay. Said he’d move out June first, this year. That’s-what-ten days from now? She said he told her he moved out here on some kind of job, she thinks from Phoenix. Said he was some kind of shift supervisor for the tunnel dig on the subway project downtown. She got the impression that’s all his job would take, eleven months, and then he’d go back to Phoenix.”

Edgar was looking in his notebook, reviewing his conversation with the landlady.

“That’s about it. She ID’d him off the Polaroid, too. She also knew him as Fields. Bill Fields. Said he kept odd hours, like he was on a night shift or something. Said she saw him last week coming home one morning, getting dropped off from a beige or tan Jeep. No license number because she wasn’t looking. But she said he was all dirty, that’s how she knew he was coming home from work.”

They were silent for a few moments, both thinking.

Bosch finally said, “J. Edgar, I have a deal for you.”

“You got a deal for me? Okay, let me hear it.”

“You go home now or back to your open house or whatever. I’ll take this from here. I’ll go pull the tape at the com center, go back to the office and start the paper going. I’ll see if Sakai made next-of-kin notification. I think, if I remember right, that Meadows was from Louisiana. Anyway, I’ve got the autopsy skedded for tomorrow at eight. I’ll take that, too, on my way in.

“Now, your end is tomorrow you finish up last night’s TV thing and take it over to the DA. Shouldn’t be any problems with it.”

“So you’re taking the end that’s dipped in shit and letting me skate. The transvestite-offs-transvestite case is as cut and dried as they come. No pun intended.”

“Yeah. There’s one thing I’d also want. On your way in from the Valley tomorrow, stop by the VA in Sepulveda and see if you can talk them into letting you see Meadows’s file. Might have some names that could help. Like I said before, he was supposedly talking to a shrink in the outpatient care unit and in one of those circle jerks. Maybe one of those guys was spiking with him, knows what happened here. It’s a long shot, I know. If they give you a hard time, give me a call and I’ll work on a search warrant.”

“Sounds like a deal. But I’m worried about you, Harry. I mean, you and I haven’t been partners too long, and I know you probably want to work your way back downtown to Robbery-Homicide, but I don’t see the percentage in busting your balls on this one. Yeah, this place has been turned over, but that isn’t the question. The question is why. And on the face of things, nothing really stirs me. It looks to me like somebody dumped Meadows down at the reservoir after he croaked and searched his place to find his stash. If he had one.”