Michael Connelly - A Darkness More Than Night

Bosch turned his head slightly and his eyes seemed to go blank as he stared at the scarred table top while considering what McCaleb had said.

“I needed to know your background with Tafero. Because that’s a question; why would he do this? Yes, there probably is money in it and a hook into Storey if he walks. But there had to be something more. And I think you just told me what it was. He’s probably hated you for a long time.”

Bosch looked up from the table and directly at McCaleb.

“It’s a payback.”

McCaleb nodded.

“For Pounds. And unless we get the proof of it, it might just work.”

Bosch was silent. He stared down at the table. He looked tired and washed out to McCaleb.

“Still want to shake his hand?” McCaleb asked.

Bosch raised his eyes.

“Sorry, Harry, that was a cheap shot.”

Bosch shook his head, shrugging it off.

“I deserve it. So tell me, what do you have?”

“Not a lot. But you were right. I missed something. Tafero bailed Gunn out on New Year’s Eve. I think the plan was to kill him that night, set the scene and let things take their course. The Hieronymus Bosch connection would come to light – either through Jaye Winston or a bureau VICAP inquiry – and you’d become a natural target. But then Gunn went and got himself drunk in here.”

He raised his bottle and gestured to the bar.

“And then he got himself duiced while driving home. Tafero had to get him out so they could stay with the plan. So he could kill him. That bail slip is the one direct link we have.”

Bosch nodded. McCaleb could tell he was seeing the scheme.

“They leaked it to that reporter,” Bosch said. “Once it hit the media they could jump on it and use it and act like it was news to them, like they were behind the curve when all along they were bending the goddamn curve.”

McCaleb nodded hesitantly. He didn’t bring up Buddy Lockridge’s admission because it threw a jam into the working theory.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking.”

“You’ve got nothing other than Tafero posting the bail?”

“A traffic ticket and that’s it for now.”

In detail McCaleb described his morning’s visits to Valentino Bonds and the post office and how his being forty-eight minutes late at the post office might be the difference in being able to clear Bosch and take down Tafero.

Bosch winced and picked up his bottle, but then put it down without drinking from it.

“The parking ticket puts him at the post office,” McCaleb offered.

“It’s nothing. He’s got an office five blocks away. He could claim it was the only parking place he could find. He could say he lent his car to somebody. It’s nothing.”

McCaleb didn’t want to concentrate on what they didn’t have. He wanted to fill in pieces.

“Listen, the morning watch sergeant told us you had a standing request to be notified every time Gunn was brought in. Would Tafero have known about it? Either from before when he was still in the squad or some other way?”

“He could have. It wasn’t a secret. I was working on Gunn. Someday I was going to break him.”

“By the way, what did Pounds look like?”

Bosch gave him a confused look.

“Short, wide and balding with a mustache?”

Bosch nodded and was about to ask a question when McCaleb answered it.

“His picture is on the wall in Tafero’s office. Pounds giving him the detective-of-the-month plaque. I bet you never got one of those, Harry.”

“Not with Pounds making the pick.”

McCaleb looked up and saw that Jaye Winston had entered the bar. She was carrying a briefcase. He nodded to her and she started toward the booth, walking with her shoulders up as though she were carefully stepping through a landfill.

McCaleb moved over and she slid into the booth next to him.

“Nice place.”

“Harry,” McCaleb said, “I believe you know Jaye Winston.”

Bosch and Winston looked at each other.

“First thing,” Winston said, “I’m sorry about the thing with Kiz. I hope -”

“We do what we have to do,” Bosch said. “You want a drink? They don’t come to the table here.”

“I’d be shocked if they did. Maker’s Mark, rocks, if they have it.”

“Terry, you cool?”

“Cool.”

Bosch slid out to get the drink. Winston turned to look at McCaleb.

“How is it going?”

“Little pieces, here and there.”

“How’s he taking it?”

“Not bad, I guess, for a guy who’s been put into a pretty big box. How’d you do?”

She smiled in a way that McCaleb could tell meant she had come up with something.

“I got you the photo and a couple other… interesting… pieces.”

Bosch put Winston’s drink down in front of her and slid back into the booth.

“She laughed when I said Maker’s Mark,” he said. “That’s the house swill there.”

“Wonderful. Thank you.”

Winston moved her glass to the side and brought her briefcase up onto the table. She opened it, removed a file and then closed the briefcase and put it back on the floor next to the booth. McCaleb watched Bosch watching her. There was an expectant look on his face.

Winston opened the file and slid a five-by-eight photo of Rudy Tafero over to McCaleb.

“That’s from his bonding license. It’s eleven months old.”

She then referred to a page of typed notes.

“I went to county lockup and pulled everything on Storey. He was held there until they transferred him to Van Nuys jail for the trial. During his stay in county he had nineteen visits from Tafero. The first twelve visits coming during the first three weeks he was in there. During that same period, Fowkkes only visited him four times. A lawyer in Fowkkes’s office visited an additional four times and Storey’s executive assistant, a woman named Betilda Lockett, visited six times. That’s it. He was meeting with his investigator more often than his lawyers.”

“That’s when they planned it,” McCaleb said.

She nodded and then smiled in that same way again.

“What?” McCaleb asked.

“Just saving the best for last.”

She brought her briefcase back up and opened it.

“The jail keeps records of all property and possessions of inmates – things that were brought in with them, things approved and passed to them by visitors. There is a notation in Storey’s records that his assistant, Betilda Lockett, was allowed to give him a book during the second of her six visits. According to the property report, it was called The Art of Darkness. I went to the downtown library and checked it out.”

From her briefcase she took a large, heavy book with a blue cloth cover. She started opening it on the table. There was a yellow Post-it sticking out as a marker.

“It’s a study of artists who used darkness as a vital part of the visual medium, according to the introduction.”

She looked up and smiled as she got to the Post-it.

“It has a rather long chapter on Hieronymus Bosch. Complete with illustrations.”

McCaleb lifted his empty bottle and clicked against her glass, which she still hadn’t touched. He then leaned in, along with Bosch, to look at the pages.

“Beautiful,” he said.

Winston turned the pages. The book’s illustrations of Bosch’s work included all of the paintings from which pieces of the crime scene could be traced: The Stone Operation, The Seven Deadly Sins with the eye of God, The Last Judgment and The Garden of Earthly Delights.

“He planned the thing right there from his cell,” McCaleb marveled.

“Looks like it,” Winston said.

They both looked at Bosch, who was nodding his head almost imperceptibly.

“Now your turn, Harry,” McCaleb said.