Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

Off camera, the car czar was a calculating businessman who always played both sides of politics and mercilessly drove competitors out of business or at least away from his dealerships. His dynasty grew rapidly, his car lots spreading across the southern California landscape. By the 1980s Jack Kincaid’s reign was done and the moniker of car czar was turned over to his son. But the old man remained a force, though a mostly unseen one. And this was never more clear than when Stacey Kincaid disappeared and old Jack returned to TV, this time to appear on newscasts and put up a million-dollar reward for her safe return. It was another surrealistic episode in Los Angeles murder lore. The old man everyone had grown up with on TV was back on once again and tearfully begging for his granddaughter’s life.

It was all for naught. The reward and the old man’s tears became moot when the girl was found dead by passersby in the vacant lot close to Michael Harris’s apartment.

The case went to trial based solely on evidence consisting of Harris’s fingerprints being found in the bedroom from which the girl had been abducted and the proximity of the body’s disposal to his apartment. The case held the city rapt, playing live every day on Court TV and local news programs. Harris’s attorney, John Penny, a lawyer as skilled as Elias when it came to manipulating juries, mounted a defense that attacked the body’s disposal location as coincidental and the fingerprints – found on one of the girl’s schoolbooks – as simply being planted by the LAPD.

All the power and money the Kincaids had amassed over generations was no match against the tide of anti-police sentiment and the racial underpinnings of the case. Harris was black, the Kincaids and the police and prosecutors on the case were white. The case against Harris was tainted beyond repair when Penny elicited what many perceived as a racist comment from Jack Kincaid during testimony about his many dealerships. After Kincaid detailed his many holdings, Penny asked why not one of the dealerships was in South Central Los Angeles. Without hesitation and before the prosecutor could object to the irrelevant question, Kincaid said he would never place a business in an area where the inhabitants had a propensity to riot. He said he made the decision after the Watts riots of 1965 and it was confirmed after the more recent riots of 1992.

The question and answer had little if anything to do with the murder of a twelve-year-old girl but proved to be the pivotal point in the trial. In later interviews jurors said Kincaid’s answer was emblematic of the city’s deep racial gulf. With that one answer sympathy swayed from the Kincaid family to Harris. The prosecution was doomed.

The jury acquitted Harris in four hours. Penny then turned the case over to his colleague, Howard Elias, for civil proceedings and Harris took his place next to Rodney King in the pantheon of civil rights victims and heroes in South L.A. Most of them deserved such honored status, but some were the creations of lawyers and the media. Whichever Harris was, he was now seeking his payday – acivil rights trial in which $10 million would be just the opening bid.

Despite the verdict and all the attached rhetoric, Bosch didn’t believe Harris’s claims of innocence or police brutality. One of the detectives Harris specifically accused of brutality was Bosch’s former partner, Frankie Sheehan, and Bosch knew Sheehan to be a total professional when dealing with suspects and prisoners. So Bosch simply thought of Harris as a liar and murderer who had walked away from his crime. He would have no qualms about rousting him and taking him downtown for questioning about Howard Elias’s murder. But Bosch also knew as he stood there with Rider that if he now brought Harris in, he would run the risk of compounding the alleged wrongs already done to him – at least in the eyes of much of the public and the media. It was a political decision as much as a police decision that he had to make.

“Let me think about this for a second,” he said.

He walked off by himself through the atrium. The case was even more perilous than he had realized. Any misstep could result in disaster – to the case, to the department, to careers. He wondered if Irving had realized all of this when he had chosen Bosch’s team for the case. Perhaps, he thought, Irving’s compliments were just a front for a real motive – leaving Bosch and his team dangling in the wind. Bosch knew he was now venturing into paranoia. It was unlikely that the deputy chief could have come up with such a plan so quickly. Or that he would even care about Bosch’s team with so much else at stake.

Bosch looked up and saw the sky was much brighter now. It would be a sunny and hot day.

“Harry?”

He turned. It was Rider.

“She’s off.”

He walked back to the group and Langwiser handed him his phone.

“You’re not going to like this,” she said. “Dave Sheiman wants to bring in a special master to look at the files before you do.”

“Special master?” Dellacroce asked. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s an attorney,” Langwiser said. “An independent attorney appointed by a judge who will oversee the files. He will be hired to protect the rights of those clients while still giving you people what you need. Hopefully.”

“Shit,” Bosch said, his frustration finally getting the better of him. “Why don’t we just stop the whole thing now and drop the damn case? If the DA’s office doesn’t care about us clearing it then we won’t care either.”

“Detective Bosch, you know it’s not like that. Of course we care. We just want to be safe. The warrant you have is still good for searching the office. Sheiman said you can even go through completed case files – which I am sure you need to look at as well. But the special master will have to come in and look at all pending files first. Remember, this person is not an adversary to you. He will give you everything you are entitled to see.”

“And when will that be? Next week? Next month?”

“No. Sheiman is going to go to work on that this morning. He’ll call Judge Houghton, apprise him of the situation, and see if he has any recommendations for a special master. With any luck, the appointment will be made today and you’ll have what you need from the files this afternoon. Tomorrow, at the very latest.”

“Tomorrow at the latest is too late. We need to keep moving on this.”

“Yeah,” Chastain chimed in. “Don’t you know an investigation is like a shark? It’s got to keep – ”

“All right, Chastain,” Bosch said.

“Look,” Langwiser said. “I’ll make sure Dave understands the urgency of the situation. In the meantime you’ll just have to be patient. Now do you want to keep standing down here talking about it or do you want to go up and do what we can in the office?”

Bosch looked at her for a long moment, annoyed by her chiding tone. The moment ended when the phone in his hand rang. It was Edgar and he was whispering. Bosch held a hand over his ear so he could hear.

“I didn’t hear that. What?”

“Listen, I’m in the bedroom. There’s no phone book in the bed table. I checked both bed tables. It’s not here.”

“What?”

“The phone book, it’s not here, man.”

Bosch looked at Chastain, who was looking back at him. He turned and walked away, out of earshot of the others. Now he whispered to Edgar.

“You sure?”

“Course I’m sure. I woulda found it if it was here.”

“You were first in the bedroom?”

“Right. First one in. It’s not here.”

“You’re in the bedroom to the right when you come down the hall.”

“Yeah, Harry. I’m in the right place. It’s just not here.”