Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

“Why did you?”

“Because if others knew this was his strategy, it could have been a motive.”

“You mean the real killer of that little girl came back to kill Elias.”

“That’s a possibility.”

Bosch nodded.

“Did you read the depos?” he asked.

“No, not enough time. I’m giving all depositions to you because the defense – in this case the city attorney’s office – would have been furnished copies. So I’m not giving you something you wouldn’t already have access to.”

“What about the computer?”

“I looked through it very quickly. It appears to be depositions and other information out of the public file. Nothing privileged.”

“Okay.”

Bosch started to get up. He was thinking about how many trips down to the car it would take him to move the files.

“Oh, one other thing.”

She reached down to the box on the floor and came up with a manila file. She opened it on the desk, revealing two envelopes. Bosch leaned over the desk to see.

“This was in the Harris stuff. I don’t know what it means.”

Both envelopes were addressed to Elias at his office. No return addresses. Both were postmarked Hollywood, one mailed five weeks earlier and the other three weeks earlier.

“There’s a single page with a line in each. Nothing that makes sense to me.”

She started opening one of the envelopes.

“Uh…,” Bosch began.

She stopped, holding the envelope in her hand.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking about prints.”

“I already handled these. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, go ahead, I guess.”

She finished opening the envelope, unfolded the page on the desk and turned it so Bosch could read it. There was one typed line at the top of the page. dot the i humbert humbert “Humbert humbert…,” Bosch said.

“It’s the name of a character from literature – or what some people consider literature,” Entrenkin said. “Lolita, by Nabokov.”

“Right.”

Bosch noticed that a notation had been written in pencil at the bottom of the page.

#2 – 3/12

“That was probably Howard’s marking,” Entrenkin said. “Or someone in his office.”

She opened the next envelope, the more recently mailed of the two, and unfolded the letter. Bosch leaned over again. license plates prove his innocense “Looks to me like they’re obviously from the same person,” Entrenkin said. “Also, notice that innocence is spelled wrong.”

“Right.”

There was also a pencil notation at the bottom of the page.

#3 – 4/5

Bosch pulled his briefcase up onto his lap and opened it. He took out the evidence envelope that contained the letter Elias had been carrying in his inside suit pocket when gunned down.

“Elias was carrying this when he… when he got on Angels Flight. I forgot that the crime scene people gave it to me. It might be good if you are here observing when I open it. It’s got the same postmark as those two. It was mailed to him Wednesday. This one I want to preserve for prints.”

He took a pair of rubber gloves out of the cardboard dispenser in his case and put them on. He then carefully removed the letter and opened it. He unfolded a piece of paper similar to the first two. Again there was one line typed on the page. he knows you know As Bosch stared at the page he felt the slight flutter in his heart that he knew came with the surge of adrenaline.

“Detective Bosch, what does this mean?”

“I don’t know. But I sure wish I had opened it sooner.”

There was no pencil notation on the bottom of the third page. Elias hadn’t gotten around to it, apparently.

“It looks like we’re missing one,” Bosch said. “These are marked two and three and this one came after – this one would be four.”

“I know. But I haven’t found anything that would be number one. Nothing in the files. Maybe he threw it out, not realizing it meant something until the second one came.”

“Maybe.”

He thought about the letters for a moment. He was mostly going on instinct and premonition, but he felt the charge sustaining in his blood. He felt he had found his focus. This exhilarated him but at the same time he also felt a bit foolish at having unknowingly carried such a potentially key piece of the case around in his briefcase now for about twelve hours.

“Did Howard ever talk to you about this case?” he asked.

“No, we never talked about each other’s work,” Entrenkin said. “We had a rule. You see, we knew that what we were doing was… something that wouldn’t be understood – the inspector general with one of the department’s most vocal and well-known critics.”

“Not to mention him being married and all.”

Her face turned hard.

“Look, what is wrong with you? One minute we’re getting along fine and maybe making some progress on this and the next you just want to antagonize me.”

“What’s wrong is that I wish you would save the we-knew-it-was-wrong sermon for somebody else. I find it hard to believe you two didn’t talk about the LAPD when you were alone up in that apartment.”

Bosch saw pure fire in her eyes.

“Well, I don’t give a good goddamn what you find hard to believe, Detective.”

“Look, we made our deal. I’m not going to tell anyone. If I make trouble for you, you can make trouble for me. If I did tell even my partners, you know what they’d say? They’d say I was crazy for not treating you as a suspect. That’s what I should be doing but I’m not. I’m flying on pure instinct and that can be scary. So to make up for it I’m looking for any edge or piece of luck or help I can get.”

She was silent a moment before responding.

“I appreciate what you are doing for me, Detective. But I am not lying to you. Howard and I never spoke in detail about his cases or my work with the department. Never in detail. The one thing I remember him saying about the Harris case is so vague as to defy interpretation. But if you must know what it was, I will tell you. He told me to brace myself because he was going to blow the department and a few of the city’s big shots out of the water on this one. I didn’t ask him what he meant.”

“And when was that?”

“That was Tuesday night.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

Bosch got up and walked around a bit. He found himself at the window staring out at Anthony Quinn in shadows. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost six. He was supposed to rendezvous with Edgar and Rider at seven at the Hollywood station.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, without turning back to Entrenkin.

“What does it mean?”

He turned to her.

“That if Elias was on to something and got close to identifying the killer – the real killer – then it wasn’t a cop who put him down.”

She thought a moment and said, “You’re only looking at it from one side.”

“What’s the other?”

“Say he was about to go to trial and pull the real killer out of his hat. Conclusively. That would put the lie to the police evidence, wouldn’t it? So proving Harris innocent would at the same time prove the cops framed him. If the real killer knew Howard was on to him, yes he could have come after him. But say a cop knew that Howard was going to prove that that cop framed Harris, he could have come at him, too.”

Bosch shook his head.

“It’s always the cops with you. Maybe the frame was in place before the cops even showed up.”

He shook his head again, more emphatically, as if warding off a thought.

“I don’t know what I’m saying. There was no frame. It’s too farfetched.”

Entrenkin watched him for a long moment.

“Whatever you say, Detective. Just never say I didn’t warn you.”