Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

Bosch put the phone down on its hook. He was in a daze. Frankie Sheehan believed that Bosch had turned their conversation of the night before against him. He believed Harry had turned him in to the bureau. It made Bosch feel worse than the knowledge that his old partner and friend now sat in an interview room fighting for his life.

“Sounds like you don’t agree much with Channel Four,” Pelfry said.

“No, I don’t.”

“You know something, I’ma take a wild ass guess here, but I think that glass in your hair means you’re the two guys they were talkin’ about on TV getting potshotted over on Western.”

“Yeah, what about it?” Edgar asked.

“Well, that’s a few blocks from where that Stacey Kincaid girl ended up.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, if that’s where you were comin’ from, then I wonder if you met my two buddies, Rufus and Andy.”

“Yeah, we met ’em and we know all about the body being dumped three days late.”

“You’re following my footsteps then.”

“Some of them. We visited Mistress Regina last night, too.”

Bosch was finally out of his daze but hung back and watched Edgar making progress with Pelfry.

“Then this isn’t all bullshit what you said about who you think hit Eli?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Then what else you want to know? Eli kept his cards close most of the time. Very close to the vest. I never knew for sure which corner of the puzzle I was working, if you know what I mean.”

“Tell us about the license plates,” Bosch said, ending his silence. “We know you guys pulled seventy-five days’ worth of receipts from Hollywood Wax. How come?”

Pelfry looked at them a long moment as if deciding something.

“Come on back,” he finally said.

He led them to the rear office.

“I didn’t want you guys back here,” he said. “But now…”

He raised his hands to indicate the boxes covering every horizontal surface in the office. They were short boxes that normally held four six-packs of soda. Stacked in them were bundled receipts with cardboard markers with dates written on them.

“Those are the receipts from Hollywood Wax?” Bosch asked.

“That’s right. Eli was going to bring ’em all into court as an exhibit. I was holding ’em here till he needed ’em.”

“What exactly was he going to show with them?”

“I thought you boys knew.”

“We’re a little behind you, Mr. Pelfry.”

“Jenkins. Or Jenks. Most people call me Jenks. I don’t know exactly what alla these receipts meant – remember what I said about Eli not showin’ me all the cards in his deck – but I got an idea. See, when he su’peenied these, he gave me a list of license plate numbers on a piece a paper. He said I was to look through alla these and see if any of those numbers on the list turned up on the receipts.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, took me the better part of a week.”

“Any matches?”

“One match.”

He went over to one of the boxes and stuck his finger into the stack where there was a cardboard marker with the date 6/12 noted on it.

“This one.”

Pelfry pulled out a receipt and took it over to Bosch. Edgar came over and looked as well. The receipt was for a daily special. It identified the car to be washed as a white Volvo wagon. It listed the license plate number and the price of the special – $14.95 plus tax.

“This plate number was on the list Elias gave you,” Bosch said.

“That’s right.”

“It was the only match you found.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You know whose car this plate is from?”

“Not exactly. Eli didn’t tell me to run it. But I got a guess who it belongs to.”

“The Kincaids.”

“Now you’re with me.”

Bosch looked at Edgar. He could tell by his partner’s face he hadn’t made the leap.

“The fingerprints. To prove Harris was innocent beyond any kind of doubt, he had to explain his client’s fingerprints on the victim’s schoolbook. If there was no reason or possible legitimate explanation for Harris having been in the Kincaid house and touching the book, then there were two alternative reasons. One, the prints were planted by the cops. Two, Harris touched the book when it was somewhere else, outside of the girl’s bedroom.”

Edgar nodded as he understood.

“The Kincaids had their car washed at Hollywood Wax and Shine, where Harris worked. The receipt proves it.”

“Right. All Elias had to do was put the book in the car.”

Bosch turned to the boxes on Pelfry’s desk and ticked his finger on the cardboard marker.

“June twelve,” he said. “That’s right around the end of the school year. Kids clear out their lockers. They take all their books home. They’re not doing homework anymore so maybe the books lie around in the back of the Volvo.”

“The Volvo goes to the car wash,” Edgar said. “I’d bet the daily special includes a vacuum, maybe some Armorall on the inside.”

“The washer – the polish man – touches the book when he’s working inside the car,” Bosch added. “There are your prints.”

“The polish man was Harris,” Edgar said. He then looked at Pelfry and said, “The manager at the car wash said you came back to look at the time cards.”

Pelfry nodded.

“I did. I got a copy of a time card that proves Harris was working at the time that white Volvo came in and got the special. Eli asked me to go over to the car wash and try to finesse that without a su’peenie. I figure the time card was the linchpin and he didn’t want anybody to know about it.”

“Even the judge who signed the subpoenas on the case,” Bosch said. “He must not have trusted anybody.”

“Looks like with good reason,” Pelfry said.

While Edgar asked Pelfry to show him the time card, Bosch withdrew and tried to think about this latest information. He remembered what Sheehan had said the night before about the fingerprints being so good because the person who had left them had probably been sweating. He understood now that that was not because of nervousness over the crime being committed, but because he was working at the car wash, vacuuming a car when those prints were left on that book. Michael Harris. He was innocent. Truly innocent. Bosch had not been convinced until that moment. And it was astounding to him. He wasn’t a dreamer. He knew cops made mistakes and innocent people went to prison. But the mistake here was colossal. An innocent man tortured as cops tried to bully him into confessing to something he had clearly not done. Satisfied they had their man, the police had dropped their investigation and let the real killer slip away – until a civil rights lawyer’s investigation found him, a discovery that got the lawyer killed. The chain reaction went even further, pushing the city once more to the brink of self-destruction.

“So then, Mr. Pelfry,” Bosch said, “who killed Stacey Kincaid?”

“It’s Jenks. And I don’t know. I know it wasn’t Michael Harris – ain’t no doubt about that. But Eli didn’t tell me the other part – if he knew before they got him.”

“They?” Bosch asked.

“Whatever.”

“Tell us about Mistress Regina,” Edgar said.

“What’s to tell? Eli got a tip, he passed it to me. I checked the broad out and couldn’t see any connection. She’s just a freak – a dead end. If you guys were there, you know what I mean. I think Eli dropped it after I told him about her.”

Bosch thought a moment and shook his head.

“I don’t think so. There’s something there.”

“Well, if there is, he didn’t tell me about it.”

In the car Bosch called Rider to check in. She said she had completed a review of the files without anything that needed immediate follow-up catching her eye.