Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

“How’d you leave it over there?”

“The coroner and SID are still there. A couple RHD bulls – they’re handling it.”

Lindell nodded.

“I saw what I needed to see. Show me what you have here.”

They went into the house and Lindell led the way to the huge living room where Bosch had sat with the Kincaids the afternoon before. He saw the bodies. Sam Kincaid was in the same spot on the couch where Bosch had last seen him. D.C. Richter was on the floor below the window that looked out across the Valley. There was no jetliner view now. It was just gray. Richter’s body was in a pool of blood. Kincaid’s blood had seeped into the material covering the couch. There were several technicians working in the room and lights were set up. Bosch saw that numbered plastic markers had been put in place where.22-caliber shells had been located on the floor and other furniture.

“You have the twenty-two over in Brentwood, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what she used.”

“You didn’t think about searching her before you started talking, huh?”

Bosch looked at the FBI agent and shook his head slightly in annoyance.

“Are you kidding me? It was a voluntary Q amp;A, man. Maybe you’ve never done one over there at the bureau, but rule number one is you don’t make the subject feel like a suspect before you even start. I didn’t search and it would have been a mistake if – ”

“I know, I know. Sorry I asked. It’s just that…”

He didn’t finish but Bosch knew what he was getting at. He decided to change the subject.

“The old man show up?”

“Jack Kincaid? No, we sent people to him. I hear he is not taking it well. He’s calling every politician he ever gave money to. I guess he thinks maybe the city council or the mayor will be able to bring his son back.”

“He knew what his son was. Probably knew all the time. That’s why he’s making the calls. He doesn’t want that to come out.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. We’ve already found digital video cameras and editing equipment. We’ll tie him to Charlotte’s Web. I feel confident of that.”

“It won’t matter. Where’s Chief Irving?”

“On the way.”

Bosch nodded. He stepped close to the couch and bent over, his hands on his knees, to look closely at the dead car czar. His eyes were open and his jaw was set in a final grimace. Lindell had been right when he’d said it had not been an easy ride down. He thought of Kincaid’s expression in comparison to his wife’s death look. There was no comparison.

“How do you think it went down?” he asked. “How’d she get the two of them?”

He continued to stare at the body while Lindell spoke.

“Well, you shoot a man in the balls and he’s going to be pretty docile. From the blood on them, I’d say that was where they got it first. Once she got past that point, I think she had pretty good control of the situation.”

Bosch nodded.

“Richter wasn’t armed?”

“Nope.”

“Anybody find a nine-millimeter around here yet?”

“No, not yet.”

Lindell gave Bosch another we fucked up look.

“We need that nine,” Bosch said. “Mrs. Kincaid got them to admit what they did with the girl but they didn’t say anything about Elias. We need to find that nine to tie them in and end this thing.”

“Well, we’re looking. If anybody finds the nine, we’ll be the first to know.”

“You have people on Richter’s home, office and car? I’m still putting my money on him being the shooter.”

“Yeah, we’re on it but don’t count on anything there.”

Bosch tried to read the FBI agent but couldn’t. He knew that something was not being said.

“What?”

“Edgar pulled his file from the police academy this morning.”

“Right. He was a washout way back. How come?”

“Turned out the guy was blind in one eye. The left eye. He was trying to make it through with nobody noticing. He did all right until the weapons course. He couldn’t shoot for shit on the range. That’s how they found out. Then they washed him out.”

Bosch nodded. He thought of the expert shooting that had taken place on Angels Flight and he knew this new information on Richter changed things. He knew it was unlikely Richter could have been the shooter.

His thoughts were disrupted by the muted roar of a helicopter. He looked up at the windows and saw a helicopter from Channel 4 drifting down and hovering outside the house, about fifty yards away. Through the rain Bosch could barely make out the cameraman in the open sliding door.

“Fucking vultures,” Lindell said. “You’d think the rain would keep them inside.”

He stepped back to the doorway where there was a panel of light switches and other electronic controls. He pushed a round button and kept his finger on it. Bosch heard the whine of an electric motor and watched an automatic window shade drop down over the windows.

“They can’t get near this place on the ground,” Bosch said. “Because of the gates. So the air’s their only shot.”

“I don’t care. Let’s see what they get now.”

Bosch didn’t care either. He looked back down at the bodies. Judging by the coloring and the slight odor already apparent in the room, he guessed that the two men had been dead for several hours. He wondered if this meant that Kate Kincaid had been in the house all that time with the bodies or had gone to Brentwood and spent the night in her daughter’s bed. He guessed the latter.

“Anybody come up with a TOD?” he asked.

“Yeah. Coroner puts time of death at sometime last night, anywhere from nine to midnight. He said the blood flow indicates they could have been alive as long as a couple hours from first to last bullet. It looks like she wanted some information from them but they didn’t want to give it up – at first.”

“Her husband talked. I don’t know about Richter – she probably didn’t care about him. But her husband told her everything about Stacey. Then, I guess, she finished him. Finished them both. It wasn’t her husband with the girl on the site images. You should get the coroner to take torso photos of Richter and do a comparison. It might have been him.”

Lindell gestured toward the bodies.

“Will do. So what do you think? She did this last night and then what, went up to bed?”

“Probably not. I think she spent the night in the Brentwood house. It looked to me like the girl’s bed had been slept in. She had to see me and tell the story before she could finish her plan.”

“The finish being her suicide.”

“Right.”

“That’s hard-core, man.”

“Living with her daughter’s ghost, what she let happen to her, that was even more hard-core. Suicide was the easy way out.”

“Not if you ask me. Like I keep thinking about Sheehan, man, and wondering. I mean, how dark out could it have been for him to do that?”

“Just hope you never know. Where are my people?”

“Down the hall in the office. They’re handling that.”

“I’ll be in there.”

Bosch left Lindell then and went down the hall to the office. Edgar and Rider were silently conducting a search. The items they wished to seize were being piled on top of the desk. Bosch nodded his hello and they did the same. A quiet pallor hung over the investigation now. There would be no prosecution, no trial. It would be left to them to explain what had happened. And they all knew the media would be skeptical and the public might not believe them.

Bosch approached the desk. There was a lot of computer equipment with connecting wires. There were boxes of thick disks used for data storage. There was a small video camera and an editing station.

“We’ve got a lot, Harry,” Rider said. “We would have had Kincaid cold on the pedo net. He’s got a Zip drive with all the images from the secret web site on it. He’s got this camera – we think it’s what was used to take the videos of Stacey.”