Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“Did she know Joey Marks?”

“Your one question is now up to three, Bosch.”

“Did she?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was her name back then?”

“That’s another one I don’t know. I’ll see you around, Bosch.”

He turned and walked away. Bosch threw his cigarette into the street and walked back toward the Glass House. A few minutes later, after being properly buzzed through the door into the SID offices, Bosch found Donovan at his desk again. The criminalist lifted a thin file from the desk and handed it to Harry.

“You got copies in there,” he said. “Same thing I sent the bureau. What I did was shoot a copy of the negative and then shot the new negative and printed it in black-and-white contrast for comparison purposes. I also blew it up to actual size.”

Bosch didn’t understand what Donovan had just said except for the last part. He opened the file. There were two pages of copy paper with the shoe prints in black. Both were partial prints of the same right shoe. But between the two partials almost all of the shoe was there. Donovan got up and looked at the open file. He pointed to a tread ridge on one of the copies. It was a curving line on the heel. But the line was broken.

“Now, if you find the shooter and he still has the shoes, this is where you’ll get him. See how that line is broken there? That does not appear to be a manufacturer’s design. This guy stepped on glass or something at some point and it cut the tread there. It’s either that or a flaw in manufacturing. But if you find the shoe, we’ll be able to make an ID match that should send the boy away.”

“Okay,” Bosch said, still looking at the copies. “Now, did you get anything even preliminary from the bureau on this?”

“Not really. I’ve got a guy I go to pretty regularly with this kind of stuff. I know him, seen him at a couple of the SID conventions. Anyway, he called just to let me know he got the package and he’d get on it as soon as he could. He said that off the top of his head he thought it was one of those lightweight boots that are popular now. You know, they’re like work boots but they’re comfortable and wear like a pair of Nikes.”

“Okay, Artie, thanks.”

Bosch drove over to the County-USC Medical Center and around to the parking lot by the railroad yard. The coroner’s office was located at the far end of the medical center property, and Bosch went in through the back door after showing his badge to a security guard.

He checked Dr. Salazar’s office first but it was empty. He then went down to the autopsy floor and looked in the first suite, where the lowered table that Salazar always used was located. Salazar was there, working on another body. Bosch stepped in and Salazar looked up from the open chest cavity of what looked like the remains of a young black man.

“Harry, what are you doing here? This is a South Bureau case.”

“I wanted to ask about the Aliso case.”

“Kind of got my hands full at the moment. And you shouldn’t be in here without a mask and gown.”

“I know. You think you could have your assistant dub off a copy of the protocol for me?”

“No problem. I heard the FBI took an interest in the case, Harry. Is that true?”

“That’s what I hear.”

“Funny thing, those agents didn’t bother talking to me. They just came in and got a copy of the protocol. The protocol only has conclusions, none of the ruminating we doctors like to do.”

“So what would you have ruminated about with them if they had talked to you?”

“I would have told them my hunch, Harry.”

“Which is?”

Salazar looked up from the body but kept his rubber-gloved and bloody hands over the open chest so they wouldn’t drip on anything else.

“My hunch is that you’re looking for a woman.”

“Why’s that?”

“The material in and below the eyes.”

“Preparation H?”

“What?”

“Nothing, never mind. What did you find?”

“The substance was analyzed and it came back oleo capsicum. Found it on the nasal swabs, too. Know what oleo capsicum is better known as, Harry?”

“Pepper spray.”

“Shit, Harry, you ruin my fun.”

“Sorry. So somebody sprayed him with pepper spray?”

“Right again. That’s why I think it’s a woman. Someone who was either having problems controlling him or afraid of problems. That makes me think it’s a woman. Besides, all these women around here, they all carry that stuff in their purses.”

Bosch wondered if Veronica Aliso was one of those women.

“That’s good, Sally. Anything else?”

“No surprises. Tests came back clean.”

“No amyl nitrate?”

“Nope, but that has a short retention. We don’t find it that often. Did you get anywhere with the slugs?”

“Yeah, we did all right. Can you call your guy?”

“Take me to the intercom.”

While Salazar held his hands up in front of himself so they wouldn’t touch anything, Bosch pushed his wheelchair to the nearby counter, where there was a phone with an intercom attachment. Salazar told Bosch which button to push and then ordered someone to make a copy of the protocol immediately for Bosch.

“Thanks,” Bosch said.

“No problem. Hope it helps. Remember, look for a woman who carries pepper spray in her purse. Not mace. Pepper spray.”

“Right.”

The end-of-the-week traffic was intense and it took Bosch nearly an hour to get out of downtown and back to Hollywood. When he got to the Cat amp; Fiddle pub on Sunset it was after six, and as he walked through the gate he saw Edgar and Rider already sitting at a table in the open-air courtyard. There was a pitcher of beer on their table. And they weren’t alone. Sitting at the table with them was Grace Billets.

The Cat amp; Fiddle was a popular drinking spot with the Hollywood cops because it was only a few blocks from the station on Wilcox. So Bosch didn’t know as he approached the table whether Billets happened to be there by coincidence or because she knew of their freelance operation.

“Howdy, folks,” Bosch said as he sat down.

There was one empty glass on the table and he filled it from the pitcher. He then held the glass up to the others and toasted to the end of another week.

“Harry,” Rider said, “the lieutenant knows what we’ve been doing. She’s here to help.”

Bosch nodded and slowly looked at Billets.

“I’m disappointed that you didn’t come to me first,” she said. “But I understand what you are doing. I agree that it might be in the bureau’s best interest to let this lie and not endanger their case. But a man was murdered. If they’re not going to look for the killer, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”

Bosch nodded. He was almost speechless. He’d never had a boss who wasn’t a rigid by-the-book man. Grace Billets was a major change.

“Of course,” she said, “we have to be very careful. We screw this up and we’ll have more than just the FBI mad at us.”

The unspoken message was that their careers were at stake here.

“Well, my position’s already pretty much shot,” Bosch said. “So if anything goes wrong, I want you all to lay it on me.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rider said.

“No, it’s not. You all are going places. I’m not going anywhere. Hollywood is it for me and all of us here know it. So if this thing hits the fan, back out. I’ll take the heat. If you can’t agree to that, I want you to back out now.”

There was silence for a few moments, and then one by one the other three nodded.

“Okay, then,” he said, “you may have told the lieutenant what you’ve been doing, but I’d like to hear it myself.”

“We’ve come up with a few things, not a lot,” Rider said. “Jerry went up the hill to see Nash while I worked the computer and talked to a friend at the Times. First off, I ran Tony Aliso’s TRW credit report and got Veronica’s Social Security number off that. I then ran that through the Department of Social Security computer to try and get a work history and found out that Veronica is not her real name. The Social comes back to Jennifer Gilroy, born forty-one years ago in Las Vegas, Nevada. No wonder she said she hated Vegas. She grew up there.”