Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“So then what will you do?” she finally asked.

“Oh, we already had to let him go.”

“No, I mean about the investigation. What’s next?”

“Well, we’re sort of starting from scratch. Looking at it like maybe it was a planned robbery.”

“You said his watch wasn’t taken.”

“Right. It wasn’t. But the Las Vegas angle wasn’t a total waste. We found out that your husband was carrying a lot of money with him when he landed here that night. He was taking it back here to run through his company. To clean it up. It was a lot of money. Nearly a million dollars. He was carrying it for-”

“A million dollars?”

That was her second mistake. To Bosch, her emphasis on million and her shock betrayed her knowledge that there had been far less than that in Tony Aliso’s briefcase. Bosch watched as her eyes stared blankly and all her movement was interior. He guessed-and hoped-she was now wondering where the rest of the money was.

“Yes,” he said. “See, the man who gave your husband the money, the one we first thought was a suspect, is an FBI agent who infiltrated the organization your husband worked for. That is why his alibi is so solid. Anyway, he told us that your husband was carrying a million dollars. It was all in cash and there was so much that he couldn’t fit it all into his briefcase. He had to put about half of it in his suit bag.”

He paused for a few moments. He could tell the story was playing in her internal theater. Her eyes had that faraway look in them. He remembered that look from her movie. But this time it was for real. He hadn’t even finished the interview, but she was already making plans. He could see it.

“Was the money marked by the FBI?” she asked. “I mean, could they trace it that way?”

“No, unfortunately their agent did not have it long enough to do that. There was too much of it, frankly. But the transaction did take place in an office with a hidden video camera. There is no doubt, Tony left there with a million dollars. Uh…”

Bosch paused to open his briefcase and quickly consult a page from a file.

“…actually, it was a million, seventy-six thousand. All in cash.”

Veronica’s eyes went down to the floor as she nodded. Bosch studied her but his concentration was interrupted when he thought he heard a sound from somewhere in the house. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe there was someone else there. They had never asked.

“Did you hear that?” Bosch asked.

“What?”

“I thought I heard something. Are you alone in the house?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I heard a bump or something.”

“You want me to look around?” Edgar offered.

“Oh, no,” Veronica said quickly, “…uh, it probably was just the cat.”

Bosch didn’t remember seeing any sign of a cat when he had been in the house before. He glanced at Kiz and saw her almost imperceptibly turn her head to signal she didn’t remember a cat either. He decided to let it go for the time being.

“Anyway,” he said, “that’s why we’re canvassing and that’s why we’re here. We need to ask you some questions. They might go over some of the same ground we’ve covered before but, like I said, we’re kind of starting over. It won’t take too much longer. Then you’ll be able to go to the stables.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

“Would you mind if I have a drink of water first?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry, I should have asked. Anybody else want something?”

“I’ll pass,” Edgar said.

“I’m fine,” Rider said.

Veronica Aliso stood up and headed toward the hallway. Bosch gave her a head start and then stood up and followed.

“You did ask,” he said to her back. “But I turned it down. I didn’t think I’d get thirsty.”

He followed her into the kitchen, where she opened a cabinet and took down a glass. Bosch looked around. It was a large kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and black granite countertops. There was a center island with a sink in it.

“Tap water’d be fine for me,” he said, taking the glass from her and filling it at the island.

He turned and leaned against the counter and drank from it. He then poured the rest out and put the glass on the counter.

“That’s all you want?”

“Yes. Just needed something to wash the dust down, I guess.”

He smiled and she didn’t.

“Well then, should we go back to the living room?” she asked.

“That’d be fine.”

He followed her out of the kitchen. Just before he entered the hallway, he turned back and his eyes swept across the gray-tiled floor. He didn’t see what he thought should be there.

Bosch spent the next fifteen minutes asking mostly questions that had been asked six days earlier and that had little bearing on the case now. He was going through the motions, the finishing touches. The trap was baited and this was his way of quietly stepping back from it. Finally, when he thought he had said and asked enough, Bosch closed the notebook in which he had been scribbling notes he’d never look at again and stood up. He thanked her for her time and Veronica Aliso walked the three detectives to the door. Bosch was the last one out, and as he stepped over the threshold she spoke to him. He somehow knew that she would. There were parts to her act that had to be played as well.

“Keep me informed, Detective Bosch. Please keep me informed.”

Bosch turned and looked back at her.

“Oh, I will. If anything happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

Bosch drove Edgar and Rider back to their car. He didn’t speak about the interview until he pulled in behind it.

“So what do you think?” he asked as he got out his cigarettes.

“I think we sunk the hook but good,” Edgar said.

“Yeah,” Rider said. “It’s going to be interesting.”

Bosch lit a cigarette.

“What about the cat?” he asked.

“What?” Edgar asked.

“The noise in the house. She said it was the cat. But in the kitchen there were no food bowls on the floor.”

“Maybe they were outside,” Edgar offered.

Bosch shook his head.

“I think people who keep cats inside feed them inside,” he said. “In the hills you’re supposed to keep ’ em in. Coyotes. Anyway, I don’t like cats. I get allergic to them. I can usually tell when somebody has a cat. I don’t think she has a cat. Kiz, you didn’t see a cat in there, did you?”

“I spent all Monday morning in there and I never saw a cat.”

“You think maybe it was the guy then?” Edgar asked. “Whoever she worked this with?”

“Maybe. I think somebody was in there. Maybe her lawyer.”

“Nah, lawyers don’t hide like that. They come out and confront.”

“True.”

“Should we watch the place, see who comes out?” Edgar asked.

Bosch thought a moment.

“No,” Bosch said. “They spot us and they’ll know the money thing is just bait. Better we let it go. Better just to get out of here, go get set up. We gotta get ready.”

DURING HIS TIME in Vietnam, Bosch’s primary assignment had been to fight the war in the tunnel networks that ranged beneath the villages in the Cu Chi province, to go into the darkness they called the black echo and to come back alive. But the tunnel work was done quickly, and between those missions he spent days in the bush, fighting and waiting under the jungle canopy. One time he and a handful of others got cut off from their unit and Bosch spent a night sitting in the elephant grass, his back pressed against the back of an Alabama boy named Donnel Fredrick, listening as a company of VC fighters moved through. They sat there and waited for Charlie to stumble onto them. There was nothing else they could do and there were too many to fight. So they waited and the minutes went by like hours. They all made it through, though Donnel was later killed in a foxhole by a direct mortar hit-friendly fire. Bosch always thought that night in the elephant grass was the closest he’d ever come to experiencing a miracle.