Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“Harry, is that you?”

“Eleanor?”

“I’m here, Harry.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I didn’t think it would be for me.”

“When did you get there?”

“Last night. I’ve been waiting for you. Thanks for leaving the key.”

“You’re welcome… Eleanor, where’d you go?”

There was a beat of silence before she answered.

“I went back to Vegas. I needed to get my car…clear out my bank account, things like that. Where have you been all night?”

“Working. We have a new suspect. We’re holding him here. Did you go by your apartment?”

“No. There was no reason to. I just did what I had to do and drove back.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“That’s okay. I was worried about where you were, but I didn’t want to call you there in case you were in the middle of something.”

Bosch wanted to ask her what came next for them, but he felt such a sense of happiness that she was there in his home that he didn’t dare to ruin the moment.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be tied up,” he said.

Bosch heard the heavy doors in the station’s rear hallway open and bang shut. Footsteps were coming toward the squad room.

“Do you have to go?” Eleanor asked.

“Um…”

Edgar and Rider walked into the squad room. Rider carried a brown evidence bag with something heavy in it. Edgar carried a closed cardboard box across which someone had stenciled Xmas with a Magic Marker. He also had a broad smile on his face.

“Yeah,” Bosch said, “I think I better go.”

“Okay, Harry, I’ll see you.”

“You’ll be there?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Okay, Eleanor, I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

He hung up and looked up at his two partners. Edgar was still smiling.

“We got your Christmas present here, Harry,” Edgar said. “We got Powers right here in this box.”

“You got the boots?”

“No. No boots. We got better than boots.”

“Show me.”

Edgar lifted the lid off the box. Off the top he took out a manila envelope. He then tilted the box so that Bosch could look in. Bosch whistled.

“Merry Christmas,” Edgar said.

“You count it?” Bosch asked, his eyes still on the stacks of currency with rubber bands around them.

“Each bundle has a number on it,” Rider said. “You add them all up, it equals four hundred eighty thousand. It looks like it’s everything.”

“Not a bad present, eh Harry?” Edgar said excitedly.

“No. Where was it?”

“Attic crawl space,” Edgar said. “One of the last places we looked. Box was just sitting there in front of me as soon as I stuck my head up.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, what else?”

“Found these under his mattress.”

From the envelope Edgar withdrew a stack of photos. They were six by four in size and each had the date of the photograph digitally printed on the bottom left corner. Bosch put them on the table in front of them and looked through them, carefully picking them up by the corners. He hoped Edgar had handled them the same way.

The first photo was of Tony Aliso getting into a car at the valet stand in front of the Mirage. The next was of him walking to the door of Dolly’s. Following that was a series of shots of him outside Dolly’s talking to the man Aliso knew as Luke Goshen. It was dark outside in these shots and they were taken from a distance, but the neon-glutted entrance of the club was lit as brightly as daylight and Aliso and Goshen were easily recognizable.

Then there were photos from the same location but the date at the bottom corner had changed. They showed a young woman leaving the club and walking to Aliso’s car. Bosch recognized her. It was Layla. There were also pictures of Tony and Layla poolside at the Mirage. The last shot was of Tony leaning his deeply tanned body over Layla’s lounge chair and kissing her on the mouth.

Bosch looked up at Edgar and Rider. Edgar was smiling again. Rider wasn’t.

“Just like we thought,” Edgar said. “He cased this guy over there in Vegas. That shows he had the knowledge to set this whole thing up. Him and the widow. We got ’em, Harry. This shows premeditation, lying in wait, the works. We got ’em both, nine ways to Sunday.”

“Maybe.” He looked at Rider. “What’s up with you, Kiz?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. It just seems too easy. The place was very clean. No old boots, no sign that Veronica ever even set foot in that place. Then we find these so easy. It was like we were supposed to find it all. I mean, why would he take the time to get rid of the boots but leave the photos under the mattress? I can see him wanting to hang on to the money, but putting it in the attic seems pretty lame.”

She moved her hand toward the photos and the cash in a dismissive gesture. Bosch nodded his agreement and leaned back in his chair.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “He’s not that stupid.”

He thought about the similarity to the gun being planted on Goshen. That, too, turned out to be too easy.

“I think it’s a setup,” Bosch said. “Veronica did this. He took the photos for her. He probably told her to destroy them, but she didn’t. She hung on to them just in case. She probably snuck them back in under his bed and put the cash up in the attic. Was it easy to get to?”

“Easy enough,” Rider said. “Fold-down ladder.”

“Wait a minute, why would she set him up?” Edgar asked.

“Not from the start,” Bosch said. “It was like a fall-back position. If things started to go wrong, if we got too close, she had Powers out there ready to take the fall. Maybe when she sent Powers after the suitcase she went to his place with the photos and the cash. Who knows when it started? But I bet when I tell Powers we found this stuff in his house, his eyes are going to pop. Whaddaya got in the bag, Kiz, the camera?”

She nodded and put the bag on the table without opening it.

“Nikon with a telephoto on it, credit card receipt for his purchase of it.”

Bosch nodded and his thoughts strayed a bit. He was trying to think about how he was going to work the photos and money with Powers. It was their shot at breaking him. It had to be played right.

“Hold on, hold on,” Edgar said, a look of confusion on his face. “I still don’t get this. What makes you say it was a setup? Maybe he was holding the cash and the photos and they were going to split it all after the heat died down. Why does it have to be that she set him up?”

Bosch looked at Rider and then back at Edgar.

“’Cause Kiz is right. It’s too easy.”

“Not if he thought we didn’t have a clue, if he thought he was clear right up to the moment we jumped out of the bushes up there in the woods.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he would have played it the way he did when I was just talking to him. Not if he knew he had this stuff back at his place. I go with it being a setup. She’s putting it all on him. We pull her in and she’ll feed us some story about the guy being obsessed with her. Maybe, if she’s any kind of actress, she tells us, yes, she had an affair with him but then she broke it off. But he wouldn’t go away. He killed her old man so he could have her all to himself.”

Bosch leaned back and looked at them, waiting for their response.

“I think it’s good,” Rider said. “It could work.”

“Except we don’t believe it,” Bosch said.

“So what’s she get out of this?” Edgar asked, refusing to drop his disagreement. “She’s givin’ up the money puttin’ it in his pad. What’s that leave her?”

“The house, the cars, insurance,” Bosch said. “Whatever’s left of the company-and the chance to get away.”