Michael Connelly - The Closers

“Look,” he finally said, “I know what you’re thinking even if you’re not saying it. It’s not just me you’re worried about. You stuck your neck out for me and you convinced the chief to take me back in. Believe me, Kiz, I know it’s not just me riding on this-on this retread. You don’t have to worry and you can tell the chief he doesn’t have to worry. I get it. There won’t be a blowout. There won’t be any blowback from me.”

“Good, Harry. I’m glad to hear that.”

He tried to think of something that he could say to convince her further. He knew words were just words.

“You know, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but after I quit I really sort of liked it at first. You know, being out of the squad and just sort of doing what I wanted. Then I started to miss it and then I started working cases again. On my own. Anyway, one thing that happened was I started walking with sort of a limp.”

“A limp?”

“Just a little thing. Like one of my heels was lower than the other. Like I was uneven.”

“Well, did you check your shoes?”

“I didn’t need to check my shoes. It wasn’t my shoes. It was my gun.”

He looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, her eyebrows set in that deep V she used so much with him. He looked back at the road ahead.

“I carried a gun for so long that when I no longer had it on me it threw off my balance. I was uneven.”

“Harry, that’s a strange story.”

They were going through the Cahuenga Pass. Bosch looked out his window and up the hillside, searching for his house nestled in among the others in the folds of the mountain. He thought he saw a glimpse of the back deck sticking out over the brown brush.

“You want to call Garcia and see if we can drop in and see him after we go by probation?” he asked.

“Yeah, I will-as soon as you get to the point of that story.”

He thought for a long moment before answering.

“The point is, I need the gun. I need the badge. Otherwise I’m out of balance. I need all of this. Okay?”

He looked over at Rider. She looked back at him but didn’t answer.

“I know what I got with this chance. So fuck Irving and his calling me a retread. I won’t fuck up.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER they stepped into one of Bosch’s least favorite places in the city: the probation and parole office of the state’s Department of Corrections in Van Nuys. It was a single-story brick building crowded with people waiting to see probation and parole agents, to give urine samples, to make their court-ordered check-ins, to turn themselves in for incarceration or to plead for one more chance of freedom. It was a place where desperation, humiliation and rage were palpable in the air. It was a place where Bosch tried not to make eye contact with anyone.

Bosch and Rider had something none of the others had: badges. It helped them cut through the lines and get an immediate audience with the agent Roland Mackey had been assigned to after his arrest two years earlier for lewd and lascivious behavior. Thelma Kibble was recessed in a standard government-issue cubicle in a room crowded with many identical cubicles. Her desk and the one government-issue shelf that came with the cubicle were crowded with the files of the convicts she was charged with shepherding through probation or parole. She was of medium size and build. Her eyes were brightly set off against her dark brown skin. Bosch and Rider introduced themselves as detectives from RHD. There was only one chair in front of Kibble’s desk so they remained standing.

“Is it robbery or homicide we are talking about here?” Kibble asked.

“Homicide,” Rider said.

“Then why doesn’t one of you grab the extra chair from that cubicle over there. She’s still at lunch.”

Bosch took the chair she pointed at and brought it back. Rider and Bosch sat down and told Kibble they wanted a look at the file belonging to Roland Mackey. Bosch could tell that Kibble recognized the name but not the case.

“It was a lewd and lash probation you caught two years ago,” he said. “He cleared after twelve months.”

“Oh, he’s not current, then. Well, I need to go grab that one in archives. I don’t remem-oh, yes I do, yes I do. Roland Mackey, yeah. I rather enjoyed that one.”

“How so?” Rider asked.

Kibble smiled.

“Let’s just say he had some difficulty reporting to a woman of color. Tell you what, though, let me go grab the file so we get the details right.”

She double-checked the spelling of Mackey’s name with them and left the cubicle.

“That might help,” Bosch said.

“What?” Rider asked.

“If he had a problem with her he’ll probably have a problem with you. We might be able to use it.”

Rider nodded. Bosch saw she was looking at a newspaper article that was tacked to the fiberboard wall of the cubicle. It was yellowed with age. Bosch leaned closer to read it but he was too far away to read anything but the headline.

WOUNDED PAROLE OFFICER GETS HERO’S WELCOME

“What is it?” he asked Rider.

“I know who this is,” Rider said. “She got shot a few years ago. She went to some ex-con’s house and somebody shot her. The convict called for help but then split. Something like that. We gave her an award at the BPO. God, she’s lost a lot of weight.”

Something about the story rang a bell with Bosch, too. He noticed there were two photographs accompanying the story. One was of Thelma Kibble standing in front of the DOC building, a banner welcoming her back hanging from the roof. Rider was right. Kibble looked like she’d dropped eighty pounds since the photo. Bosch suddenly remembered seeing that banner across the front of the building a few years back while one of his cases was in trial at the courthouse across the street. He nodded. Now he remembered.

Then something about the second photo caught his eye and memory. It was a mug shot of a white woman-the ex-convict who lived in the house where Kibble had been shot.

“That’s not the shooter, right?” he asked.

“No, she’s the one who called it in, who saved her. She disappeared.”

Bosch suddenly stood up and leaned across the desk, putting his hands on stacks of files for support. He looked at the mug shot photo. It was a black-and-white shot that had darkened as the newspaper clipping had aged. But Bosch recognized the face in the photo. He was sure of it. The hair and eyes were different. The name underneath the photo was different, too. But he was sure he had encountered the woman in Las Vegas in the past year.

“Those are my files you’re messing up.”

Bosch immediately pulled himself back across the desk as Kibble came around it.

“Sorry about that. I was just trying to read the story.”

“That’s old news. Time I took that thing down. A lot of years and a lot of pounds ago.”

“I was at the Black Peace Officers meeting when you were honored,” Rider said.

“Oh, really?” Kibble said, her face breaking into a smile. “That was a really nice night for me.”

“Whatever happened to the woman?” Bosch asked.

“Cassie Black? Oh, she’s in the wind. Nobody’s seen her since.”

“She has charges?”

“The funny thing is, no. I mean, we violated her because she ran, but that’s all she’s got on her. Hell, she didn’t shoot me. All she did was save my life. I wasn’t going to have ’em charge her for it. But the parole violation I couldn’t do anything about. She split. Far as I know, the guy who shot me might’ve got her and buried her out in the desert somewhere. I hope not, though. She did me a good turn.”

Bosch was suddenly not so sure the woman he had temporarily lived next to in an airport motel while visiting his daughter in Las Vegas the year before had been Cassie Black. He sat down and didn’t say anything.