Michael Connelly - The Closers

“What is there to say?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t need you to talk. We’ve got you. Actions and evidence-we’ve got all we need. I just thought you might want to explain things, that’s all. At a point like this a lot of people just want to explain themselves.”

Stoddard didn’t respond at first. The car was heading east on Devonshire Boulevard. The station was a couple miles ahead. Earlier, when he had conferred with the two patrolmen outside of the car, Bosch had told the driver to take it slow.

“It’s funny,” Stoddard finally said.

“What is?”

“I’m a science teacher, you know? I mean, before I was principal I taught science. I was head of the science department.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I taught my students about DNA. I always told them that it was the secret of life. Decode DNA and you decode life itself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And now… now, well, it’s used to decode death. By you people. It’s the secret of life. It’s the secret of death. I don’t know. I guess it’s not really funny. It’s more ironic in my case.”

“If you say so.”

“A guy who taught DNA gets caught by DNA.”

Stoddard started to laugh.

“Hey, that’s a good headline,” he said. “Make sure you tell them that.”

Bosch reached over and used a key to unlock Stoddard’s cuffs. He then relocked his wrists in front of his body so that he could sit up.

“Back there at the house, you said you loved her,” Bosch said.

Stoddard nodded.

“I did. I still do.”

“Funny way of showing it, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t planned. Nothing was planned that night. I had been watching her, that’s all. Whenever I could, I watched her. I drove by all the time. I followed her when she got to take the car. I watched her at work, too.”

“And all the time you had a gun.”

“No, the gun was for me, not her. But…”

“You found out it was easier to kill her instead of yourself.”

“That night… I saw the garage door was open. I went in. I wasn’t sure why. I thought I was going to use the gun on myself. On her bed. It would be my way of showing her my devotion.”

“But you went under the bed instead of on top of it.”

“I had to think.”

“Where was Mackey?”

“Mackey? I don’t know where he was.”

“He wasn’t with you? He didn’t help you?”

“He gave me the gun. We made a deal. The gun for the grade. I was his teacher. And his tutor. It was my summer job.”

“But he wasn’t with you that night? You carried her up the hill by yourself?”

Stoddard’s eyes were open and staring into the distance even though their focus was only on the back of the front seat.

“I was strong back then,” he said in a whisper.

The patrol car pulled through the opening in the concrete block wall that surrounded the back of Devonshire Division. Stoddard looked out the window. Seeing all of the patrol cars and the back of the station must have brought an awakening to him. He realized his situation.

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” he said.

“That’s fine,” Bosch said. “We’ll put you in a holding room and get you a lawyer if you want.”

The car stopped in front of a set of double doors and Bosch got out. He came around and got Stoddard out and then walked him in through the doors. The detective bureau was on the second floor. They took an elevator and were met by the lieutenant in charge of Devonshire detectives. Bosch had called him from the Verloren house. An interview room was waiting for Stoddard. Bosch put him in a seat and cuffed one of his wrists to a metal ring bolted to the center of the table.

“Sit tight,” Bosch said. “I’ll be back.”

At the door, he looked back at Stoddard. He decided to make one last play.

“And for what it’s worth, I think your story is bullshit,” he said.

Stoddard looked at him, surprise on his face.

“What do you mean? I loved her. I didn’t want -”

“You stalked her with one purpose. To kill her. She rejected you and you couldn’t take it, so you wanted her dead. And now seventeen years later you’re going to try to tell it different, like it’s Romeo and Juliet or something. You’re a coward, Stoddard. You stalked her and killed her and you should own up to it.”

“No, you’re wrong. I had the gun for myself.”

Bosch came back into the room and leaned down on the table.

“Yeah? What about the stun gun, Stoddard? Was that for yourself, too? You left that out of your story, didn’t you? Why’d you need a stun gun if you went in there to kill yourself?”

Stoddard was silent. It was almost as if after seventeen years he had been able to erase the Professional 100 from his memory.

“We got first degree and we got lying in wait,” Bosch said. “You’re going down for the whole ride, Stoddard. You were never going to kill yourself. Back then, or even today.”

“I think I want a lawyer now,” Stoddard said.

“Yeah, of course you do.”

Bosch left the room and walked down the hallway to an open door. It was the monitoring room. The lieutenant and one of the patrol officers from the ride in were in the small space. There were two active video screens. On one Bosch saw Stoddard sitting in the interview room. The camera angle was from an upper corner of the room. Stoddard seemed to be staring blankly at the wall.

The image on the other screen was frozen. It showed Bosch and Stoddard in the backseat of the patrol car.

“How’s the sound?” Bosch asked.

“Beautiful,” the lieutenant said. “We got it all. Taking off the cuffs was a nice touch. Brought his face up into the camera.”

The lieutenant hit a switch and the picture started moving. Bosch could hear Stoddard’s voice clearly. He nodded. The patrol car had been equipped with a dashboard camera used for filming traffic stops and prisoner transports. For the ride in with Stoddard the car’s interior microphone was turned on and the exterior was cut off.

It had worked perfectly. Stoddard’s admissions in the backseat would help seal the case. Bosch felt no worries from that direction at all. He thanked the lieutenant and the patrolman and asked if he could borrow a desk to make some calls.

Bosch called Abel Pratt to update him and to assure him that Rider was shaken up but otherwise okay. He told Pratt that he needed to get SID teams to both Stoddard’s and Muriel Verloren’s homes to process crime scenes. He said a search warrant should be applied for and approved before the SID team entered Stoddard’s house. He said that Stoddard was about to be booked and his fingerprints taken. The prints would need to be compared to those found on the slat from beneath Rebecca Verloren’s bed. He finished by telling Pratt about the video taken during the ride to the station and the admissions Stoddard had made.

“It’s all solid and it’s on tape,” Bosch said. “It all came after Miranda.”

“Good going, Harry,” Pratt said. “I don’t think we’ll have anything to worry about on this.”

“Not with the case, at least.”

Meaning that Stoddard was going to go down without a problem, but Bosch wasn’t sure how he would fare in the review of his handling of the case.

“It’s tough to argue with results,” Pratt said.

“We’ll see.”

Bosch started getting a call-waiting signal on his phone. He told Pratt he had to go and clicked over to the new call. It was McKenzie Ward from the Daily News .

“My sister was listening to the scanner in the photo shop,” she said urgently. “She said a backup unit and an ambulance were sent to the Verloren house. She recognized the address.”

“That’s right.”