Michael Connelly - EchoPark

“Fine. I trust you. Maybe at some point you will trust me enough to ask my opinion before you go off and make decisions that affect both of us.”

Bosch felt his cheeks flare hot, mostly because he knew she was right. He didn’t say anything because he knew that apologizing for leaving her out of the loop wasn’t going to cut it.

“Call me back if Olivas gives us a time for tomorrow,” she said.

“You got it.”

After closing the phone Bosch thought about things for a moment. He tried to move on from his embarrassment over Rider’s indignation. He focused on the case and what he had left out of the investigation so far. After a few minutes he reopened the phone, called Olivas and asked if a time and place had been set for the Waits interview.

“Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock,” Olivas said. “Don’t be late.”

“Were you going to tell me, Olivas, or was I supposed to pick it up telepathically?”

“I just found out myself. You called me before I could call you.”

Bosch ignored his excuse.

“Where?”

“The DA’s office. We’ll have him brought down from high-power and set him up in an interview room here.”

“You’re at the DA’s now?”

“I had some things to go over with Rick.”

Bosch let that float out there without a response.

“Anything else?” Olivas asked.

“Yeah, I have a question,” Bosch said. “Where’s your partner in all of this, Olivas? What happened to Colbert?”

“He’s in Hawaii. He’ll be back next week. If this thing carries over till then he’ll be part of it.”

Bosch wondered if Colbert even knew what was happening or that he was missing out on a potentially career-making case while he was off on vacation. From everything Bosch knew about Olivas, there would be no surprise if he was scheming to ace out his own partner on a glory case.

“Ten o’clock, then?” Bosch asked.

“Ten.”

“Anything else I should know, Olivas?”

He was curious about why Olivas was at the DA’s office but didn’t want to directly ask why.

“Matter of fact, there is one more thing. Sort of a delicate thing, you could say. I’ve been talking to Rick about it.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, take a guess at what I’m looking at here.”

Bosch blew out his breath. Olivas was going to string it out. Bosch had known him less than one day and already knew without a doubt that he didn’t like the man and never would.

“I have no idea, Olivas. What?”

“Your fifty-ones from Gesto.”

He was referring to the Investigative Chronology, a master listing kept by date and time of all aspects of a case, ranging from an accounting of detectives’ time and movements to notations on routine phone calls and messages to media inquiries and tips from citizens. Usually, these were handwritten with all manner of shorthand and abbreviations employed as they were updated throughout each day, sometimes hourly. Then, when a page became full, it was typed up on a form called a 51, which would be complete and legible when and if the case ever moved into the courts, and lawyers, judges and juries needed to review the investigative files. The original handwritten pages were then discarded.

“What about them?” Bosch asked.

“I’m looking at the last line on page fourteen. The listing is for September twenty-ninth, nineteen ninety-three, at six-forty p.m. Must’ve been quitting time. The initials on the entry are JE.”

Bosch felt the bile rising in his throat. Whatever it was Olivas was getting at, he was enjoying milking it.

“Obviously,” he said impatiently, “that would’ve been my partner at the time, Jerry Edgar. What’s the entry say, Olivas?”

“It says… I’ll just read it. It says, ‘Robert Saxon DOB eleven/three/’seventy-one. Saw Times story. Was at Mayfair and saw MG alone. Nobody following.’ It gives Saxon’s phone number and that’s all it says. But that’s enough, Hotshot. You know what it means?”

Bosch did. He had just given the name Robert Saxon to Kiz Rider to background. It was either an alias or perhaps the real name of the man known currently as Raynard Waits. That name on the 51s now connected Waits to the Gesto case. It also meant that thirteen years ago Bosch and Edgar had at least a shot at Waits/Saxon. But for reasons he didn’t recall or didn’t know about they never took it. He did not recall the specific entry in the 51s. There were dozens of pages in the Investigative Chronology filled with one- and two-line entries. Remembering them all-even with his frequent returns to the investigation over the years-would have been impossible.

It took him a long moment to find his voice.

“That’s the only mention in the murder book?” he asked.

“That I’ve seen,” Olivas said. “I’ve been through everything twice. I even missed it the first time through. Then the second time I said, ‘Hey, I know that name.’ It’s an alias Waits used back in the early nineties. It should be in the files you have.”

“I know. I saw it.”

“It meant he called you guys, Bosch. The killer called you, and you and your partner blew it. Looks like nobody ever followed up with him or ran his name through the box. You had the killer’s alias and a phone number and didn’t do anything. ’Course, you didn’t know he was the killer. Just some citizen calling in about what he saw. He must’ve been trying to play you guys in some way, trying to find out about the case. Only Edgar didn’t play. It was late in the day and he probably wanted to get to that first martini.”

Bosch said nothing and Olivas was only too happy to continue to fill the void.

“Too bad, you know? Maybe this whole thing could’ve ended right then. I guess we’ll ask Waits about it in the morning.”

Olivas and his petty world no longer mattered to Bosch. The barbs couldn’t penetrate the thick, dark cloud that was already coming down on him. For he knew that if the name Robert Saxon had come up in the Gesto investigation, then it should have been routinely run through the computer. It would have scored a match in the alias database and taken them to Raynard Waits and his prior arrest for prowling. That would have made him a suspect. Not just a person of interest like Anthony Garland. A strong suspect. And that would have undoubtedly taken the investigation in a whole new direction.

But that never happened. Apparently neither Edgar nor Bosch had run the name through the box. It was an oversight that Bosch now knew had probably cost the lives of the two women who ended up in trash bags and the seven others Waits was going to tell them about the next day.

“Olivas?” Bosch said.

“What, Bosch?”

“Make sure you bring the book with you tomorrow. I want to see the fifty-ones.”

“Oh, I will. We’ll need it to do the interview.”

Bosch closed his phone without another word. He felt the pace of his breathing increase. Soon he was close to hyperventilating. His back felt hot against the car seat and he was starting to sweat. He opened the windows and tried to slow the measure of each breath. He was close to Parker Center but pulled to a stop at the curb.

It was every detective’s nightmare. The worst-case scenario. A lead ignored or bungled, allowing something awful to be loose in the world. Something dark and evil, destroying life after life as it moved through the shadows. It was true that all detectives made mistakes and had to live with the regrets. But Bosch instinctively knew that this one was malignant. It would grow and grow inside until it darkened everything and he became the last victim, the last life destroyed.

He pulled out from the curb and into traffic to get air moving through the windows. He made a screeching U-turn and headed home.