Michael Connelly - EchoPark

There had to be another reason.

Bosch worked it over for a while but only came to the weak conclusion that Olivas needed to connect Waits to Gesto. By putting the killer’s alias into the book, he was going back thirteen years in time and firmly tying Raynard Waits to Marie Gesto.

But Waits was about to admit he murdered Gesto. There could be no stronger tie than an uncoerced confession. He was even going to lead authorities to the body. The notation in the chronology would be a minor connection compared with these two. So then why put it in?

Ultimately, Bosch was confounded by the risk Olivas had taken. He had tampered with the official record of the murder investigation for seemingly little reason or gain. He had run the risk that Bosch would discover the deceit and call him on it. He had run the risk of the deceit possibly being revealed by a smart lawyer like Maury Swann in court one day. And he did all of this knowing that he didn’t have to, knowing that Waits would be tied solidly into the case with a confession.

Now Olivas was dead and could not be confronted. There was no one to answer why.

Except maybe Raynard Waits.

“How’s your bullshit deal looking now?”

And maybe Rick O’Shea.

Bosch thought about everything and all in a moment it came together. Bosch suddenly knew why Olivas had taken the risk and put the specter of Raynard Waits into the Marie Gesto murder book. He saw it with a clarity that left him no room for doubt.

Raynard Waits didn’t kill Marie Gesto.

He jumped up and started gathering the files together. Clutching them with both hands, he hurried through the rotunda toward the exit. His footfalls echoed behind him in the great room like a crowd of people chasing him. He looked back but there was nobody there.

BOSCH HAD LOST TRACK of time while in the library. He was late. Rachel was already seated and waiting for him. She was holding a large one-sheet menu that obscured the look of annoyance on her face as Bosch was led to the table by a waiter.

“Sorry,” Bosch said as he sat down.

“It’s okay,” she replied. “But I already ordered for myself. I didn’t know if you were going to show or not.”

She handed the menu across to him. He immediately handed it to the waiter.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” he said. “And just the water is fine.”

He drank from the glass already poured for him while the waiter hurried away. Rachel smiled at him, but not in a nice way.

“You’re not going to like it. You’d better call him back.”

“Why? I like seafood.”

“Because I ordered the sashimi. You told me the other night that you like your seafood cooked.”

The news gave him momentary pause but he decided he deserved to pay for his mistake of arriving late.

“It all goes to the same place,” he said, dismissing the issue. “But why do they call this place the Water Grill if they’re not grilling the food?”

“Good question.”

“Forget about it. We need to talk. I need your help, Rachel.”

“With what? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think Raynard Waits killed Marie Gesto.”

“What do you mean? He led you to her body. Are you saying that wasn’t Marie Gesto?”

“No, ID was confirmed today at the autopsy. It was definitely Marie Gesto in that grave.”

“And Waits was the one who led you to it, right?”

“Right.”

“And Waits was the one who confessed to killing her, right?”

“Right.”

“At autopsy, was the cause of death in agreement with that confession?”

“Yeah, from what I hear, it was.”

“Then, Harry, you’re not making sense. With all of that, how can he not be the killer?”

“Because something is going on that we don’t know about, that I don’t know about. Olivas and O’Shea had some sort of play going with him. I’m not sure what it was but it all went to shit in Beachwood Canyon.”

She held up her hands in a hold-it-right-there gesture.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning. Only tell me facts. No theory, no conjecture. Just give me what you’ve got.”

He told her everything, starting with the tampering with the murder book by Olivas and concluding with the detail-by-detail accounting of what had happened when Waits started to climb up the ladder in Beachwood Canyon. He told her what Waits had yelled at O’Shea and what had been edited out of the field trip video.

It took him fifteen minutes and during that time their lunch was served. Of course it came fast, Bosch thought. It didn’t have to be cooked! He felt lucky to be the one doing all the talking. It gave him a ready excuse not to eat the raw fish put down in front of him.

By the time he was finished recounting the story he could see that Rachel’s mind had gone to work on everything. She was grinding it down.

“Putting Waits in the murder book doesn’t make sense,” she said. “It connects him to the case, yes, but he is already connected through his confession and his leading you to the body. So why bother with the murder book?”

Bosch leaned across the table to respond.

“Two things. One, Olivas thought he might need to sell the confession. He had no idea if I’d be able to punch holes in it, so he wanted some insurance. He put Waits in the file. And it put me in a position of being preconditioned to believe the confession.”

“Okay, and two?”

“This is where it gets tricky,” he said. “Putting Waits in the book was a way of preconditioning me but it was also about knocking me off my game.”

She looked at him, but what he was saying didn’t register.

“You’d better explain that.”

“This is where we go off the known facts and talk about what the facts might mean. Theory, conjecture, whatever you want to call it. Olivas put that line in the chronology and then threw it in my face. He knew that if I saw it and believed it, then I would believe that my partner and I had horribly messed up back in ’ninety-three, that I would believe people were dead because of our mistake. The weight of all those women Waits killed since then would be on me.”

“Okay.”

“And it would connect me with Waits on an emotional level of pure hate. Yes, I’ve wanted the guy who killed Marie Gesto for thirteen years. But adding in all those other women and putting their deaths on me would bring things to a raw edge when I finally came face-to-face with the guy. It would distract me.”

“From what?”

“From the fact that Waits didn’t kill her. He was confessing to killing Marie Gesto but he didn’t kill her. He made some sort of deal with Olivas and probably O’Shea to take the fall for it because he was already going down for all the others. I was so overcome with my hatred that I didn’t have my eyes on the prize. I wasn’t paying attention to the details, Rachel. All I wanted to do was jump across the table and choke the guy out.”

“You are forgetting something.”

“What?”

Now she leaned across the table, keeping her voice down so as not to disturb the other diners.

“He led you to her body. If he didn’t kill her, how did he know where to go in the woods? How did he lead you right to her?”

Bosch nodded. It was a good point but one he had already thought about.

“It could have been done. He could have been schooled in his cell by Olivas. It could’ve been a Hansel and Gretel trick, a trail marked in such a way that only he would notice the markers. I’m going back up to Beachwood this afternoon. My guess is that when I go through there this time, I’ll find the markers.”

Bosch reached over and took her empty plate and exchanged it with his untouched plate. She didn’t object.