Michael Connelly - The Overlook

“Jesse, how are you doing?” Bosch asked as he took the empty seat across from him.

“Uh, not so good. It’s hot in here.”

“Really?”

“Are you my lawyer?”

“No, Jesse, I’m your detective. My name’s Harry Bosch. I’m a homicide detective and I am working the overlook case.”

Bosch put both his legal pad and his coffee mug down on the table. He noticed that Mitford still had handcuffs on. It was a nice touch by Ferras to keep the kid confused, scared and worried.

“I told the Mexican detective I didn’t want to talk anymore. I want a lawyer.”

Bosch nodded.

“He’s Cuban American, Jesse,” he said. “And you don’t get a lawyer. Lawyers are for U.S. citizens only.”

This was a lie but Bosch was banking on the twenty-year-old’s not knowing this.

“You’re in trouble, kid,” he continued. “It’s one thing to be stalking an old girlfriend or boyfriend. It’s something else with a celebrity. This is a celebrity town in a celebrity country, Jesse, and we take care of our own. I don’t know what you’ve got up there in Canada but the penalties here for what you were doing tonight are pretty stiff.”

Mitford shook his head as if he could ward off his problems that way.

“But I was told that she doesn’t even live there anymore. Madonna, I mean. So I wasn’t really stalking her, then. It would just be trespassing.”

Now Bosch shook his head.

“It’s about intent, Jesse. You thought she might be there. You had a map that said she was there. You even circled the spot. So as far as the law goes, that constitutes stalking a celebrity.”

“Then why do they sell maps to stars’ homes?”

“And why do bars have parking lots when drunk driving is illegal? We’re not going to play that game, Jesse. The point is, there’s nothing on the map that says anything about it being okay to jump over a wall and trespass, you know what I mean?”

Mitford dropped his eyes to his manacled wrists and sadly nodded.

“Tell you what, though,” Bosch said. “You can cheer up because things aren’t as bad as they seem. You’ve got stalking and trespassing charges here, but I think we can probably get this all fixed up and taken care of if you agree to cooperate with me.”

Mitford leaned forward.

“But like I told that Mexi-that Cuban detective, I didn’t see anything.”

Bosch waited a long moment before responding.

“I don’t care what you told him. You’re dealing with me now, son. And I think you’re holding back on me.”

“No, I’m not. I swear to God.”

He held his hands open and as wide as the cuffs allowed in a pleading gesture. But Bosch wasn’t buying it. The kid was too young to be a liar capable of convincing Bosch. He decided to go right at him.

“Let me tell you something, Jesse. My partner is good and he’s going places in the department. No doubt about that. But right now he’s a baby. He’s been a detective for about as long as you’ve been growing that peach fuzz on your chin. Me, I’ve been around and that means I’ve been around a lot of liars. Sometimes I think all I know are liars. And, Jesse, I can tell. You’re lying to me and nobody lies to me.”

“No! I-”

“And so, what you’ve got here is about thirty seconds to start talking to me or I’m just going to take you down and book you into county lockup. I’m sure there’s going to be somebody waiting in there who will have a guy like you singing O Canada ! into the mike before sunup. You see, that’s what I meant about there being stiff penalties for stalking.”

Mitford stared down at his hands on the table. Bosch waited and twenty seconds slowly went by. Finally, Bosch stood up.

“Okay, Jesse, stand up. We’re going.”

“Wait, wait, wait!”

“For what? I said stand up! Let’s go. This is a murder investigation and I’m not wasting time on-”

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you. I saw the whole thing, okay? I saw everything.”

Bosch studied him for a moment.

“You’re talking about the overlook?” he asked. “You saw the shooting on the overlook?”

“I saw everything, man.”

Bosch pulled his chair out and sat back down.

BOSCH STOPPED JESSE MITFORD FROM SPEAKING until he signed a rights waiver. It didn’t matter that he was now considered a witness to the murder that took place on the Mulholland overlook. Whatever it was that he witnessed he saw because he was in the act of committing his own crime-trespassing and stalking. Bosch had to make sure there were no mistakes on the case. No fruit-of-the-poison-tree appeal. No blowback. The stakes were high, the feds were classic second-guessers and he knew he had to do this right.

“Okay, Jesse,” he said when the waiver form was signed. “You are going to tell me what you saw and heard up on the overlook. If you are truthful and helpful I am going to drop all charges and let you walk out of here a free man.”

Technically, Bosch was overstating his hand. He had no authority to drop charges or make deals with criminal suspects. But he didn’t need it in this case because Mitford had not yet been formally charged with anything. Therein lay Bosch’s leverage. It came down to semantics. What Bosch was really offering was to not proceed with charging Mitford in exchange for the young Canadian’s honest cooperation.

“I understand,” Mitford said.

“Just remember, only the truth. Only what you saw and heard. Nothing else.”

“I understand.”

“Hold up your hands.”

Mitford raised his wrists and Bosch used his own key to remove his partner’s handcuffs. Mitford immediately began to rub them to get circulation going again. It reminded Bosch of seeing Rachel rub Alicia Kent’s wrists earlier.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Yeah, good,” Mitford replied.

“Okay, then let’s start from the top. Tell me where you came from, where you were going and exactly what you saw up on the overlook.”

Mitford nodded and then took Bosch through a twenty-minute story that began on Hollywood Boulevard with the purchase of the star map from a curbside vendor and his long trek on foot up into the hills. His journey took nearly three hours and probably accounted most for the odor emanating from his body. He told Bosch that by the time he got up to Mulholland Drive it was getting dark and he was tired. The house where the map said Madonna lived was dark inside. No one appeared to be home. Disappointed, he decided to rest from his long journey and to wait and see if the pop singer he wanted to meet would arrive home later. He found a spot behind some bushes where he could lean back against the exterior of the wall that surrounded the home of his quarry-he didn’t use that word-and wait. Mitford said he fell asleep there until something woke him up.

“What woke you up?” Bosch asked.

“Voices. I heard voices.”

“What was said?”

“I don’t know. It was just what woke me up.”

“How far were you from the overlook?”

“I don’t know. Like fifty meters, I think. I was pretty far away.”

“What was said after you were awake and could hear?”

“Nothing. They stopped.”

“All right, then what did you see when you woke up?”

“I saw three cars parked by the clearing. One was a Porsche and the other two were bigger. I don’t know the kind but they were sort of the same.”

“Did you see the men on the overlook?”

“No, I didn’t see anybody. It was too dark out there. But then I heard a voice again and it was coming from over there. In the dark. It was like a yell. Right at the moment I looked, there were two quick flashes and shots. Like muffled shots. I could see somebody in the clearing on his knees. You know, in the flash of light. But it was so quick that was all I saw.”