Michael Connelly - The Overlook

He put the printout down on his desk and leaned over it with the magnifier. He first studied the bindings that held the woman’s limbs behind her torso. The intruders had used six snap ties, placing one loop around each wrist and ankle, then one to link the ankles and the last one to link the wrist loops to the loop connecting the ankles.

It seemed like an overly complicated way to bind the woman’s extremities. It was not the way Bosch would have done it if he were trying to quickly hog-tie a perhaps struggling woman. He would have used fewer bindings and made the work easier and quicker.

He wasn’t sure what this meant or if it meant anything at all. Perhaps Alicia Kent hadn’t struggled at all and in return for her cooperation her captors used the extra links in order to make the time she was left bound on the bed less difficult. It seemed to Bosch that the way she had been bound meant that her arms and legs were not pulled behind her as far as they could have been.

Still, remembering the bruising on Alicia Kent’s wrists, he realized that no matter what, the time she had spent hog-tied naked on the bed had not been easy. He decided that the only thing he knew for sure from studying the photo was that he needed to talk with Alicia Kent again and go over what had happened in more exacting detail.

On a fresh page of his notebook he wrote down his questions about the bindings. He planned to use the rest of the page to add more questions in preparation for an eventual follow-up interview with her.

Nothing else came to mind during his study of the photograph. When he was finished he put the magnifier aside and started skimming through the forensics reports from the murder scene. Nothing grabbed his attention there either and he quickly moved on to the reports and evidence from the Kent house. Because he and Brenner had quickly left the house for Saint Agatha’s, Bosch had not been there when the SID techs searched for evidence left behind by the intruders. He was anxious to see what, if anything, had been found.

But there was only one evidence bag and it contained the black plastic snap ties that had been used to bind Alicia Kent’s wrists and ankles and that Rachel Walling had cut in order to free her.

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said, holding up the clear plastic bag. “Is this the only evidence they bagged at the Kent house?”

Ferras looked up.

“It’s the only bag they gave me. Did you check the evidence log? It should be in there. Maybe they’re still processing some stuff.”

Bosch looked through the documents Ferras had obtained until he found the forensic evidence log. Every item removed from a crime scene by the technicians was always entered on the log. It helped track the chain of evidence.

He found the log and noticed that it included several items removed by technicians from the Kent house, most of them tiny hair and fiber specimens. This was to be expected, though there was no telling if any of the specimens was related to the suspects. But in all his years working cases Bosch had yet to come across the immaculate crime scene. Plain and simple, it was a basic law of nature that when a crime takes place it always leaves its mark-no matter how small-on the environment. There is always a transfer. It is just a matter of finding it.

On the list each snap tie had been individually entered and these were followed by numerous hair and fiber specimens extracted from locations ranging from the master bedroom carpet to the sink trap in the guest bathroom. The mouse pad from the office computer was on the list as well as a Nikon camera’s lens cap which had been found beneath the bed in the master bedroom. The last entry on the list was the most interesting to Bosch. The evidence was simply described as a cigarette ash.

Bosch could not think what value as evidence a cigarette ash could be.

“Is anybody still up there in SID from the Kent house search?” he asked Ferras.

“There was a half hour ago,” Ferras answered. “Buzz Yates and the latents woman whose name I always forget.”

Bosch picked up the phone and called the SID office.

“Scientific Investigation Division, Yates.”

“Buzz, just the guy I wanted to talk to.”

“Who’s this?”

“Harry Bosch. On the search of the Kent house, tell me about this cigarette ash you collected.”

“Oh, yeah, that was a cigarette that had burned down to just the ash. The FBI agent who was there asked me to collect it.”

“Where was it?”

“She found it on top of the toilet tank in the guest bedroom. Like somebody had put their smoke down while they took a leak and then forgot about it. It burned all the way through and then out.”

“So it was just ashes when she found it?”

“Right. A gray caterpillar. But she wanted us to collect it for her. She said their lab might be able to do something with-”

“Wait a minute, Buzz. You gave her the evidence?”

“Well, sort of. Yeah. She-”

“What do you mean ‘sort of’? You either did or you didn’t. Did you give Agent Walling the cigarette ashes you collected from my crime scene?”

“Yes,” Yates conceded. “But not without a lot of discussion and assurances, Harry. She said the bureau’s science lab could analyze the ashes and determine the type of tobacco, which would then allow them to determine country of origin. We can’t do anything like that, Harry. We can’t even touch that. She said it would be important to the investigation because they might be dealing with terrorists from outside the country. So I went along with it. She told me that once she worked an arson case where they found a single ash from the cigarette that lit the fire. They were able to tell what brand and that tied it to a specific suspect.”

“And you believed her?”

“Well… yeah, I believed her.”

“So you gave her my evidence.”

Bosch said it in a resigned tone.

“Harry, it’s not your evidence. We all work and play on the same team, don’t we?”

“Yeah, Buzz, we do.”

Bosch hung up the phone and cursed. Ferras asked him what was wrong but Bosch waved the question away.

“Just typical bureau bullshit.”

“Harry, did you get any sleep at all before the call out?”

Bosch looked across the desks at his partner. He knew exactly where Ferras was headed with that question.

“No,” Bosch answered. “I was awake. But lack of sleep has nothing to do with my frustration with the FBI. I’ve been doing this for more years than you’ve been alive. I know how to handle sleep deprivation.”

He held his mug of coffee up.

“Cheers,” he said.

“It’s still not good, partner,” Ferras responded. “Your ass is going to be dragging in a while.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay, Harry.”

Bosch went back to thoughts about the cigarette ash.

“What about photos?” he asked Ferras. “Did you pick up photos from the Kent house?”

“Yeah, they’re here somewhere.”

Ferras looked through the files on his desk and came up with the folder containing the photos and passed it across. Bosch looked through them and found three shots from the guest bathroom. A full shot, an angled shot of the toilet that showed the line of ash on the tank lid, and a close-up of the gray caterpillar, as Buzz Yates had called it.

He spread the three shots out and used his magnifier once again to study them. In the close-up shot of the ash the photographer had put a six-inch ruler down on the tank lid to give the shot scale. The ash was almost two inches long, almost a full cigarette.

“See anything yet, Sherlock?” Ferras asked.

Bosch looked up at him. His partner was smiling. Bosch didn’t smile back, deciding that now he couldn’t even use the magnifying glass in front of his own partner without getting ripped.