Michael Connelly - The Overlook

“What?”

“When I was in the room with her at TIU. That small space. I thought I smelled grape in the room. I thought somebody had been in there before us and had been drinking grape juice. I smelled it!”

“There you go.”

There was no doubt now. Bosch had her. But then a shadow of concern and doubt moved across Walling’s face like a summer cloud.

“What about motive?” she asked. “This is a federal agent we’re talking about. To move on this we need everything, even motive. There can be nothing left open to chance.”

Bosch had been ready for the question.

“You saw the motive. Alicia Kent is a beautiful woman. Jack Brenner wanted her and Stanley Kent was in the way of that.”

Walling’s eyes widened in shock. Bosch pressed on with his case.

“That’s the motive, Rachel. You-”

“But he-”

“Let me just finish. It goes like this. You and your partner show up here that day last year to give the Kents the warning about his occupation. Some kind of vibe is exchanged between Alicia and Jack. He gets interested, she gets interested. They meet on the sly for coffee or for drinks or whatever. One thing leads to another. An affair begins and it lasts and then it lasts to the point that it’s time to start thinking about doing something. Leaving the husband. Or getting rid of him because there’s insurance and half a company at stake. That’s enough motive right there, Rachel, and that’s what this case is about. It’s not about cesium or terrorism or anything else. It’s the basic equation: sex plus money equals murder. That’s all.”

She frowned and shook her head.

“You don’t know what you are talking about. Jack Brenner is married and has three children. He’s stable, boring and not interested. He wasn’t-”

“Every man is interested. It doesn’t matter if they’re married or how many kids they have.”

She spoke quietly.

“Would you listen and let me finish now? You are wrong about Brenner. He never met Alicia Kent before today. He wasn’t my partner when I came here last year and I never told you he was.”

Bosch was jolted by the news. He’d assumed that her current partner had been her partner last year. He’d had Brenner’s image locked and loaded in his mind as he had unfolded the story.

“At the start of the year all partners in TIU were shuffled. It’s the routine. It promotes a better team concept. I’ve been with Jack since January.”

“Who was your partner last year, Rachel?”

She held his eyes for a long moment.

“It was Cliff Maxwell.”

HARRY BOSCH ALMOST LAUGHED but was too shocked to do anything but shake his head. Rachel Walling was telling him that Cliff Maxwell was Alicia Kent’s partner in murder.

“I can’t believe this,” he finally said. “About five hours ago I had the killer handcuffed on the floor right here!”

Rachel looked mortified by the realization that the murder of Stanley Kent was an inside job and the theft of the cesium was nothing more than a well-played misdirection.

“You see the rest now?” Bosch asked. “You see how he would work it? Her husband’s dead and he starts coming around out of sympathy and because he’s on the case. They start dating, fall in love and nobody ever raises an eyebrow about it. They’re still out there looking for Moby and El-Fayed.”

“And what if we ever catch those guys?” Walling said, taking up the story. “They could deny being a part of this thing until Osama bin Laden dies in a cave of old age but who would believe them or care? There’s nothing more ingenious than framing terrorists with a crime they didn’t commit. They can never defend themselves.”

Bosch nodded.

“A perfect crime,” he said. “The only reason it blew up was because Digoberto Gonzalves checked that Dumpster. Without him we’d still be chasing Moby and El-Fayed, probably thinking that they had used Samir’s place as a safe house.”

“So, what do we do now, Bosch?”

Bosch shrugged but then answered anyway.

“I say we set up a classic rattrap. Put them both in rooms, ring the bell and say the first one who talks gets the deal. I’d bet on Alicia. She’ll break and give him up, probably blame him for everything, say she was acting under his influence and control.”

“Something tells me you’re right. And the truth is, I don’t think Maxwell was smart enough to pull this off. I worked with-”

Her cell phone started buzzing. She took it out of her pocket and looked at the screen.

“It’s Jack.”

“Find out where Maxwell is.”

She answered the call and first replied to a few questions about Bosch’s status, telling Brenner that he was okay but was losing his voice because his throat hurt. Bosch got up for another bottle of water but listened from the kitchen. Walling casually steered the call toward Maxwell.

“Hey, where’s Cliff, by the way? I wanted to talk to him about that thing with Bosch in the hallway. I didn’t like what he-”

She stopped and listened to the answer and Bosch saw her eyes immediately become alert. Something was wrong.

“When was that?” she asked.

She listened again and stood up.

“Listen, Jack, I’ve got to go. I think Bosch is about to be discharged. I’ll check in as soon as I’m clear here.”

She closed the phone and looked at Bosch.

“I can’t stand lying to him. He won’t forget it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said there were too many agents at the recovery scene-just about everybody came out from downtown and they were standing around waiting on the radiation team. So Maxwell volunteered to go pick up the witness at the Mark Twain. Nobody had gotten around to it because I’d pulled off the original pickup team.”

“He went alone?”

“That’s what Jack said.”

“How long ago?”

“A half hour.”

“He’s going to kill him.”

Bosch started moving quickly toward the door.

BOSCH DROVE THIS TIME. On the way toward Hollywood he told Walling that Jesse Mitford had no phone in his room. The Mark Twain wasn’t much when it came to full service. Instead, Bosch called the watch commander at Hollywood Division and asked him to send a patrol car to the hotel to check on the witness. He then called information and was connected to the front desk at the Mark Twain.

“Alvin, this is Detective Bosch. From this morning?”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s up with you, Detective?”

“Has anyone come in asking for Stephen King?”

“Mmm, nope.”

“In the last twenty minutes have you buzzed in anybody who looked like a cop or who wasn’t a tenant there?”

“No, Detective. What’s going on?”

“Listen, I need you to go up to that room and tell Stephen King to get out of there and then to call me on my cell.”

“I got nobody to watch the desk, Detective.”

“It’s an emergency, Alvin. I need to get him out of there. It will take you less than five minutes. Here, write this down. My number is three-two-three, two-four-four, five-six-three-one. You got it?”

“I got it.”

“Okay, go. And if anybody but me comes in there looking for him, say he checked out, took a refund and left. Go, Alvin, and thanks.”

Bosch closed the phone and looked over at Rachel. His face showed his lack of confidence in the deskman.

“I think the guy’s a tweaker.”

Bosch increased his speed and tried to concentrate on driving. They had just turned south on Cahuenga off Barham. He was thinking that, depending on traffic in Hollywood, they could get to the Mark Twain in another five minutes. This conclusion made him shake his head. With a half-hour lead Maxwell should already be at the Mark Twain. He wondered if he had slipped in the back way and already gotten to Mitford.