Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (73)

The woman who had asked the question was unseen because the camera was trained on the podium and the chief of police. But Bosch thought he recognized her slight Caribbean accent.

The chief tried to deflect.

“As I said in my statement, there are components of the investigation that are continuing. One of those components is the officer-involved shooting, and I am not going to comment on what is an ongoing investigation and personnel matter. That would not be fair at this time. Suffice it to say, our internal investigation will be fully and independently reviewed by the District Attorney’s Office, as is our protocol with all officer-involved shootings.”

As the chief raised his arm to point to another reporter, the original questioner loudly fired a follow-up at him.

“In court documents regarding prior shootings by Harry Bosch, he was described as a ‘gunslinger.’ Did that weigh in the decision to put him on this unit?”

The word gunslinger made the chief blink.

“Uh, I am unfamiliar with that,” he said. “As I just said, I am making no comment at this time regarding the officer-involved shooting. And that’s all I have time for today.”

He quickly turned from the podium and headed across the plaza to the safety of the PAB. Questions shouted after him were neither answered nor acknowledged. Ballard and a tight grouping of media relations people followed in his wake. Bosch had watched Ballard as she turned to follow the chief. He could see dread clearly drawn on her face.

After the press conference, the broadcast switched to a live report from the scene of the Rawls shooting. A female reporter introduced recorded interviews with residents in the normally quiet neighborhood. It was strictly filler, but in her wrap-up the reporter mentioned that Councilman Pearlman had scheduled a 5 p.m. press conference to discuss the case and his personal connection to it.

At 5 p.m. Bosch switched from KCAL, which went to non-news programming, to the start of a news hour on KNBC. The anchor immediately cued up Councilman Pearlman’s live appearance on the granite steps of City Hall behind a podium adorned with the city’s seal.

In a brief address, Pearlman praised the work of the Open-Unsolved Unit, noting that his office had played the key role in reinstating it. He also said that the identification of Rawls as the killer of his sister and Laura Wilson did not bring his family closure, but finally knowing the truth was enough to hopefully bandage the wounds of the past.

He, too, left out many key facts, namely that he and his chief of staff had placed Rawls on the very unit that unmasked him as the killer. He also failed to mention that Rawls had likely chosen Laura Wilson as a victim while knocking on doors in support of Pearlman’s first bid for office in 2005.

The councilman ended his short statement by saying that he would be taking no questions and asking that his and his family’s privacy be respected. Bosch cynically viewed this last part as a means of avoiding inquiries that could result in political damage.

Bosch turned off the screen and sat there thinking about how the truth was always manipulated by those in power. It bothered him to know things that shouldn’t be kept secret.

He thought about the look of dread he saw on Ballard’s face and wondered if she had been forced in some way to stand next to the chief and be part of the manipulation. He wished she had at least called him to give him a heads-up.

It was then that he realized Ballard might have done so but he wouldn’t have known, because his phone was either in direct police custody or still somewhere in his Cherokee after being jarred from his hand when Rawls sent his car into the tailspin. The Cherokee was presumably in a police impound yard.

Bosch got up and went to the kitchen. He used his house phone to call his cell phone number and check for messages. He had two. The first was a heads-up call from Ballard that came in at 2 p.m. and outlined the timing of the two press conferences. The second was a message left just ten minutes earlier from Juanita Wilson in Chicago. She asked him to call her back. Bosch grabbed a pen and Post-it out of a kitchen drawer and wrote her number down.

The landline was a cordless phone. He took it out to the back deck of the house to make the call.

“Mrs. Wilson?”

“Detective Bosch, I’m sorry to disturb you. Thank you for calling me back so quickly.”

“You’re not disturbing me. Did Detective Ballard call you?”

“She did. She told me what happened, that the man who killed my Laura is dead.”

“Yes, he killed himself when we were closing in on him. I’m sorry. I wanted … we wanted to take him alive so he could be punished.”

“Don’t be sorry. I believe he is being punished. He’s in Hell.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me Juanita.”

“Juanita.”

“I called because I want to thank you for what you did. Detective Ballard told me. I hope you’re okay and will heal quickly.”

“I’m fine, Juanita.”

“And I want to thank you for the answers. I told you I was holding on for answers.”

“I understand.”

“Thanks to you and Detective Ballard, I can let go now … and I can join Laura and my husband.”

Bosch wasn’t sure what to say. He knew that almost everybody believed in something, holding a hope that there wasn’t just an empty void at the end.

“I understand,” he said.