Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (80)

“He checks it out, sees it’s you, and figures he’s gotta get the hell out of here.”

“Right, so he runs back to his car, turns it around in the alley, and takes off. But he’s still got the other box in the trunk. I pull out of the driveway, cruise by the alley up here, and that’s when I see him, when he’s pulling out down at the other end.”

They walked back to Bosch’s car in silence. Ballard guessed that they were both rethinking the scenario they had just spun, looking for holes in the logic of it.

“It feels like something is off,” Bosch finally said. “Something missing. Why would he use the dumpsters behind his business? It wasn’t smart. There had to be another reason for him coming here.”

“There was,” Ballard said. “I didn’t tell you this, but RHD interviewed the guy who was working in the shop Sunday. He told them that Rawls came in the back door, said hello, and then went right to the safe in the back room that’s used for keeping backup cash for all the shops. The employee said Rawls took all the money. We know from what was in Rawls’s pockets that it was nine hundred dollars.”

“His go money.”

“Right. But the story he told his employee was that he needed the cash to put down on a car he was buying. So he took what was in the safe and then left by the back door.”

“That works. He goes there to get the cash and dump the boxes of souvenirs. He pulls up, pops the trunk, but goes into the store first to get the money. That’s when I drive by and see the trunk open but no sign of Rawls. Then I go around the block and post up in that driveway. Rawls comes out of his store and takes the first box up the alley to the last dumpster, distancing it from his store just in case. But after he dumps it, he hears the guy yelling at me. Rawls checks it out, sees me, and hauls ass back to his car.”

“He makes a U-turn in the alley so you won’t see him leave and goes out the other end. It works, but we’ll never know for sure. Was he going to put the second box in a different dumpster? Why didn’t he carry both boxes to the dumpster at once? We could spin our wheels on this forever.”

“One of the known unknowns,” Bosch said.

“Exactly.”

“So now what?”

Ballard pointed to the box sitting on the city car’s front hood.

“I want to take this back to Ahmanson and go to work on that bracelet,” she said. “And I’ll get the hammer to forensics.”

“I had a hammer case once. It was the murder weapon, and we recovered it from the L.A. River in a spot where there was actual water in the channel. It had been in there for something like thirty-six hours and looked clean as a whistle. But they still found blood in the wood where it connected to the steel head. The victim’s blood. We made the case.”

“So maybe we’ll get lucky with this one and connect it to a victim. Let’s go back.”

She picked up the box and headed to the trunk.

“When we get back to Ahmanson, I’m going to go,” Bosch said.

Ballard popped the trunk and put the box in. She closed it and moved to the driver’s-side door. She looked at Bosch over the roof of the car.

“Go where?” she asked.

“Sheila Walsh has percolated long enough,” Bosch said. “It’s time I go see her.”

“What about Rawls?”

“I figure you’ve got Rawls covered. You’ve got everybody else working it.”

“You’re going to see Walsh by yourself?”

“Yeah, like before. Better that way.”

Bosch opened his door and got in the car. Ballard did the same.

“What if her son is there?”

“Not a problem. He’s scared of me.”

“Probably with good reason.”





44


BOSCH HAD RENTED a car on Tuesday, picking it up at Midway after meeting his daughter for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant on Sunset. He had earlier made an inquiry about his own car at the police garage but was told detectives from the Force Investigation Division had not released it yet. The helpful garage attendant also told him that the car was inoperable because the frame had been bent during the accident that preceded the shooting with Rawls. Despite his claim to Ballard that the old Cherokee was invincible, Bosch now knew that he had most likely driven it for the last time.

He pulled up in the rental in front of Sheila Walsh’s house. If she was on the watch for him, she wouldn’t recognize the car. He sat for a minute collecting his thoughts and deciding how he was going to play this. It had been almost a week since Walsh had called him and angrily told him to stay away from her and her son. Bosch needed to put her in a mindset that told her he would not be going away until she broke and revealed whatever secret she knew about Finbar McShane.

He got out and walked up the stone path to the front door. He knocked sharply, the kind of rap that would hopefully startle anyone inside. Nothing happened. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out the paper-clipped packet of documents to have them ready.

Raising his fist to hammer on the door again, he heard Sheila Walsh’s voice from the other side.

“Go away. You’re not coming in.”

“Mrs. Walsh … Sheila, open the door. I have a search warrant here.”