Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (95)



He casually walked down the pier like a tourist marveling at this floating neighborhood. He spent equal time checking out each residence on either side of the pier as he moved. When he came to the yellow house that was second from the end, he saw that the sliding door on a second-floor balcony was open with a screen pulled closed across it. He could hear music coming from inside—a reggae beat, but it wasn’t a song he could identify.

Bosch used his injury to his advantage here. He stopped and leaned against a light pole at the end of the pier. He raised his left leg, bringing his foot up and down as if working out a stiff joint. And he studied the yellow floater. He saw that the decking extended down the right side of the house, offering a narrow access to the back deck and the skiff tied up to it. He also noted the double locks on the front door.

Satisfied with the intel he had gathered, Bosch headed back to the gangway. He had seen enough. He believed that the man he had been chasing for many years was inside the yellow house. He needed to go back to his hotel room. He needed to take more Advil and work out the plan for when he would come back under the cover of night.





51


BALLARD HAD BEEN ten minutes late to her four o’clock appointment with Vickie Blodget, the prosecutor assigned to handle cases from the unit. Ballard had always had an easy and open relationship with Blodget, but she was off her game in giving the case overview, leaving out details and delivering them out of order. She had been in a fog since leaving the lab. The Olga Reyes case had been pushed out of her brain by Ballard’s need to find Harry Bosch.

“Let me make sure I understand the chain on this,” Blodget said. “Bosch saw Rawls put the box in the dumpster, but then you waited three days to go retrieve it? Why?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant, and I’m sorry if I’m confusing you,” Ballard said. “Bosch did not see him dump the box. It just came to him later that Rawls might have been in the process of dumping evidence when he saw Bosch and decided to make a run for it. So, in other words, he dumped the box, saw Bosch, then ran back to his car and took off.”

“But why did you wait three days to go back? See, that’s a problem. If he didn’t see Rawls dump the box, we’re going to have a difficult time linking it.”

“Well, who else could it be? The dumpster is literally sixty feet from the back door of a serial killer’s business. Bosch got banged up pretty good in what happened Sunday. He fucked up his knee and ribs in the crash, not to mention a bullet whizzing by his head and clipping his ear. It took him a couple days to put two and two together, and then we went dumpster diving.”

Blodget nodded as she wrote a short note on a legal pad.

“Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “Those three days. It could have been anybody who dumped the box. As you know, the shootout with Rawls hit the media in a very big way. Somebody could have seen the story and then gone down there to dump the box, hoping it would be found and linked to Rawls.”

The fog was burning away. Ballard stared at Blodget incredulously.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “What is going on here? This kid’s been in prison for thirteen years. I mean, he’s not even a kid anymore. He shouldn’t be there.”

“Are you a hundred percent sure about that?” Blodget asked.

“Yes, I am. Jorge Ochoa is innocent.”

“It was a DNA match.”

“Yeah, and she was his girlfriend. That was his defense: they had sex that night, he went home, and the killer came next. And now we know that’s what happened. It was Rawls, not Ochoa. The murder weapon was in the box. You have the autopsy report right there in front of you. Blunt force trauma, circular impacts to the skull, one inch in diameter. Those were hammer blows, Vickie. It’s obvious.”

“I know all of that, Renée. That’s not the point. We need linkage to Rawls. Were there any prints on the box? Anything that directly ties it or its contents to him?”

“No, I had it processed. No prints, no fibers, no DNA from Rawls. But remember, he was getting rid of the box. He would have made sure it was clean and not traceable to him. The only flaw in the plan was that we were onto him and Bosch was watching. He didn’t count on that until he saw Bosch and tried to flee.”

“There are just too many holes in it. I can’t take it across the street. Not yet. I need you to get more evidence.”

Blodget’s office was in the Hall of Justice, which was directly across Temple Street from the downtown criminal courthouse, where the elected D.A.’s office was located on the sixteenth floor.

“You said Bosch got into an argument with a resident there,” Blodget said. “Did you talk to this man? Did he see Rawls dump the box?”

“I doubt he had an angle on it,” Ballard said. “But no, we haven’t talked to him. I didn’t think it was necessary when the rest is so obvious.”

“And nothing in property or evidence storage from the case?”

“No. After Ochoa lost his last appeal, there was an evidence disposal order from the court. There is nothing but what you have right there. No crime scene to go back to, no witnesses to show photos of Rawls to. Just the box.”

Blodget nodded and wrote something down.

“Then there’s nothing I can do at the moment,” she said. “I’m sorry, Renée.”

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