The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(85)

They entered a large office that had a sitting area to the left and a desk to the right. In between was a man sitting in a chair. He was partially gagged with a piece of white cloth stuffed into his mouth and held in place by plastic zip ties wrapped around his head and across his mouth. Zip ties also secured his wrists to the arms of the chair and still more held his ankles to the legs.

Ballard swept her aim across the room to make sure there was no one else present. She also checked through the open door to a small bathroom that was to the right behind the desk. She then holstered her weapon as she returned to the center of the room.

“Harry? You — ”

“Got it.”

Bosch moved in, unfolding a knife he had withdrawn from a pocket. He first worked on the gag, pulling the zip tie loop away from the man’s jaw to cut it. He then pulled loose the cloth from the man’s mouth and dropped it on the floor. Ballard noted that it was a washcloth, likely grabbed from the bathroom.

“Oh, thank god,” the man said. “I thought he would come back first.”

Bosch moved on to the bindings on the man’s wrists and ankles.

“Who are you?” Ballard asked. “What happened here?”

“I’m Jason Abbott,” the man said. “Dr. Jason Abbott. You saved me.”

He was wearing blue jeans and a light blue button-down shirt with the tails out. The zip ties had left marks on his cheeks. He had a ruddy complexion and blue eyes under a full head of dark, curly hair.

When his wrists were released, he immediately started rubbing them to get circulation going.

“What happened?” Ballard repeated. “Who did this to you?”

“A man,” Abbott said. “His name is Christopher Bonner. He’s an ex-cop. He tied me up.”

After crouching down to cut the ties on Abbott’s ankles, Bosch stood up and backed away. Abbott reached down and rubbed his ankles, exaggerating the action, and then unsteadily stood up and tried to take a few steps. He quickly reached his hands out and leaned down on the front of the desk.

“I can’t feel my feet,” he said. “I’ve been tied to that chair for hours.”

“Dr. Abbott, sit down over here on the couch,” Ballard said. “You need to tell us exactly what happened.”

Ballard held Abbott by the arm and helped him move unsteadily from the desk to the couch, where he sat down.

“Bonner came here and tied me up,” he said.

“When was this?” Ballard asked.

“About two. He came in, he had a gun, and I had to let him tie me up with those plastic things. I had no choice.”

“Two a.m. or p.m.?”

“Two p.m. Like twelve hours ago. What time is it anyway?”

“It’s after four.”

“Jesus. I’ve been in that chair fourteen hours.”

“Why did he tie you up?”

“Because he was going to kill me, I think. He said he had to go do something and I think he wanted me alive and with no alibi when he did it. Then he was going to come back and make it look like I did it. He’d kill me, make it look like a suicide or something and I’d get the blame.”

“He told you all of this?”

“I know it sounds fantastic, but it’s true. He didn’t tell me everything. But I’ve been sitting here for fourteen fucking hours and I put it together. I mean, why else would he tie me up and keep me here?”

Ballard knew that the more she kept Abbott talking, the more his story would become implausible and the flaws in it would show.

“What was it he had to go and do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Abbott said. “But I think he was going to kill somebody. That’s what he does.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me. He flat out told me. This guy, he’s had his hooks into me for years. He’s been blackmailing me, threatening me, making me do things. And not just me. All of us.”

“Who is ‘all of us,’ Dr. Abbott?”

“My partners. I have partners in the lab, and Bonner bullied his way in and took control. I mean, he was a cop. We were scared. We did what we were told.”

Ballard had to assume that Abbott did not know that Bonner was dead. But trying to throw the blame on him was probably the best ploy he could come up with when he saw Ballard and Bosch on the lab’s exterior cameras and deduced that it hadn’t been Bonner texting him about “complications.”

“So you think this was some sort of master plan on Bonner’s part?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Abbott said. “Ask him. If you can find him.”

“Or was it a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing, you think?”

“I already said I don’t know.”

“Because I noticed those zip ties you were bound to the chair with came from the lab down the hall. I saw a few of them on the floor in there.”

“Yeah, then he must have just grabbed them on his way back here to me.”

“Who let him into the building?”

“I did. We were closed today — tacked the day on to the holiday weekend. I was here alone, catching up on work and he buzzed the gate. I had no idea what he was going to do. I let him in.”

Ballard stepped closer to the couch.