The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(104)

Bosch deviated from the path the others were taking and headed toward the building’s entrance. As he went, he surveyed California Plaza. It was surrounded on three sides by office towers. The one he was heading toward was the tallest but Bosch assumed that cameras somewhere in the plaza would have captured Manley’s fall. From them it might be possible to determine whether he had been conscious when he fell.

He reached into his pocket as he approached the revolving glass doors at the lobby entrance, pulled out his old ID, and clipped it to the breast pocket of his jacket. He knew that the plan now was to keep moving and not stop long enough for anyone to read the date on it.

Once he passed through the door, he saw the round security desk with a sign saying that visitors must show ID before being allowed to go up. Bosch strode toward it confidently. A man and a woman sat behind the counter, both wearing blue blazers with name tags.

“Detective Bosch, LAPD,” he said. “Have any of my colleagues asked about visitors today to Michaelson & Mitchell on the sixteenth floor?”

“Not yet,” the woman said. Her name tag said RACHEL.

Bosch leaned over the counter as if to look down at the screen in front of Rachel. He put his elbow on the marble top and drew his hand up to his chin as if contemplating her answer. This allowed him to block her view of his ID tag with his forearm.

“Can we take a look, then?” he said. “All visitors to the firm.”

Rachel started typing. The angle Bosch had on her screen was too sharp and he could not see what she was doing.

“I can only tell you who was put on the visitor list this morning,” Rachel said.

“That’s fine,” Bosch said. “Would it say which lawyer in the firm they were visiting?”

“Yes, I can provide that if needed.”

“Thank you.”

“This is about the suicide?”

“We’re not calling it a suicide yet. We need to investigate it and that’s why we want to see who came up to the firm today.”

Bosch turned and looked through the glass walls of the lobby. He did not have a view of the death scene but felt he was only a few moves ahead of Gustafson and Reyes. One of them would be going up to the firm soon.

“Okay, I have it here,” Rachel said.

“Is that something you can print out for me?” Bosch asked.

“Not a problem.”

“Thanks.”

Rachel moved down the counter to a printer and took two pages out of the tray. She handed them to Bosch, who took them as he walked around the counter toward the elevators.

“I’m going up to sixteen,” he said.

“Wait,” Rachel said.

Bosch froze.

“What?” he asked.

“You need a visitor card to get to the elevators,” Rachel said.

Bosch had forgotten that the elevator lobby was protected by electronic turnstiles. Rachel programmed a card and handed it to him.

“Here you go, Detective. Just put it into the slot at the turnstile.”

“Thank you. How do I get access to the roof?”

“You can get to thirty-two, but from there you have to take the maintenance stairwell up. It’s supposed to be locked but I guess today it wasn’t.”

“How do employees get up to their offices?”

“They enter the underground parking on Hill Street, take an elevator to this level, then everybody goes through the turnstiles. Employees get permanent cards.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Be careful up there.”

Bosch decided to go to the roof first. As he rode the elevator up, he tried to think in terms of how the Black Widow did it. She had somehow lured Manley to the roof and then pushed him off, or incapacitated him and pushed him off. The question was how she got him up there. Forcing him at gunpoint to walk through the law firm and take an elevator up would have been too risky. Just the chance that someone could be on the elevator would seem to scratch that as a possibility. But somehow, she had gotten Manley up there.

As the elevator ascended, he looked for the first time at the printout he had received at the security desk. He knew, of course, that the Black Widow could have arrived as an employee or with an employee, but nevertheless he studied the names of the seventeen visitors on the list. None of them was Laurie Lee Wells. That would have been too easy. But only four were women, none were visiting Manley, and only one was visiting either Michaelson or Mitchell. That name was Sonja Soquin, who had arrived at 2:55 p.m. for a three o’clock appointment with Michaelson. Calculating from the time Reyes got the call while sitting with Bosch, he estimated that Manley had fallen from the building to his death sometime between 3:50 and 4:00 p.m.

The elevator opened and Bosch stepped out. He looked up and down the hall and saw a uniformed officer standing in front of an open door Bosch assumed was the maintenance entrance to the roof. He walked that way.

“Anybody gone up yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” the officer said. “It might be a crime scene.”

As Bosch got closer he saw that the officer’s name tag said OHLMAN.

“I’m going up,” Bosch said.

The officer hesitated while eyeing Bosch’s ID tag. But Bosch turned as if to look back down the hallway.

“This is the only way up?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Ohlman said. “The door was open when I got up here.”