The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(24)

13


Bosch parked right in front of Margaret Thompson’s house. He thought about making the short walk to the house without his cane but he looked at the six steps leading up to the porch. His knee was aching from a full day of movement, with and without the cane. He decided not to push it, grabbed the cane off the passenger seat, and used it to amble up the front walk and stairs. It was getting dark now but there were no lights on that he could see. He knocked on the door but was thinking that he should have called ahead and avoided wasting time. Then the porch lights came on and Margaret opened the door.

“Harry?”

“Hello, Margaret. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. What brings you here?”

“Well, I wanted to see how you were doing and I wanted to also ask about the case—the murder book you gave me. I was hoping I could get a look at John Jack’s office, see if there were any notes relating to his investigation.”

“Well, you’re welcome to look but I don’t think there is anything there.”

She led him into the house and turned on lights as they went. It made Bosch wonder whether she had been sitting in the dark when he had knocked on the door.

In the office Margaret signaled toward the desk. Bosch paused and studied the whole room.

“The murder book was sitting on top of the desk when I retrieved it,” he said. “Is that where it was, or did you find it somewhere?”

“It was in the bottom right side drawer,” Margaret said. “I found it when I was looking for the cemetery papers.”

“Cemetery papers?”

“He bought that plot at Hollywood Forever many years ago. He liked the name of it.”

Bosch moved around the desk and sat down. He opened the bottom right drawer. It was now empty.

“Did you clean this out?”

“No, I haven’t looked in there since the day I found the book.”

“So there was nothing else in the drawer? Just the murder book?”

“That was all.”

“Did John Jack spend a lot of time in here?”

“A day or two a week. When he did the bills and the taxes. Things like that.”

“Did he have a computer or a laptop?”

“No, he never got one. He said he hated using computers when he worked.”

Bosch nodded. He opened another drawer while talking.

“Had you ever seen the murder book before you found it in the drawer?”

“No, Harry, I hadn’t. What’s going on with it?”

The drawer had two checkbooks and rubber-banded stacks of envelopes from DWP and the Dish Network. It was all household billing records.

“Well, I gave it to a detective and she started checking into it. She said there was nothing added to it by John Jack. So we thought maybe he kept notes separate from it.”

He opened the top drawer and found it full of pens, paper clips, and Post-it pads. There was a pair of scissors, a roll of packing tape, a mini-light, and a magnifying glass with a bone handle with an inscription carved in it.

To my Sherlock

Love, Margaret

“It’s like he took the book with him when he retired but never worked it.”

From the desk Bosch saw a door on the opposite wall.

“You mind if I look in the closet?”

“No, go ahead.”

Bosch got up and walked over. The closet was for long-term storage of clothes. There was a set of golf clubs that looked like they had barely been used and Bosch remembered that they had been presented to John Jack at his retirement party.

On the shelf above the hanging bar Bosch saw a cardboard file box next to a stack of old LPs and a bobby’s helmet that had probably been given to John Jack by a visiting police officer from England.

“What’s in the file box?”

“I don’t know. This was his room, Harry.”

“Mind if I look?”

“Go ahead.”

Bosch pulled the box down. It was heavy and it was sealed. He carried it over to the desk and used the scissors from the drawer to cut the tape stretched across the top of the box.

The box was filled with police documents but they were not contained in files or murder books. At first glance they appeared to be haphazardly stored, from multiple cases. Bosch started taking out thick sheaves of documents and putting them on the desk.

“This might take a while,” he said. “I need to look through these to see what they are and if they’re connected to the murder book.”

“I’ll leave you here so you can work,” Margaret said. “Would you like me to make some coffee, Harry?”

“Uh, no. But a glass of water would be good. My knee is swelling and I have to take a pill.”

“Did you overwork it?”

“Maybe. It’s been a long day.”

“I’ll go get your water.”

Bosch finished taking the documents out of the box and started going through them from what would have been at the bottom. It quickly became clear they had nothing to do with the John Hilton case. What Bosch had in front of him were copies of partial case records and arrest reports as well as state parole-board notifications. John Jack Thompson had been keeping tabs on the people he had sent to prison as a detective, writing letters of opposition to the parole board, and keeping track of when prisoners were released.