The Wrong Side of Goodbye(102)

Meaning they were looking at him as a possible suspect. Not that Butler would have done anything personally, but whether he was the kind of guy who could get it done.

“Wouldn’t be the first time boardroom animosity leads to murder,” Bosch said.

“Nope,” Poydras said.

“What about the will? I heard they opened probate today.” Bosch hoped he had slid the question in casually, as a natural extension of the question regarding corporate motivation.

“They opened probate with a will filed with the corporate attorney back in ’92,” Poydras said. “It was the latest will on record. Vance apparently had his first bout with cancer then, so he had the corporate lawyer create a last will and testament to make the transition of power clear. Everything goes into the corporation. There was an amendment—I think codicil is the word—filed a year later that covers the possibility of an heir. But with no heir, it all goes to the corporation and is controlled by the board. That includes setting compensation and bonus payouts. There are now eighteen people remaining on the board and they’re going to control about six billion bucks. You know what that means, Bosch?”

“Eighteen suspects,” Bosch said.

“Correct. And all eighteen of them are well heeled and insulated. They can hide behind lawyers, behind walls, you name it.”

Bosch wanted to know exactly what the codicil regarding an heir said but thought that if he got more targeted with his questioning, Poydras would start to suspect that his search for an heir didn’t end in Vietnam. He thought Haller would at some point be able to procure a copy of the 1992 will and get the same information.

“Was Ida Forsythe at San Rafael when you went there to visit Vance?” Poydras asked.

It was a turn in direction away from the idea of corporate murder. Bosch understood that a good interviewer never follows a straight line.

“Yes,” he said. “She wasn’t in the room when we talked but she led me back to the office.”

“Interesting woman,” Poydras said. “She’d been with him longer than Sloan.”

Bosch just nodded.

“So have you talked to her since that day at San Rafael?” Poydras asked.

Bosch paused as he considered the question. Every good interviewer sets up a trapdoor. He thought of Ida Forsythe saying she was being watched and about Poydras and Franks showing up on the day he visited her at her home.

“You know the answer to that,” he said. “Either you or your people saw me at her house today.”

Poydras nodded and hid a smile. Bosch had passed the trapdoor test.

“Yeah, we saw you,” he said. “And we were wondering what that was about.”

Bosch shrugged to buy time. He knew that they might have knocked on Forsythe’s door ten minutes after he left and that she could have told them what he had said about the will. But he guessed that if that were the case, Poydras would be coming at the interview from a different angle.

“It was just about me thinking she was a nice old lady,” he said. “She lost her longtime boss and I wanted to pay my respects. I also wanted to know what she knew about what happened.”

Poydras paused as he decided whether Bosch was lying.

“You sure that’s all it was?” he pressed. “When you were standing at the door she didn’t look too happy to see you.”

“Because she thought she was being watched,” Bosch said. “And she was right.”

“Like I said, everybody’s a suspect until they’re not. She found the victim. That puts her on the list. Even though the only thing she gets out of it is being unemployed.”

Bosch nodded. He knew at that moment that he was withholding a big piece of information from Poydras—the will he had received in the mail. But things were coming together in Bosch’s mind and he wanted time to think before giving up the big reveal. He changed the subject.

“Did you read the letters?” Bosch said.

“What letters?” Poydras asked.

“You said Ida Forsythe was called in to write letters for Vance on Sunday.”

“They never actually got written. She came in and found him dead at the desk. But apparently every Sunday afternoon, when Vance was feeling up to it, she came in and wrote letters for him.”

“What kind of letters? Business? Personal?”

“I got the idea it was personal stuff. He was old-fashioned, liked to send letters instead of e-mails. Kind of nice actually. He had the stationery out on the desk, ready to go.”

“So these were handwritten letters she was coming in to write for him?”

“I didn’t ask specifically. But the stationery and his fancy pen were there and ready to go. I think that was the plan. Where are you going with this, Bosch?”

“You said a fancy pen?”

Poydras looked at him for a long moment.

“Yeah, you didn’t see it? Solid gold pen in a holder on his desk.”

Bosch reached over and tapped a finger on the black binder.

“You got a photo in there?” he asked.

“I might,” Poydras said. “What’s so special about the pen?”

“I want to see if it’s the one he showed me. He told me it was made of gold that his great-grandfather prospected.”

Poydras opened the binder and flipped through to a section of clear plastic sleeves containing 8 x 10 color photos of the Vance death scene. He kept flipping pages until he found a shot he deemed appropriate and then turned the book around to show Bosch. In the photo Whitney Vance’s body was on the floor next to his desk and his wheelchair. His shirt was open, his ivory chest exposed, and it was clear the photo was taken after unsuccessful efforts had been made to revive him.