The Wrong Side of Goodbye(49)

Bosch swiveled in his chair to see Trevino pointing toward the door where the board was located.

“Right, right. I’ll do it now.”

He stood up and Trevino stepped back so he could leave the cubicle. The captain spoke to his back.

“That’s the knife?” Trevino asked.

“That’s the knife,” Bosch said.

Bosch grabbed a marker off the board’s sill and put down that he had arrived at 6:15 that morning. He hadn’t exactly checked the time but he knew he had been at the Starbucks at 6:00.

Trevino went into his office and shut the door. Bosch returned to the knife on his desk. This time he put the time travel aside and leaned down so he could read the numbers stamped on the black blade. On one side of the TitaniumEdge logo was the date of manufacture—09/08—and on the other side was a number Bosch assumed was the weapon’s unique serial number. He wrote both of these down and then went online to see if TitaniumEdge had a website.

As he did so he heard Lourdes start one of the callbacks in Spanish. Bosch understood enough to know she was calling someone who had fingered a person she knew as the rapist. Bosch knew it would be a quick call. The investigators were 95 percent sure they were looking for a white man. Any caller accusing a Latino would be wrong and most likely engaged in trying to make a personal enemy’s life difficult.

Bosch found the TitaniumEdge site and quickly learned that owners of their knives could register them at purchase or thereafter. It was not required and Bosch guessed that in most cases purchasers had not bothered. The knife manufacturer was located in Pennsylvania—close to the steel mills that produced the raw materials of their weapons. The website showed that the company made several different folding knives. Not knowing if the business would be open on a Saturday, Bosch took a shot and called the number listed on the website. His call was answered by an operator and he asked for the supervisor on duty.

“We have Johnny and George here today. They’re the guys in charge.”

“Is one of them available?” he asked. “Doesn’t matter which.”

She put Bosch on hold and two minutes later a gruff male voice came on the line. If there was a voice to match a black blade knife maker, it was this one.

“This is Johnny.”

“Johnny, this is Detective Bosch with the SFPD out in California. I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time to help with an investigation we have going out here.”

There was a pause. Bosch had taken to using the abbreviation SFPD when making calls outside the city because the chances were good that the receiver of the call would jump to the conclusion that Bosch was calling from the San Francisco Police Department and be more willing to help than if they knew he was calling from tiny San Fernando.

“SFPD?” Johnny finally said. “I’ve never even been to California.”

“Well, it’s not about you, sir,” Bosch said. “It’s about a knife that we recovered from a crime scene.”

“Was someone hurt with it?”

“Not that we’re aware of. A burglar dropped it when he was chased from a house where he had broken in.”

“Sounds like he was going to use it to hurt somebody.”

“We’ll never know. He dropped it and I’m trying to trace it. I see from your website that purchasers can register them. I was wondering if I could find out if this one is registered.”

“Which one is it?”

“It’s a Socom Black. Four-inch black powdered blade. On the blade it says it was made in September ’08.”

“Yeah, we don’t make that one anymore.”

“But it is still highly regarded and a collector’s item, from what I’ve been told.”

“Well, let me look it up here on the computer and see what we got.”

Bosch was buoyed by the cooperation. Johnny asked for the serial number and Bosch read it to him off the blade. Harry could hear him tap it into a computer.

“Well, it’s registered,” Johnny said. “But unfortunately, that’s a stolen knife.”

“Really?” Bosch said.

But this was not surprising to him. He thought it unlikely that a serial rapist would use a weapon that could be traced directly to him, even if he narcissistically assumed that he would never lose the knife or be identified as a suspect.

“Yeah, stolen a couple years after the original purchaser bought it,” Johnny said. “At least that’s when he notified us.”

“Well, it’s been recovered,” Bosch said. “And that owner will be getting it back after we’re finished with the case. Can you give me that information?”

Here was where Bosch hoped that Johnny wouldn’t ask for a warrant. That would slow pursuit of this lead down to a crawl. Rousing a judge on a weekend to sign a warrant for a small part of an investigation was not something he relished doing.

“We are always happy to help out the military and law enforcement,” Johnny said patriotically.

Bosch then wrote down the name and address as of 2010 of the original buyer of the knife. He was Jonathan Danbury and his address, at least back then, was in Santa Clarita, no more than a thirty-minute drive up the 5 freeway from San Fernando.

Bosch thanked Johnny the knife maker for his cooperation and ended the phone call. He immediately went to the DMV database to see if he could locate Jonathan Danbury. He quickly learned that Danbury still lived in the same house as when he reported the knife stolen in 2010. Bosch also learned that Danbury was now thirty-six years old and had no criminal record.