The Wrong Side of Goodbye(53)

As he exited the bureau, he almost ran into Captain Trevino, who was in the hallway.

“Hey, Cap.”

“Harry, where are you going?”

“Going to grab lunch.”

Bosch kept going. It might have been his intention to get lunch while he was out but he wasn’t interested in sharing his real destination with Trevino. If it went from anonymous tip to legitimate lead he would inform the boss. He picked up speed so he would be to the side door of the station before Trevino checked the attendance board in the bureau and saw that Bosch had once again failed to sign in or out.

It took him three minutes to drive to the corner of Maclay and Seventh. Bosch parked his rented Cherokee and got out. He stood on the corner and looked around. It was an intersection of commercial and residential zones. Maclay was lined with small businesses, shops, and restaurants. Seventh was lined with small, gated properties that were supposed to be single-family homes. But Bosch knew that many of those homes were shared by multiple families, and even more people lived in illegally converted garages.

He spotted a trash can near the corner and got an idea. If the Screen Cutter pulled off his mask and gloves when he got to Maclay, would he keep them? Would he carry them in his hands or stuff them into his pockets? Or would he dump them? It was known that he had access to and had used other masks in his crimes. Dumping the wrestling mask and gloves would have been the smart move once he was on the busy commercial street.

Bosch went to the trash can and lifted the top off. It had been little more than forty-eight hours since the attempted assault on Beatriz Sahagun. Bosch doubted the city had emptied the can in that time and he was right. It had been a busy weekend on Maclay and the trash can was nearly full. Bosch took a pair of latex gloves out of his jacket pocket and then removed the jacket and hung it over the back of a nearby bus bench. He then put on the gloves, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work.

It was a disgusting process with the can largely filled with rotting food and the occasional disposable baby diaper. It also appeared that at some point during the weekend someone had vomited directly into the receptacle. It took him a solid ten minutes to thoroughly dig through it to the bottom. He found no mask and no gloves.

Undaunted, Bosch went to the next trash can twenty yards further down Maclay and started the same process. Without his jacket on, his badge was visible on his belt, and that probably stopped shop owners and passersby from asking what he was doing. At the second can he drew the attention of a family eating at the front window of a taqueria ten feet away. Bosch tried to conduct his search while positioning his body as a visual blind to them. It was more of the same detritus in the second can but he hit pay dirt halfway through the excavation. There in the debris was a black leather wrestling mask with a green-and-red design.

Bosch straightened up out of the can and stripped off his gloves, dropping them to the ground next to the trash can. He then pulled his cell phone and took several photos of the mask in place in the can. After documenting the find he called the SFPD com room and told the officer in charge he needed to call in an evidence team from the Sheriff’s Department to collect the mask from the trash receptacle.

“You can’t bag it and tag it yourself?” the officer asked.

“No, I can’t bag it and tag it,” Bosch said. “There is going to be genetic evidence inside and possibly outside the mask. I want to go four by four on it so some lawyer down the line doesn’t get to tell a jury I did it all wrong and tainted the case. Okay?”

“Okay, okay, I was just asking. I need to get Captain Trevino to sign off on this and then I’ll call the Sheriff’s. It might be a while.”

“I’ll be here waiting.”

A while turned out to be three hours. Bosch waited patiently, spending part of the time talking to Lourdes when she called him after he had texted her a photo of the mask. It was a good find and would help bring a new dimension to their understanding of the Screen Cutter. They also agreed there would undoubtedly be genetic material inside the mask that could be linked to the rapist. In that regard it would be like the semen collected in three of the other assaults: a definitive link, but only if the suspect was identified. Bosch said he was holding out hope that they would do better and that the treated leather of the mask would hold a fingerprint left when the mask was pulled on and adjusted. A fingerprint would be a whole new angle. The Screen Cutter may never have been DNA-typed, but he could have been fingerprinted. A driver’s license in California required a thumbprint. If there was a thumbprint on the mask, they might be in business. Bosch had worked cases with the LAPD where prints were pulled off of leather coats and boots. It wasn’t a reach to hope the mask could be the case breaker.

“You done good, Harry,” Lourdes said. “Now I wish I was working today.”

“It’s okay,” Bosch said. “We’re both on the case now. My get is your get and vice versa.”

“Well, that attitude will make Captain Trevino happy.”

“Which is what we are all striving for.”

She was laughing as they disconnected.

Bosch went back to waiting. Repeatedly through the afternoon he had to shoo away pedestrians aiming to use the trash can for its public purpose. The one instance where someone got by him was when he remembered he had left his sports coat on the bus bench up at the corner and walked back to retrieve it. When he turned back around he saw a woman who was pushing a baby carriage throw something into the receptacle containing the mask. She had come out of nowhere and Bosch was too late to stop her. He expected to find another disposable diaper when he returned but instead found a half-eaten ice-cream cone splatted directly on the mask.