The Wrong Side of Goodbye(54)
Cursing to himself, Bosch put on latex again, reached in, and flipped the melting chocolate mess off the mask. When he did so he saw a single glove much like the one he was wearing underneath the mask. It reduced his frustration level but not by much.
The two-man forensic team from the Sheriff’s Department didn’t arrive until almost 4 p.m. and they didn’t seem too pleased about the Sunday afternoon callout or the fact that they would be working in a trash can. Bosch was unapologetic and asked them to photograph, chart, and collect the evidence. That process, which included emptying the entire contents of the can onto plastic sheets and then examining each piece before transferring it to a second sheet took nearly two hours.
In the end, the mask and two gloves were recovered and taken to the Sheriff’s lab for analysis along all lines of evidence. Bosch asked for a rush but the lead forensic tech just nodded and smiled as though he was dealing with a naive child who thought he was first in line in life.
Bosch got back to the detective bureau at seven and saw no sign of Captain Trevino. The door to his office was closed and the transom window dark. Bosch sat down in his cubicle and typed up an evidence report on the recovery of the mask and gloves and the anonymous tip that led to them. He then printed two copies, one for his file and one for the captain.
He went back to the computer and filled out a supplemental lab request form that would be sent to the Sheriff’s lab at Cal State L.A. and serve as a means of doubling-down on the request for a rush. The timing was good. A courier from the lab made a weekly stop at the SFPD on Mondays to drop off and pick up evidence. Bosch’s request for a rush would get to the lab by the next afternoon, even if the forensic tech who collected the evidence didn’t pass along his verbal request. In the request Bosch asked for a complete examination of the mask inside and out for fingerprints, hair, and all other genetic material. Additionally, he asked the lab to check the inside of the latex gloves for similar evidence. He cited the fact that the investigation was a serial offender case as the reason for fast-tracking the analysis. He wrote: “This offender will not stop his terror and violence against women until we stop him. Please speed this along.”
This time he printed out three copies of his work—one for his own case file, one for Trevino, and the third for the lab courier. After dropping off the third copy at the evidence control room, Bosch was clear to head home. He had put in a solid day and had broken out a good lead with the mask and gloves. But instead he headed back to his cubicle to shift cases and spend some time on the Vance investigation. Thanks to the attendance board, he knew that Trevino had long ago signed out for the day and that he need not worry about being discovered.
Bosch was intrigued by the story Halley Lewis had told him about Dominick Santanello being drawn into the Chicano Pride movement while in training down in San Diego. His description of the park beneath a freeway overpass was particularly worth checking into. Bosch came at it from several angles on Google and soon enough was looking at photos and a map of a place called Chicano Park, which was located beneath the 5 freeway and the exit to the bridge crossing San Diego Bay to Coronado Island.
The photos of the park showed dozens of murals painted on every concrete pillar and stanchion supporting the overhead freeway and bridge. The murals depicted religious allegories, cultural heritage, and individuals of note in the Chicano Pride movement. One pillar was painted with a mural that marked the founding of the park in April 1970. Bosch realized that Santanello was in Vietnam by then, which meant that his association with the woman Lewis identified as Gabriela began before the park was formally approved by the city and dedicated.
The mural he was looking at listed the park’s founding artists at the bottom. The list was long and the paint faded. The names disappeared behind a bed of zinnias that circled the bottom of the pillar like a wreath. Bosch did not see the name Gabriela but realized that there were names on the pillar he could not make out.
He closed the photo and spent the next twenty minutes searching the Internet for a better angle on the pillar or an early shot taken before the flower wreath grew to obscure the names. He found nothing and was frustrated. There was no guarantee that Gabriela would even be listed on the mural, but he knew he would need to stop at the park and check when he went down to San Diego to look for 1970 birth records of a girl with a father named Dominick Santanello.
After a stop for a combined lunch and dinner at Art’s Deli in Studio City, Bosch got to Woodrow Wilson Drive late in the evening. He parked as usual around the bend and then walked back to his house. He pulled a week’s worth of deliveries out of the mailbox, including a small box that had been stuffed in as well.
He went into the house and dumped the envelopes onto the dining room table to be dealt with later. But he opened the box and found the GPS detector/jammer he had ordered.
He grabbed a beer out of the fridge and stripped off his jacket before taking the device over to the reclining chair in front of the living room TV. Normally, he would have put on a disc but he wanted to check the news and see if they were still pumping the Screen Cutter story.
He turned on channel 5 because it was a local independent channel that paid attention to news stories outside of Hollywood. Bosch had seen a news van with a 5 on the side at the police station on Friday when the press conference took place.
The news was already under way when he turned the television on. He started reading through the instruction manual that came with the GPS device and kept one ear on the TV.