The Wrong Side of Goodbye(61)

With no sign of Trevino around, he next ran a DMV search on Ida Townes Forsythe and picked up an address on Arroyo Drive in South Pasadena. He thought of the envelope from Vance having a South Pasadena postmark as he jumped over to Google Maps and plugged in the address. He pulled up a visual and saw that Forsythe had a very nice home on a street overlooking the Arroyo Seco Wash. It appeared that Vance had taken good care of his most trusted and long-term employee.

His last move in the detective bureau was to pull out the file on one of the unsolved murders he was working and fill out an evidence recovery form. He listed the evidence as “victim’s property,” then put the two original Vance documents and the gold pen, contained in the original mailing envelope, into a plastic evidence bag. He sealed the bag and put it into a cardboard evidence storage box. He sealed this as well with red breakaway tape, which would show any sign of tampering.

Bosch walked the box back to the evidence control room and checked it into the locker where other evidence accumulated during the investigation was already being stored. Bosch believed the original of the Vance will was now properly hidden and secured. The evidence control officer printed a receipt for him and he took it back to the bureau to put it in the case file. He was just locking his file drawer when his phone buzzed with a call on the intercom. It was the front desk officer.

“Detective Bosch, you have a visitor up front.”

Bosch guessed that it was somebody coming in with what they believed was a tip on the Screen Cutter. He knew that he couldn’t get bogged down with that case today. He hit the intercom button.

“Is it a tip about the Screen Cutter? Can you ask whoever it is to come back this afternoon and ask for Detective Lourdes?”

There was no immediate response and Bosch assumed the desk officer was asking the visitor to state his or her business. He knew that if it was another Screen Cutter victim, he would need to drop everything and handle it. He could not let a potential sixth victim walk out of the police station without being interviewed.

He went to his screen, clicked back to the DMV page on Ida Forsythe, and printed it out so he would have her address handy when he went to her home to talk to her. He was about to go retrieve it from the communal printer, when the desk man’s voice came back over the intercom.

“He’s asked for you specifically, Detective Bosch. He says it’s about the Vance case.”

Bosch stared at his desk phone for a long moment before responding.

“Tell him I’m coming out. One minute.”

Bosch signed off his computer and left the bureau. But he went out the side door rather than taking the main hallway to the front lobby of the station. He then walked around the outside of the station to the front, where he stood at the corner of the building and checked the street to try to determine if his visitor had come alone.

He noticed no one who looked suspicious but he did see a dark green BMW with near-black tinted windows parked at the curb in front of the Department of Public Works across from the police station. The car was as long as Haller’s Town Car and Bosch could see a driver waiting behind the wheel.

He quickly doubled back to the side entrance of the station and went back through to the front lobby. He was expecting the visitor to be Sloan, but when he got there he realized he had shot low. It was Creighton, the man who had sent him down the path to Vance in the first place.

“Having trouble following me?” Bosch said by way of a greeting. “You come in to get my itinerary?”

Creighton nodded his confirmation that he had been tailing Bosch.

“Yes, I should have known better,” he said. “You probably had us since the bank.”

“What do you want, Creighton?”

Creighton frowned. Bosch’s dispensing with first names and titles signaled that the old LAPD bonds were of no use to him here.

“I want you to stand down,” Creighton said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bosch said. “Stand down from what?”

“Your employer has died. Your employment is now terminated. Speaking for the corporation, which is all there is now, stop what you’re doing.”

“What makes you think I’m doing anything?”

“We know what you’re doing and we know why. We even know what your low-rent attorney is doing. We’ve been watching you.”

Bosch had thoroughly scoured the street before leaving his house. He now knew that rather than looking for people and cars, he should have looked for cameras. He now wondered if they had been inside his home as well. And making the jump to Haller, Bosch assumed that the lawyer had made a call about the case that had put him on their radar as well.

He looked at Creighton without showing any indication of being intimidated.

“Well, I’ll take all of this under advisement,” he said. “You know your way out.”

He stepped away from Creighton but then the former deputy chief spoke again.

“I don’t think you really understand the position you’re in.”

Bosch turned and came back to him. He got up in his face.

“What position is that?”

“You are on very dangerous ground. You need to make careful decisions. I represent people who reward those who make careful decisions.”

“I don’t know if that is a threat or a bribe or maybe both.”

“Take it any way you want.”