The Wrong Side of Goodbye(78)

He kept the flashlight on and moved to the back of the pickup. He pointed the beam into the far corners of the truck’s bed and camper shell. Again he saw nothing that connected to Lourdes or to the Screen Cutter. Still, Dockweiler had been doing something at the tailgate when the chief’s phone sounded the alarm. He had also opened the garage with a purpose other than parking his truck. Bosch still couldn’t figure out what he had been up to.

Stored in the back of the pickup was an upside-down wheelbarrow, a two-wheeled hand truck, and several long tools—three shovels, a hoe, a push broom, and a pick—as well as several drop cloths for keeping work spaces clean. The shovels were not duplicates. One had a pointed spade for digging and the other two had straight edges of different widths, and Bosch knew these would be used for scooping up debris. Each of them was dirty—the pointed spade with a dark red soil and the straight-edge blades with the same gray concrete dust as in the bathtub.

He put the light on the wheelbarrow’s rubber wheel and saw larger chunks of concrete caught in the tread. Dockweiler had no doubt been involved in a recent project involving concrete but Bosch held off concerns that he had buried Bella Lourdes. The clothes in the bathtub with the same debris as the tools accounted for several changes of clothes. The indications were that this was a longtime project, not something taken on in the last eight hours, when Bella had gone missing.

The orange soil on the digging spade gave him pause, however. That could have been used and dirtied anytime.

Bosch pulled the hand truck out to the tailgate so he could look at it more closely. He assumed that Dockweiler used it to move the stacks of boxes he kept in his home and garage. He then noticed a label taped to the axle between the two rubber wheels. It said:

Property of City of San Fernando Department of Public Works

Dockweiler had stolen or borrowed the hand truck for his own purposes. Bosch assumed that if he looked closely enough, many of the tools in the truck and garage would be seen to have come from the workbenches in the Public Works yard. But he wasn’t sure how the hand truck fit with what Dockweiler was doing that night at the tailgate.

Bosch felt he had worked the exigent circumstances to the maximum allowed. He backed away from the truck and pulled his phone. He scrolled through his contact list to the letter J, where he kept the contact information of judges that he’d had good enough experiences with to ask for and receive their cell numbers.

He first called Judge Robert O’Neill, who had presided over a four-month murder trial on which Bosch had been lead detective. Bosch checked his watch after sending the call and saw it was not yet 11 p.m., which always seemed to be the witching hour with judges. They got upset when you called them later, even in an emergency.

O’Neill answered promptly with no sign of sleep or intoxicants in his voice. This was something to note. Bosch had once had a case where the defense lawyer challenged the validity of a search warrant because it had been signed by a judge at 3 a.m. after Bosch had woken him from sleep.

“Judge O’Neill, it’s Harry Bosch. I hope I’m not waking you.”

“Harry, how are you? And, no, you didn’t wake me. These days I stay up late and sleep even later.”

Bosch wasn’t sure what he’d meant by the last part.

“Are you on vacation, sir? Could you still approve a telephonic affidavit? We’ve got a missing—”

“Let me stop you right there, Harry. You apparently didn’t hear the news. I’m off the bench. I pulled the plug three months ago.”

Bosch was stunned and embarrassed. Since his own retirement from the LAPD he had not kept track of who held sway in the courtrooms in the Foltz building.

“You retired?” he asked.

“I did,” O’Neill said. “And last I heard, you did too. Is this some kind of a prank?”

“Uh, no, sir. No prank. I’m doing some work for the San Fernando Police Department now. And I need to go. We have an emergency situation here and I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

Bosch disconnected before O’Neill could ask anything else and waste Harry’s time. He quickly went back to his contact list, deleted O’Neill, and then called Judge John Houghton, who was next in line on the list of judges friendly to Bosch. He was known as Shootin’ Houghton among local cops and lawyers because he had a concealed-carry permit and once fired a shot into the ceiling of his courtroom to restore order during a brawl between defendants in a Mexican mafia prosecution. He was subsequently censured by the county judicial committee and the California Bar, and was also charged by the City Attorney with illegal use of a firearm, a misdemeanor. Despite all of that he routinely won landslide reelection each term as a law and order judge.

He, too, answered with a clear voice.

“Harry Bosch? I thought you retired.”

“Retired and hired, Judge. I’m working for San Fernando PD now. Part-time, on their backlog of cold cases. But I’m calling because we have an all-hands emergency going—a missing officer— and I’m outside a suspect’s house and need to conduct a search. We’re hoping to find her still alive.”

“A female officer?”

“Yes, sir. A detective. We think the suspect in a serial rape case grabbed her about seven or eight hours ago. We did a quick run-through of the property under exigent circumstance. Now we would like to go back in for a deep look for the officer and anything relating to the underlying rape case.”