The Wrong Side of Goodbye(84)

“Help me,” Bosch said. “I think she’s here. Pull up this matting.”

They each went to a side of the room and started pulling the rubber matting back. It was one piece cut to fit the space. As it was rolled back Bosch could see wooden planking beneath. He started looking for a hinge or a seam or some indication of a hidden compartment but he saw nothing.

Bosch banged his fist down on the wood and determined there was a definite hollow below it. Sisto started pounding the floor as well.

“Bella? Bella?”

Still no response. Bosch scuttled across the floor to the plastic curtain, grabbed it, and jerked it down, bringing a metal frame crashing down with it.

“Watch it!” Sisto yelled.

One arm of the frame hit Bosch on the shoulder but he wasn’t fazed. He was flying on adrenaline.

He dropped down to the front chamber again and put the light on the facing of the eight-inch step riser. He saw a seam running completely around the facing that curved with the contour of the concrete floor. On his knees, he moved in and tried to open it but he couldn’t figure it out. “Help me get this open,” he called to Sisto.

The young detective got down next to Bosch and tried to get his fingernails into the seam. He could not get a grip.

“Look out,” Bosch said.

He grabbed a piece of the curtain’s fallen frame and drove its edge into the seam. Once it was jammed in tightly he levered the frame upward and the seam opened an inch. Sisto put his fingers in and pulled the board free.

Bosch dropped the frame with a metal clatter and put his light into the shallow space under the second room’s floor.

He saw bare feet heels-down on a blanket and tied together. The space under the floor was recessed and deeper than the dimensions of the floor and step indicated from the outside.

“She’s here!”

He reached in and gripped either side of the blanket and pulled it out. Bella Lourdes came sliding out of the shallow black space on a blanket spread over a plywood pallet. She barely cleared the opening created by the step’s riser. She was bound and gagged and bloodied. Her clothes were gone and she was either dead or unconscious.

“Bella!” Sisto yelled.

“Call for another RA,” Bosch ordered. “They’ll need a portable stretcher to get her through the manhole.”

As Sisto pulled his phone, Bosch turned back to Bella’s side. He bent down and put his ear to her mouth. He felt the faint wind of breath. She was alive.

“I got no signal!” Sisto said in frustration.

“Go up,” Bosch yelled back. “Go back up!”

Sisto ran to the ladder and started climbing. Bosch pulled his jacket off and put it over Bella’s body. He pulled the pallet closer to the ladder and the air from the manhole.

Bella started to regain consciousness as she got more air. Her eyes opened and they were startled, confused. She started shaking.

“Bella?” Bosch said. “It’s me, Harry. You’re safe and we’re going to get you out of here.”





34

Bosch spent the entire night with the Sheriff’s investigators, first talking them through the steps that led to the arrival of the San Fernando officers at Dockweiler’s home and then walking them through a play-by-play accounting of the moves that led to the shooting. Bosch had just been through the process the year before after a shooting in West Hollywood. He knew what to expect and knew it was routine, and yet he could not take it as such. He knew he needed to carefully make the case that his decision to fire through the window at Dockweiler’s back was warranted and unavoidable. Essentially, Dockweiler’s pointing a weapon at the three officers in the kitchen made the use of deadly force acceptable.

The investigative report would take weeks to put together as investigators waited on ballistic and forensic reports and collated it all with the interviews of the officers involved and schematic drawings of the shooting scene. It would then be presented to the district attorney’s police shooting unit for another review, which would also take several weeks. A final declaration of the shooting as justified and within the scope of police authority would then be issued.

Bosch wasn’t worried about his actions and he also knew that Bella Lourdes would be a significant factor in the investigation. The fact that she was rescued from Dockweiler’s underground shelter would blow away any possible media backlash that could put pressure on the D.A.’s Office. It would be hard to question the tactics resulting in the shooting of a man who had abducted a police officer, sexually assaulted her, and then held her in an underground chamber with the obvious intention of keeping her alive— the food he had brought home—for repeated assaults before eventually killing her.

It was dawn by the time the investigators said they were finished with Bosch. They told him to go home and get some rest and that they might have further questions over the next couple of days before they moved into the collating and writing phase of the investigation. Bosch said he would be available.

Harry had learned during the course of his interview that Lourdes had been transported to the trauma center at Holy Cross. On his way home he stopped by the hospital to see if he could get an update on her condition. He found Valdez in the waiting room of the trauma center and he could tell he had been there all night since being released by the Sheriff’s investigators. He was sitting on a couch next to a woman Bosch recognized as Bella’s partner from the photos on her cubicle’s wall.