The Wrong Side of Goodbye(88)
The information garnered from the reports helped draw a solid picture of Dockweiler’s MO. Bosch believed that he first saw the victims while conducting inspections, then stalked them and carefully planned the assaults for weeks and sometimes months. As a code inspector and former police officer he had skills that aided this process. Bosch had no doubt that Dockweiler entered and prowled the homes of the victims, possibly even while they were at home and asleep.
Finished with the code inspection piece of the puzzle, Bosch began writing the charging document. He was a two-finger typist but he was fast just the same, especially when he knew and was confident in the story he wanted to tell.
He worked another two hours without a break or even a look up from the computer screen. When he was finished he took a gulp of cold black coffee and hit the print button. The universal printer on the other side of the room spit out six single-spaced pages of a chronology that began with the first Screen Cutter rape four years earlier and ended with Kurt Dockweiler lying facedown on his kitchen floor with a bullet lodged in his spine. Bosch proofed it with a red pen, made the corrections on the computer, and printed it again. He then took it to the chief’s office, where he found him talking on the phone to yet another reporter. He covered the receiver again.
“USA Today,” he said. “This story is going coast to coast.”
“Make sure they spell your name right,” Bosch said. “I’m going to need you to read and approve this. I want to file on Dockweiler first thing tomorrow morning. I’m going for five counts of forcible rape, one count attempted rape, then kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and multiple counts of theft of government property.”
“The kitchen-sink approach. I like it.”
“Let me know. I have to go write up the evidence report and the search warrant that we got approved last night.”
Bosch was about to leave the office, when Valdez held up a finger, then returned to his phone call.
“Donna, I need to go,” he said. “You have the details in the press release, and like I said, we’re not putting out either officer’s name at this time. We took a really bad character out of circulation and we’re all very proud of that. Thank you.”
Valdez hung up the phone, even as he and Bosch could hear the reporter’s voice asking another question.
“All day long,” Valdez said. “They’re calling from all over the place. Everybody wants to get photos of the dungeon. Everybody wants to talk to Bella and you.”
“I heard you on the phone earlier when you used that word dungeon,” Bosch said. “That’s how things take on a whole new life in the media. It’s a fallout shelter, not a dungeon.”
“Well, as soon as Dockweiler has a lawyer he can sue me. These reporters…One of them told me the average cost of incarcerating an inmate is thirty K a year but with Dockweiler likely being a paraplegic now, it will double for him. I said, so what are you saying, we should have just executed him on the spot to save the money?”
“We did have our chance.”
“I’ll forget you said that, Harry. I don’t even want to think about what you were going to do to him last night.”
“Just what was necessary to find Bella.”
“Well, we did anyway.”
“We got lucky.”
“That wasn’t luck. That was good detective work. Anyway, you should be ready. They’re trying to find out who the shooter was and when they learn it was you, they’ll connect it to West Hollywood last year and everything else before. Be prepared.”
“I’ll take a vacation and disappear.”
“Good idea. So this is good to go?”
He had picked up the document Bosch had delivered.
“You tell me,” Bosch said.
“Okay, give me fifteen minutes,” Valdez said.
“By the way, where’s the captain been all day? Sleeping?”
“No, he’s staying at the hospital with Bella. I wanted someone there to keep the media away and in case she needed anything.”
Bosch nodded. It was a good move. He told Valdez he would be in the bureau and to call or e-mail if he wanted any changes to the charging document.
He returned to his computer in the detective bureau. He was just putting the finishing touches on a report summarizing the physical evidence they had amassed in the case when his cell phone buzzed. It was Mickey Haller calling.
“Yo, Bro, haven’t heard from you,” the lawyer said. “You talk to the granddaughter yet?”
The Vance case had been so thoroughly crowded out of Bosch’s mind with the events of the past eighteen hours that it seemed like his trip to San Diego had been a month ago.
“No, not yet,” Bosch said.
“What about Ida Parks Whatever-Her-Name-Is?” Haller asked.
“Ida Townes Forsythe. No, haven’t gotten to her yet either. Things have sort of been crazy with my other job.”
“Holy shit. You’re on that thing with the guy and the dungeon up there in Santa Clorox?”
It was an old nickname for Santa Clarita, reflecting its early incarnation as a destination for white flight from Los Angeles. It seemed somehow inappropriate coming from a guy Bosch knew grew up in Beverly Hills, the county’s first bastion of white isolationism and privilege.
“Yes, I’m on the case,” Bosch said.