Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(16)

“What, no doughnuts?” Rosenberg asked.

The table was usually where the spread of food donated by citizens ended up. Almost every morning there were doughnuts or breakfast burritos. Rosenberg’s disappointment was shared by all.

“All right, let’s get this going,” Trevino said. “What’ve we got, Harry? You should bring Irwin up to speed.”

“This is the Cristobal Vega case,” Bosch said. “The murder of Uncle Murda fourteen years ago. We have a search warrant allowing us to enter Pacoima Tire & Muffler on San Fernando Road and search for bullets fired into the rear wall of the main garage fourteen years ago. This place is on LAPD turf, so we will coordinate with them. We want to do it as unobtrusively as possible so word doesn’t get back to our suspect or anybody else with the SanFers. We want to keep this quiet until it’s time to hopefully make an arrest.”

“It’s going to be impossible with the SanFers,” Rosenberg said. “They have eyes all over the place.”

Bosch nodded.

“We know that,” he said. “Bella’s been working on a cover story. We just need to buy a couple days. If we find slugs, then I have it greased down at the lab. They’ll ASAP the comparison to the bullet that killed Vega. If there’s a match, we’ll be good to go at our suspect.”

“Who is the suspect?” Rosenberg asked.

Bosch hesitated. He trusted Rosenberg but it was not good case management to discuss suspects—especially when there was an informant involved.

“Never mind,” Rosenberg said quickly. “I don’t need to know. So, do you want to keep this to one car, two uniforms?”

“At the most,” Bosch said.

“Done. We’ve got the new SUV in the yard that just came in. Hasn’t been decaled yet. We could use that, not advertise we’re from SFPD. That might help.”

Bosch nodded. He had seen the SUV in the Public Works yard by the old jail. It had arrived from the manufacturer in black-and-white paint but the SFPD identifiers had not been applied to its doors and rear hatch. It could blend in with the LAPD vehicles and help disguise that the search was part of an SFPD investigation. It would further insulate the investigation from the VSF.

“In case we have to take out the whole wall, we’ll have a Public Works crew with us,” Bosch said. “They’ll be using an unmarked truck.”

“So what’s our cover?” Luzon asked.

“Burglary,” Lourdes said. “If anybody asks, we say somebody broke in during the night and there’s a crime scene. It should do it. The place is no longer owned by the suspect’s uncle. As far as we can tell, the new owner is clean, and we expect his full cooperation with both the search and the cover story.”

“Good,” Trevino said. “When do we go?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Bosch said. “Right when the place opens at seven. With any luck we’ll be in and out before most gangsters in the neighborhood open their eyes for the day.”

“Okay,” Trevino said. “Let’s rally here at six and be in Pacoima when they open the doors.”

The meeting broke up after that and Bosch followed Lourdes back to her workstation.

“Hey, I had a visitor to my cell earlier,” he said. “Did you send her over?”

Lourdes shook her head.

“No, nobody came in here,” she said. “I’ve been doing reports all day.”

Bosch nodded. He wondered about Ballard and how she knew where to find him. His guess was that Lucia Soto had told her.

He knew he would find out soon enough.





7



Bosch got home early. He smelled cooking as soon as he opened the door, and found Elizabeth Clayton in the kitchen. She was sautéing chicken in butter and garlic.

“Hey,” Bosch said. “Smells good.”

“I wanted to make you something,” she said.

They awkwardly hugged while she was in front of the stove. When Bosch first met her, she was an addict trying to bury her daughter’s murder under a mountain of pills. She had had a shaved head, weighed ninety pounds, and would have willingly traded sex for thirty milligrams of guilt-and memory-blurring oxycodone.

Seven months later, she was clean and had put on twenty pounds, and her sandy-blond hair was long enough to frame the pretty face that had emerged during recovery. But the guilt and memories were still there at the edge of darkness and threatening every day.

“That’s great,” he said. “I’m going to clean up first, okay?”

“It’ll be a half hour,” she said. “I have to boil the noodles.”

Bosch walked down the hallway, past Elizabeth’s room, and into his own. He took off his work clothes and got into the shower. As the water cascaded down on his head, he thought about cases and victims. The woman cooking his dinner was a victim of the fallout that comes from murder, her daughter taken in a way too horrible to contemplate. Bosch thought he had rescued Elizabeth the year before. He had helped her through addiction and now she was straight and healthy, but the addiction had been what buffered reality and kept that contemplation away. He had promised her he would solve her daughter’s killing but now found that he could not talk to her about the case without causing her the kind of pain she used to vanquish with pills. He was left with the question of whether he had rescued her at all.