Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(51)

Mejia was not charged yet with the Perez killing because the evidence was only circumstantial at the moment: he had been shot, and it was believed that Perez’s killer had been shot. The upward trajectory of the wound trail through Mejia’s lower intestine fit with the ricochet-in-the-shower theory as well. But it wasn’t enough to take to the District Attorney’s Office. The bullet had been removed from Mejia’s gut and disposed of—there would be no ballistics match to the bullet taken from Perez’s brain. However, the forensic team that processed the Perez crime scene had found that the blood spattered in the shower stall had come from two individuals—Perez and presumably his shooter after he caught the bouncing bullet. Confidence was high that a DNA comparison between Mejia’s blood and that found in the shower would lead to a match and Mejia would be charged with murder. He was now in the hospital ward of the county jail while a rush was put on the DNA comparison.

The intel gathering that Lourdes had undertaken that morning was related to Mejia and any connections he might have with those who knew about the renewed investigation of the Uncle Murda case and that Martin Perez had flipped.

“I really hate this,” Lourdes said. “What if we’re wrong?”

“We make sure we aren’t,” Bosch said. “What did you find out?”

She opened a small notebook she always carried with her.

“Okay,” she said, reading her notes. “I talked to my cousin and a couple other guys in gang intel. They say Mejia is a SanFer OG known as El Brujo.”

“What’s that, ‘sorcerer’?”

“More like ‘witch doctor,’ but it doesn’t matter. He got the moniker because of his ability to find and get to people who supposedly can’t be gotten to.”

“Case in point, Perez. But somebody told him.”

“I’m getting to that. The intel guys said that Mejia pretty much had his own set in the gang and would have been on equal footing with Tranquillo Cortez. So you can see how this is all cinching up. El Brujo hears somehow that Perez flipped and decides to take care of it for Cortez. End result, Cortez owes Mejia.”

“Got it. The question is, how did he hear that Perez was flipping?”

Lourdes nodded and a painful frown creased her face again.

“What is it?” Bosch asked.

“Well,” she said. “When the intel guys were talking to me, one of them says, ‘Maybe you should talk to your buddy Oscar about El Brujo. He grew up with him.’ I said, ‘Oscar Luzon?’ to confirm, and they said, ‘Yeah, Luzon.’ They said Oscar and Mejia went all the way back to Gridley.”

Bosch knew that Gridley was an elementary school on 8th Street.

“So, was this connection in the gang book?” Bosch asked.

Because of the unavoidable connections between some homegrown SFPD officers and local gangs, the department had a registry known as the “gang book” in which officers named acquaintances in the gangs. It allowed the officers to avoid suspicion should the connections become known through the course of investigations, wiretaps, and street gossip. The book was also a resource for gang intel officers when they wanted to target a particular gang member. If there was a connection in the book, it could be exploited, by using the officer to initiate communication with the gang member or even cross paths with him in a seemingly coincidental way.

“No, they said Luzon never put it in the book,” Lourdes said. “They only knew because they have class photos from all the schools in the city going back to the seventies. They have photos of Luzon and Mejia in the same classes at Gridley and then Lakeview. But a few years ago, when they asked Oscar why he never put it in the book, he said it was because he didn’t really know Mejia.”

“Did they believe him?” Bosch asked.

“Well, they accepted it. The question is, do we believe it?”

“The same class through elementary and high school, and Luzon says they didn’t know each other? No, I don’t believe it.”

Lourdes nodded. She didn’t believe it either.

“So, how do we do this?” she asked.

“We need to talk to him,” Bosch said.

“I know that, but how?”

“Does he still take his gun off when he works at his desk?”

“I think so.”

They needed to separate Luzon from his weapon before they confronted him. They didn’t want to risk his harming them or himself.

Luzon was a muffin top. He cinched his belt tight around a growing waistline, creating an overflow roll of bulk that circled his body. This caused him to remove his sidearm when he worked in his pod so that the arm of his desk chair didn’t drive the hard-edged weapon into his side. He usually placed the gun in the top drawer of his desk.

“Okay, we draw him out without his gun,” Bosch said. “Then we brace him.”

“But he always takes his gun when he leaves the office,” Lourdes said. “It’d be a violation if he didn’t.”

“We get him over to the old jail, to come see me.”

“That could work. We just need the reason.”

They were both silent as they thought about a way to draw Luzon across the street from the station without his gun.

Soon they concocted a two-part plan. But it would involve the police chief’s cooperation. This was not a deterrent, because they knew they could not carry out any confrontation with Luzon without alerting command staff. They finished their coffees and walked back to the station, going directly to the chief of police’s office and asking for an audience.