Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(9)

“Hail, Cesar.”

Rivera was another mustache guy, his almost white against his brown skin. He matched this with flowing white hair that was a little long by LAPD standards but acceptable on an old detective. He jolted a bit in his seat, afraid his morning routine had been seen. He swiveled his chair around but relaxed when he saw it was Ballard. He knew she would not make any waves.

“Renée,” he said. “What’s up, girl? You got something for me?”

“No, nothing,” she said. “Quiet night.”

Ballard kept her distance in case she smelled like decomp.

“So what’s up?” Rivera asked.

“About to leave,” Ballard said. “I was wondering, though. You know a guy used to work out of here named Harry Bosch? He worked homicide.”

She pointed to the corner of the room where the homicide squad was once located. It was now used by an anti-gang team.

“Before I got here,” Rivera said. “I mean, I know who he is—everybody does, I think. But no, I never dealt with the guy. Why?”

“He was in the station this morning,” Ballard said.

“You mean on graveyard?”

“Yeah, he said he came in to talk to Dvorek about an old homicide. But I found him looking through your stack.”

She pointed toward the long row of file cabinets running along the wall. Rivera shook his head in confusion.

“My stack?” Rivera said. “What the fuck?”

“How long have you been at Hollywood Division, Cesar?” Ballard asked.

“Seven years, what’s that got to—”

“You know the name Daisy Clayton? She was murdered in ’09. It’s an open case, classified as sexually motivated.”

Rivera shook his head.

“That was before my time here,” he said. “I was at Hollenbeck then.”

He got up and walked over to the row of file cabinets and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket to open the top drawer of his four-drawer stack.

“Locked now,” he said. “Was locked when I left last night.”

“I locked it after he left,” Ballard said.

She said nothing about finding the bent paper clip in the drawer.

“Isn’t Bosch retired?” Rivera said. “How’d he get in here? He keep his nine-nine-nine when he split?”

Every officer was given what was called a 999 key, which unlocked the back door of every station in the city. They were distributed as a backup to the electronic ID keys, which were more prone to malfunction and failure during power outages. The city was not scrupulous about collecting them when officers retired.

“Maybe, but he told me Lieutenant Munroe let him in so he could wait for Dvorek to come in off patrol,” Ballard said. “He wandered, and that’s when I saw him looking in your files. I was working over in the corner and he didn’t see me.”

“He’s the one who mentioned the Daisy case?”

“Daisy Clayton. No, actually Dvorek said that’s what Bosch wanted to talk to him about. Dvorek was first officer on scene with her.”

“Was it Bosch’s case back then?”

“No. It was worked by King and Carswell initially. Now it’s assigned to Open-Unsolved downtown.”

Rivera walked back to his desk but stayed standing while he grabbed his coffee cup and took a long drink out of it. He then abruptly pulled the cup away from his mouth.

“Shit, I know what he was doing,” he said.

“What?” Ballard asked.

There was a sense of urgency in her voice.

“I got here just as they were reorganizing and moving homicide over to West Bureau,” Rivera said. “The sex table was expanding and they brought me in. Me and Sandoval were add-ons, not replacements. We both came from Hollenbeck, see.”

“Okay,” Ballard said.

“So the lieutenant assigned me that cabinet and gave me the key. But when I opened the top drawer to put stuff in there, it was full. All four drawers were full. Same with Sandoval—his four were filled up as well.”

“Filled with what? You mean with files?”

“No, every drawer was filled with shake cards. Stacks and stacks of them crammed in there. The homicide guys and the other detectives had decided to keep the old cards after the department went digital. They stuck them in the file drawers for safekeeping.”

Rivera was talking about what were officially called field interview cards. They were 3 x 5 cards that were filled out by officers while they were on patrol when they encountered people on the streets. The front of each card was a form with specific identifiers regarding the person interviewed, such as name, date of birth, address, gang affiliation, tattoos, and known associates. The back of each card was blank, and that was where the officer could write any ancillary information about the subject.

Officers carried stacks of blank FI cards on their person or in their patrol cars—Ballard had always kept hers under the sun visor in her car when she had worked patrol in Pacific Division. At the end of shift, the cards were turned in to the divisional watch commander and the information on them was entered by clerical staff into a searchable database. Should a name that was run through the database produce a match, the inquiring officer or detective would have a ready set of facts, addresses, and known associates to start with.