The LAPD press conference was carried live on KCAL’s 4 p.m. newscast. Bosch watched from his home and had to sit and marvel at how the chief of police managed to tell the story of Ted Rawls with such command authority and yet leave out so many salient details of the story. He spun a tale of a serial killer being identified through DNA by members of the newly re-formed cold case squad and then killing himself as members of the unit closed in. Not mentioned was the fact that the killer was a member of the unit that was closing in on him, or that he had been placed on it by Councilman Jake Pearlman, his longtime friend. Rawls was simply described as a man who made a living from a chain of small businesses. No names of the Open-Unsolved Unit investigators were mentioned, and Renée Ballard, who stood behind the chief at the podium, was not called upon to speak. The chief finished his five-minute reading of a prepared statement by lavishing praise on the unit and Ballard, its lead detective. The upshot of the whole thing was that another serial killer was taken out of play thanks to the hard work and dedication of the OU team as well as the foresight of the administrators who had reconstituted the previously shuttered unit.
Apparently feeling confident in his spinning of half-truths, the chief said he would take a few questions. That was when things didn’t go so well for him. The first question was a softball about why he had decided to reboot the cold case unit. But the second question was a curveball that tailed right into the strike zone.
“My sources tell me that the investigator who exchanged fire with Rawls before he killed himself was none other than Harry Bosch. Bosch was involved in numerous shootings before he retired from the department. Now he’s back, and my question is, were you consulted, and did you approve of Bosch being added to the team?”
The woman who had asked the question was unseen because the camera was trained on the podium and the chief of police. But Bosch thought he recognized her slight Caribbean accent.
The chief tried to deflect.
“As I said in my statement, there are components of the investigation that are continuing. One of those components is the officer-involved shooting, and I am not going to comment on what is an ongoing investigation and personnel matter. That would not be fair at this time. Suffice it to say, our internal investigation will be fully and independently reviewed by the District Attorney’s Office, as is our protocol with all officer-involved shootings.”
As the chief raised his arm to point to another reporter, the original questioner loudly fired a follow-up at him.
“In court documents regarding prior shootings by Harry Bosch, he was described as a ‘gunslinger.’ Did that weigh in the decision to put him on this unit?”
The word gunslinger made the chief blink.
“Uh, I am unfamiliar with that,” he said. “As I just said, I am making no comment at this time regarding the officer-involved shooting. And that’s all I have time for today.”
He quickly turned from the podium and headed across the plaza to the safety of the PAB. Questions shouted after him were neither answered nor acknowledged. Ballard and a tight grouping of media relations people followed in his wake. Bosch had watched Ballard as she turned to follow the chief. He could see dread clearly drawn on her face.
After the press conference, the broadcast switched to a live report from the scene of the Rawls shooting. A female reporter introduced recorded interviews with residents in the normally quiet neighborhood. It was strictly filler, but in her wrap-up the reporter mentioned that Councilman Pearlman had scheduled a 5 p.m. press conference to discuss the case and his personal connection to it.
At 5 p.m. Bosch switched from KCAL, which went to non-news programming, to the start of a news hour on KNBC. The anchor immediately cued up Councilman Pearlman’s live appearance on the granite steps of City Hall behind a podium adorned with the city’s seal.
In a brief address, Pearlman praised the work of the Open-Unsolved Unit, noting that his office had played the key role in reinstating it. He also said that the identification of Rawls as the killer of his sister and Laura Wilson did not bring his family closure, but finally knowing the truth was enough to hopefully bandage the wounds of the past.
He, too, left out many key facts, namely that he and his chief of staff had placed Rawls on the very unit that unmasked him as the killer. He also failed to mention that Rawls had likely chosen Laura Wilson as a victim while knocking on doors in support of Pearlman’s first bid for office in 2005.
The councilman ended his short statement by saying that he would be taking no questions and asking that his and his family’s privacy be respected. Bosch cynically viewed this last part as a means of avoiding inquiries that could result in political damage.
Bosch turned off the screen and sat there thinking about how the truth was always manipulated by those in power. It bothered him to know things that shouldn’t be kept secret.
He thought about the look of dread he saw on Ballard’s face and wondered if she had been forced in some way to stand next to the chief and be part of the manipulation. He wished she had at least called him to give him a heads-up.
It was then that he realized Ballard might have done so but he wouldn’t have known, because his phone was either in direct police custody or still somewhere in his Cherokee after being jarred from his hand when Rawls sent his car into the tailspin. The Cherokee was presumably in a police impound yard.
Bosch got up and went to the kitchen. He used his house phone to call his cell phone number and check for messages. He had two. The first was a heads-up call from Ballard that came in at 2 p.m. and outlined the timing of the two press conferences. The second was a message left just ten minutes earlier from Juanita Wilson in Chicago. She asked him to call her back. Bosch grabbed a pen and Post-it out of a kitchen drawer and wrote her number down.
The landline was a cordless phone. He took it out to the back deck of the house to make the call.
“Mrs. Wilson?”
“Detective Bosch, I’m sorry to disturb you. Thank you for calling me back so quickly.”
“You’re not disturbing me. Did Detective Ballard call you?”
“She did. She told me what happened, that the man who killed my Laura is dead.”
“Yes, he killed himself when we were closing in on him. I’m sorry. I wanted…we wanted to take him alive so he could be punished.”
“Don’t be sorry. I believe he is being punished. He’s in Hell.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Call me Juanita.”
“Juanita.”
“I called because I want to thank you for what you did. Detective Ballard told me. I hope you’re okay and will heal quickly.”
“I’m fine, Juanita.”
“And I want to thank you for the answers. I told you I was holding on for answers.”
“I understand.”
“Thanks to you and Detective Ballard, I can let go now…and I can join Laura and my husband.”
Bosch wasn’t sure what to say. He knew that almost everybody believed in something, holding a hope that there wasn’t just an empty void at the end.
“I understand,” he said.
He looked out across the Cahuenga Pass to his sideways view of the Hollywood sign. He felt the inadequacy of his response to her.
“I’ll let you go now,” Juanita said. “Once again, thank you, Detective Bosch.”
“Harry.”
“Thank you, Harry. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Juanita.”
Bosch clutched the phone in his hand as he thought about Juanita waiting years for answers and then not even getting the full truth of things. A deep font of anger started to well up inside him.
Bosch limped back inside the house and used his laptop to search for a phone number. He called it and asked by name for the reporter whose voice he had heard at the LAPD press conference. As he waited for the transfer, he went back out to the deck. He was staring out across the pass when the voice with a slight Caribbean accent came into his ear.
“Keisha Russell, how can I help you?”
“You called me a gunslinger on live television.”
“Harry Bosch. It’s been a while.”
He remembered how she said his name. It sounded to him like she was taking a bite out of a crisp apple.
“I thought you were in D.C., covering politics.”
“I got tired of the winters. Plus, I almost got killed at the Capitol last year. Decided it was time to come home to my first love, covering crime.”
“I thought covering politics was covering crime.”
“Funny. And funny that you called me. I wanted to call you but couldn’t find anybody around here who would share your number. Did you call just to complain, or is there something you want to say?”
Bosch gave one last thought to holding back, but quickly the images he carried from the case—Sarah Pearlman, Laura Wilson, and even Juanita Wilson—crowded such consideration out.
“You’re being used,” he said. “You were smarter than that last time you were on the beat.”
“Really?” Russell said. “Used by who?”
“The source who told you I was the shooter. They told you about me but not the rest of the story. They’re more concerned with getting rid of me than getting the whole truth out.”
“Is this conversation on the record?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m going to have to go. I’m on deadline. If you want to meet after I file, then I’d definitely be up for that. It’s been a long time. Maybe we get a drink and you can school me on who’s who in the zoo.”
It was an old LAPD expression, a caution that was just as useful when answering a code 3 radio call—lights and siren authorized—as when delving into the abyss of department politics. Step one was assessment: determining who’s who in the zoo.
“Maybe after things shake out a little bit,” Bosch said. “If I’m still here.”
“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Russell said. “You may or may not be a gunslinger, but you’re definitely a survivor. Anything you think I really need to know before I file this story?”
“Right now, you only have half the story.”
“Then tell me the half I don’t have.”
“It’s not my place.”
“What if I lay off the gunslinger stuff and keep it on point with what happened Sunday? I do you that favor, what do you do for me?”
“Where did that come from?”
“‘Gunslinger’? I had to dig deep. That was a Honey Chandler quote from a motion she filed back in the nineties. Remember her? The actual quote was ‘Bosch is a gunslinger who shoots first and asks questions later.’ She also called you a cowboy in the motion. I love that and I’m definitely going to use it in my story.”
Bosch caught a flash memory of the civil rights lawyer before she was murdered by someone trying to impress him. Honey Chandler had been Bosch’s nemesis, and he didn’t doubt that she would have labeled him a gunslinger in one of her documents or even in open court, but he had respected her in the end.
He dropped his gaze down to the freeway at the bottom of the pass. It was in full rush-hour inertia.
“Yes,” he said. “I remember Chandler. Like I remember you being a reporter who always wanted to get it first but still get it right.”
“That’s a low blow, Harry. It’s always blame the messenger. But I’m asking you to help me get it right. If you don’t want to, then who is to blame?”
Bosch hesitated for only a moment before speaking.
“There was a fox in the henhouse, Keisha.”
That was followed by a long silence before Russell responded.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“You didn’t get this from me,” Bosch said. “Confirm it somewhere else. Rawls was the fox.”
“You’re talking in riddles. What henhouse are we talking about?”
“Rawls was a volunteer for the unit. He was working on the Pearlman and Wilson cases. Right there with us.”
“The Open-Unsolved Unit—are you fucking kidding me?”
“I wish.”
“And they’re trying to hide that to avoid the embarrassment.”
“You wanted to know who’s who in the zoo.”
“So, let me get this straight. Renée Ballard put a serial killer on her own cold case team.”
“No. It wasn’t her call. He wasn’t her choice.”
“Then who?”
“You should maybe call Nelson Hastings at the councilman’s office and ask him that question.”
Bosch could hear Russell’s muffled laugh even though it was apparent she had put her hand over the phone. Then she came back clear.
“This is just too fucking good,” she said.
“Remember, confirm it on your own,” Bosch said. “Not from me.”
“Don’t worry, Harry. I will. You trust me? You used to.”
“That was a long time ago. I’ll know if I can trust you when I read the paper tomorrow.”
“You’ll see it online at ten.”
“I don’t subscribe.”
“Then wait till tomorrow. But let’s get that drink soon.”
“You do this right, and drinks are on me.”
“That’s a deal. And I gotta go. Deadline’s in an hour, and thanks to you, I still have a lot of work to do.”
“Happy hunting.”
Bosch disconnected and looked down into the pass again. Nothing was moving. The city’s arteries were clogged.