GOOD TO GO,” Commander Garcia replied when Bosch asked if he was ready.
Bosch nodded and went to the door to usher in the two women from the Daily News.
“Hi, I’m McKenzie Ward,” said the one leading the way. She was obviously the reporter. The other woman was carrying a camera bag and a tripod.
“I’m Emmy Ward,” said the photographer.
“Sisters?” Garcia asked, though the answer was obvious because of how much the two women, both in their twenties, looked alike: both attractive blondes with big smiles.
“I’m older,” said McKenzie. “But not by much.”
They all shook hands.
“How did two sisters get on the same paper together, then the same story together?” Garcia said.
“I was here a few years and then Emmy just applied. It’s no big deal. We’ve worked together a lot. It’s just a blind draw on who gets the photo assignments. Today we work together. Tomorrow maybe not.”
“Do you mind if we take some photos first?” Emmy asked. “I have another assignment I need to get to right after this.”
“Of course,” Garcia said, ever accommodating. “Where do you want me?”
Emmy Ward set up a shot with Garcia seated at the meeting table with the murder book open in front of him. Bosch had brought it with him to use as a prop. As the photo session proceeded, Bosch and McKenzie Ward stood off to the side and talked casually. Earlier, they had spoken at length on the phone. She had agreed to the deal. If she got the story into the paper the following day, she would be first in line for the exclusive when they took down the killer. She had not agreed easily. Garcia had initially been clumsy in his approach to her before turning the negotiation over to Bosch. Bosch was wise enough to know that no reporter would allow the police department to dictate when a story would be published and how it would be written. So Bosch concentrated on the when, not the how. He went with the assumption that McKenzie Ward would and could write a story that would serve his purposes. He just needed it in the paper sooner rather than later. Kiz Rider had an appointment with a judge that afternoon. If the wiretap application was approved, they would be in business by the next morning.
“Did you talk to Muriel Verloren?” the reporter asked Bosch.
“Yeah, she’s there all afternoon and she’s ready to talk.”
“I pulled the clips and read everything from back then—like I was eight years old at the time—and there were several mentions of the father and his restaurant. Will he be there, too?”
“I don’t think so. He’s gone. It’s more of a mother’s story, anyway. She’s the one who has kept her daughter’s bedroom untouched for seventeen years. She said you could photograph in there, too, if you want.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Bosch watched her looking at the shot being set up with Garcia. He knew what she was thinking. The mother in the bedroom frozen in time would be a lot better shot than an old cop at a table with a binder. She looked at Bosch while she started digging in her purse.
“Then I have to make a call to see if I can keep Emmy.”
“Go ahead.”
She left the office, probably because she didn’t want Garcia to overhear her telling an editor that she needed Emmy to stay on the assignment because she had a better shot with the mother.
She was back in three minutes and nodded to Bosch, which he took to mean that Emmy was going to stay with her on the story.
“So this thing is a go for tomorrow?” he asked, just to make sure once again.
“It’s slotted for the window—depending on the art. My editor wanted to hold it for Sunday, make a nice long feature, but I told him we were competitive on it. Anytime we can beat the Times on a story we do.”
“Yeah, but what will he say when the Times doesn’t run anything? He’ll know you tricked him.”
“No, he’ll think that the Times killed their story because we beat them to the punch. Happens all the time.”
Bosch nodded thoughtfully, then asked, “What did you mean about it being slotted for the window?”
“We run a news feature every day with a photo on the front page. We call it the window because it’s in the center of the page. Also because you can see the art in the window of the newspaper boxes on the street. It’s a prime spot.”
“Good.”
Bosch was excited by the play the story was going to get.
“If you guys screw me on this, I won’t forget it,” McKenzie said quietly.
There was a threat in her tone, the tough reporter coming to the surface. Bosch held his hands wide, as if he had nothing to hide.
“That’s not going to happen. You’ve got the exclusive. As soon as we wrap somebody up, I’m calling you and you only.”
“Thank you. Now, just to go over the rules again, I can quote you by name in the story but you don’t want to be in any photos, right?”
“Right. I may have to do some undercover work on this. I don’t want my face in the paper.”
“Got it. What undercover?”
“You never know. I just want to keep the option open. Besides, the commander is better for the photo. He’s lived with the case longer than I have.”
“Well, I think I already have most of what I need from the clips and our call earlier but I still want to sit down with you two for a few minutes.”
“Whatever you need.”
“Done,” Emmy said, a few minutes later. She started breaking down her equipment.
“Call the photo desk,” her sister said. “I think there’s been a change and you are staying with me.”
“Oh,” Emmy said, not seeming to mind.
“Why don’t you make the call outside while we get going with the interview?” McKenzie said. “I want to get back to writing this as soon as we can.”
The reporter and Bosch took seats at the table with Garcia while the photographer went out to check on her new assignment. McKenzie started by asking Garcia what stuck with him about the case for so long and what made him push it forward through the Open-Unsolved Unit. While Garcia gave a rambling response about the ones that haunt you, Bosch felt the waters of contempt rise in him. He knew what the reporter didn’t know, that Garcia had knowingly or unknowingly allowed the investigation to be shunted aside seventeen years earlier. The fact that it appeared Garcia did not know that his investigation had been tampered with somehow seemed like the lesser sin to Bosch. Still, if it didn’t show personal corruption or a giving way to pressure from the upper reaches of the department, at the very least it showed incompetence.
After a few more questions of Garcia the reporter turned her attention to Bosch and asked what was new in the case seventeen years later.
“The main thing is we have the DNA of the shooter,” he said. “Tissue and blood from the murder weapon was preserved by our Scientific Investigation Division. We are hoping that analysis of it will allow us either to match it to a suspect whose DNA is already in the Department of Justice data bank, or to use it in comparisons to eliminate or identify suspects. We are in the process of going back to everybody in the case. Anybody who looks like a suspect will have their DNA checked against what we’ve got. That is something Commander Garcia couldn’t do in ’eighty-eight. We’re hoping it will change things this time.”
Bosch further explained how the weapon extracted a DNA sample from the person who shot it. The reporter seemed very interested in the happenstance of this and took detailed notes.
Bosch was pleased. The gun and DNA story was what he wanted to get into the paper. He wanted Mackey to read the story and know that his DNA was in the pipeline. It was being analyzed and compared. He would know that a sample from him was already in the DOJ database. The hope was that this would make him panic. Maybe he would try to run, maybe he would make a mistake and make a call in which he discussed the crime. One mistake would be all it would take.
“How long before you get results from the DOJ?” McKenzie asked.
Bosch fidgeted. He was trying not to lie directly to the reporter.
“Uh, that’s hard to say,” he answered. “The DOJ prioritizes comparison requests and there is always a backup. We should have something any day now.”
Bosch was pleased with his response but then the reporter threw another grenade into his foxhole.
“What about race?” she said. “I read all the clips and it seemed like nothing was ever brought up one way or the other about this girl being biracial. Do you think that played at all into the motivation of this murder?”
Bosch flicked a look at Garcia and hoped he would answer first.
“The case was fully explored in that regard in nineteen eighty-eight,” Garcia said. “We found nothing to support the racial angle. That’s probably why it wasn’t in the clips.”
The reporter turned her focus to Bosch, wanting the present take on the question as well.
“We’ve thoroughly reviewed the murder book and there is nothing there that would support a racial motivation in the case,” Bosch said. “We obviously are in the process of reworking the case, front to back, and we’ll be looking for anything that might have played a part in the motivation behind the crime.”
He looked at her and braced himself for her not accepting his answer and pressing it further. He thought about floating the racial angle into the story. It might improve the chances of some kind of response from Mackey. But it might also tip Mackey to how close they were to him. He decided to leave his answer as is.
Instead of pursuing the question further, the reporter flipped her notebook closed.
“I think I have what I need for right now,” she said. “I am going to go talk to Mrs. Verloren and then I have to hurry back and write this up to get it in tomorrow. Is there a number I can reach you at, Detective Bosch? Quickly, if I need to.”
Bosch knew she had him. He reluctantly gave her his cell number, knowing it meant that in the future she would have a direct line to him and would use it in regard to any case or story. It was the last payment on the deal they had made.
Everyone got up from the table and Bosch noticed that Emmy Ward had quietly come back into the office and had been sitting by the door during the interview. He and Garcia thanked them both for coming in and said good-bye. Bosch remained in the office with Garcia.
“I think that went well,” Garcia said after the door had closed.
“I hope so,” Bosch said. “It cost me a cell phone number. I’ve had that number for three years. Now I’ll have to change it and notify everybody about the new number. A big pain in the ass is what it’s going to be.”
Garcia ignored the complaint.
“How sure are you that this guy Mackey will even see the story?”
“We’re not. In fact, we believe he’s dyslexic. He might not read at all.”
Garcia’s jaw dropped.
“Then what are we doing?”
“Well, we have a plan for making sure he’s aware of the story. Don’t worry about that. We’ve got it covered. There’s also another name that’s come up since yesterday. An associate of Mackey then and now. His name is William Burkhart. Back when you were on the case he was known as Billy Blitzkrieg. That ring a bell?”
Garcia put on his best deep thinking look, like the one he had used for the camera, and moved around behind his desk. He then shook his head.
“Don’t think it came up,” he said.
“Yeah, you probably would have remembered.”
Garcia remained standing but leaned over the desk to look at his schedule.
“Let’s see. What have I got next?”
“You’ve got me, Commander,” Bosch said.
Garcia looked at him.
“Excuse me?”
“I need a few more minutes to clear up some of this stuff that’s come up.”
“What stuff? You mean this new guy, Blitzkrieg?”
“Yes, and the stuff the reporter asked about and we lied about. The racial angle.”
Bosch watched Garcia’s face set sternly into stone.
“I didn’t lie to her and I didn’t lie to you yesterday. We didn’t find it. We didn’t see a racial angle to this.”
“We?”
“My partner and I.”
“Are you sure about that?”
The phone on his desk buzzed. Garcia grabbed it up angrily and said, “No calls, no intrusions,” into it before dropping it back into its cradle.
“Detective, I want to remind you whom you are talking to,” Garcia said evenly. “Now what the fuck do you mean, ‘Are you sure?’ What are you saying?”
“With all due respect to the rank, sir, the case was pushed away from the racial angle in ’eighty-eight. I believe you when you say you didn’t see it. Otherwise, I can’t see you calling Pratt down at Open-Unsolved and reminding him there was DNA in the case. But if you didn’t know what was happening, then your partner certainly did. Did he ever talk about the pressure brought to bear on him from the command side on this case?”
“Ron Green was the finest detective I ever knew or worked with. I’m not going to let you besmirch his reputation.”
They stood just a few feet apart, the desk between them, their eyes locked in battle.
“I’m not interested in reputations. I’m interested in the truth. You said yesterday he ate his own gun a few years after this case. Why? Was there a note?”
“The burden, Detective. He couldn’t carry it anymore. He was haunted by the ones who got away.”
“What about the ones he let get away?”
Garcia pointed an angry finger at Bosch.
“How fucking dare you? You are on thin ice here, Bosch. I could make one call to the sixth floor and you’d be out on the street before sundown. You understand me? I know about you. You’re just back from retirement and that makes you expendable with one phone call. You understand me?”
“Sure. I understand you.”
Bosch sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk, hoping it might defuse the tension in the room a little bit. Garcia hesitated and then he sat down as well.
“I find what you have just said to me completely insulting,” he said, his voice juiced with anger.
“I’m sorry, Commander. I was trying to see what you knew.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am sorry, sir, but the case was definitely stonewalled by chain of command. I don’t want to get into names with you at this point. Some of them are still active. But I think this case revolved on race—the connection to Mackey and now Burkhart proves it. And you didn’t have Mackey or Burkhart back then, but you had the gun and there were other things. I needed to find out if you were part of it. I would say by your reaction that you weren’t.”
“But you are telling me my partner was, and that he kept it from me.”
Bosch nodded.
“Impossible,” Garcia protested. “Ron and I were close.”
“All partners are close, Commander. But not that close. From what I understand, you took care of the book and Green pressed the case forward. If he encountered resistance from within the department, he might have chosen to keep it from you. I think he did. Maybe he was protecting you, maybe he was humiliated about being vulnerable to the push. ”
Garcia dropped his eyes from Bosch and looked down at his desk. Bosch could tell he was looking at a memory. Something in the stone wall of his face broke and gave way.
“I think maybe I knew something was wrong,” he said quietly. “About halfway through.”
“How so?”
“Early on we decided to split up the parents. Ron took the father and I took the mother. You know, to establish relationships. Ron was having trouble with the father. He was volatile. He had been passive and then all of a sudden he’s on Ron’s ass wanting results. But there was something more there and Ron kept it from me.”
“Did you ask about it?”
“Yeah. I asked. He just told me the father was a handful. He said he was paranoid about race, that he thought his daughter was killed because of the race thing. And then he said something that I still remember. He said, ‘We can’t go there.’ That’s all he said, but it stuck with me because that didn’t sound like the Ron Green I knew. We can’t go there. The Ron Green I knew would go wherever it led. There were no can’t-go-theres with him. Not until that case.”
Garcia raised his eyes to Bosch and Bosch nodded, his way of thanking him for opening up.
“You think it had something to do with what happened later?” Bosch asked.
“You mean the suicide?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Anything’s possible. After this case we sort of went in different directions. The thing about partners is that once the work stops, there isn’t a whole lot to talk about.”
“True,” Bosch said.
“I was in a command staff meeting at Seventy-seventh—I was assigned there after making lieutenant. That was when I found out he was dead. It came across in a staff notice. I guess that shows how far apart we had gotten. I found out he had killed himself a week after he did it.”
Bosch just nodded. There was nothing he could say to that.
“I think I have a staff meeting now, Detective,” Garcia said. “It’s time for you to go.”
“Yes, sir. But you know, I was thinking, in order for them to push Ron Green so hard, they must have already had something to push him with. You remember anything like that? Did he have an IAD beef running at the time?”
Garcia shook his head. He wasn’t saying no to Bosch’s question. He was saying something else.
“You know, this department has always had more cops assigned to investigating cops than it has to investigating murders. I always thought that if I reached the top, I would change that.”
“Are you saying there was an investigation?”
“I’m saying it was rare in the department not to have something on your record. There was a file on Ron, sure. He had been accused of assaulting a suspect. It was bullshit. The kid bumped his head and needed stitches when Ron was putting him in the back of the car. Big deal, right? Turned out the kid had connections and the IAD wasn’t letting it go away.”
“So they could have used that to push this case.”
“Could have, depending on how much a believer in conspiracy theories you are.”
When it comes to the LAPD I am a believer, Bosch thought but didn’t say.
“Okay, sir, I think I have the picture,” he said instead. “I’ll get out of here now.”
Bosch stood up to leave.
“I understand your need to know all of this,” Garcia said. “I just don’t appreciate how you sandbagged me.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No you’re not, Detective Bosch. Not really.”
Bosch said nothing. He moved to the door and opened it. He looked back at Garcia and tried to think of something to say. He came up blank. He turned and left, closing the door behind him.