ABEL PRATT CONVENED all members of the Open-Unsolved Unit in the squad room as well as four other RHD detectives loaned to the unit for the surveillance. The meeting was turned over to Bosch and Rider, who took a verbal walk through the case that lasted a half hour. On a bulletin board behind them they pinned blowups of the most recent driver’s license photos of Roland Mackey and William Burkhart. The other detectives asked few questions. Bosch and Rider then turned the show back over to Pratt.
“All right, we’re going to need all hands on deck with this,” he said. “We’ll be working the sixes. Two pairs working the sound room, two pairs working Mackey and two pairs working Burkhart. I want the OU teams on Mackey and the surveillance room. The four loaners from RHD will watch Burkhart. Kiz and Harry have dibs and they want the second shift on Mackey. The rest of you can work out how you want to cover the remaining shifts. We start tomorrow morning at six, just about the time the paper will be hitting the streets.”
The plan translated into six pairs of detectives working twelve-hour shifts. The shifts changed at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Since it was their case, Bosch and Rider got first choice of shifts and had elected to cover Mackey beginning each day at 6 p.m. This meant working through the night, but it was Bosch’s hunch that if Mackey made a move or a call it would occur in the evening. And Bosch wanted to be there when it happened.
They would alternate with one of the other teams. The remaining two OU teams would alternate their time in the City of Industry, where a private contractor called ListenTech had what amounted to a wiretap center which was used by all law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles County. Sitting in a van next to the telephone pole carrying the line you were listening to was a thing of the past. ListenTech provided a quiet, air-conditioned center where electronic consoles were set up for monitoring and recording conversations placed or received on any phone numbers in the county, including cell phones. There was even a cafeteria with fresh coffee and vending machines. Pizza could be delivered if needed.
ListenTech could service as many as ninety taps at a time. Rider had told Bosch that the company was spawned in 2001 when law enforcement agencies began taking increasing advantage of the widening laws governing wiretaps. A private company that saw the growing need stepped in with regional wiretap centers, also known as sound rooms. They made the work easier. But there were still rules to follow.
“We’re going to hit a bit of a snag in the sound room,” Pratt said. “The law still requires that each line be monitored by a single individual—no listening to two lines at once. But we need to monitor three lines with two cops because that’s all we got. So how do we do this and still stay within the law? We alternate. One line is Roland Mackey’s cell. We monitor that full-time. But the other two lines are secondary. That’s where we alternate. They come from the property where he lives and the place where he works. So what we do is we stay with the first line when he is home and then from four to midnight, when he is at work, we switch to the work line. No matter what lines we are actually listening to, we will still get twenty-four-hour pen registers on all three.”
“Can’t we get one more loaner from RHD to cover the third line?” Rider asked.
Pratt shook his head.
“Captain Norona gave us four bodies and that’s it,” Pratt said. “We won’t miss much. Like I said, we have the pen registers.”
Pen registers were part of the telephone monitoring process. While the investigators were allowed to listen in on phone calls on the monitored lines, the equipment also registered all incoming and outgoing calls on all the lines listed in the warrant, even if they were not being monitored. This would provide the investigators with a listing by time and length of call, as well as the numbers dialed on outgoing calls and the originating numbers for incoming calls.
“Any questions?” Pratt asked.
Bosch didn’t think there would be any questions. The plan was simple enough. But then an OU detective named Renner raised his hand and Pratt nodded at him.
“Is this thing OT authorized?”
“Yes, it is,” Pratt replied. “But as was said before, as of now we only have seventy-two hours on the warrant.”
“Well, let’s hope it goes the whole seventy-two,” Renner said. “I gotta pay for my kid’s summer camp in Malibu.”
The others laughed.
Tim Marcia and Rick Jackson volunteered to be the other street team working with Bosch and Rider. The other four got the sound-room detail, with Renner and Robleto taking the day shift and Robinson and Nord taking the same shift as Bosch and Rider. The ListenTech center was nice and comfortable, but some cops didn’t want to be cooped up no matter what the circumstances. Some would always choose the street and, like Marcia and Jackson, Bosch knew he was one of them.
Pratt ended the meeting by handing out copies of a piece of paper with everyone’s cell phone number on it as well as the radio channel they would use during the surveillance.
“For you teams in the field, I’ve got rovers on hold down in the equipment shed,” Pratt said. “Make sure you have the radio on. Harry, Kiz, did I miss anything?”
“I think you got it covered,” Rider said.
“Since our time is short on this one,” Bosch said, “Kiz and I are working something up to sort of push the action if we don’t see any signs by tomorrow night. We have the newspaper article and we have to make sure he sees it.”
“How’s he going to read it if he’s dyslexic?” Renner asked.
“He got a GED,” Bosch said. “He should be able to read it. We just have to make sure it somehow gets in front of him.”
Everybody nodded their agreement and then Pratt wrapped things up.
“Okay, gang, that’s it,” Pratt said. “I will be checking with everybody through the days and nights. Stay loose and be careful with these guys. We don’t want anything turning back on us. You people taking the first shift might want to head home now and get a good night. Just remember, the clock’s ticking on the warrant. We have till Friday night and then it’s pumpkins. So let’s get out there and get what’s to be got. We’re the closers. So let’s close this one out.”
Bosch and Rider stood and small-talked about the case with the others for a few minutes and then Bosch made his way back to their alcove. He pulled the copy of the probation file out of the stack of accumulated case files. He had not gotten a chance to read through it thoroughly and now was the time.
The file was an add-on file, meaning that as Mackey repeatedly was arrested and continued a lifelong trek through the criminal justice system the reports and court transcripts were merely added to the front of the file. Therefore the reports ran in reverse chronological order. Bosch was most interested in Mackey’s earlier years. He went to the back of the file with the idea of moving forward in time.
Mackey’s first arrest as an adult came only a month after he turned eighteen. In August 1987 he was picked up for car theft in what the follow-up reports classified as a joyriding incident. Mackey had been living at home at the time and stole a neighbor’s Corvette. He had jumped in the car and taken off after the neighbor had left it running in the driveway and gone back inside his house for a forgotten pair of sunglasses.
Mackey pleaded guilty and the presentencing report contained in the file cited his juvenile record but made no mention of the Chatsworth Eights. In September 1987 the young car thief was placed on one year probation by a superior court judge, who tried to talk Mackey out of a life of crime.
The transcript of the sentencing hearing was in the file. Bosch read the judge’s two-page lecture, in which he told Mackey he had seen young men like him a hundred times before. He told Mackey he was standing at the same precipice as the others. One simple crime could be a life lesson, or it could be the first step down a spiral. He urged Mackey not to go down the wrong path. He told him to think hard and make the right decision on which way to go.
The words of warning had obviously fallen on deaf ears. Six weeks later Mackey was arrested for burglarizing a neighborhood home while the husband and wife who lived there were at work. Mackey had cut an alarm, but the break in current had registered with the alarm company and a patrol car was dispatched. When Mackey came out the back door carrying a video camera and assorted other electronics and jewelry, two officers were waiting with guns drawn.
Because Mackey had been on probation for the car theft he was held in the county jail while awaiting disposition of the case. After thirty-six days in stir he stood before the same judge again and, according to the transcript, begged forgiveness and for one more chance. This time the presentencing report noted that drug testing indicated that Mackey was a marijuana user and that he had begun hanging around an unsavory group of young men from the Chatsworth area.
Bosch knew that these men were likely the Chatsworth Eights. It was early December and their plan of terror and symbolic homage to Adolf Hitler was just a few weeks away. But none of this was in the PSR. The report simply stated that Mackey was hanging with the wrong crowd. As he sentenced Mackey, the judge would not have known how wrong that crowd was.
Mackey was sentenced to three years of prison reduced to time served. He was also placed on two years probation. The judge, knowing that prison would be just a finishing school for a young criminal like Mackey, was giving him a break and attempting to break him at the same time. Mackey walked out of court free, but the judge had placed a series of heavy restrictions on his probation. They included weekly drug tests, maintaining gainful employment and a requirement that the high school dropout get his general education degree within nine months. The judge told Mackey that if he failed in any part of the probation order he would be sent to a state prison to complete his three-year sentence.
“You may consider this harsh, Mr. Mackey,” the judge said in the transcript. “But I consider it quite kind. I am giving you a last chance here. If you fail me on this, you will without a doubt be going to prison. Society will be through with trying to help you at that point. It will simply throw you away. Do you understand this?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Mackey said.
The file came with copies of the court-requested completion reports from Chatsworth High. Mackey got his GED in August 1988, a little more than a month after Rebecca Verloren was taken from her bed and murdered.
Despite the judge’s admirable efforts to steer Mackey from a life of crime, Bosch had to wonder if those efforts had cost Rebecca Verloren her life. Whether Mackey was the actual triggerman or not, he’d had possession of the gun that killed her. Was it reasonable to think that the chain of events leading to the murder would have been broken if Mackey had been behind bars? Bosch wasn’t sure. It was possible that Mackey simply filled a role as weapon delivery man. If it wasn’t him it could have been someone else. Bosch knew there was no sense in breaking down the chain into what could or could not have happened.
“Anything?”
Bosch looked up from his thoughts. Rider was standing at her desk. He flipped the file closed.
“Nah, not really. I was reading the probation file. The early stuff. A judge took an interest at first but then sort of let him go. The best he could do was make him get the GED.”
“And that served him so well, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Bosch said nothing else. He only had a GED himself. He’d also stood before a judge once as a car thief. The car he had gone joyriding in had also been a Corvette. Except it had not been a neighbor’s. It had been his foster father’s. Bosch had taken it as a way to say fuck you. But it was the foster father who sent the ultimate fuck you. Bosch was sent back to the youth hall to fend for himself.
“My mother died when I was eleven,” Bosch suddenly said.
Rider looked at him, doing her eyebrow thing.
“I know. Why’d you bring that up?”
“I don’t know. I spent a lot of time in the youth hall after that. I mean, I had some stays with foster families but it never lasted long. I always went back.”
Rider waited but Bosch didn’t continue.
“And?” she prompted.
“Well, we didn’t have gangs in the hall,” he said. “But there was sort of a natural segregation. You know, the whites stuck together. The blacks. The Hispanics. There weren’t any Asians back then.”
“What are you saying, that you feel sorry for this asshole Mackey?”
“No.”
“He killed a girl or at least helped kill her, Harry.”
“I know that, Kiz. That’s not my point.”
“What is your point?”
“I don’t know. I’m just sort of wondering, you know, what makes people go down different paths. How come this guy became a hater? How come I didn’t?”
“Harry, you’re overthinking. Go home tonight and get a good night’s sleep. You’ll need it because there won’t be any tomorrow night.”
Bosch nodded but didn’t move.
“You going to take off?” Rider asked.
“Yeah, in a few. You heading out?”
“Yeah, unless you want me to go with you over to Hollywood Vice.”
“Nah, I’ll be all right. Let’s talk in the morning after we get the paper.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure where I can get the Daily News in the south end. I might have to call you up and let you read it to me.”
The Daily News was circulated widely in the Valley but sometimes hard to locate elsewhere in the city. Rider lived down near Inglewood, in the same neighborhood where she had grown up.
“That’s cool. Give me a call and I’ll have it. There’s a box down at the bottom of the hill from my place.”
Rider opened one of her desk drawers and pulled out her purse. She looked at Bosch and did her eyebrow thing once again.
“You sure about doing this, marking yourself like that?”
She was talking about their plan for pushing Mackey the next day. Bosch nodded.
“I have to be able to sell it,” he said. “Besides, I can wear long sleeves for a while. It isn’t summer yet.”
“But what if it’s not necessary? What if he sees the story in the paper and gets on the phone and starts talking a blue streak?”
“Something tells me that isn’t going to happen. Anyway, it isn’t permanent. Vicki Landreth told me it lasts a couple weeks at the most, depending on how often you shower. It’s not like those henna tattoos kids get on the Santa Monica pier. They last longer.”
She nodded her agreement.
“Okay, Harry. I’ll catch you in the a.m., then.”
“See ya, Kiz. Have a good one.”
She started walking out of the alcove.
“Hey, Kiz?” Bosch called after her.
“What?” she said, stopping and looking back at him.
“What do you think? You happy to be back on it?”
She knew what he was talking about. Being back in homicide.
“Oh yeah, Harry, I’m happy. I’ll be downright giddy once we take this pale rider down and solve the mystery.”
“Yeah,” Bosch said.
After she left, Bosch thought for a few moments about what she meant by calling Mackey a pale rider. He thought it might be some sort of biblical reference but he couldn’t place it. Maybe in the south end it was what some people called racists. He decided to ask her about it the next day. He started to look through the probation file again but soon gave up. He knew it was time to focus on the here and now. Not the past. Not the choices made and the paths not taken. He got up and stacked the file and the murder book under his arm. If things were slow on the surveillance the next day, they might make for good reading. He stuck his head in Abel Pratt’s office to say good-bye.
“Good luck, Harry,” Pratt said. “Close it out.”
“We’re going to.”