SHORTLY AFTER the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit began operation the DNA evidence from the Verloren case was forwarded to the California Department of Justice. It was delivered to the DNA lab along with evidence from dozens of other cases drawn from the unit’s initial survey of the department’s unsolved murders. The DOJ operated the state’s primary DNA database. The backlog of comparison requests to the underfunded and undermanned lab was running more than a year at the time. But thanks to the tide of requests from the new LAPD unit it took almost eighteen months before the Verloren evidence was re-typed by DOJ analysts and compared to thousands of DNA profiles in the state data bank. It produced a single match, a “cold hit” in the parlance of DNA work.
Bosch looked at the single-page DOJ report unfolded in front of him. It stated that twelve of a possible fourteen markers matched the DNA from the weapon used to murder Rebecca Verloren to a now thirty-five-year-old man named Roland Mackey. He was a native of Los Angeles whose last known address was in Panorama City. Bosch felt his blood start moving a little faster as he read the cold hit report. Panorama City was in the San Fernando Valley, not more than fifteen minutes from Chatsworth, even in bad traffic. It added a level of credibility to the match. It was not that Bosch didn’t believe the science. He did. But he also believed you needed more than the science to convince a jury beyond a doubt. You needed to bolster the scientific fact with connections of circumstantial evidence and common sense. This was one of those connections.
Bosch noticed the date on the cover letter of the DOJ report.
“You said we just got this?” he asked Rider.
“Yeah. I think it came in Friday. Why?”
“The date on it is from two Fridays ago. Ten days.”
Rider shrugged.
“Bureaucracy,” she said. “I guess it took its time getting down here from Sacramento.”
“I know the case is old but you’d think they’d move a little faster than that.”
Rider didn’t respond. Bosch dropped it and read on. Mackey’s DNA was in the DOJ computer base because all offenders convicted of any sex-related crime in California were forced under state law to submit blood and oral swabs for typing and inclusion in the DNA data bank. The offense that resulted in Mackey’s DNA going into the bank was on the far margin of the state mandate. Two years earlier Mackey was convicted of lewd behavior in Los Angeles. The DOJ report did not offer details of the crime but stated Mackey was placed on twelve months probation, an indication that his was a minor offense.
Bosch was about to write a note on his pad when he looked up and saw Rider closing the murder book on the second half of the documents.
“Done?”
“Done.”
“Now what?”
“I figured that while you were finishing the book I’d go over to the ESB and pick up the box.”
Bosch had no trouble remembering the meaning of what she said. He had slipped easily back into the world of acronyms and copspeak. The ESB was the Evidence Storage Building over at the Piper Tech compound. She would go there to pick up the physical evidence that would have been stored from the case. Items like the murder weapon, the victim’s clothing and anything else accumulated while the case was initially worked. It was usually stored in a taped cardboard box and put on a shelf. The exception to this was storage of perishable and biological evidence—such as the blood and tissue recovered from the Verloren murder weapon—which was stored in lab vaults in the Scientific Investigation Division.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Bosch said. “But first why don’t you run this guy through DMV and NCIC and see if we can get a location?”
“Already did that.”
She turned her laptop around on her desk so Bosch could see the screen. He recognized the National Crime Index Computer template on the screen. He reached across and started scrolling down the screen, his eyes scanning the information.
Rider had run Roland Mackey through NCIC and gotten his criminal record. His conviction two years earlier for lewd behavior was only the latest in a string of recorded arrests dating back to when he was eighteen—the same year as Rebecca Verloren’s murder. Anything prior would not be listed because juvenile protection laws shielded that part of his record. Most of the crimes listed were property and drug-related crimes, beginning with car theft and a burglary at eighteen and leading to two drug-possession raps, two driving under the influence arrests, another burglary charge and a receiving stolen property hit. There was also an early solicitation of prostitution arrest. Overall it was the pedigree of a small-time criminal and drug user. It appeared that Mackey never went to state prison for any of his crimes. He was often given second chances and then, through plea agreements, was sentenced to probation or to short stints in county jail. It appeared that the longest he ever stayed in stir was six months served after pleading guilty to receiving stolen property when he was twenty-eight years old. He served his time at the county-run Wayside Honor Rancho.
Bosch leaned back after he was finished scrolling through the computer records. He felt uneasy about what he had just read. Mackey had the kind of record that might be seen as a pathway to murder. But in this case the murder came first—when Mackey was only eighteen years old—and the petty crimes came after. It didn’t seem to quite fit.
“What?” Rider asked, sensing his mood.
“I don’t know. I thought there’d be more, I guess. It’s backwards. This guy goes from murder to petty crime? Doesn’t seem to hold.”
“Well, this is all he’s ever gotten popped for. Doesn’t mean it’s all he ever did.”
He nodded.
“Juvenile?” he asked.
“Maybe. Probably. But we’ll never get those records now. They’re probably long gone.”
It was true. The state went out of its way to protect the privacy of juvenile offenders. Crimes rarely tailed offenders into the adult justice system. Nevertheless, Bosch thought that there had to be childhood crimes that would fit better with the seemingly cold-blooded murder of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been incapacitated with a stun gun and abducted from her home. Bosch began to have an uneasy feeling about the cold hit they were working. He was beginning to sense that Mackey was not the target. He was a means to the target.
“Did you run him through DMV for an address?” he asked.
“Harry, that’s old-school. You only have to update your driver’s license every four years. You want to find somebody you go to AutoTrack.”
She opened the murder book and slid a loose piece of paper across to him. It was a computer printout that said AutoTrack at the top. Rider said it was a private company the police department contracted with. It provided computer searches of all public records, including DMV, public utility and cable service databases, as well as private databases such as credit reporting services, to determine an individual’s past and current addresses. Bosch saw that the printout contained a listing of Roland Mackey’s various addresses dating back to when he was eighteen. His current listing on all current data, including driver’s license and car registration, was the address in Panorama City. But on the page, Rider had circled the address ascribed to Mackey when he was eighteen through twenty years old—the years 1988 through 1990. It was an apartment on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth. This meant that at the time of the murder Mackey was living very close to Rebecca Verloren’s home. This made Bosch feel a little better about things. Proximity was a key piece to the puzzle. Bosch’s misgivings over Mackey’s criminal pedigree aside, knowing that he was in the immediate vicinity in 1988 and therefore could have seen or even known Rebecca Verloren was a large check mark in the positive column.
“Make you feel any better, Harry?”
“A little bit.”
“Good. I’m going, then.”
“I’ll be here.”
After Rider left, Bosch jumped back into his review of the murder book. The third Investigator’s Summary focused on how the intruder got into the house. The door and window locks showed no signs of having been compromised and all known keys to the home were accounted for among family members and a housekeeper who was cleared of any suspicion. The investigators theorized that the killer came in through the garage, which had been left open, and then entered the house through the connecting door, which was usually not locked until after Robert Verloren came home from work at night.
According to Robert Verloren the garage was open when he came home from his restaurant about ten-thirty on the night of July fifth. The connecting door from the garage into the house was unlocked. He entered his home, closed the garage and locked the connecting door. The investigators theorized that by then the killer was already in the house.
The Verlorens’ explanation for the open garage was that their daughter had recently received her driver’s license and was on occasion allowed to use her mother’s car. However, she had not yet acquired the habit of remembering to close the garage door upon leaving or coming home, and had been chastised by her parents on more than one occasion for this. Late in the afternoon before her abduction Rebecca was sent on an errand by her mother to pick up dry cleaning. She used her mother’s car. The investigators confirmed that she picked up the clothing at 5:15 p.m. and then returned home. It was believed by the investigators that she once again forgot to close the garage or lock the connecting door after returning. Her mother said she never checked the garage that night, assuming wrongly that it was closed.
Two residents in the neighborhood canvassed after the murder reported seeing the garage door open that evening. This left the house easily accessible until Robert Verloren came home.
Bosch thought about how many times over the years he had seen someone’s seemingly innocent mistake turn into one of the keys to their own doom. A routine chore to pick up clothes may have led to the opportunity for a killer to get inside the house. Becky Verloren may have unwittingly engineered her own death.
Bosch pushed his chair back and stood up. He had finished the review of the first half of the murder book. He decided to get another cup of coffee before taking on the second half. He asked around in the office if anybody needed anything from the cafeteria and got one order for coffee from Jean Nord. He took the stairs down to the cafeteria and filled two cups from the urn, then paid for them and went over to the condiments counter to get Nord’s cream and sugar. While he was pouring a shot of cream into one of the cups he felt a presence next to him at the counter. He made room at the station but no one reached for any condiments. He turned toward the presence and found himself looking at the smiling face of Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.
There had never been any love lost between Bosch and Deputy Chief Irving. The chief had at various times been his adversary and unwitting savior in the department. But Bosch had heard from Rider that Irving was on the outs now. He had been unceremoniously pushed out of power by the new chief and given a virtually meaningless posting and assignment outside of Parker Center.
“I thought that was you, Detective Bosch. I’d buy you a cup of coffee but I see you already have more than enough. Would you like to sit down for a minute anyway?”
Bosch held up both cups of coffee.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something, Chief. And somebody’s waiting for one of these.”
“One minute, Detective,” Irving said, a stern tone entering his voice. “The coffee will still be hot when you get to where you have to go. I promise.”
Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked to a nearby table. Bosch followed. Irving still had a shaved and gleaming skull. His muscular jaw was his most prominent feature. He took a seat and held his posture ramrod straight. He didn’t look comfortable. He didn’t speak until Bosch sat down. The pleasant tone was back in his voice.
“All I wanted to do was welcome you back to the department,” he said.
He smiled like a shark. Bosch hesitated like a man stepping across a trapdoor before answering.
“It’s good to be back, Chief.”
“The Open-Unsolved Unit. I think that is the appropriate place for someone of your skills.”
Bosch took a sip from his scalding cup of coffee. He didn’t know if Irving had just complimented or insulted him. He wanted to leave.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said. “I hope so. I think I better—”
Irving held his hands out wide, as if to show he wasn’t hiding anything.
“That’s it,” he said. “You can go. I just wanted to say welcome back. And to thank you.”
Bosch hesitated, but then bit.
“Thank me for what, Chief?”
“For resurrecting me in this department.”
Bosch shook his head and smiled as if he didn’t understand.
“I don’t get it, Chief,” he said. “How am I supposed to do that? I mean, you’re across the street in the City Hall Annex now, right? What is it, the Office of Strategic Planning or something? From what I hear, you get to leave your gun at home.”
Irving folded his arms on the table and leaned in close to Bosch. All pretense of humor, false or otherwise, evaporated. He spoke strongly but quietly.
“Yes, that is where I am. But I guarantee you that it will not be for long. Not with the likes of you being welcomed back into the department.”
He then leaned back and just as quickly adopted a casual manner for what he delivered as casual conversation.
“You know what you are, Bosch? You are a retread. This new chief likes putting retreads on the car. But you know what happens with a retread? It comes apart at the seams. The friction and the heat—they’re too much for it. It comes apart and what happens? A blowout. And then the car goes off the road.”
He nodded silently as he let Bosch think about that.
“You see, Bosch, you are my ticket. You will fuck up—if you will excuse my language. It is in your history. It is in your nature. It is guaranteed. And when you fuck up, our illustrious new chief fucks up for being the one who put a cheap retread on our car.”
He smiled. Bosch thought that all he needed was a gold earring to complete the picture. Mr. Clean all the way.
“And when he goes down my stock goes right back up. I’m a patient man. I’ve waited for over forty years in this department. I can wait longer.”
Bosch expected more but that was it. Irving nodded once and stood up. He quickly turned and headed out of the cafeteria. Bosch felt the anger rise in his throat. He looked down at the two cups of coffee in his hands and felt like an idiot for having sat there like a defenseless errand boy while Irving had verbally punched him out. He got up and threw both cups into a trash can. He decided that when he got back to room 503 he would tell Jean Nord to get her own damn coffee.