The Last Coyote - Страница 5

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He took the plane off the door edge and ran his hand along the smooth wood again. He thought he had it right and carried it inside. Over a drop cloth in an area of the living room he had reserved for woodworking, he ran a sheet of small-grain sandpaper over the door edge until it was perfecdy smooth to his touch.

Holding the door vertically and balancing it on a block of wood, he eased it into the hinges and then dropped the pins in. He tapped them home with a hammer and they went in easily. He had oiled the pins and hinges earlier and

so the bedroom door opened and closed almost silently.

Most important, though, was that it closed evenly in the

jamb. He opened and closed it several more times, just

staring at it, pleased with his accomplishment.

The glow of his success was short-lived, for having completed the project left his mind open to wander. Back

out on the deck the other thoughts came back as he swept the wood shavings into a small pile.

Hinojos had told him to stay busy. Now he knew how he would do it. And in that moment he realized that no matter how many projects he found to take his time, there was one job he still had to do. He leaned the broom against the wall and went inside to get ready.

The LAPD storage facility and aerosquad headquarters known as Piper Tech was on Ramirez Street in downtown, not far from Parker Center. Bosch, in a suit and tie, arrived shortly before eleven at the gate. He held his LAPD identification card out the window and was quickly waved in. The card was all he had. The card, along with his gold badge and gun, had been taken from him when he was placed on leave the week before. But it was later returned so that he could gain entry to the BSS offices for the stress therapy sessions with Carmen Hinojos.

After parking, he walked to the beige-painted storage warehouse that housed the city's history of violence. The quarter-acre building contained the files of all LAPD cases, solved or unsolved. This was where the case files came when nobody cared anymore.

At the front counter a civilian clerk was loading files onto a cart so that they could be wheeled back into the expanse of shelves and forgotten. By the way she studied Bosch, he knew it was rare that anyone ever showed up here in person. It was all done by telephones and city couriers.

'If you're looking for city council minutes, that's building A, across the lot. The one with brown trim.'

Bosch held up his ID card.

'No, I want to pull a case.'

He reached into his coat pocket while she walked up to

the counter and bent forward to read his card. She was a small black woman with graying hair and glasses. The name tag affixed to her blouse said her name was Geneva Beaupre.

'Hollywood,' she said. 'Why didn't you just ask for it to be sent out in dispatch? There ain't no hurry on these cases.'

'I was downtown, over at Parker ... I wanted to see it as soon as I could, anyway.'

'Well, you got a number?'

From his pocket he pulled a piece of notebook paper with the number 61-743 written on it. She bent to study it and then her head jerked up.

'Nineteen sixty-one? You want a case from — I don't know where nineteen sixty-one is.'

'It's here. I've looked at the file before. I guess there was someone else clerking here back then, but it was here.'

'Well, I'll look. You're going to wait?'

'Yeah, I'll wait.'

This seemed to disappoint her but Bosch smiled at her in the most friendly way he could muster. She took the paper with her and disappeared into the stacks. Bosch walked around the small waiting area by the counter for a few minutes and then stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. He was nervous for a reason he could not exactly place. He kept moving, pacing.

'Harry Bosch!'

He turned and saw a man approaching him from the helicopter hangar. He recognized him but couldn't immediately place him. Then it hit him: Captain Dan Washington, a former Hollywood patrol skipper who was now commander of the aerosquadron. They shook hands cordially and Bosch immediately hoped Washington did not know of his ISL situation.

'Howzit going in the 'wood?'

'Same old same old, Captain.'

'You know, I miss that place.'

'You're not missing much. How is it with you?'

'Can't complain. I like the detail but it's more like being an airport manager than a cop, I guess. It's as good a place to lay low as any other.'

Bosch recalled that Washington had gotten into a political scrap with the department weight and taken the transfer as a means of survival. The department had dozens of out-of-the-way jobs like Washington's, where you could lay up and wait for your political fortunes to change.

'What're you doing over here?'

There it was. If Washington knew Bosch was on leave, then admitting he was pulling an old case file would be admitting he was violating the leave order. Still, as his position in the aerosquad attested, Washington was not a straight-line company man. Bosch decided to run the risk.

'I'm just pulling an old case. I got some free time and thought I'd check a few things.'

Washington narrowed his eyes and Bosch knew that he knew.

'Yeah ... well, listen, I gotta run, but hang in there, man. Don't let the book men get you down.'

He winked at Bosch and moved on.

'I won't, Captain. You either.'

Bosch felt reasonably sure Washington wouldn't men-tion their meeting to anybody. He stepped on his cigarette and went back inside to the counter, privately chastising himself anyway for having gone outside and advertised that he was there. Five minutes later he started hearing a squeaking sound coming from one of the aisles between the stacks. In a moment Geneva Beaupre appeared pushing a cart with a blue three-ring binder on it.

It was a murder book. It was at least two inches thick,

dusty, and with a rubber band around it. The band held an old green checkout card to the binder.

'Found it.'

There was a note of triumph in her voice. It would be the major accomplishment of her day, Bosch guessed.

'Great.'

She dropped the heavy binder on the counter.

'Marjorie Lowe. Homicide, 1961. Now...' She took the card off the binder and looked at it. 'Yes, you were the last to take this out. Let's see, that was five years ago. You were with Robbery-Homicide then

'Yes. And now I'm in Hollywood. You want me to sign for it again?'

She put the card down in front of him.

'Yes. Put your ID number there, too, please.'

He quickly did as he was told and he could tell she was studying him as he wrote.

'A lefty.'

'Yeah.'

He slid the card back across the counter to her.

'Thanks, Geneva.'

He looked at her, wanting to say something else, but decided it might be a mistake. She looked back at him and a grandmotherly smile formed on her face.

'I don't know what you're doing, Detective Bosch, but I wish you good luck. I can tell it's important, you coming back to this after five years.'

'It's been longer than that, Geneva. A lot longer.'

Bosch cleared all the old mail and carpentry books off the dining room table and placed the binder and his own notebook on top of it. He went to the stereo and loaded a compact disc, 'Clifford Brown with Strings.' He went to the kitchen and got an ashtray, then he sat down in front of the blue murder book and looked at it for a long time without moving. The last time he'd had the file, he had barely looked at it as he skimmed through its many pages. He hadn't been ready then and had returned it to the archives.

This time, he wanted to be sure he was ready before he

opened it, so he sat there a long time just studying the

cracked plastic cover as if it held some clue to his

preparedness. A memory crowded into his mind. A boy of

eleven in a swimming pool clinging to the steel ladder at

the side, out of breath and crying, the tears disguised by

the water that dripped out of his wet hair. The boy felt

scared. Alone. He felt as if the pool were an ocean that he

must cross.

Brownie was working through 'Willow Weep for Me,'

his trumpet as gentle as a portrait painter's brush. Bosch

reached for the rubber band he had put around the binder

five years earlier and it broke at his touch. He hesitated

only another moment before opening the binder and

blowing off the dust.

The binder contained the case file on the October 28, 1961, homicide of Marjorie Phillips Lowe. His mother.

The pages of the binder were brownish yellow and stiff with age. As he looked at them and read them, Bosch was initially surprised at how little things had changed in nearly thirty-five years. Many of the investigative forms in the binder were still currently in use. The Preliminary Report and the Investigating Officer's Chronological Record were the same as those presendy used, save for word changes made to accommodate court rulings and political correctness. Description Boxes marked negro had sometime along the line been changed to black and then african-american. The list of motivations on the Preliminary Case Screening chart did not include domestic violence or hatred/prejudice classifications as they did now. Interview summary sheets did not include boxes to be checked after Miranda warnings had been given.

But aside from those kinds of changes, the reports were the same and Bosch decided that homicide investigation was largely the same now as back then. Of course, there had been incredible technological advances in the past thirty-five years but he believed there were some things that were always the same and always would remain the same. The legwork, the art of interviewing and listening, knowing when to trust an instinct or a hunch. Those were things that didn't change, that couldn't.