Angels Flight (1998) by Michael Connelly
“Harry, I thought you were going to steer us clear of this stuff,” Rider said.
“I know. It was selfish. Frankie Sheehan is a friend. What they did to him, leaking his name like that, was bullshit. I was hoping that having you two here might add some credibility to the announcement that he was being let go.”
“So you used us the way Irving wanted to yesterday,” she said. “You wouldn’t let him do it but it was okay for yourself.”
Bosch studied her face. He could tell she was genuinely angry at being used in such a way. Bosch knew that it was a betrayal. A small one in his mind, but a betrayal just the same.
“Look, Kiz, we can talk about this later. But like I said, Frankie’s a friend. He’s now your friend for this. And that could be valuable someday.”
He waited and watched and finally she gave a slight nod. It was over, for now.
“How much more time do you need?” he asked.
“Maybe an hour,” Edgar said. “Then we’ve got to find a judge.”
“Why?” Rider said. “What did Irving say?”
“Irving’s sitting on the fence. So I want to have everything ready. I want to be able to move. Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning’s no problem,” Edgar said.
“Good. Then you two go back and finish up. Get to a judge tonight. Tomorrow we’ll — ”
“Detective Bosch?”
Bosch turned. Harvey Button and his producer, Tom Chainey, were standing there.
“I can’t talk to you,” Bosch said.
“We understand that you have reopened the Stacey Kincaid case,” Chainey said. “We’d like to talk to you about — ”
“Who told you that?” Bosch snapped, anger quickly showing on his face.
“We have a source who — ”
“Well, tell your source he’s full of shit. No comment.”
A cameraman came up and poked his lens over Button’s shoulder. Button raised a microphone.
“Have you exonerated Michael Harris?” Button blurted out.
“I said no comment,” Bosch said. “Get that out of here.”
Bosch reached to the camera and put his hand over the lens. The cameraman shrieked.
“Don’t touch the camera! This is private property.”
“So is my face. Get it away from me. The press conference is over.”
Bosch put his hand on Button’s shoulder and forcefully ushered him off the stage. The cameraman followed. So did Chainey, but in a slow, calm way as if daring Bosch to manhandle him as well. Their eyes locked.
“Watch the news tonight, Detective,” Chainey said. “You might find it interesting.”
“I doubt that,” Bosch said.
Twenty minutes later Bosch was sitting on an empty desk at the mouth of the hallway that led to the RHD interview rooms on the third floor. He was still thinking about the exchange he’d had with Button and Chainey and wondering what they had. He heard one of the doors open and looked up. Frankie Sheehan came down the hallway with Lindell. Bosch’s old partner looked drained. His face was slack, his hair unkempt and his clothes — the same ones he had worn the night before in the bar — were disheveled. Bosch slid off the desk and stood up, ready to deflect a physical assault if need be. But Sheehan apparently read his body language and raised his hands, palms forward. He smiled crookedly.
“It’s okay, Harry,” Sheehan said, his voice very tired and hoarse. “Agent Lindell here gave me the scoop. Part of it, at least. It wasn’t you who . . . It was myself. You know I forgot all about threatening that douche bag.”
Bosch nodded.
“Come on, Frankie,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride.”
Without thinking too much about it Bosch led him to the main elevators and they headed down to the lobby. They stood side by side, both looking up at the lighted numbers above the door.
“Sorry I doubted you, buddy,” Sheehan said quietly.
“Don’t worry about it, buddy. That makes us even.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“Last night when I asked about the prints.”
“You still doubt them?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
In the lobby they went out a side door to the employee parking lot. They were about halfway to the car when Bosch heard a commotion and turned to see several reporters and cameramen moving toward them.
“Don’t say anything,” Bosch said quickly. “Don’t say a word to them.”
The initial wave of reporters descended quickly and surrounded them. Bosch could see more coming.
“No comment,” Bosch said. “No comment.”
But it wasn’t Bosch they cared about. They shoved their microphones and cameras at Sheehan’s face. His eyes, so tired before, seemed wild now, even scared. Bosch tried to pull his friend through the crowd and to the car. The reporters shouted their questions.
“Detective Sheehan, did you kill Howard Elias?” a woman asked, louder than the others.
“No,” Sheehan said. “I didn’t — I didn’t do anything.”
“Did you previously threaten the victim?”
“Look, no comment,” Bosch said before Sheehan could react to the question. “Do you hear that? No comment. Leave us a — ”
“Why were you questioned?”
“Tell us why you were questioned, Detective”
They were almost there. Some of the reporters had dropped off, realizing they would get nothing. But most of the cameras were staying with them. They could always use the video. Suddenly, Sheehan broke from Bosch’s grip and wheeled around on the reporters.
“You want to know why I was questioned? I was questioned because the department needs to sacrifice somebody. To keep the peace. Doesn’t matter who it is, as long as they fit the bill. That’s where I came in. I fit the — ”
Bosch grabbed Sheehan and yanked him away from the microphones.
“Come on, Frankie, forget about them.”
By moving between two parked cars they were able to cut off the clot of reporters and cameramen. Bosch pushed Sheehan quickly to his slickback and opened the door. By the time the reporters followed in single file to the car, Sheehan was inside and safe from the microphones. Bosch went around to his side and got in.
They drove in silence until they were on the 101 Freeway going north. Bosch then glanced over at Sheehan. His eyes were staring ahead.
“You shouldn’t have said that, Frankie. You’re fanning the fire.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the fire. Not anymore.”
Silence returned. They were on the freeway cutting through Hollywood and traffic was light. Bosch could see smoke rising from a fire somewhere to the south and west. He thought about putting KFWB on the radio but decided he didn’t want to know what that smoke meant.
“They give you a chance in there to call Margaret?” he asked after a while.
“Nope. They didn’t give me a chance to do anything other than confess. I’m sure glad you rode into town and saved the day, Harry. I never did get told what you told ’em but whatever it was it sure saved my ass.”
Bosch knew what Sheehan was asking but he wasn’t ready to tell him.
“The media’s probably been out to your house,” he said instead. “Margaret probably got blindsided with this.”
“I got news for you, Harry. Margaret left me eight months ago. Took the girls and moved to Bakersfield. To be near her folks. There’s nobody at my house.”
“Sorry, Frankie.”
“I should’ve told you last night when you asked about them.”
Bosch drove for a little bit, thinking about things.
“Why don’t you get some stuff from your place and come stay at my house? The reporters won’t find you. Until this blows over.”
“I don’t know, Harry. Your house is the size of a box of Girl Scout cookies. I’m already claustrophobic from being in that room all day. Besides, I never met your wife, you know? She’s not going to want some stranger sleeping on your couch.”
Bosch looked at the Capitol Records building as the freeway cut past it. It was supposed to resemble a stack of records with a phonograph stylus on top. But like most of Hollywood time had passed it by. They didn’t make records anymore. Music came on compact discs. They sold record albums in secondhand stores now. Sometimes all of Hollywood seemed like a secondhand store to Bosch.
“My house got wrecked in the earthquake,” Bosch said. “It’s rebuilt now. I even have a guest room . . . and, Frankie, my wife left me, too.”
It felt strange to say it out loud. As if it was some form of confirmation of the death of his marriage.
“Oh, shit, Harry, you guys only got married a year or so ago. When did this happen?”
Bosch looked over at him and then back at the road.
“Recently.”
There were no reporters waiting outside Sheehan’s home when they got there twenty minutes later. Bosch said he was going to wait in the car and make some calls while Sheehan got his things. When he was alone he called his house to check for messages, so he wouldn’t have to play them in front of Sheehan when they got there. But there were none. He put the phone away and just sat. He wondered if his inviting Sheehan to stay at his house had been a subconscious effort to avoid facing the emptiness of the place. After a while he decided it wasn’t. He had lived alone most of his life. He was used to places that were empty. He knew the real shelter of a home was inside yourself.
Light washing across the mirrors caught Bosch’s eyes. He checked the side view and saw the lights of a car that was being parked against the curb a block or so back. He doubted it was a reporter. A reporter would have pulled right into Sheehan’s driveway, made no effort at concealment. He started thinking about what he wanted to ask Sheehan.
A few minutes later his former partner came out of the house carrying a grocery bag. He opened the back door and tossed it in, then got in up front. He was smiling.
“Margie took all the suitcases,” he said. “I didn’t realize that till tonight.”
They took Beverly Glen up the hill to Mulholland and then took it east to Woodrow Wilson. Bosch usually loved driving Mulholland at night. The curving road, the city lights coming in and out of view. But along the way they drove by The Summit and Bosch studied the gate and thought about the Kincaids somewhere behind it in the safety of their home with jetliner views.
“Frankie, I have to ask you something,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“Back on the Kincaid thing, during the investigation, did you talk to Kincaid much? Sam Kincaid, I mean.”
“Yeah, sure. Guy like that you handled with kid gloves. Him and the old man. You be careful, else it might come back on you.”
“Yeah. So you were pretty much keeping him informed on what was happening?”
“Yeah, pretty much. What about it? You’re sounding like those bureau guys who were all over me all day, Harry.”
“Sorry, just asking. Did he call you a lot or did you call him?”
“Both ways. He also had a security guy who was talking to us, staying in touch.”
“D.C. Richter?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Harry, you going to tell me what’s goin’ on or what?”
“In a minute. Let me ask you something first. How much did you tell Kincaid or Richter about Michael Harris, you remember?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, I’m not saying you did anything wrong. A case like that, you keep the principals involved and informed. So did you go to them and tell them you had brought Harris in on the fingerprints and, you know, that you were smoking him in the rooms?”
“Sure we did. Standard operating procedure.”
“Right. And did you tell them about who Harris was and where he came from, that sort of thing?”
“I suppose I did.”
Bosch let it go for a while. He turned onto Woodrow Wilson and drove the winding road down to the house. He pulled into the carport.
“Hey, this looks nice,” Sheehan said.
Bosch put the car into park but paused before getting out.
“Did you tell the Kincaids or Richter specifically where Harris lived?” he asked.
Sheehan looked over at him.
“What are you telling me?”
“I’m asking you. Did you tell any of them where Harris lived?”
“I might have. I don’t remember.”
Bosch got out and headed to the kitchen door. Sheehan got his stuff out of the back seat and followed.
“Talk to me, Hieronymus.”
Bosch unlocked the door.
“I think you made a mistake.”
He went inside.
“Talk to me, Hieronymus.”
Bosch led Sheehan to the guest room and Sheehan threw his bag onto the bed. Back out in the hall Bosch pointed into the bathroom and headed back into the living room. Sheehan was silent, waiting.
“The toilet handle in that one is broken,” Bosch said, not looking at him. “You have to hold it down the whole time it’s flushing.”
He now looked at his former partner.
“We can explain Harris’s fingerprints. He didn’t abduct or kill Stacey Kincaid. In fact, we don’t even think there was an abduction. Kincaid killed his stepdaughter. He was abusing her and killed her, then staged the abduction scene. He got lucky when the prints on the book tied in Harris. He then used it. We think it was him — or his man, Richter — who dumped the body near Harris’s place because he knew where that place was. So think, Francis. I don’t want probablys. I need to know if you told Kincaid or his security man where Harris lived.”
Sheehan looked dumbfounded and his eyes wandered to the floor.
“You’re saying we were wrong about Harris . . .”
“You guys had blinders on, man. Once those prints came up, you could only see Harris.”
Sheehan kept his eyes on the floor and slowly nodded his head.
“We all make mistakes, Frankie. Sit down and think about what I just asked. What did you tell Kincaid and at what point did you tell him? I’ll be right back.”
While he left Sheehan to ponder what he had just been told, Bosch went back down the hall to his bedroom. He stepped in and looked around. It looked the same. He opened the door to the walk-in closet and hit the light. Eleanor’s clothes were gone. He looked down at the floor. Her shoes had been cleared out as well. On the rug he saw a little bundle of netting tied with a blue ribbon. He bent down and picked it up. The netting was wrapped around a handful of rice. He remembered that the chapel in Las Vegas had provided the rice bundles as part of the wedding package — for tossing at the happy couple. Eleanor had kept one as a keepsake. Now Bosch wondered if she had mistakenly left it behind or had simply discarded it.
Bosch dropped the bundle into his pocket and turned off the light.
28
EDGAR and Rider had rolled the television out of the lieutenant’s office and were watching the news when Bosch walked into the squad room after leaving Sheehan at his house. They barely looked up to acknowledge him.
“What?” Bosch asked.
“I guess people didn’t like us cutting Sheehan loose,” Edgar said.
“Sporadic looting and arson,” Rider said. “Nothing like last time. I think we’ll make it if we get through this night. We got roving platoons out there and they’re coming down on anything that moves.”
“No bullshit like last time,” Edgar added.
Bosch nodded and stared at the TV for a few moments. The screen showed firefighters aiming three-inch hoses into the balling flames pouring through the roof of another strip mall. It was too late to save it. It almost seemed as though it was being done for the media.
“Urban redevelopment,” Edgar said. “Get rid of all the strip malls.”
“Problem is, they just put strip malls back,” Rider said.
“At least they look better than before,” Edgar said. “Real problem is the liquor stores. These things always start in the liqu
“Where are we on the warrants?” Bosch asked.
“We’re done,” Rider said. “We just have to take them over to the judge.”
“Who are you thinking about?”
“Terry Baker. I already called and she said she’d be around.”