Michael Connelly (73 page)

Sheehan hesitated. It was the moment of truth. If he discussed the IAD investigation he would be breaking enough departmental
regs to get shipped permanently out of RHD. Like Harry.

“I could get busted for talking about that,” Sheehan said. “Could end up like you, out there in the cesspool.”

“It’s all a cesspool, man. Doesn’t matter if you’re on the bottom or the top. You’re still swimming in shit.”

Sheehan took a sip of his coffee.

“IAD had taken a report, this was about two months ago, that Moore was some way involved in the traffic on the Boulevard.
Possibly offering protection, possibly a deeper involvement. The source was not clear on that.”

“Two months ago?” Bosch asked. “Didn’t they get anything? I mean, Moore was still working the street all this time. Wasn’t
there enough to at least put him on a desk?”

“Look, you’ve got to remember that Irving put Chastain with me on this. But I’m not with Chastain. He doesn’t do much talking
to me. All he would tell me was the investigation was in its infancy when Moore disappeared. He had no proof substantiating
or discrediting the claim.”

“You know how hard he worked it?”

“I assume very hard. He’s IAD. He’s always looking for a badge to pull. And this looked like more than just departmental charges.
This would have gone to the DA. So I assume he had a hard-on for it. He just didn’t get anything. Moore must’ve been very
good.”

Not good enough, Bosch thought. Obviously.

“Who was the source?”

“You don’t need that.”

“You know I do. If I’m going to be a free agent on this I have to know what’s what.”

Sheehan hesitated but didn’t make a good show of it.

“It was anonymous — a letter. But Chastain said it was the wife. That’s what he figured. She turned him in.”

“How’s he so sure?”

“The details of the letter, whatever they were, Chastain said they would only be known by someone close to him. He told me
it wasn’t unusual. It often comes from the spouse. But he said that a lot of times it’s bogus. A wife or husband will report
something totally false, you know, if they are going through a divorce or something, just to fuck the other up with work.
So, he spent a lot of time just seeing if that was the case here. ’Cause Moore and his wife were splitting up. He said she
never admitted it but he was sure she sent it. He just never got very far with substantiating what was in it.”

Bosch thought of Sylvia. He was sure they were wrong.

“Did you talk to the wife, tell her the ID was confirmed?”

“No, Irving did that last night.”

“He tell her about the autopsy, ’bout it not being suicide?”

“I don’t know about that. See, I don’t get to sit down with Irving like you with me here and ask him everything that comes
into my head.”

Bosch was wearing out his welcome.

“Just a few more, Frankie. Did Chastain focus on black ice?”

“No. When we got this file of yours yesterday, he about shit his pants. I got the feeling he was hearing about all that side
of it for the first time. I kind of enjoyed that, Harry. If there was anything to enjoy about any of this.”

“Well, now, you can tell him all the rest I told you.”

“No chance. This conversation didn’t take place. I gotta try to put it all together like it was my own before I hand anything
over to him.”

Bosch was thinking quickly. What else was there to ask?

“What about the note? That’s the part that doesn’t fit now. If it was no suicide then where’s this note come from?”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. That’s why we gave the coroner such a hard time. Far as we can guess, he either had it all along
in his back pocket or whoever did him made him write it. I don’t know.”

“Yeah.” Bosch thought a moment. “Would you write a note like that if somebody was about to put you down on the floor?”

“I don’t know, man. People do things you’d never expect when they’ve got the gun on them. They always’ve got hope that things
might turn out all right. That’s the way I see it.”

Bosch nodded. But he didn’t know if he agreed or not.

“I gotta go,” Sheehan said. “Let me know what comes up.”

Bosch nodded and Sheehan left him there with two cups of coffee on the table. A few moments later Sheehan was back.

“You know, I never told you, it was too bad about what happened with you. We could use you back here, Harry. I’ve always thought
that.”

Bosch looked up at him.

“Yeah, Frankie. Thanks.”

The Medfly Eradication Project Center was at the edge of East L.A., on San Fernando Road not far from County–USC Med Center,
which housed the morgue. Bosch was tempted to drop by to see Teresa but he figured he should give her time to cool. He also
figured that decision was cowardly but he didn’t change it. He just kept driving.

The project center was a former county psychiatric ward which had been abandoned to that cause years earlier when Supreme
Court rulings made it virtually impossible for the government — in the form of the police — to take the mentally ill off the
streets and hold them for observation and public safety. The San Fernando Road ward was closed as the country consolidated
its psych centers.

It had been used since for a variety of purposes, including a set for a slasher movie about a haunted nuthouse and even a
temporary morgue when an earthquake damaged the facility at County–USC a few years back. Bodies had been stored in two refrigerated
trucks in the parking lot. Because of the emergency situation, county administrators had to get the first trucks they could
get their hands on. Painted on the side of one of them had been the words “Live Maine Lobsters!” Bosch remembered reading
about it in the “Only in L.A.” column in the
Times
.

There was a check-in post at the entry manned by a state police officer. Bosch rolled down the window, badged him and asked
who the head medfly eradicator was. He was directed to a parking space and an entrance to the administration suite.

The door to the suite still said No Unescorted Patients on it. Bosch went through and down a hallway, nodding to and passing
another state officer. He came to a secretary’s desk where he identified himself again to the woman sitting there and asked
to see the entomologist in charge. She made a quick phone call to someone and then escorted Harry into a nearby office, introducing
him to a man named Roland Edson. The secretary hovered near the door with a shocked look on her face until Edson finally told
her that would be all.

When they were alone in the office, Edson said, “I kill flies for a living, not people, Detective. Is this a serious visit?”

Edson laughed hard and Bosch forced a smile to be polite. Edson was a small man in a short-sleeved white shirt and pale green
tie. His bald scalp had been freckled by the sun and was scarred by misjudgments. He wore thick, rimless glasses that magnified
his eyes and made him somewhat resemble his quarry. Behind his back his subordinates probably called him “The Fly.”

Bosch explained that he was working a homicide case and could not tell Edson a lot of the background because the investigation
was of a highly confidential nature. He warned him that other investigators might be back with more questions. He asked for
some general information about the breeding and transport of sterile fruit flies into the state, hoping that the appeal for
expert advice would get the bureaucrat to open up.

Edson responded by giving him much of the same information Teresa Corazón had already provided, but Bosch acted as if it was
all new to him and took notes.

“Here’s the specimen here, Detective,” Edson said, holding up a paperweight. It was a glass block in which a fruit fly had
been perpetually cast, like a prehistoric ant caught in amber.

Bosch nodded and steered the interview specifically toward Mexicali. The entomologist said the breeding contractor there was
a company called Enviro-Breed. He said EnviroBreed shipped an average of thirty million flies to the eradication center each
week.

“How do they get here?” Bosch asked.

“In the pupal stage, of course.”

“Of course. But my question is how?”

“This is the stage in which the insect is nonfeeding, immobile. It is what we call the transformation stage between larva
and imago — adult. This works out quite well because it is an ideal point for transport. They come in incubators, if you will.
Environment boxes, we call them. And then, of course, shortly after they get here metamorphosis is completed and they are
ready to be released as adults.”

“So when they get here, they have already been dyed and irradiated?”

“That is correct. I said that.”

“And they are in the pupal stage, not larva?”

“Larvae is the plural, Detective, but, yes, that is essentially correct. I said that, also.”

Bosch was beginning to think Edson was essentially an officious prick. He was sure they definitely called him The Fly around
here.

“Okay,” Harry said. “So what if, here in L.A., I found a larvae, I mean a larva, that was dyed but not irradiated? Is that
possible?”

Edson was silent a moment. He didn’t want to speak too soon and be wrong. Bosch was getting the idea that he was the type
of guy who watched “Jeopardy” on the tube each night and barked out the answers ahead of the contestants even if he was alone.

“Well, Detective, any given scenario is possible. I would, however, say the example you just gave is highly unlikely. As I
said, our suppliers send the pupae packages through an irradiation machine before they are shipped here. In these packages
we often find larvae mixed with the pupae because it would generally be impossible to completely separate the two. But these
larvae samplings have been through the same irradiation as the pupae. So, no, I don’t see it.”

“So if I had a person who on their body carried a single pupa that had been dyed but not irradiated, that person would not
have come from here, right?”

“Yes, that would be my answer.”

“Would?”

“Yes, Detective, that
is
my answer.”

“Then where would this person have come from?”

Edson gave it some thought first. He used the eraser end of a pencil he had been fiddling with to press his glasses up on
the bridge of his nose.

“I take it this person is dead, you having introduced yourself as a homicide detective and obviously being unable to ask the
person this question yourself.”

“You should be on ‘Jeopardy,’ Mr. Edson.”

“It’s Doctor. Anyway, I couldn’t begin to guess where the person would have picked up this specimen you speak of.”

“He could have been from one of the breeders you mentioned, down in Mexico or over in Hawaii, couldn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s a possibility. One of them.”

“And what’s another?”

“Well, Mr. Bosch, you saw the security we have around here. Frankly, there are some people who are not happy with what we
are doing. Some extremists believe nature should take its course. If the medfly comes to southern California, who are we to
try to eradicate it? Some people believe we have no business being in this business. There have been threats from some groups.
Anonymous, but nevertheless, threats to breed nonsterile medflies and release them, causing a massive infestation. Now, if
I were going to do that, I might dye them to obfuscate my opponent.”

Edson was pleased with himself on that one. But Bosch didn’t buy it. It did not fit with the facts. But he nodded, indicating
to Edson that he would give it some consideration and thought. Then he said, “Tell me, how do these deliveries from the breeders
get here? For example, how do they get here from the place down in Mexicali you deal with?”

Edson said that at the breeding facility thousands of pupae were packed into plastic tubes resembling six-foot-long sausages.
The tubes were then strung in cartons complete with incubators and humidifiers. The environment boxes were sealed at the EnviroBreed
lab under the scrutiny of a USDA inspector and then trucked across the border and north to Los Angeles. The deliveries from
EnviroBreed came two to three times a week, depending on availability of supply.

“The cartons are not inspected at the border?” Bosch asked.

“They are inspected but not opened. It could endanger the product if the cartons were opened. Each carton contains a carefully
controlled environment, you understand. But as I said, the cartons are sealed under the eye of government inspectors, and
each carton is reinspected upon the breaking of such seals at the eradication center to make sure there has been no tampering.
Um, at the border, the Border Patrol checks the seal numbers and cartons against the driver’s bill of lading and our separate
notification of transport crossing. It’s very thorough, Detective Bosch. The system was all hashed out at the highest levels.”

Bosch said nothing for a while. He wasn’t going to debate the security of the system, but he wondered who designed it at the
highest levels, the scientists or the Border Patrol.

“If I was to go down there, to Mexicali, could you get me into Enviro-Breed?”