The Drop (36 page)
“No, refresh me.”
“Thirteen years old, she got grabbed at a mall out there. Never found, nobody ever arrested.”
“You got the guy?”
“Yeah, and get this. When he got a driver’s license three years ago? He gave the girl’s address as his own.”
Rider was silent as she registered Hardy’s audacity.
“I’m glad you got him,” she finally said.
“She’s not the only one. We’re down in Orange County putting it together. But it’s going to get big. The guy claims his number is thirty-seven.”
“Oh, my god!”
“He’s got a closet full of cameras and photos and tapes. There are VHS tapes, Kiz. This guy’s been at this a very long time.”
Bosch knew he was taking a risk in revealing to Rider what he had found while jumping the warrant. They had been partners once but the bulletproof bond they shared then was now rusting through. Still, he risked it. Politics and high jingo aside, if he couldn’t trust her, then he could trust no one.
“You told Lieutenant Duvall all of this?”
“I told the whip. Not everything, but enough. I think they’re coming down with everybody.”
“Okay, I’ll check in and monitor things. I don’t know if the chief will go down there. But he’ll want to get involved. They may want to use the theater here for something like this.”
The PAB complex had a ground-level theater that was used for award programs, special events and major press conferences. This would be one of those.
“Okay, but that wasn’t the main reason I called.”
“Well, what was the main reason?”
“Did you do anything yet about moving my partner out of the unit?”
“Uh, no. I’ve been a little busy this morning.”
“Good. Then don’t. Never mind that.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.”
“And that other thing you mentioned. About me getting the whole five years on the DROP. Is that something you still think you can do?”
“I was pretty sure I could get it done when I made the offer. After this case, I think it’s a cinch. They’re going to want to keep you around, Harry. You’re about to get famous.”
“I don’t want to be famous. I just want to work cases.”
“I understand that. I’ll go for the full five.”
“Thanks, Kiz. And I guess I should get back to it now. A lot going on here.”
“Good luck, Harry. Keep it between the lines.”
Meaning don’t break the rules. The case is too big, too important.
“Got it.”
“And Harry?”
“Yeah.”
“This is why we do this. Because of people like this guy. Monsters like him, they don’t stop until we stop them. It’s noble work. Remember that. Just think how many people you just saved.”
Bosch nodded and thought about the golf clubs carrier. He knew it was going to be something that stayed with him forever. Hardy had been right when he warned that going into 6A would change Bosch.
“Not enough,” he said.
He disconnected and thought about things. Two days ago he didn’t think he could leg out the last thirty-nine months of his career. Now he wanted the full five years. Whatever his failings were on the Irving case, he now understood that the mission didn’t end. There was always the mission and always work to be done. His kind of work.
This is why we do this
.
Bosch nodded. Kiz got that right.
He used the banister to pull himself up to a standing position and then started down the stairs again. He needed to get out of the town house and into the sunlight.
B
y noon a search warrant had been signed by superior court judge George Companioni and the horrors contained inside town house 6A were officially and legally confirmed by Bosch, Chu and other members of the Open-Unsolved Unit. Chilton Hardy was then moved to one of the squad’s cars and transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center for booking by detectives Baker and Kehoe. Bosch and Chu, as the lead investigators, remained behind to work the crime scene.
Soon the street outside the side-by-side town houses where Hardy had lived as his father and carried out his ghastly desires took on a circus atmosphere as reports of the horrific findings drew more investigators and law enforcement officers as well as forensic technicians and the media from two counties. It would not be long before tiny Los Alamitos attracted the attention of the entire world as the story was catapulted onto every news site on the Internet as well as the cable and broadcast television networks.
A jurisdictional squabble between the two LAPDs was quickly settled in favor of Los Angeles handling all of the investigative aspects of the case, while Los Alamitos was given site security as well as crowd and media control. The latter included a traffic shutdown on the block and an evacuation of all other residents in the six-unit town house complex where Hardy lived and operated. Both sides dug in for what was expected to be a minimum weeklong crime scene investigation. Both sides brought in onsite media spokesmen to handle the expected crush of reporters, cameras and satellite trucks that would descend on the once quiet neighborhood.
The chief of police and the commander of the Robbery-Homicide Division put their heads together and created an investigative battle plan that had at least one immediate surprise attached. Lieutenant Duvall, supervisor of the Open-Unsolved Unit, was aced out of running the show. What would be arguably her unit’s finest hour and most important investigation was placed in the hands of Lieutenant Larry Gandle, another RHD squad leader who had more experience than Duvall and was considered far more media savvy. Gandle would direct the ongoing investigation.
Bosch couldn’t complain about the move. He had been on Gandle’s homicide team previous to his assignment in OU and they had worked well together. Gandle was a roll-up-his-sleeves kind of guy who trusted his investigators. He was not the kind of supervisor who hid behind closed doors and shuttered blinds.
One of the first moves Gandle made after conferring with Bosch and Chu was to call for a meeting of all the investigators on the scene. They stood together in the dark front room of unit 6A after Gandle temporarily shooed a team of forensic photographers and technicians out.
“Okay, people, listen up,” he said. “I didn’t think we should meet together outside in the sunshine and fresh air. I thought it would be better for us to be in here, where it’s dark and it stinks of death. The indications are that many people died in this place and that they died horribly. They were tortured and murdered and we must respect them and honor them by doing our very best work here. We cut no corners, we bend no rules. We do it right. I don’t care if this guy Hardy is riding in that car right now with Baker and Kehoe and confessing his ass off. We are going to put together a case that is absolutely fucking bulletproof. We all make the vow right now that this guy never sees the light of day again. Destination: death row. Nothing else. Everybody got that?”
There were a few nods across the room. It was the first time Bosch had ever seen the lieutenant giving a pep talk like a football coach. Harry liked it and thought it was a good move to remind everyone in the room how high the stakes were with the investigation.
After the preamble Gandle proceeded to divide responsibilities among the teams. While much of the investigation inside the two town houses would involve the gathering of forensic evidence, the heart of the case would undoubtedly be the videos found in the second bedroom closet and the photos taped to the walls throughout the town house. The OU investigators would be charged with documenting who the victims were, where they came from and what exactly happened to them. It would be a terribly grim task. Earlier, Chu had put one of the DVDs from the bedroom closet into his computer so that he and Bosch could get a sense of what was on the vast collection of tapes and discs. The video showed Hardy raping and torturing a woman to the point that she began begging him—after he pulled down her gag—to kill her and simply put her out of her misery. The video ended with the woman choked unconscious but clearly still breathing and Hardy turning to his camera and smiling. He had gotten what he wanted from her.
In all of his years as a cop, Bosch had seen nothing so gut-wrenching and horrible. There were images on that one disc that he knew were indelible and that he would have to try to push into the recesses of his mind. But there were dozens more discs and tapes and hundreds of photographs. Each would need to be viewed, described, catalogued and placed into evidence. It was going to be painful, soul-searing work, guaranteed to leave the kind of internal scars only homicide cops carry. Gandle said that he wanted everyone in the unit to be open to discussing the harrowing duty with therapists in the department’s Behavioral Sciences Unit. Every cop knew that quietly carrying the horrors of the job inside could be like carrying untreated cancer. Still, seeking help for dealing with the burden was seen by many as a weakness. No cop wanted to be weak, whether it was in the view of the bad guys or their fellow good guys.
Gandle next turned the meeting over to Bosch and Chu, the lead investigators, and they quickly summarized the steps that led them to Hardy and the side-by-side town houses.
They also discussed the dichotomy in the investigation that they now faced. There was a need for speed on one level but also a necessity to move deliberately and carefully to ensure that they conducted the most thorough investigation possible.
The department was under the legal obligation to file charges against Hardy within forty-eight hours of his arrest. He would be brought into court for his first appearance before a judge on Wednesday morning. If by then he was not charged with a crime, he would be released.
“What we’re going to do is file one case against him,” Bosch said. “One murder now and then we add on later when we’re ready with the rest. So on Wednesday we go with Lily Price. Right now, it’s a wobbler but it’s still our best bet. We have a DNA hit, and while it’s not Hardy’s, we think we can prove it puts him at the scene. What we’re hoping is that between now and Wednesday morning we find an image of Lily somewhere in this place.”
Chu held up a 5 × 7 photo of Lily Price taken from the original murder book. It was her yearbook photo. She was smiling and innocent and beautiful. If they found her image anywhere among Hardy’s souvenirs, it wouldn’t look the same.
“We’re talking nineteen eighty-nine so she won’t be on any of the DVDs unless we find out that Hardy was transferring VHS to DVD,” Chu said. “But this is unlikely as there is no transfer machine here and this isn’t the kind of thing you send out to have done.”
“We’re going to take a quick run at the still photos,” Bosch said. “Those of you working the VHS, keep an eye out for her. If we find her on one of this guy’s tapes or photos, then we’re gold on Wednesday.”
When Bosch and Chu were finished, Gandle took back the lead to wrap things up with a final rally cry.
“Okay, people,” he said. “That’s it. We all know what we have to do. So let’s do it. Make it count.”
The group started to break up. Bosch could feel an air of urgency among the detectives. Gandle’s charge had worked.
“Oh, one other thing,” Gandle said. “No time limitations on the work on this. We have full overtime authorization and that comes directly from the chief’s office.”
If the lieutenant was expecting a cheer or even a round of applause, he was disappointed. There was little reaction to the good news that money would flow unabated into the investigation. OT was a good thing and it had been in short supply all year. But there was a reluctance to consider financial remuneration for the work this case would entail. Bosch knew that everyone in the room would work whatever hours were needed whether paid or not.
This is why we do this
.
Bosch thought about what Kiz Rider had said to him earlier. It was all part of the mission and this case told that tale better than most.
I
t took the three teams of detectives assigned to the photographic and video evidence two hours to package all the materials from the second bedroom closet into evidence boxes. As if in a solemn funeral procession three unmarked cars then transported the boxes north to Los Angeles and the PAB. Bosch and Chu were in the last car, three boxes of still photos on the rear seat. There was little to talk about as they drove. They had a grim duty ahead of them and thoughts of preparing for it were all-consuming.
The media relations office had tipped the media to the arrival of the procession and as the detectives carried their boxes into the police headquarters, they were documented by photographers and videographers lined up outside the building’s entrance. This was not done simply to appease the media. Rather, it was part of what would be an ongoing effort to use the media to hammer home with the public—and the local jury pool—that Chilton Hardy was guilty of ghastly deeds. It was part of the subtle complicity that would always exist between the police and the media.
All three of the meeting rooms had been assigned to what was being known as the Hardy Task Force. Bosch and Chu took the smallest room because it did not have video equipment. They were going to sort through still photographs and didn’t need it.
Hardy had shown no apparent rhyme or reason in his cataloguing of the photos. Old and new, the photographs were tossed into several shoeboxes and placed on the shelves of the closet. There was no writing on the front or back of any of them. Several photos were taken of the same individuals but these might be spread across two or three different shoe boxes.
As Bosch and Chu began to go through them, they attempted to group the photos in a variety of ways. First and foremost they tried to put all photos of the same individual together. They then tried to estimate the age of the photos and organize them chronologically. Some of the photos had date stamps on them and these were helpful, though there was no way of knowing if the camera used had been set with the proper date.