The Overlook (12 page)

“You still there, Jack?”

“Uh, yeah, Harry, I’m here. I should tell you that it probably won’t be necessary, you going back to the house and then by Kent’s office.”

Bosch shook his head.
I knew it
, he thought.

“You’ve already scooped everybody up, haven’t you?”

“Wasn’t my call. Anyway, from what I hear, the office was clean and we have Kent’s partner in here being questioned right now. We brought Mrs. Kent in as kind of a precautionary thing. We’re still talking to her, too.”

“Not your call? Then whose call was it, Rachel’s?”

“I’m not going to get into that, Harry.”

Bosch killed the car’s engine and thought about how to respond.

“Well, then maybe my partner and I should head downtown to TIU,” he finally said. “This is still a homicide investigation. And last I heard, I was still working it.”

There was a long thread of silence before Brenner responded.

“Look, Detective, the case is taking on larger dimensions. You have been invited to the status meeting. You and your partner. And at that time you will be updated on what Mr. Kelber has had to say and a few other things. If Mr. Kelber is still here with us I will do my best to get you in to speak with him. And with Mrs. Kent, too. But to be clear, the priority here is not the homicide. The priority is not finding out who killed Stanley Kent. The priority is finding the cesium and we’re now almost ten hours behind.”

Bosch nodded.

“I have a feeling that if you find the killer you find the cesium,” he said.

“That may be so,” Brenner responded. “But the experience is that this material is moved very quickly. Hand to hand. It takes an investigation with a lot of velocity. That’s what we’re engaged in now. Building velocity. We don’t want to be slowed down.”

“By the local yokels.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure. I’ll see you at ten, Agent Brenner.”

Bosch closed his phone and started to get out. As he and Ferras crossed the lot to the restaurant’s doors, his partner barraged him with questions.

“Why did you lie to him about the wit, Harry? What’s going on? What are we doing here?”

Bosch held his hands up in a calming motion.

“Hold on, Ignacio. Just hold on. Let’s sit down and have some coffee and maybe something to eat and I’ll tell you what is going on.”

They almost had their pick of the place. Bosch went to a booth in a corner that would allow them a clear view of the front door. The waitress came over quickly. She was an old battle-ax with her steel-gray hair in a tight bun. Working graveyard at a Denny’s in Hollywood had leached the life out of her eyes.

“Harry, it’s been a long time,” she said.

“Hey, Peggy. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve had to chase a case through the night.”

“Well, welcome back. What can I get you and your much younger partner?”

Bosch ignored the dig. He ordered coffee, toast and eggs-over medium well. Ferras ordered an egg-white omelet and a latte. When the waitress smirked and told him that neither could be accomplished he settled for scrambled eggs and regular coffee. As soon as the waitress left them alone Bosch answered Ferras’s questions.

“We’re being cut out,” he said. “That’s what’s going on here.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Because they’ve already scooped up our victim’s wife and partner and I can guaran-damn-tee you they are not going to let us talk to them.”

“Harry, did they say that? Did they tell you that we couldn’t talk to them? There’s a lot at stake here and I think you’re being a little paranoid. You’re jumping to—”

“Am I? Well, wait and see, partner. Watch and learn.”

“We’re still going to the meeting at nine, aren’t we?”

“Supposedly. Except now it’s at ten. And it will probably be a dog and pony show just for us. They’re not going to tell us anything. They’re going to sweet-talk us and brush us aside. ‘Thanks a lot, fellas, we’ll take it from here.’ Well, fuck that. This is a homicide and nobody, not even the FBI, brushes me off a case.”

“Have a little faith, Harry.”

“I have faith in myself. That’s it. I’ve been on this road before. I know where it goes. On the one hand, who cares? Let them run with the case. But on the other hand, I care. I can’t trust them to do it right. They want the cesium. I want the bastards who terrorized Stanley Kent for two hours and then forced him down on his knees and put two slugs in the back of his head.”

“This is national security, Harry. This is different. There’s a greater good here. You know, the good of the order.”

It sounded to Bosch like Ferras was quoting from an academy textbook or the code of some sort of secret society. He didn’t care. He had his own code.

“The good of the order starts with that guy lying dead on the overlook. If we forget about him, then we can forget about everything else.”

Nervous about debating his partner, Ferras had picked up the salt shaker and was manipulating it in his hand, spilling salt on the table.

“Nobody’s forgetting, Harry. It’s about priorities. I am sure that when things shake out during the meeting, they will share any information relating to the homicide.”

Bosch grew frustrated. He was trying to teach the kid something but the kid wasn’t listening.

“Let me tell you something about sharing with the feds,” Bosch said. “When it comes to sharing information, the FBI eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse. I mean, don’t you get it? There will be no meeting. They put that out there so we would stay in line until nine and now ten, all the while thinking we’re still part of the team. But then we’ll show up there and they’ll delay it again and then they’ll delay it again until they finally trot out with some organizational chart that’s supposed to make us feel like we’re part of everything when the reality is we’re part of nothing and they’ve run out the back door.”

Ferras nodded as though he was taking the advice to heart. But then he spoke from somewhere else.

“I still don’t think we should have lied to them about the witness. He might be very valuable to them. Something he told us might fit with something they know about already. What’s the harm in telling them where he is? Maybe they take a shot at him and get something we didn’t. Who knows?”

Bosch emphatically shook his head.

“No fucking way. Not yet. The wit is ours and we don’t give him up. We trade him for access and information or we keep him for ourselves.”

The waitress brought their plates and looked from the salt spilled on the table to Ferras and then Bosch.

“I know he’s young, Harry, but can’t you teach him some manners?”

“I’m trying, Peggy. But these young people don’t want to learn.”

“I hear you.”

She left the table and Bosch immediately dug into his food, holding a fork in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. He was starved and had a feeling they’d be on the move soon. When they would next have time for a meal was anybody’s guess.

He was halfway through his eggs when he saw four men in dark suits walk in with unmistakable federal purpose in their strides. Wordlessly, they split into twos and started walking through the restaurant.

There were less than a dozen diners in the place, most of them strippers and their boyfriend pimps heading home from four o’clock clubs, Hollywood night crawlers fueling the engine before putting it to sleep. Bosch calmly continued to eat and watched the men in suits stop at each table, show credentials and ask for IDs. Ferras was too busy splashing hot sauce on his eggs to notice what was happening. Bosch got his attention and nodded toward the agents.

Most of the people scattered among the tables were too tired or buzzed to do anything but comply with the demands to show identification. One young woman with a Z shaved into the side of her head started giving one pair of agents some lip but she was a woman and they were looking for a man, so they ignored her and waited patiently for her boyfriend with the matching Z to show some ID.

Finally, a pair of agents came to the table in the corner. Their creds identified them as FBI agents Ronald Lundy and John Parkyn. They ignored Bosch because he was too old and asked Ferras for his ID.

“Who are you looking for?” Bosch asked.

“That’s government business, sir. We just need to check some IDs.”

Ferras opened his badge wallet. On one side it had his photo and police ID and on the other side his detective’s badge. It seemed to freeze the two agents.

“It’s funny,” Bosch said. “If you’re looking at IDs that means you have a name. But I never gave Agent Brenner the witness’s name. Makes me wonder. You guys over there in Tactical Intelligence don’t happen to have a bug in our computer or maybe our squad room, do you?”

Lundy, the one obviously in charge of the pickup detail, looked squarely at Bosch. His eyes were as gray as gravel.

“And you are?” he asked.

“You want to see my ID, too? I haven’t passed for a twenty-year-old in a long time, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

He pulled out his badge wallet and handed it to Lundy unopened. The agent opened it and examined the contents very closely. He took his time.

“Hieronymus Bosch,” he said, reading the name on the ID. “Wasn’t there some sick creep of a painter named that? Or have I got it confused with one of the bottom-feeders I’ve read about in the overnights.”

Bosch smiled back at him.

“Some people consider the painter a master of the Renaissance period,” he said.

Lundy dropped the badge wallet on Bosch’s plate. Bosch hadn’t finished his eggs yet but luckily the yolks were overcooked.

“I don’t know what the game is here, Bosch. Where’s Jesse Mitford?”

Bosch picked up his badge wallet and used his napkin to clean egg debris off it. He took his time, put the wallet away and then he looked back up at Lundy.

“Who’s Jesse Mitford?”

Lundy leaned down and put both hands on the table.

“You know damn well who he is and we need to take him in.”

Bosch nodded as though he understood the situation perfectly.

“We can talk about Mitford and everything else at the meeting at ten. Right after I interview Kent’s partner and his wife.”

Lundy smiled in a way that carried no friendliness or humor.

“You know something, pal? You’re going to need a Renaissance period yourself when this is all over.”

Bosch smiled again.

“See you at the meeting, Agent Lundy. In the meantime, we’re eating. Can you go bother somebody else?”

Bosch picked up his knife and started spreading strawberry jam from a little plastic container on his last piece of toast.

Lundy straightened up and pointed at Bosch’s chest.

“You better be careful, Bosch.”

With that he turned and headed toward the door. He signaled to the other team of agents and pointed toward the exit. Bosch watched them go.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said.

ELEVEN

THE SUN WAS STILL BELOW the ridgeline but dawn had a full grip on the sky. In daylight the Mulholland overlook showed no sign of the violence of the night before. Even the debris usually left behind at a crime scene—rubber gloves, coffee cups and yellow tape—had somehow been cleaned up or maybe had blown away. It was as if Stanley Kent had not been shot to death, his body never left on the promontory with the jetliner view of the city below. Bosch had investigated hundreds of murders during his time with the badge. He never got over how quickly the city seemed to heal itself—at least outwardly—and move on. To act as though nothing had ever happened.

Bosch kicked at the soft, orange ground and watched the dirt drop over the edge into the brush below. He made a decision and headed back toward the car. Ferras watched him go.

“What are you going to do?” Ferras asked.

“I’m going in. If you’re coming, get in the car.”

Ferras hesitated and then trotted after Bosch. They got back in the Crown Vic and drove over to Arrowhead Drive. Bosch knew that the feds had Alicia Kent but he still had the key ring from her husband’s Porsche.

The fed car they had spotted when they had driven by ten minutes earlier was still parked in front of the Kent house. Bosch pulled into the driveway, got out and headed with purpose to the front door. He ignored the car in the street, even when he heard its door open. He managed to find the right key and get it into the lock before they were hit with a voice from behind.

“FBI. Hold it right there.”

Bosch put his hand on the knob.

“Do not open that door.”

Bosch turned and looked at the man approaching on the front walkway. He knew that whoever was assigned to watch the house would be the lowest man on the Tactical Intelligence totem pole, a screwup or an agent with baggage. He knew he could use this to his advantage.

“LAPD Homicide Special,” he said. “We’re just going to finish up in here.”

“No, you’re not,” the agent said. “The bureau has taken over jurisdiction of this investigation and will be handling everything from here on out.”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t get the memo,” Bosch said. “If you’ll excuse us.”

He turned back to the door.

“Do not open that door,” the agent said again. “This is a national security investigation now. You can check with your superiors.”

Bosch shook his head.

“You may have superiors. I have supervisors.”

“Whatever. You’re not going into that house.”

“Harry,” Ferras said. “Maybe we—”

Bosch waved a hand and cut him off. He turned back to the agent.

“Let me see some ID,” he said.

The agent put an exasperated look on his face and dug out his creds. He flipped them open and held them out. Bosch was ready. He grabbed the agent by the wrist and pivoted. The agent’s body came forward and past him and Bosch used a forearm to press him face first against the door. He pulled his hand—still clutching his credentials—behind his back.

The agent started struggling and protesting but it was too late. Bosch leaned his shoulder into him to keep him against the door and slipped his free hand under the man’s jacket. He found and jerked the handcuffs off the agent’s belt and started cuffing him up.