The Burning Room

11



Bosch and Soto hurried back to the PAB and divided up the work. It was decided that Bosch would write up the search warrant for the Boyle Hotel records and take it to the CCB to be signed by a judge. Meanwhile, Soto would work on locating the surviving three members of Los Reyes Jalisco—her priority being Angel Ojeda, the trumpet player.

While Soto went for coffee before beginning her task, Bosch went to the captain’s office and knocked on the door. He wanted to give Crowder a brief update on the case. It was unusual for Bosch to keep his supervisor so closely informed about a case but he wanted to make sure Crowder was not falling under the sway of his lieutenant in terms of moving the Merced investigation out of Open-Unsolved and over to Robbery-Homicide. If Crowder knew that progress was being made, he would be less likely to move the case. After all, if Bosch and Soto actually solved it, then Crowder as their supervisor would be in for all the kudos that came with an arrest.

To Bosch’s dismay Crowder picked up his phone and called Samuels into the office so he could hear Bosch’s report. Harry had hoped to keep Samuels out of this loop, since the lieutenant was pushing for the case to be transferred.

Bosch quickly updated both men on the key information from the video-and-data-imaging unit—that they now knew where the shot came from and were working toward finding out who had rented that room at the Hotel Mariachi on the day of the shooting. He didn’t bother telling them about the animation Bailey Copeland had made that indicated the bullet that hit Merced might have been meant for Angel Ojeda, the trumpet player. Bosch wanted to pursue that aspect further before bringing it to Crowder and Samuels. He did tell the two supervisors that Soto was tracing the three other band members so they could be reinterviewed.

“Okay, Harry,” Crowder said. “You’re making good progress. Keep it going.”

“Okay, Cap.”

“We’re putting Holcomb on the tip line,” Samuels said. “Starting today. Quarles has court.”

Sarah Holcomb and Eddie Quarles were one of the other teams in the unit. Quarles was the veteran and Holcomb was one of the new transfers. They had a case that was currently on trial, and as the senior partner, Quarles would have the lead and therefore be assisting and testifying in court. Holcomb could attend trial but would have little to do. Rather than leave her there as a spectator, Samuels pulled her back into the unit to handle the reward calls that came in on Merced. Normally Bosch would have wished for a more experienced detective vetting the calls, but in this case having one of the unit’s rookies on the tip line would work better with a plan he was formulating.

When Bosch got back to his desk he found a cup of coffee from the vending machine on the first floor. A good cup of coffee never came out of that machine but it always did the job and he appreciated that Soto had gotten it for him.

“I’ll get the next round,” he said to his partner, who was already back at her computer.

“No worries,” she said without looking away from her screen. “It all squares up in the end.”

Bosch opened up his laptop and went to work on the warrant. He used a basic template for the first several pages, just filling in blanks about where he wanted to search and what he was looking for. The difficult part was narrowing down where the Boyle Hotel’s old records were currently located. The renovation project had been carried out by one agency and the materials Bosch sought had been turned over to another. That agency, the Historical Society, had them in storage somewhere. But the location of the targeted materials aside, it was the probable cause summary that counted most in the document, and there was no template for that. He had to persuade a judge to grant him the authority to temporarily seize the records of the now-defunct hotel. He had to show cause for why the records were pertinent to his case.

It took him the rest of the morning to finish the search warrant. Shortly before lunch he printed it and asked Soto to read it over. It was a way of instilling “partnership” and teaching her the ropes. The search warrant was one of the investigator’s most useful tools. After she was finished he told her he was going to walk it to the courthouse while she continued to run down locations on their interview subjects. She reported that she had already tracked two members of Los Reyes Jalisco and that they were both local, but Angel Ojeda—the one they most wanted to talk to—was proving difficult to find. He had split from the band and even apparently left Los Angeles very soon after the shooting. Nothing had come up on law enforcement databases, and the INS base showed his Permanent Resident Card had not been renewed three years ago.

“Maybe the other two know where he is,” Bosch suggested.

“That’s what I’m thinking. Or maybe they can give us a line on somebody who can give us a line. Are you free this afternoon to do this?”

“Yeah, we need to keep momentum. We can drop the search warrant at the Historical Society on the way.”

“Cool.”

The place Bosch was going was the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center but nobody ever called it that. The name was too long and too difficult to collapse into the easy parlance cops liked to use. Most cops and lawyers called it the CCB for Criminal Courts Building or the 2-10 for its address on West Temple Street. It was a slightly uphill block from the PAB and Bosch walked it because it would take much longer to drive over and find a parking space.

Bosch was in luck. The on-call judge who handled administrative matters including search warrant applications was Sherma Barthlett, a jurist Bosch had known since she was a prosecutor. They had always had a professional but easy rapport and when Bosch sent word to her through her clerk that he was there with a warrant, he was immediately invited back to her chambers. More often than not the warrants went back to the chambers for the judge’s consideration while the detectives cooled their heels in the empty courtroom.

“Harry, I can’t believe you’re still in the game,” she said as he entered.

She got up and came around from behind her desk to formally shake his hand.

“Barely,” he said. “I’ve got about a year left on my DROP contract but some days I’m not even sure I can make that.”

“You? They’ll probably have to drag you out. Sit down.”

She gestured to a chair in front of her desk while she returned to her spot behind it. She was a very pleasant woman whose easygoing demeanor always belied her ferocity as a prosecutor and now as a judge. Back when she was a prosecutor her nickname was “The Accountant” because not only did she specialize in financial crimes but she had a marvelous memory for all things numerical—from penal code numbers to phone numbers to the sentences received by violators in her cases years before. Bosch had worked with her twice in the nineties on murder cases motivated by financial gain. She had been a taskmaster but he couldn’t complain. They got first-degree verdicts both times. He handed the search warrant application across the desk to her.

“What have we got here?” Barthlett said as she began flipping through the pages to the summary. “This is a records search.”

“Right,” Bosch said. “Looking for a name on a hotel registry.”

“The Historical Society…”

Bosch didn’t respond. She was just reading out loud. He waited.

“I remember the Merced case. I was out of the D.A.’s Office but I do remember this one. So now he’s died.”

“Yes. It’s been in the papers.”

“Between what I do here and my husband and kids, I have so little time to read the paper.…I’m always out of the loop.”

Bosch just nodded, even though the judge’s eyes were on the document he had brought.

The judge picked up a small gavel that was on her desk and Bosch realized that it was actually a pen. She signed the front signature page of the warrant and handed it back to him with a smile.

“I hope it helps, Detective.”

“Me, too. Thanks, Judge.”

He got up and turned to the door.

“When’s your retirement date?” she said to his back.

He looked back at her.

“Supposed to be end of next year,” he said.

“Supposed to be?” she asked.

Bosch shrugged.

“You never know.”

“You’ll make it, Harry,” she said. “And I hope Jerry and I get invited to the party.”

Bosch assumed Jerry was her husband. He smiled.

“You’re on the list.”



From the courthouse he walked through the Pueblo and over to Alameda. His first stop was Philippe’s for a French Dip sandwich. Getting food at Philippe’s had worked the same way for more than a hundred years. Customers lined up at the deli counter in front of carvers and waited patiently to order their sandwiches. The trick was to pick the fastest-moving line. Carvers who were chatty with the customers were slow. Bosch chose a woman who looked like she was all business and he chose right. His line moved efficiently and soon he was sitting at one of the communal tables with his sandwich, a side of potato salad, and a Coke.

The food hit the mark as usual and Bosch was tempted to wait in line for another round but decided to stay hungry. The French Dip hadn’t been the only reason he had chosen Philippe’s. The restaurant was across the street from Union Station. When he was finished Bosch stepped out and crossed Alameda to enter the great hall of the train station. There was a bank of old-style phone booths near the entrance and he went into one to make a quick call, wrapping his tie around the mouthpiece to muffle his voice.