The Burning Room

27



On Tuesday afternoon Bosch and Soto sat in the seventeenth-floor waiting room at the District Attorney’s Office for twenty minutes before being allowed in to see a filing deputy. Bosch thought the wait was because he had asked specifically for John Lewin to review their case. But they didn’t get Lewin. They got a young hotshot named Jake Boland, who proudly hung his Harvard Law sheepskin on the wall of his ten-by-ten office. He was in shirtsleeves after a busy morning of filing cases, his suit jacket on a hanger on the back of his door. Bosch and Soto sat down in side-by-side chairs in front of his desk.

“We’re not here in any official capacity,” Bosch said.

“What do you mean?” Boland asked. “I’m a filing deputy. Let’s file a case.”

“We don’t know if we’re there yet. That’s what I want to hear from you. But I don’t want you to enter it on the log or treat this as a filing request, because if you reject it and we later file it, some defense attorney is going to get that out in front of a jury—that this case was originally rejected by the D.A. So let’s just say we’re here for advice only.”

Boland leaned back as if distancing himself from the detectives and their case.

“Then I can’t really give you a lot of time. I’ve got to file cases. At the end of the day, that’s what they look at here. If I don’t file cases, I don’t get that courtroom assignment I’m in line for.”

“But you have to file good cases. If you file dogs, they’ll never let you near a courtroom.”

“Look, can you just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me so I can get on to the next one? We’ve got a waiting room out there with detectives who actually want to file cases. I know that might be a novel idea to you two, but believe it or not, it does happen.”

At this point Bosch wanted to reach across the desk and grab Boland by his skinny purple tie, but he held his composure. Trading off with Soto, they began to tell the young prosecutor what they had, including the major developments of the morning—namely that the two other weapons found hidden in David Willman’s workbench had been connected by Gun Chung to murders in Las Vegas and San Diego. One before the Merced shooting and one after. Additionally, fingerprints pulled off the Merced murder weapon the evening before were matched to David Willman.

When they were finished, Boland leaned back again and this time drummed a pen against his upturned chin as he considered the story they had just told.

“So you have a hit man out there on this hunting ranch and weapons that tie him to three killings,” he said. “And no connection at all between the killings?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Other than him having possession of all the murder weapons? No. The Vegas thing was a rap DJ who was machine-gunned in his car à la Tupac Shakur. Made the police look at it like a gang thing but it was probably the end of a business deal gone sideways. The one in San Diego was probably a husband taking out his wife for the insurance. That was what was suspected at the time, but he was alibied and the cops had no leads—until we called today.”

Boland paused the drumming for a moment.

“What about the sword?”

“Nothing on that yet.”

“Any idea how these people knew to go to Willman for these hits? I mean, did he advertise on the Internet or what?”

“We don’t know yet, but the agencies involved are on it now.”

Boland nodded.

“By the way, did you get a warrant to search for those weapons?” he asked.

“Nope,” Bosch said. “We were invited to search by one of the current owners of the property.”

Boland frowned.

“Still should’ve papered it to make it clean.”

“It was clean,” Bosch insisted. “The lady there had nothing to do with the case. They bought the house from Willman’s estate six years ago. Why would we need a judge’s signature to search the garage when she said, ‘Please do,’ and the weapons we found were obviously abandoned by the previous owner?”

“Because when in doubt you whip it out—always bring a warrant. Come on, Detective. That’s basic.”

“But there wasn’t any doubt. That search was clean. Are you sure you went to Harvard?”

Boland’s face turned scarlet.

“Detective, you know what else is basic?” he managed to ask. “Not insulting the prosecutor you want to file your case.”

“If you were acting like a prosecutor, there wouldn’t be any insult. And I didn’t ask you to file the case. I asked you what we were missing, what we needed. I didn’t ask you to piss on what we already have.”

Soto put her hand on Bosch’s arm, trying to bring him down. Boland held his hand out in a calming manner.

“Look,” he said. “Let’s start over. Whatever the details of the search, we live with it, and I think what you have here is a case against a dead hit man. But you don’t have a case against Broussard or anybody else. Not even close.”

“Broussard’s wife was having an affair with the intended target,” Soto said.

“Says who?” asked Boland.

“We have the witness and his story adds up,” she answered. “On top of that, the guy who took the shot was Broussard’s business partner. They were best friends since high school. You’re saying that’s not enough?”

Boland put the pen down and leaned forward.

“Guys, seriously, it’s not enough,” he said. “You go forward with what you’ve got and you can count on a number of things happening. First of all, you can count on Broussard having a drop-dead, ironclad alibi. I’m betting he was in another state with at least ten witnesses with him. That’s how these guys do this. Second, you can expect his wife to deny everything—the affair, this Ojeda guy, that her husband could ever have done anything like this. She’ll be a solid witness for the defense. And third, you can expect your witness—Ojeda—to fold before he even gets to the stand. They’ll get to him first and buy him off or scare him off. One or the other.”

Soto shook her head in frustration. Boland continued to dismantle the case in front of them.

“You have nothing that says Broussard asked or paid Willman to do this. Like I said, you might be able to convict Willman, but he’s dead. You need a direct connection between Broussard and the crime, not just Broussard and Willman having known each other since high school. That proves nothing in a court of law.”

“What about the Willman shooting?” Bosch asked.

Boland shrugged.

“It was ruled an accident by Riverside County. Fricking OSHA said it was an accident. I mean, unless you can prove otherwise, it’s no help to our cause. It’s probably not even admissible.”

“What about the lawsuit Broussard settled with Willman’s widow? Do we have any shot of breaking the seal on that?”

“Probably not. These guns you found have nothing to do with that case, do they?”

Bosch reluctantly shook his head. No one wants to be told they’ve come up short—especially when the telling is coming from a pompous prick. But Bosch was finally able to separate Boland’s annoying personality from what he was saying. Harry understood that the young prosecutor was probably right. They didn’t have a case yet. Soto was about to protest the rejection, when Bosch this time reached over to her and put his hand on her arm to stop her.

“So, then, what do we need?” he asked.

“Well, a signed confession is always nice,” Boland said. “But realistically, I would want someone or something that brings us inside the conspiracy. It’s too bad Willman’s dead, because if he was alive we could pit the two principals against each other and play who-talks-first. But that’s obviously not going to happen.”

Bosch knew that Boland’s take on the case was on target. It was depressing to think that Broussard might have successfully sealed himself off from prosecution for the Merced shooting.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Good luck, guys. And believe me, I don’t like shooting holes in cases. I’d much rather file them. But as you said at the beginning, I need to file good, winnable cases, or I’ll be stuck in this little room the rest of my career.”

Bosch stood up to go. As off-putting as Boland’s personality was, Bosch knew the same aspects of confidence, smarm, and ability to forecast and strategize a case would make him a solid prosecutor when he finally got that courtroom job.

Bosch and Soto walked down Spring Street back to the PAB. Their next stop would be the captain’s office, where he and his lieutenant were overdue for the promised update on the case. Considering Boland’s response to their efforts so far, Bosch knew that the next meeting would not go any better. Captain Crowder had told him that morning that he was getting a lot of pressure from the tenth floor and needed results. Bosch had asked for the rest of the day, and now they were at the point that Crowder would be waiting for them because the tenth floor was waiting for him.

“You want me to go in with you?” Soto asked.

“I think I can handle them,” Bosch said.

“What do you say is next?”

“Not sure yet. What do you think about me telling them we’re going to be putting some pressure on Broussard to see how he reacts?”

“What kind of pressure?”

“I’m still thinking. Maybe knocking on his door, maybe planting a story in the paper.”

“You knock on his door and he’ll probably lawyer up on the spot.”

“If he does that, then that says something right there.”

“What would a story in the paper say?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that we have narrowed in on a suspect. Mention no names. Maybe we put it out there that we’ve got the murder weapon.”

“That would sure let Broussard know we’re close.”

“And that’s the risk. Do we want to show our hand like that? It’s a desperate move. Are we there yet? I don’t know.”

Bosch hated the idea of acting desperately. A move like that put the following move in someone else’s hands. It meant losing control of the investigation—bringing the media in, which was always risky, and waiting for the suspect to react, which was never guaranteed and couldn’t be fully anticipated.

Bosch had seen it work beautifully before and he had seen it go horribly wrong. He had once been on a case where the lead team decided to plant a story saying the task force was closing in on a suspected serial rapist and killer. They dropped in one piece of evidence they knew would let the suspect know that they were specifically closing in on him—that the man they were looking at was a respected husband and father with a white-collar job. The 911 calls starting coming in shortly after. The man grabbed his boss and holed up in a supply closet, keeping a pair of scissors to his hostage’s neck. The police moved in but were too late to stop the murder-suicide that ensued in the closet. There simply was no telling what would happen if Broussard learned that the Merced investigation was getting close to him.

Bosch thought about the fund-raiser scheduled for that night at the Beverly Hilton. They could possibly put some pressure on Broussard there—without having to resort to the media. At minimum they could get their first up-close look at the man they believed was behind the Merced shooting.

“Whatever you want to do, Harry,” Soto said. “I’m with you.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Tonight? I don’t know. You want to go to Broussard’s house?”

“No, but there’s a fund-raiser he’s hosting away from the house. I was thinking of going just to get a look at him, maybe have him get a look at us. I can try to use it to put Crowder off for another day. Tell him we’ll meet tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a plan. I’m in.”

“Okay, then.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.