The Burning Room

After dropping Soto off at her car at the PAB, Bosch headed back to Hollywood. He put the division’s tactical channel on his car’s scanner and soon learned the location of the alcohol sting involving the station’s Explorers. The current target was a convenience store on La Brea south of Sunset. Bosch moved in close but not too close. His plain-wrap Ford would be easily made as a police vehicle. It would be the height of embarrassment for Bosch’s daughter if he were to spoil the sting.

Bosch spent the next two hours mostly listening to the operation as the sting was carried out at several different locations in Hollywood. No arrests were made. They would be made later after the results of the operation were taken to the City Attorney’s Office for filing of charges against individuals or against the license-holders of the businesses.

When he heard the field supervisor call the code that ended the operation for the night, Bosch headed home, taking Laurel Canyon up to Mulholland and then heading east. This allowed him to cruise by Broussard’s house on his way home. He once more stopped at the overlook and checked on the concrete house but he saw no lights on and no figure on any of the rear balconies. Even the pool light was out.

Bosch managed to leave the overlook without encountering the park ranger Bender and got to his home before his daughter. He texted her to ask for an arrival time but she walked in the door five minutes later. He asked how the night had gone and never let on that he already knew the answer because he had ghosted the operation.

“It was great,” she said. “I put in a fake nose ring. It was fun.”

“How many of them sold you booze?” he asked.

“Just about all of them. It wasn’t random. Each place either had a history already or there had been complaints. One skeezy guy told me he’d only sell me the six-pack if I got behind the counter and gave him oral sex. Isn’t that gross?”

“Yeah.”

Bosch had not heard that while monitoring the tactical channel. He decided to stop asking questions at that point. He just gave his daughter a hug.

“I’m proud of you,” he said.

“Thanks, Dad. You know, I’m dead tired and I have school tomorrow,” she said.

“Then go to sleep.”

“I am. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He watched her head toward the hallway that led to their bedrooms.

“Hey, Mads.”

She turned and looked back at him.

“What is ‘skeezy,’ anyway?”

“I don’t know. Old, creepy, gross.”

He nodded.

“What I thought. Good night.”

“Good night.”





29



Once again Soto was in the squad room ahead of Bosch. He was beginning to think she was throwing down a challenge, seeing who could be more dedicated to the job, who could arrive earliest and stay longest. No partner of his had ever been this way. He was duly impressed.

She didn’t notice him until she heard the clunk of his briefcase on his desk. Then she spun around in her chair and fixed him with wide eyes and a broad smile.

“Harry! I found the nexus!”

“On Bonnie Brae?”

“Yes, Bonnie Brae. I came in early and got back to my tenants list. You were right. There is a connection between Bonnie Brae and EZBank. A big one.”

Bosch pulled his chair over and sat down in front of her.

“Okay, talk me through it.”

She gestured back to the open binder on her desk.

“Well, I’ve been going through the tenants list from ’93. I started on the first floor and finally on the third floor, I found something. Apartment 3-G. A woman named Stephanie Perez lived there in a two-bedroom.”

“Do you remember her from back then? Did you know her?”

“No, the place was too big and I was just a little kid. I didn’t track any grown-ups beyond my parents and the ladies in day care, like Miss Esi.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, sorry to interrupt. Keep going.”

“Okay, so Stephanie Perez was interviewed. Everybody was interviewed by the fire department and the CCS, and the summaries are in binder three here. The interviewers used a number system one through five in evaluating each person as a witness as well as the value of their information—five being the highest in each category. Stephanie Perez was a one-one. So she was interviewed and quickly forgotten because she didn’t know anything. She was twenty-four at the time, unmarried, and worked as a cashier at a Ralphs supermarket. No gang affiliation on record and was at work the morning of the fire.”

“Okay.”

“But she lived alone in a two-bedroom unit, and when she was asked about that empty room, she said her roommate had moved out a month earlier and she was in the process of trying to find a new one.”

Bosch reflexively jumped her story.

“One of our EZBank people looked at the place to rent.”

“No, but I thought maybe that was a possibility too. So I tracked Stephanie Perez down to see what, if anything, she remembered. They had a protocol for all these tenant interviews and it included taking down DL numbers and birth dates. It was easy to find her.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s still in the neighborhood but now lives in a building down on Wilshire. She’s still working at the same Ralphs, too, but now she’s assistant manager and she’s been married, divorced, and has two kids.”

“So when did you call her?”

“About a half hour ago. I waited till seven.”

Bosch gave her a look. Making a call that early was risky. It could anger someone if you woke them up to talk about something that had happened more than two decades ago. Soto read his concern.

“No, she was totally cool with it,” she said. “She was already awake and getting ready for work.”

“You were lucky,” Bosch said. “What did she tell you?”

“She moved out right after the fire, so she never rented the second bedroom. And before the fire she hadn’t interviewed anybody yet. She had just put the ad in La Opinión.”

“So the roommate who moved out is the connection?”

“Exactly. Her old roommate was Ana Acevedo, who worked at EZBank—the one who opened the door.”

Bosch nodded. It was a very good lead and connection. He immediately understood that momentum had just shifted away from the Merced case and was with the Bonnie Brae investigation now. They would need to ride it and that would mean having to finesse Captain Crowder, which might not be easy.

“Is there more?” he asked. “What else did she tell you?”

“It gets better, Harry,” Soto said. “Because it confirms things we already know. Stephanie Perez was the leaseholder on the apartment. She said the reason she asked Ana to move out was because she was juggling two boyfriends, and one of them was a white boy who was mean and had a habit of saying racist things even though he was dating Ana. Stephanie didn’t want to be in the middle of it, especially if the white boy found out about the other boyfriend, because she thought he was the kind of guy who might be violent. She had warned Ana about the situation several times and Ana did nothing about it. So Stephanie told Ana she had to go and she moved out—a month before the fire.”

Bosch remembered the name he had read off the page from the robbery journal borrowed from the captain’s office in Robbery Special.

“Rodney Burrows?”

“That’s what I’m guessing. She didn’t remember names, but when I said Rodney she said yes, one of them was named Rodney. I said, ‘Rodney Burrows?’ and she couldn’t remember a last name. She said she’d look at a six-pack if I brought it by the store today.”

“Okay, what about the other boyfriend?”

“Same thing. I said, ‘Maxim Boiko?’ and she remembered Max but not the last name. She’ll look at a six-pack on him, too.”

“Did she talk about how long these guys were around the apartment? Were they staying over, taking out the trash, things like that?”

“I didn’t get into it in detail—that question about the trash is a good one. But I did get the impression that these guys would stay over and that’s where Stephanie was scared. She was afraid one might come over and surprise Ana when she was with the other.”

“Right.”

Bosch thought about the scenario for a few moments. It did seem to be the connection they were looking for.

“I think we’re in business here, Harry,” Soto said.

Bosch nodded. But his mind was still bumping over other possibilities.

“Did she ever consider that Ana might have started the fire? You know, sort of in revenge for getting kicked out of the apartment?”

“I didn’t ask. We should.”

Harry nodded again.

“Okay,” he said, “so let’s get six-packs together for all three of them and start with Stephanie Perez at Ralphs. Let’s move fast and get out of here before the captain gets in and wants an update on Merced.”

“You got it.”

“By the way, did you check—do any of these EZBank people have records?”

Soto nodded.

“I started address searches and backgrounds on them on Sunday after we got the names off the robbery book. Acevedo and Boiko are clean. But Burrows went to federal prison in ’06 for tax evasion.”

“Tax evasion?”

“Yeah. He didn’t file tax returns for something like six years in the nineties and the feds caught up to him. He cut a deal to limit his time and they put him in Lompoc. He served twenty-two months.”

“Nice. Anything else?”

“That’s all I found.”

“Where’s he live now?”

“Oh, he’s some kind of desert rat or something. He lives out in a place called Adelanto. I looked at his house on Street View. It looks like a shithole surrounded by fences and in the middle of nowhere.”

Bosch nodded. Extreme rural address, tax evasion, washing out of the police academy on a racial insensitivity beef—Bosch was beginning to get a picture of Rodney Burrows.

“Did you request the file on the tax case?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t had time,” she answered defensively. “Yesterday we were going full bore on Merced.”

“I know, I know,” Bosch said. “I’m just asking. What about a mug shot from the feds?”

“There’s one online. I just have to print it.”

“Okay, for Acevedo and Boiko you’ll have to use DL shots, since they’ve got clean records.”

“Okay, but won’t they be current photos? What if she can’t make an ID twenty-one years later? Stephanie said she hasn’t seen any of these people since back then.”

Bosch thought a moment, weighing the risk. Anything they tried that came back wrong or negative could come up and hurt them in trial.

“I still want Perez to look at photos. You put that together and I’ll make a call to somebody I know in the federal building, maybe see if we can get a look at the file or the presentencing report on Burrows. I want to start filling out his profile.”

“You got it.”

“The captain will be here by eight. Let’s get moving.”

“On it.”

“And Lucy, this is really good stuff.”

“Thanks.”

Bosch started pushing himself in his chair back to his desk but then stopped and looked at her.

“You know, I have to say I underestimated you. Two weeks ago I wasn’t sure you even belonged in the unit. Now I have no doubt.”

She didn’t say anything. He nodded and turned back to his desk.

Bosch opened the contact list on his phone and called the cell number he had for Rachel Walling at the bureau. It had to have been at least a couple years since he had used the number or had spoken to her. He hoped the number was still good and that she’d take his call. He also hoped she was still assigned to the Los Angeles office. With the FBI, you never knew. Here today, Miami or Dallas or Philadelphia tomorrow. He remembered that before L.A., Walling had been posted in Minot, North Dakota.

Walling answered the call.

“Well, well, well. Harry Bosch. The man who only calls when he needs something.”

Bosch smiled. He deserved the rebuke.

“Rachel, how are you?”

“Things are good. How about with you?”

“Can’t complain, except they’re just about to pull the rug out from under me here. I’m on the DROP.”

“At least you get to stay till you’re, what, sixty-five?”

“Hey, hold on. I’m not that old yet!”

“I know, but what I’m saying is that around here they kick us out at fifty-seven. There is no such thing as the Deferred Retirement Option Plan here.”

“That isn’t fair. But, hey, you don’t have to worry about that for a couple decades, right?”

He could almost hear her smile.

“Smooth, Harry. You must really, really want something from me.”

“Well, I was just calling to see how you’re doing, but if you really need me to ask for something, then I’ll ask if you’ve got anybody over at the IRS who might look up an old case for me.”

There was a pause but it didn’t last too long.

“You know the IRS doesn’t talk to anybody, not even us. What kind of case is it?”

“Tax evasion in ’06. Guy went away for a couple years. Right now he lives out in the desert and it looks to me like he may be one of these ‘ist’ guys, you know? Extremist, separatist, survivalist, white supremacist—take your pick. Who knows, maybe he’s even a polygamist. Added to that, he didn’t pay taxes for six years. That isn’t an oversight, you know? That’s a choice.”

“Well, if he is all of that, then it’s most likely we had part of the case. What’s your angle? You’re still working cold cases, right?”

“Yeah. And I think this guy was part of a three-man takedown team that pulled off a quarter-million-dollar heist at a check-cashing store in ’93. I think he was the inside man. I want to know about him but I’d also like to know who his KAs at the time were, too.”

“Who died?”

“Nobody in the heist but I’m looking at a fire that started a few blocks away as a diversion. It killed nine people, most of them kids. I think it was before you were out in L.A., Rachel. You were still riding the range in North Dakota.”

“Don’t remind me. Give me what you’ve got and I’ll see what I can find.”

Bosch hesitated here but only for a moment. This was the point where he was vulnerable. He had just laid out his investigation to her in oblique terms. If he now gave her the name and details, there was nothing stopping her from running with the case and possibly grabbing it from the LAPD. But it was Rachel Walling. They had known each other for a long time. Bosch felt safe.

“Rodney Burrows,” he said.

“You have a case number, DOB, anything else?”

“Hold on a second.”

Bosch swiveled in his chair, covered his phone, and asked Soto for the information on Burrows. She held out a legal pad with the information written on it, and Bosch uncovered the phone and read it off to Walling.

“And you have no known associates?”

“No KAs. That’s what I’m hoping to get from you.”

He then turned back to his desk, checking the wall clock as he did so. He knew they had to get out of the squad room or be confronted by Crowder about the Merced case. He stood up.

“Okay?” he said. “You need anything else?”

“Yes,” Walling said. “I need breakfast and you’re going to owe me for this. How about you meet me at nine at the Dining Car?”

Bosch thought about what they were planning with Stephanie Perez at Ralphs. The store wasn’t far from the Pacific Dining Car. There was also the fact that he had skipped breakfast in an unsuccessful attempt to beat Soto into the squad room that morning.

“How about ten?”

“Too late. Nine-thirty.”

“I think I can do that. Is it all right if I bring—”

“Come alone, Bosch. I don’t need to meet another cop.”

“Uh, okay. Sure.”

But he realized he was already speaking into a dead line.