The Burning Room

Rachel Walling was waiting for Bosch in a booth in a back room of the restaurant on 6th Street. It was the room reserved for heavy hitters and regulars. With three round tables for big parties and three booths for smaller parties, the room was at capacity, and Bosch recognized half the faces from City Hall. He wasn’t sure who they all were but they were at least mid-level important or they wouldn’t be eating breakfast at 9 a.m. on a workday.

Rachel Walling didn’t look like she had aged a day since he had last seen her. Her jawline was cut sharply, her neck taut, her brown hair with hints of raven in it. Her eyes were always the thing with Bosch. Dark, piercing, unreadable. A vibration went through him as he approached, a reminder of what could have been. There was a time when he had this woman, and then things went wrong. When it came to the women in his life, there were only a few regrets. She would always be one of them.

She smiled and put aside the folded newspaper she had been reading as he slid into the booth.

“Harry.”

“Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not that late. Are things happening?”

“Beginning to.”

Walling indicated the newspaper she had put to the side.

“You were in the paper last week about that mariachi musician dying. Can I ask, were you asking about Rodney Burrows in regard to that?”

“Not really, no. I have other cases. You know how it is.”

“Sure. I was just curious about the fit on this.”

“No, like I told you on the phone, I’m interested in the fire that killed all those kids. Were you able to get me something? I see the newspaper but I don’t see a file or anything.”

She smiled as if parrying an insult.

“You know we don’t give files out. We’re not really the sharing kind.”

The waiter came up with a coffeepot and Bosch signaled that he’d take a cup. The waiter asked if they knew what they wanted to order or needed a menu. Bosch hadn’t needed a menu in the Pacific Dining Car in twenty-five years. He looked at Rachel.

“Are we going to eat or is this going to be short and sweet?” he asked.

“We’re going to eat,” she said. “I told you, I’m hungry.”

They ordered without the menu and the waiter went away. Bosch took a draw of hot coffee and then fixed Walling with a look that said it was time to give.

“So,” he said. “Rodney Burrows…”

She nodded.

“Okay, this is the deal,” she said. “You had Rodney Burrows pegged correctly and he was on our radar for a long time, but then he went away on the tax conviction and he’s been quiet ever since. At least we think so. So I need to know if the bureau is going to be embarrassed by anything you are doing.”

Bosch shook his head emphatically.

“Not unless the bureau dropped the ball in ’93. This is strictly a cold case investigation. This guy lives out in Adelanto now and as far as I know he’s been quiet as a mouse.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you on that.”

“So tell me what you’ve got. When did he hit the FBI radar?”

“Well, by the mid-nineties we started watching a lot of these types. You know, militia sympathizers, Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity—all those ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ anti-government hate groups. In the space of two years we had Waco and Ruby Ridge and you couple that with the riots in ’92 right here in L.A. and you sort of have this call to arms that speaks to a lot of these fringe dwellers. Some of them, like your guy, believed the riots constituted the first warning of a coming race war. Mix in your standard anti-government views, stand-your-ground arms accumulation, and a lot of those other ‘ist’ allegiances you mentioned earlier, and you have yourself a loose-form movement. We picked up on this happening in many places across the country. Obviously there were many that didn’t get our notice—the Oklahoma City bombing happened in ’95.”

“So what about Burrows?”

“He and some of his fellow numbskulls formed something they called the WAVE. It was a benign-sounding acronym standing for White American Voices Everywhere. They became part of this national association of groups that wanted to close borders and get ready to defend white America when the race war began.”

“Didn’t Charlie Manson preach the same thing back in the day?”

“He did. But just like somebody should have been watching Manson back in the day, we did start watching Burrows and his group.”

“When?”

“We didn’t get onto them until about ’94, when they started putting leaflets on windshields from L.A. to San Diego—which, by the way, they called Ban Diego.”

“Cute. My case was a year before that.”

“I know. I can’t directly help you there. You asked me what we had on Burrows and it’s all ’94 and on.”

“What were they doing besides printing up leaflets?”

“Nothing much. They had a compound out near Castaic and they shot their guns off and trained recruits and listened to a lot of speed metal on the stereo. Your basic hate group—long on rhetoric but not much else. The boldest thing they ever did was print up a racist manifesto and put out leaflets inviting people to an open house at the training camp. We kept a loose watch on them, had a plant inside the clubhouse, and the determination was that these guys were all talk and no walk. They would not start the war, they would just be cheerleaders when it came.”

“A plant? Did you bug the place?”

“No, we had a CI. One of the members of WAVE got jammed up on something else and agreed to inform.”

“Where’d the money come from for this compound? Did these guys have jobs? What?”

“The summaries I read before coming here described them as very well-funded, but the source of that funding was not determined. These guys were security guards and long-range truckers. It didn’t account for their funding.”

“The robbery I’m talking about netted two hundred sixty thousand. There was another one a few months before that that could have been connected.”

“Well, that could explain it, but I saw nothing about that in the summaries.”

“Was Burrows the top man?”

“No, he was just a worker bee. WAVE was started by a guy named Garret Henley, who was a long-haul trucker. He was the initial recruiter.”

Bosch got out his notebook to write the name down.

“You won’t be able to talk to him,” Walling said. “He died twelve years ago. Killed himself after being indicted for tax evasion. He knew he was going to go away. That’s how we got most of these guys—they stopped paying taxes.”

“Then, who else?” Bosch asked. “Who were Burrows’s known associates? My case involved him and two gunmen.”

Walling reached over and unfolded the newspaper she had put to the side. For the first time Bosch could see she had written notes on the edges of the columns. Walling read her own notes and then flipped the paper closed again.

“The summaries said there were two brothers who were tight with Burrows. Matt and Mike Pollard. Also, if you are looking for a getaway driver, there was a wannabe stock car driver named Stanley Nance in the group. His nickname was ‘Nascar Nance.’ Maybe he was your driver.”

Bosch liked all of this. It seemed to fit. Walling read his excitement.

“Now, before you jump up and start doing an Irish jig, I ran a quick check on these three guys and you’re not going to like what I found,” she said.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“Well, Nascar Nance is driving the big oval in the sky. He killed himself in ’96 when he hit a bridge abutment at ninety-five miles an hour on the five. And both the Pollards were sent to federal prison for tax evasion but only one came out alive. Mike Pollard was sent to Coleman, which is in Florida, where he was stabbed to death in the prison library in ’06. Case was never solved and is suspected of being racially motivated.”

“And the other one?”

“Matt Pollard served his time in Lewisburg and paroled out in ’09. He had a five-year tail and reported to the federal parole office in Philadelphia. But he cleared parole two months ago and his whereabouts are currently unknown. These diehard anti-government types like to stay below the radar. They avoid driver’s licenses, Social Security, paying taxes, and so on.”

Bosch frowned and was reminded that Ana Acevedo had likewise dropped off the grid. But then he thought of something that seemed like a discrepancy regarding the men of WAVE.

“Burrows didn’t go to prison until ’06,” he said. “And he was out in twenty-two months.”

“What can I tell you? The process is slow,” Walling said. “I don’t know the details of each case but they went after these guys one at a time, and Burrows came up last, I guess.”

That didn’t sound right to Bosch.

“Okay, but Burrows went up to the country club at Lompoc,” he said. “How does he get Lompoc, and the Pollards get Lewisburg and Coleman? Those are hard places. It sounds like Burrows caught a break.”

Walling nodded.

“You’d have to pull all three cases and see how they lined up differently. You didn’t ask me to do that. You asked about Burrows. Who knows, maybe his offenses were not as extensive. Plus he took a deal, and maybe the other two went to trial. A lot of things can explain the discrepancy.”

“I know, I know. I’m just wondering if he got a payoff for being the confidential informant all those years before.”

Walling shook her head.

“There was nothing in the file I looked at that said anything about substantial assistance being given by the defendant,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Bosch said.

“Either way, you’re now asking things above my pay grade. I don’t have access to CI lists. For obvious reasons, those are under lock and key.”

“Did you write down any of the case numbers? I could talk to the prosecutor.”

“I did.”

“What about the case agent who handled WAVE? Who was that?”

“Nick Yardley. And he’s still in the L.A. office.”

“Think he’d talk to me?”

“He might, but you have to remember, Burrows went to prison on an IRS case. Technically we would only have been assisting. Nick might shine you onto them, and if that happens you can forget it. IRS agents don’t talk to locals.”

“I know.”

“If you talk to Nick, don’t tell him you’ve talked to me. Tell him your information comes from the court file.”

“Of course.”

The waiter came with the food then. Bosch wanted to leave and keep moving with the case but he knew if he was rude to Rachel she might never help him again. He didn’t want to risk that.

They started to eat and he tried some small talk.

“So what’s Jack doing these days?” he asked.

Jack was Jack McEvoy, the former Times reporter that Rachel had been with for the past few years. Bosch knew McEvoy as well.

“He’s doing well,” she said. “He’s happy—and lucky, considering today’s journalism market.”

“He’s still working on that investigative website?”

“He recently jumped to a different one. It’s called Fair Warning. It’s consumer protection investigations and reporting. You should check it out. The government, the newspapers—nobody’s really watching out for Joe Citizen anymore. They do some interesting stuff on the site. And he loves the work again.”

“That’s great. I will check it out. Fair Warning dot com?”

“Dot org. It’s a nonprofit.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look at it.”

Bosch thought about asking her about the tightrope she walked at the bureau by being in a relationship with a reporter, but before he said anything, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He put his fork down and checked it. It was a text from Soto.

Ready to go



A not-so-gentle reminder that the case was waiting. He looked at Walling, who was taking her time spreading cream cheese on a bagel.

“You gotta go, right?” she said without looking up from her work.

“Sort of,” Bosch said.

“Then don’t worry about me. Go.”

“Thanks, Rachel. For everything. I’ll grab the check on the way out.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

Bosch took the English muffin off his plate and started to slide out of the booth.

“Don’t forget this,” Rachel said.

She handed the newspaper across the table. Bosch took it from her and stood up.

“Tell Jack he is lucky.”

“What? You mean about the job?”

“No, Rachel, I mean about you.”