The Burning Room

36



They decided it was too risky to go directly to the house. There was no telling if Broussard would be home, and even if he wasn’t, the exterior camera surveillance of the house suggested that there might also be interior monitoring of the premises as well as of his wife. Instead, Bosch and Soto put the house under surveillance, taking a position at the public overlook a block away. The plan was to wait for Maria Broussard to leave the home and then move in at the appropriate moment to confront her about the anonymous calls and ask her what she knew about the Merced shooting.

They split the surveillance, with one of them remaining in the car and the other sitting on one of the benches out on the overlook. It gave them front and back angles on the Broussard property fifty yards away. To help avoid boredom, they switched posts every thirty minutes, stopping long enough during the change to discuss the case or whatever else had come to mind.

During one of the transitions, Bosch told Soto about a previous surveillance he had been involved in on Mulholland Drive. It was a case from almost twenty years before when he had been assigned to the Hollywood Division detective squad and was partnered with Jerry Edgar. Edgar was a stylish dresser who liked custom-tailored suits and tasseled shoes. They were watching a house and were not even sure the subject—a suspect in a series of rapes and murders—was inside. It was winter cold but in the car it was stuffy because the windows were up. Both detectives had stripped off their suit jackets. The sun went down and no lights were visible from the house under surveillance. An hour went by and took them into full darkness. Still no light behind any of the windows of the house. Frustrated, Bosch finally said he was going to climb down the hillside and try to get a look at the back of the house for signs of life. Edgar urged him not to go. He warned that in the darkness he might easily slip and fall, possibly hurting himself, not to mention dirtying his clothes. Bosch told him not to worry as he reached over the seat to grab his jacket.

Sure enough, Bosch fell down the hillside. He didn’t hurt himself except for a few minor scrapes and bruises. But he muddied his clothes and ripped the seam between his suit jacket’s sleeve and shoulder. He also determined that the house in question was empty.

The surveillance a bust, Bosch and Edgar drove back to Hollywood Station, where it was revealed in the harsh fluorescent light of the squad room that the torn and muddied jacket Bosch wore was Edgar’s.

Soto laughed so heartily at the story that she didn’t hear Bosch when he announced “Car!”

He had to grab her arm and tell her again.

“There’s a car pulling out,” he said, directing her back toward their Ford. “Let’s go.”

“Can you tell, is it her?” Soto asked.

“I can’t see the driver. But that’s a woman’s car.”

“Oh, really? What makes it a woman’s car?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t see a guy driving that.”

They jumped in the Ford and Bosch started the engine. The car that had left the Broussard residence was coming their way. Bosch waited for it to pass the parking turnout and then pulled onto Mulholland behind it. The car was a two-seat silver Mercedes. Its windows were tinted and there was no way to confirm who the driver was, let alone if it was a woman. He realized that his comment about the car was probably sexist but his gut told him there was a woman driving that car. Whether it was because of the model of the car or not, he had to go with it.

“It’s gotta be her,” he said.

“Better hope so,” she said.

They got no help with a confirmation when Soto called the com center and asked an operator to run the Mercedes’s plate. The car was registered to Broussard Concrete Design, which meant it could easily have been driven by either one of the Broussards.

Bosch gave the Mercedes some distance and followed it west on Mulholland. At the light at Laurel Canyon it went straight and Harry began to entertain all manner of paranoid ideas about them being led astray. Perhaps they had been spotted on the overlook and someone left the house in the Mercedes on a leisurely cruise along the mountain ridge in an effort to pull them far off the surveillance.

But finally the car turned right and started down the northern slope of the mountain on Coldwater Canyon Boulevard. The car now appeared headed into Sherman Oaks or Van Nuys, but then it turned sharply just before Ventura Boulevard into the parking lot of a Gelson’s supermarket. Bosch quickly made up the ground between them and pulled in as well. He got eyes on the Mercedes and parked one lane away from it.

When the driver’s door of the Mercedes opened, it was indeed a woman who emerged from the vehicle. She was small and dressed in silver pants and a knee-length coat worn open over a pale blouse. She had blond hair, which threw Bosch because he expected a brunette.

“Is that her?” he asked. “She’s blond? Didn’t she have dark hair in the photo from the mayor’s election?”

“She did,” Soto said. “She also has dark hair on the DL issued three years ago.”

Bosch opened his door.

“Let’s go in,” he said.

They followed the woman in and watched as she pulled a shopping cart out of the stack and proceeded down the store’s first aisle. Gelson’s was an upscale chain that attracted customers who were interested in quality over price. As the woman began filling her cart, Bosch didn’t see her check a single price tag. It gave him confidence that they were following Maria Broussard. Still, the blond hair threw him and he wasn’t sure why.

“It’s a dye job,” Soto whispered when they casually moved in closer to the woman in the produce section.

“How do you know?” Bosch whispered back.

She held up her phone to him. On the screen was a photograph Soto had Googled of Charles and Maria Broussard. It showed them embracing for the camera. Maria had dark brown hair.

Soto then thumbed to the next image, and the screen displayed the same woman with blond hair.

“She’s dyed it,” she said. “Judging by dates here, I’d say sometime in the past year.”

“Okay,” Bosch said. “Let’s talk to her.”

They moved in on her from either side of an end display of bananas.

“Mrs. Broussard?” Bosch asked.

The woman looked up from the banana bunch she was considering with an easy smile. It froze when she saw a stranger’s face. It then dropped off her face like an avalanche when she saw the badge he was holding.

“Yes?” she said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We want to talk to you about your husband and the phone calls you’ve been making.”

“I don’t know what you mean. My husband’s fine. I was just with him at our home fifteen minutes ago.”

“We’re talking about the anonymous calls to the police tip line from your house,” Soto said.

Maria Broussard spun around, not realizing that Soto was behind her.

“That is crazy,” she said, her voice tight with panic. “I have never made a call to the police, anonymous or otherwise. Calls about what?”

Bosch studied her for a moment, trying to read her. Something wasn’t tracking here.

“About the shooting of Orlando Merced,” he said.

He saw something flare in her eyes. Some sort of recognition, but he wasn’t sure if it was of the name or something else.

“Stay away from me,” she said.

She grabbed her purse out of the shopping cart and moved between Bosch and Soto and away. She walked as quickly as her high heels allowed her.

Soto started after her.

“Mrs. Broussard—”

Bosch grabbed her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “Something’s wrong. She…”

He didn’t finish. He pulled his phone and went to the recent calls list. He hit the number he had used that morning to make contact with the tech unit. He asked for Marshall Flowers and started moving toward the market’s exit.

“Let’s go,” he said to Soto.

“Where?” she said. “What are we doing?”

Flowers picked up the call.

“Marshall,” Bosch said urgently, “I need you to ping the phone again.”

Flowers seemed confused.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Ping the phone. Do it now.”

“We hit it twenty minutes ago. It hasn’t moved all morning, Detective.”

“Ping it again and call me back. Now.”

He disconnected before Flowers could protest. They exited the store and Bosch saw Maria Broussard striding toward her car. She was on her phone.

“We have fucked up,” Bosch said.

He started walking and then broke into a run toward the Ford. Soto gave chase, calling across the roof of the car when she got there.

“Harry, what are you talking about?”

“The woman I saw had brown hair. Get in.”