The Black Ice

Ten
SHE DROVE HIM BACK TO GET HIS CAR NEAR the Red Wind and then followed him out of downtown and up to his home in the hills. She lived in a condo in Hancock Park, which was closer, but she said she had been spending too much time there lately and wanted a chance to see or hear the coyote. He knew her real reason was that it would be easier for her to extricate herself from his place than to ask him to leave hers.
Bosch didn't mind, though. The truth was, he felt uncomfortable at her place. It reminded him too much of what L.A. was coming to. It was a fifth-floor loft with a view of downtown in a historic residence building called the Warfield. The exterior of the building was still as beautiful as the day in 1911 it was completed by George Allan Hancock. Beaux Arts architecture with a blue-gray terracotta facade. George hadn't spared the oil money and from the street the Warfield, with its fleurs-de-lys and cartouches, showed it. But it was the interior—the current interior, that is—that Bosch found objectionable. The place had been bought a few years back by a Japanese firm and completely gutted, then retrofitted, renovated and revamped. The walls in each apartment were knocked down and each place was nothing but a long, sterile room with fake wood floors, stainless-steel counters and track lighting. Just a pretty shell, Bosch thought. He had a feeling George would've thought the same.
At Harry's house they talked while he lit the hibachi on the porch and put an orange roughy filet on the grill. He had bought it Christmas Eve and it was still fresh and large enough to split. Teresa told him the County Commission would probably informally decide before New Year's on a permanent chief medical examiner. He wished her good luck but privately wasn't sure he meant it. It was a political appointment and she would have to toe the line. Why get into that box? He changed the subject.
"So, if this guy, this Juan Doe, was down in Mexicali—near where they make these fruit flies—how do you think his body got all the way up here?"
"That's not my department," Teresa said.
She was at the railing, staring out over the Valley. There were a million lights glinting in the crisp, cool air. She was wearing his jacket over her shoulders. Harry glazed the fish with a pineapple barbecue sauce and then turned it over.
"It's warm over here by the fire," he said. He dawdled a bit over the filet and then said, "I think what it was is that maybe they didn't want anybody checking around that USDA contractor's business. You know? They didn't want that body connected to that place. So they take the guy's body far away."
"Yeah, but all the way to L.A.?"
"Maybe they were . . . well, I don't know. That is pretty far away."
They were both silent with their thoughts for a few moments. Bosch could hear and smell the pineapple sizzling as it dripped on the coals. He said, "How do you smuggle a dead body across the border?"
"Oh, I think they've smuggled larger things than that across, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Ever been down there, Harry, to Mexicali?"
"Just to drive through on my way to Bahia San Felipe, where I went fishing last summer. I never stopped. You?"
"Never."
"You know the name of the town just across the border? On our side?"
"Uh uh."
"Calexico."
"You're kidding? Is that where—"
"Yup."
The fish was done. He forked it onto a plate, put the cover on the grill and they went inside. He served it with Spanish rice he made with Pico Pico. He opened a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. Blood of the gods. He didn't have any white. As he put everything on the table he saw a smile on her face.
"Thought I was a TV dinner guy, didn't you."
"Crossed my mind. This is very nice."
They clicked glasses and ate quietly. She complimented him on the meal but he knew the fish was a little too dry. They descended into small talk again. The whole time he was looking for the opening to ask her about the Moore autopsy. It didn't come until they were finished.
"What will you do now?" she asked after putting her napkin on the table.
"Guess I'll clear the table and see if—"
"No. You know what I mean. About the Juan Doe case."
"I'm not sure. I want to talk to Porter again. And I'll probably look up the USDA. I'd like to know more about how those flies get here from Mexico."
She nodded and said, "Let me know if you want to talk to the entomologist. I can arrange that."
He watched her as she once again got the far-off stare that had been intruding all night.
"What about you?" he asked. "What will you do now?"
"About what?"
"About the problems with the Moore autopsy."
"That obvious, huh?"
He got up and cleared the plates away. She didn't move from the table. He sat back down and emptied the bottle into the glasses. He decided he would have to give her something in order for her to feel comfortable giving him something in return.
"Listen to me, Teresa. I think you and I should talk about things. I think we have two investigations, probably three investigations, here, that may all be part of the same thing. Like different spokes on the same wheel."
She brought her eyes up, confused. "What cases? What are you talking about?"
"I know that all of what I'm about to say is outside your venue but I think you need to know it to help make your decision. I've been watching you all night and I can tell you have a problem and don't know what to do."
He hesitated, giving her a chance to stop him. She didn't. He told her about Marvin Dance's arrest and its relation to the Jimmy Kapps murder.
"When I found out Kapps had been bringing ice over from Hawaii, I went to Cal Moore to ask about black ice. You know, the competition. I wanted to know where it comes from, where you get it, who's selling it, anything that would help me get a picture of who might've put down Jimmy Kapps. Anyway, the point is I thought Moore shined me on, said he knew nothing, but today I find out he was putting together a file on black ice. He was gathering string on my case. He held stuff back from me, but at the same time was putting something together on this when he disappeared. I got the file today. There was a note. It said 'Give to Harry Bosch' on it."
"What was in it? The file."
"A lot. Including an intelligence report, says the main source of black ice is probably a ranch down in Mexicali."
She stared at him but said nothing.
"Which brings us to our Juan Doe. Porter bails out and the case comes to me today. I am reading through the file and I'll give you one guess who it was that found the body and then disappeared the next day."
"Shit," she said.
"Exactly. Cal Moore. What this means I don't know. But he is the reporting officer on the body. The next day he is in the wind. The next week he is found in a motel room, a supposed suicide. And then the next day—after the discovery of Moore has been in the papers and on TV—Porter calls up and says, 'Guess what, guys, I quit.' Does all of this sound aboveboard to you?"
She abruptly stood up and walked to the sliding door to the porch. She stared through the glass out across the pass.
"Those bastards," she said. "They just want to drop the whole thing. Because it might embarrass somebody."
Bosch walked up behind her.
"You have to tell somebody about it. Tell me."
"No. I can't. You tell me everything."
"I've told you. There isn't much else and it's all a jumble. The file didn't have much, other than that the DEA told Moore that black ice is coming up from Mexicali. That's how I guessed about the fruit fly contractor. And then there's Moore. He grew up in Calexico and Mexicali. You see? There are too many coincidences here that I don't think are coincidences."
She still faced the door and he was talking to her back, but he saw the reflection of her worried face in the glass. He could smell her perfume.
"The important thing about the file is that Moore didn't keep it in his office or his apartment. It was in a place where someone from IAD or RHD wouldn't find it. And when the guys on his crew found it, there was the note that said to give it to me. You understand?"
The confused look in the glass answered for her. She turned and moved into the living room, sitting on the cushioned chair and running her hands through her hair. Harry stayed standing and paced on the wood floor in front of her.
"Why would he write a note saying give the file to me? It wouldn't have been a note to himself. He already knew he was putting the file together for me. So, the note was for someone else. And what does that tell us? That he either knew when he wrote it that he was going to kill himself. Or he—"
"Knew he was going to be killed," she said.
Bosch nodded. "Or, at least, he knew he had gotten into something too deep. That he was in trouble. In danger."
"Jesus," she said.
Harry approached and handed her her wineglass. He bent down close to her face.
"You have to tell me about the autopsy. Something's wrong. I heard that bullshit press release they put out. Inconclusive. What is that shit? Since when can't you tell if a shotgun blast to the face killed somebody or not?
"So tell me, Teresa. We can figure out what to do."
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, but Harry knew she was going to tell.
"They told me because I wasn't a hundred percent— Harry, you can't reveal where you got this information. You can't."
"It won't get back to you. If I have to, I will use it to help us, but it won't get back to you. That's my promise."
"They told me not to discuss it with anyone because I couldn't be completely sure. The assistant chief, Irving, that arrogant prick knew just where to stick it in. Talking about the County Commission deciding soon about my position. Saying they would be looking for a chief ME who knew discretion. Saying what friends he had on the commission. I'd like to take a scalpel—"
"Never mind all of that. What was it you weren't one hundred percent sure about?"
She drained her wineglass. Then the story came out. She told him that the autopsy had proceeded as routine, other than the fact that in addition to the two case detectives observing it, Sheehan and Chastain from IAD, was assistant police chief Irving. She said a lab technician was also on hand to make the fingerprint comparisons.
"The decomposition was extensive," Teresa said. "I had to take the finger tips off and spray them with a chemical hardening agent. Collins, that's my lab tech, was able to take prints after that. He made the comparison right there because Irving had brought exemplars. It was a match. It was Moore."
"What about the teeth?"
"Dental was tough. There wasn't much left that hadn't been fragged. We made a comparison between a partial incisor found in the tub and some dental records Irving came up with. Moore had had a root canal and it was there. That was a match, too."
She said she began the autopsy after confirming the identity and immediately concluded the obvious: that damage from the double-barrel-shotgun blast was massive and fatal. Instantly. But it was while examining the material that had separated from the body that she began to question whether she could rule Moore's death a suicide.
"The force of the blast resulted in complete cranial displacement," she said. "And, of course, the autopsy protocol calls for examination of all vital organs, including the brain.
"Problem was the brain was mostly unmassed due to the wide projectile pattern. I believe I was told the pellets came from a double-barrel, side-by-side configuration. I could see that. The projectile pattern was very wide. Nevertheless, a large portion of the frontal lobe and corresponding skull fragment were left largely intact, though it had been separated.
"You know what I mean? The diagram said this had been charted in the bathtub. Is this . . . too much? I know you knew him."
"Not that well. Go on."
"So I examined this piece, not really expecting anything more than what I was seeing earlier. But I was wrong. There was hemorrhagic demarcation in the lobe along the skull lining."
She took a hit off his wineglass and breathed heavily, as if casting out a demon.
"And so, you see Harry, that was a big f*cking problem."
"Tell me why."
"You sound like Irving. 'Tell me why. Tell me why.' Well, it should be obvious. For two reasons. First of all you don't have that much hemorrhage on instant death like that. There is not much bleeding in the brain lining when the brain has been literally disconnected from the body in a split second. But while there is some room for some debate on that—I'll give that to Irving—there is no debate whatsoever on the second reason. This hemorrhaging was clearly indicative of a contrecoup injury to the head. No doubt in my mind at all."
Harry quickly reviewed the physics he had learned over the ten years he had been watching autopsies. Contrecoup brain injury is damage that occurs to the side of the brain opposite the insult. The brain, in effect, was a Jell-O mold inside the skull. A jarring blow to the left side often did its worst damage to the right side because the force of impact pushed the Jell-O against the right side of the skull. Harry knew that for Moore to have the hemorrhage Teresa described to the front of the brain, he would have to be struck from behind. A shotgun blast to the face would not have done it.
"Is there any way. . . ," he trailed off unclear of what he wanted to ask. He suddenly became aware of his body's pangs for a cigarette and smacked the end of a fresh pack on his palm.
"What happened?" he asked as he opened it.
"Well, when I started explaining, Irving got all uptight and kept asking, 'Are you sure? Is that a hundred percent accurate? Aren't we jumping the gun?' and on and on like that. I think it was pretty clear. He didn't want this to be anything other than a suicide. The minute I raised a doubt he started talking about jumping to conclusions and the need to move slowly. He said the department could be embarrassed by what an investigation could lead to if we did not proceed slowly and cautiously and correctly. Those were his words. A*shole."
"Let sleeping dogs lie," Bosch said.
"Right. So I just flat-out told them I was not going to rule it a suicide. And then . . . then they talked me out of ruling it a homicide. So that's where the inconclusive comes from. A compromise. For now. It makes me feel like I am guilty of something. Those bastards."
"They're just going to drop it," Bosch said.
He couldn't figure it out. The reluctance had to be because of the IAD investigation. Whatever Moore was into, Irving must believe it either led him to kill himself or got him killed. And either way Irving didn't want to open that box without knowing first what was in it. Maybe he never wanted to know. That told Bosch one thing. He was on his own. No matter what he came up with, turning it over to Irving and RHD would get it buried. So if Bosch went on with it, he was freelancing.
"Do they know that Moore was working on something for you?" Teresa asked.
"By now they do, but they probably didn't when they were with you. Probably won't make any difference."
"What about the Juan Doe case? About him finding the body."
"I don't know what they know on that."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything. What will you do?"
She was silent for a long time, then she got up and walked to him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the lips. She whispered, "Let's forget about all of this for a while."
He conceded to her in their lovemaking, letting her lead and direct him, use his body the way she wanted. They had been together often enough so that they were comfortable and knew each other's ways. They were beyond the stages of curiosity or embarrassment. At the end, she was straddled over him as he leaned back, propped on pillows, against the headboard. Her head snapped back and her clipped nails dug painlessly into his chest. She made no sound at all.
In the darkness he looked up and saw the glint of silver dripping from her ears. He reached up and touched the earrings and then ran his hands down her throat, over her shoulders and breasts. Her skin was warm and damp. Her slow methodical motion drew him further into the void where everything else in the world could not go.
When they were both resting, she still huddled on top of him, a sense of guilt came over him. He thought of Sylvia Moore. A woman he had met only the night before, how could she intrude on this? But she had. He wondered where the guilt came from. Maybe it was for what was still ahead of them.
He thought he heard the short, high-pitched bark of the coyote in the distance behind the house. Teresa raised her head off his chest and then they heard the animal's lonesome baying.
"Timido," he heard her say quietly.
Harry felt the guilt pass over him again. He thought of Teresa. Had he tricked her into telling him? He didn't think so. Maybe, again, it was guilt over what he had not yet done. What he knew he would do with the information she had given.
She seemed to know his thoughts were away from her. Perhaps a change in his heartbeat, a slight tensing in his muscles.
"Nothing," she said.
"What?"
"You asked what I was going to do. Nothing. I'm not going to get involved in this bullshit any further. If they want to bury it, let them bury it."
Harry knew then that she would make a good permanent chief medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles.
He felt himself falling away from her in the dark.
Teresa rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the three-quarter moon. They had left the curtain open. The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance.
"Are you like him?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Timido. Alone out there in the dark world."
"Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes."
"Yes, but you like it, don't you?"
"Not always."
"Not always . . ."
He thought about what to say. The wrong word and she'd be gone.
"I'm sorry if I'm distant," he tried. "There's a lot of things . . ."
He didn't finish. There was no excuse.
"You do like living up here in this little, lonely house, with the coyote as your only friend, don't you?"
He didn't answer. The face of Sylvia Moore inexplicably came back into his mind. But this time he felt no guilt. He liked seeing her there.
"I have to go," Teresa said. "Long day tomorrow."
He watched her walk naked into the bathroom, picking her purse up off the night table as she went. He listened as the shower ran. He imagined her in there, cleaning all traces of him off and out of her and then splashing on the all-purpose perfume she always carried in her purse to cover up any smells left on her from her job.
He rolled to the side of the bed to the pile of his clothes on the floor and got out his phone book. He dialed while the water still ran. The voice that answered was dulled with sleep. It was near midnight.
"You don't know who this is and I never talked to you." There was silence while Harry's voice registered. "Okay, okay. Got it. I understand."
"There's a problem on the Cal Moore autopsy."
"Shit, I know that, man. Inconclusive. You don't have to wake me up to—"
"No, you don't understand. You are confusing the autopsy with the press release on the autopsy. Two different things. Understand now?"
"Yeah . . . I think I do. So, what's the problem?"
"The assistant chief of police and the acting chief ME don't agree. One says suicide, the other homicide. Can't have both. I guess that's what you call inconclusive in a press release."
There was a low whistling sound in the phone.
"This is good. But why would the cops want to bury a homicide, especially one of their own? I mean, suicide makes the department look like shit as it is. Why bury a murder unless it means there's something—"
"Right," Bosch said and he hung up the phone.
A minute later the shower was turned off and Teresa came out, drying herself with a towel. She was totally unabashed about her nakedness with him and Harry found he missed that shyness. It had eventually left all the women he became involved with before they eventually left him.
He pulled on blue jeans and a T-shirt while she dressed. Neither spoke. She looked at him with a thin smile and then he walked her out to her car.
"So, we still have a date for New Year's Eve?" she asked after he opened the car door for her.
"Of course," he said, though he knew she would call with an excuse to cancel it.
She leaned up and kissed him on the lips, then slipped into the driver's seat.
"Good-bye, Teresa," he said but she had already closed the door.
It was midnight when he came back inside. The place smelled of her perfume. And his own guilt. He put Frank Morgan's Mood Indigo on the CD player and stood there in the living room without moving, just listening to the phrasing on the first solo, a song called "Lullaby." Bosch thought he knew nothing truer than the sound of a saxophone.