A Darkness More Than Night - Michael Connelly [144]
“I’m thinking he was on the docks looking for an owl he could take off a boat to use at Winston’s. They were improvising tonight.”
Bosch nodded.
“Anyway, I was looking around and saw the door open on your boat and decided to check it out. I thought it was too cold a night and you were too careful a guy to sleep with the door open like that.”
McCaleb nodded.
Bosch now heard the unmistakable sound of approaching sirens and looked out the window and across the docks to the parking lot. He saw two patrol cars glide in and stop near his slickback where Tafero was locked in the back. They killed the sirens but left the blue lights flashing.
“I better go meet the boys in blue,” he said.
44
For most of the night they were separated and questioned and then questioned again. Then the interrogators switched rooms and they heard the same questions once more from different mouths. Five hours after the shooting on The Following Sea the doors were opened and McCaleb and Bosch stepped out into a hallway at Parker Center. Bosch came up to him then.
“You okay?”
“Tired.”
“Yeah.”
McCaleb watched him put a cigarette in his mouth but not light it.
“I’m heading out to the sheriff’s,” Bosch said. “I want to be there.”
McCaleb nodded.
“I’ll see you there.”
• • •
They stood side by side behind the one-way glass, squeezed in next to the videographer. McCaleb was close enough to smell Bosch’s menthol cigarette breath and the glove-box cologne he had seen him put on in his car while driving behind him out to Whittier. He could see the faint reflection of Bosch’s face in the glass and he realized he was looking through it into what was happening in the next room.
On the other side of the glass was a conference table with Rudy Tafero seated next to a public defender named Arnold Prince. Tafero had white tape spread across his nose and cotton in both nostrils. He had six stitches in the crown of his head which could not be seen because of his full head of hair. Paramedics had treated him for a broken nose and the head laceration at Cabrillo Marina.
Across from Tafero sat Jaye Winston. To her right was Alice Short, from the DA’s office. To her left were Deputy Chief Irvin Irving of the LAPD and Donald Twilley of the FBI. The early morning hours had been spent with all law enforcement agencies remotely involved in the investigation jockeying for the best position to take advantage of what all players knew to be a major case. It was now six-thirty in the morning and time to question the suspect.
It had been decided that Winston would handle the questioning — it being her case from the beginning — while the other three looked on and were available to her for advice. She began the interview by stating the date, time and identities of those in the room. She then read Tafero his constitutional rights and had him sign an acknowledgment form. His attorney said that Tafero would not be making a statement at the present time.
“That’s fine,” Winston said, her eyes on Tafero. “I don’t need him to talk to me. I want to talk to him. I want to give him an idea of what he is facing here. I don’t want there to be any regrets down the line over miscommunications or his passing up the one opportunity to cooperate that he’ll be given.”
She looked down at the file in front of her and opened it. McCaleb recognized the top sheet as a DA’s office complaint form.
“Mr. Tafero,” Winston began, “I want you to know that this morning we are charging you with the first-degree murder of Edward Gunn on January first of this year, the attempted murder of Terrell McCaleb on this date, and the murder of Jesse Tafero, also on this date. I know you know the law but I am compelled to explain the last charge. Your brother’s death occurred during the commission of a felony. Therefore, under California law you, as his co-conspirator, are held responsible for his death.”
She waited a beat, staring into Tafero’s seemingly dead eyes. She went back to reading the complaint.
“Further, you should know that the district attorney