Angle of Investigation_ Three Harry Bosch Stories - Michael Connelly [25]
“Thanks, Larkin,” Bosch said. “I’ve got to go.”
Bosch hung up, grabbed the note off Rider’s desk and crumpled it in his hand. He took his cell phone off his belt and called Rider’s cell number. She answered right away.
“Where are you?” Bosch asked.
“Having a coffee.”
“You want to take a ride?”
“I’ve got the case"0egot the summary to finish. A ride where?”
“Ten Thousand Palms.”
“Harry, that’s not a ride. That’s a journey. That’s at least ninety minutes each way.”
“Get me a coffee for the road. I’ll be right down.”
He hung up before she could protest.
On the drive out Bosch told Rider about the moves he had made with the case and how the print had come back to his old partner. He then recounted the morning he and Eckersly had found the lady in the tub. Rider listened without interrupting, then she had only one question at the end.
“This is important, Harry,” she said. “You are dealing with your own memory and you know from case experience how faulty memories can be. We’re talking thirty-three years ago. Are you sure there wasn’t a moment when Eckersly could have put his hand on the wall?”
“Yeah, like he might’ve leaned against the wall and taken a leak while I didn’t notice.”
“I’m not talking about taking a leak. Could he have leaned against the wall when you found the body, like he got grossed out or sick and leaned against the wall for support?”
“No, Kiz. I was in that room the whole time he was. He said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and he was the first one out. He did not go back in. We called in the detectives and then stood outside keeping the neighbors away when everybody showed up.”
“Thirty-three years is a long time, Harry.”
Bosch waited a moment before responding.
“I know this sounds sad and sick but your first DB is like your first love. You remember the details. Plus…”
He didn’t finish.
“Plus what?”
“Plus my mother was murdered when I was a kid. I think it’s why I became a cop. So finding that woman—my second day on the job—was sort of like finding my mother. I can’t explain it. But what I can tell you is that I remember being in that house like it was yesterday. And Eckersly never touched a thing in there, let alone put his hand on the wall over the toilet.”
Now she was silent for a long moment before responding.
“Okay, Harry.”
Ten Thousand Palms was on the outskirts of Joshua Tree. They made good time and pulled into the visitor parking space in front of the tiny police station shortly before one. They had worked out how they would handle Eckersly in the last half hour of the drive.
They went in and I rwent inasked a woman who was sitting behind a front counter if they could speak with Eckersly. They flashed the gold and told her they were from the Open-Unsolved Unit. The woman picked up a phone and communicated the information to someone on the other end. Before she hung up, a door behind her opened and there stood Ron Eckersly. He was thicker and his skin a dark and worn brown from the desert. He still had a full head of hair, which was cut short and silver. Bosch had no trouble recognizing him. But it didn’t appear that he recognized Bosch.
“Detectives, come on back,” he said.
He held the door and they walked into his office. He was wearing a blue blazer with a maroon tie over a white shirt. It did not appear to Bosch that he had a gun on his belt. Maybe in a little desert town a gun wasn’t needed.
The office was a small space with LAPD memorabilia and photographs on the wall behind the desk. Rider introduced herself and shook Eckersly’s hand and then Bosch did the same. There was a hesitation in Eckersly’s shake and then Bosch knew. Instinctively, he knew. He was holding the hand of June Wilkins’s killer.
“Harry Bosch,” Eckersly said. “You were one of my boots, right?”
“That’s right. I came on the job in ’seventy-two. We rode Wilshire