Suicide Run_ Three Harry Bosch Stories - Michael Connelly [22]
“Tell me again what the witnesses said about the husband when they saw him in the street?”
“They said he was in the middle of the street, screaming for help, yelling things like call the cops and call for an ambulance. The man who lives across the street was the next on scene and checked on the victim. He saw that there was no hope and took the husband back over to his place. He was sitting on the porch with him when police arrived on scene.”
Gunn pointed across the street to the old craftsman with a porch running its entire length.
“The neighbor gave him some clothes, too,” she added. “A T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Blitzstein never went back into his own house before we shipped him downtown.”
“Okay, good. Let’s just make sure nobody goes into the house until we get a search warrant.”
He looked around the crime scene. Gunn took a step closer and spoke in a lower voice.
“You really like him for this, don’t you? The husband. I wish I knew what I was missing.”
Bosch shook his head.
“I don’t know. You’re probably not missing anything. Things just don’t seem right to me. Do you know if David Blitzstein is left-handed or right-handed?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to call my partner? He’s probably still delivering him. He could ask.”
“No, that would tip him off. Let that go for now. Until we…”
He didn’t finish. Until we what? He didn’t know yet.
“What doesn’t seem right about the scene?” Gunn said, pressing him. “Teach me something.”
“Just a feeling, that’s all. The door was locked on that car when she pulled in. I know, I have a Mustang and the doors automatically lock.”
“Okay, it was locked, but she opened it.”
Bosch shook his head.
“That’s what I don’t see. I know this kind of woman. I was married to one. Someone like her, somebody who moves in a man’s world, somebody who plays cards all night and wins big… somebody who knows the dangers that comes with all of that… I don’t see her swinging that door open before she takes off the seat belt. She wouldn’t open that door until she was ready to move.”
Gunn digested Bosch’s ramble and nodded.
“But she would open it for someone she trusted,” she said.
Bosch pointed a finger at her like a gun and nodded his head.
“Only one problem with that scenario,” she said. “Where’s the gun? I’ve got about a dozen witnesses who saw Blitzstein in the middle of the street in his blue jeans and nothing else.”
Bosch was ready for that argument.
“The gun could be anywhere. It could be in the house or the canal behind the house. It doesn’t matter because the gun and the gunshot do not set the time of the killing. The witnesses didn’t look out their windows because they heard a shot. They looked because Blitzstein was out there screaming in the street.”
Bosch saw recognition flare in Gunn’s eyes.
“You’re saying he had time to get rid of the gun because nobody knows how long it was between when she was capped with the silencer and when he went into the street and started waking up the neighborhood.”
Bosch nodded.
“That’s the other thing. Him going into the street and yelling for help—like he wanted the neighbors to see him. I don’t know, if that was my wife in that car with her brains all over the place… I don’t think I’d end up in the middle of the street with no blood on me. I don’t see that at all.”
His phone buzzed and he started digging it out of his pocket.
“See if Dussein’s done with the purse,” he said. “I’ve got a guy at Parker Center waiting to go to work. I’ll get him on the search warrant for the house.”
“You got it.”
Bosch opened his phone. It was Ignacio Ferras.
“Harry, I’ve looked at all the tapes from the casino’s entrance area and the parking lot. It looks to me like she had a follower.”
Bosch felt a sudden pause. A follower would completely contradict the theory he had just spun with Gunn.
“Are you sure, Ignacio?”
“Well, nothing’s for sure but I have her on tape leaving the casino with a security escort. The guy walked her out to her car. He then stood in the lot until she pulled out. Everything