The Drop - Michael Connelly [60]
“He got special attention.”
“Right. Now, every one of his use-of-force incidents came back clean on review at the time of occurrence. Including the two deaths. It was determined by a review board that both times he used the hold within policy. But one time and it’s an unlucky thing. Two times and there is a pattern. Somebody leaked his name and history to the Times, which was hovering over the task force like the smog over downtown. They ran a story and McQuillen became the face of what was wrong in the department. Didn’t matter that he was never found to have acted out of policy. He was the guy. A killer cop. The head of the ministers’ coalition at the time held a press conference it seemed every other day. He started calling him McKillin and it stuck.”
Bosch got up from the bench so he could pace a little bit as he continued.
“The task force recommended that the bar hold be dropped from the use-of-force progression and it was. Funny thing is, the department then told officers to rely more on their batons—in fact, you could be disciplined if you got out of a patrol car without carrying your baton in your hand or on your belt. Added to that, Tasers were coming into use just as the choke hold went out. And what did we get? Rodney King. A video that changed the world. A video of a guy being Tased and whaled on with batons when a proper choke hold would’ve just put him to sleep.”
“Huh,” Rider said. “I never looked at it that way.”
Bosch nodded.
“Anyway, dropping the choke hold wasn’t enough. There had to be an offering to the angry mob and it was McQuillen. He was suspended on what I always thought were trumped-up, politically motivated charges. The review of the deaths determined that in the second case he had been out of policy in the escalation of the use-of-force sequence. In other words, the choke hold that killed the guy was okay but everything he did up until he used it was wrong. He was brought up on a board of rights and fired. The case was referred to the DA and the DA took a pass. At the time, I remember thinking McQuillen was lucky they didn’t ride the wave and prosecute him. He sued to get his job back but that was a nonstarter. He was done.”
Bosch ended it there for the moment to see if Rider had a response. She had folded her arms across her chest and was staring into the shadows. Bosch knew she was grinding it down. Seeing how all of this played out in the present.
“So,” she finally said. “Twenty-five years ago a task force headed by Irvin Irving results in McQuillen losing his job and career in a process that, at least in his view, was unfounded and unfair. Now we have what appears to be an attempt by Irving’s son and possibly the councilman himself to grab the franchise from the business where McQuillen now works as . . . what, a night dispatcher?”
“Shift supervisor. Which I guess really means dispatcher.”
“And this adds up to him murdering George Irving. I can connect the dots but am having trouble with the motive, Harry.”
“Well, we don’t know anything about McQuillen, do we? We don’t know if he’s been carrying this grudge around like a festering wound and the opportunity simply presented itself. A driver calls in and says, ‘Guess who I just saw.’ We have the abrasion pattern on the shoulder—it’s unmistakable evidence of the choke hold. We also have a witness who saw somebody on the fire escape.”
“What witness? You didn’t tell me you had a witness.”
“I just found out today. The hillside behind the hotel was canvassed and they came up with a resident who saw a man on the fire escape ladder Sunday night. But he says it was twelve-forty A.M. and the coroner puts TOD no earlier than two and as late as four. So we have about a two-hour discrepancy. The guy on the ladder was going down at twelve-forty,