The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [183]
A big part of the rhythm was the monthly arrival of the yellow envelopes. Sometimes Bosch found it hard to sleep on the night before Christmas. He never took time off during the first week of the month and never came to work late on a day when the yellow envelopes might come in. Even his teenage daughter noticed his monthly cycle of anticipation and agitation and had likened it to a menstrual cycle. Bosch didn’t see the humor in this and was embarrassed when she brought it up.
Now his disappointment at the sight of so few envelopes in the lieutenant’s hand felt palpable in his throat. He wanted a new case. He needed a new case. He had to see the look on the killer’s face when Bosch knocked on the door and showed his badge, the embodiment of justice come calling unexpectedly after so many years. The experience was addictive and Bosch was craving it now.
The lieutenant handed the first envelope to Rick Jackson. He and his partner, Rich Bengtson, were solid investigators who had been with the unit since its inception. Bosch had no complaint there. The next envelope was placed on an empty desk belonging to Teddy Baker. She and her partner, Greg Kehoe, were on their way back from a pickup in Tampa, Florida—an airline pilot who had been connected through fingerprints to the 1991 strangulation of a flight attendant in Marina del Rey.
Bosch was about to suggest to the lieutenant that Baker and Kehoe might have their hands full with the marina case and that the envelope should be given to another team, namely his, when the lieutenant looked at him and used the last remaining envelope to beckon him to her office.
“Can you guys step in for a minute? You, too, Tim.”
Tim Marcia was the squad whip, the detective-3 who handled mostly supervisory and fill-in duties. He mentored the young detectives and made sure the old ones like Jackson and Bosch didn’t get lazy.
Bosch was out of his seat before the lieutenant had finished her question. He headed toward the lieutenant’s office with Chu and Marcia trailing behind.
“Close the door,” Duvall said. “Sit down.”
Duvall had a corner office with windows that looked across Spring Street at the Los Angeles Times Building. Paranoid that reporters were watching from the newsroom across the way, Duvall kept her shades permanently lowered. It made the office dim and cavelike. Bosch and Chu took the two seats positioned in front of the lieutenant’s desk. Marcia followed them in, moved to the side of Duvall’s desk and leaned against an old evidence safe.
“I want you two to handle this hit,” she said, sitting down and proffering the yellow envelope to Bosch. “There’s something wrong here and I want you to keep quiet about it until you find out what it is. Keep Tim in the loop but make sure it stays low-key.”
The envelope had already been opened. Chu leaned over to look as Bosch opened the flap and pulled out the hit sheet. It listed the case number of the DNA evidence, plus the name, age, last known address and criminal history of the person whose genetic profile matched it. Bosch first noticed that the case number had the prefix 89, meaning it was a case from 1989. There were no details about the crime, just the year. But Bosch knew that cases from that year belonged to the team of Ross Shuler and Adriana Dolan. He knew this because 1989 had been a busy year for him, working murders for the Homicide Special Team, and he had recently checked on one of his own unsolved cases, which was how he learned that jurisdiction over that year’s cases belonged