The Overlook - Michael Connelly [36]
Bosch felt Ferras staring at him as he lied.
“Can you hold a second, Harry?” Brenner said. “I’ve got another call coming in here. It might be Washington.”
Back to first names, Bosch noted.
“Sure, Jack, but I can just go.”
“No, hold on.”
Bosch heard the line go to music and he looked over at Ferras. His partner started to speak.
“Why’d you tell him we—”
Bosch held a finger to his lips and Ferras stopped.
“Just hold it a second,” Bosch said.
Half a minute went by while Bosch waited. A saxophone version of “What a Wonderful World” started to play on the phone. Bosch had always loved the line about the dark sacred night.
The light finally changed and Bosch turned onto Sunset. Then Brenner came back on the line.
“Harry? Sorry about that. That was Washington. As you can imagine, they’re all over this thing.”
Bosch decided to draw things out into the open.
“What’s new on your end?”
“Not a lot. Homeland is sending a fleet of choppers with equipment that can track a radiation trail. They’ll start up at the overlook and try to pick up a signature specific to cesium. But the reality is it’s got to come out of the pig before they’ll pick up a signal. Meantime, we’re organizing the status meeting so that we can make sure everybody’s on the same page.”
“That’s all the big G has accomplished?”
“Well, we’re just getting organized. I told you how it would be. Alphabet soup.”
“Right. You called it pandemonium. The feds are good at that.”
“No, I’m not sure I said all of that. But there’s always a learning curve. I think after the meeting we’ll be hitting this thing on all cylinders.”
Bosch now knew for sure that things had changed. Brenner’s defensive response told him the conversation was either being taped or overheard by others.
“It’s still a few hours till the meeting,” Brenner said. “What’s your next move, Harry?”
Bosch hesitated but not for long.
“My next move is to go back up to the house and talk to Mrs. Kent again. I have some follow-up. Then we’ll go over to the south tower at Cedars. Kent’s office is there and we need to see it and to talk to his partner.”
There was no response. Bosch was coming up on the Denny’s on Sunset. He pulled into the lot and parked. Through the windows he could see that the twenty-four-hour restaurant was largely deserted.
“You still there, Jack?”
“Uh, yeah, Harry, I’m here. I should tell you that it probably won’t be necessary, you going back to the house and then by Kent’s office.”
Bosch shook his head. I knew it, he thought.
“You’ve already scooped everybody up, haven’t you?”
“Wasn’t my call. Anyway, from what I hear, the office was clean and we have Kent’s partner in here being questioned right now. We brought Mrs. Kent in as kind of a precautionary thing. We’re still talking to her, too.”
“Not your call? Then whose call was it, Rachel’s?”
“I’m not going to get into that, Harry.”
Bosch killed the car’s engine and thought about how to respond.
“Well, then maybe my partner and I should head downtown to TIU,” he finally said. “This is still a homicide investigation. And last I heard, I was still working it.”
There was a long thread of silence before Brenner responded.
“Look, Detective, the case is taking on larger dimensions. You have been invited to the status meeting. You and your partner. And at that time you will be updated on what Mr. Kelber has had to say and a few other things. If Mr. Kelber is still here with us I will do my best to get you in to speak with him. And with Mrs. Kent, too. But to be clear, the priority here is not the homicide. The priority is not finding out who killed Stanley Kent. The priority is finding the cesium and we’re now almost ten hours behind.”
Bosch nodded.
“I have a feeling that if you find the killer you find the cesium,” he said.
“That may be so,” Brenner responded. “But the experience is that this material is moved very quickly. Hand to hand. It takes an investigation