The Overlook - Michael Connelly [70]
“Fine. So the bulletin went out October ninth. That was the day the plan to kill Stanley Kent began.”
Walling folded her arms across her chest and just stared at him. Bosch thought that maybe she was beginning to see where he was going with the story and she didn’t like it.
“It works best if you start from the end and go backwards,” Bosch said. “Alicia Kent gave you the name Moby. How could she have gotten that name?”
“She overheard one of them calling the other one by that name.”
Bosch shook his head.
“No, she told you she overheard it. But if she was lying, how would she know the name to lie about it? Just coincidence that she gives the nickname of a guy who less than six months ago was confirmed as being in the country—in L.A. County, no less? I don’t think so, Rachel, and neither do you. The odds of that probably can’t be calculated.”
“Okay, so you’re saying that somebody in the bureau or another agency that received the FBI bulletin I wrote gave her the name.”
Bosch nodded and pointed at her.
“Right. He gave her the name so she could come out with it while being questioned by the FBI’s master interrogator. That name along with the plan to dump the car in front of Ramin Samir’s house would act in concert to send this whole thing down the wrong road with the FBI and everybody else chasing after terrorists who had nothing to do with it.”
“He?”
“I’m getting to that now. You are right, anybody who got a look at that bulletin would have been able to give her that name. My guess is that would be a lot of people. A lot of people just in L.A. alone. So how would we narrow it down to one?”
“You tell me.”
Bosch opened the bottle and drank the rest of the water. He held the empty bottle in his hand as he continued.
“You narrow it down by continuing to go backwards. Where would Alicia Kent’s life have intersected with one of those people in the agencies who knew about Moby?”
Walling frowned and shook her head.
“That could have been anywhere with those kinds of parameters. In line at the supermarket, or when she was buying fertilizer for her roses. Anywhere.”
Bosch now had her right where he wanted her to be.
“Then narrow the parameters,” he said. “Where would she have intersected with someone who knew about Moby but also knew that her husband had access to the sort of radioactive materials Moby might be interested in?”
Now she shook her head in a dismissive way.
“Nowhere. It would take a monumental coincidence to—”
She stopped when it came to her. Enlightenment. And shock as she fully understood where Bosch was going.
“My partner and I visited the Kents to warn them early last year. I guess what you’re saying is that that makes me a suspect.”
Bosch shook his head.
“I said ‘he,’ remember? You didn’t come here alone.”
Her eyes fired when she registered the implication.
“That’s ridiculous. There’s no way. I can’t believe you would . . .”
She didn’t finish as her mind snagged on something, some memory that undermined her trust and loyalty to her partner. Bosch picked up on the tell and moved in closer.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Look,” she insisted, “take my advice and tell no one this theory of yours. You’re lucky you told me first. Because this makes you sound like some kind of crackpot with a vendetta. You have no evidence, no motive, no incriminating statements, nothing. You just have this thing you’ve spun out of . . . out of a yoga poster.”
“There is no other explanation that fits with the facts. And I’m talking about the facts of the case. Not the fact that the bureau and Homeland Security and the rest of the federal government would love this to be a terrorism event so they can justify their existence and deflect criticism from other failings. Contrary to what you want to think, there is evidence and there are incriminating statements. If we put Alicia Kent on a lie detector, you’ll find out that everything she told me, you and the master interrogator downtown is a lie. The real master was Alicia Kent. As in master manipulator.”
Walling leaned forward