Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [124]
“No, you tell me.”
“We were all used, Lindell. I’m going to find out by who. When I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Look, Bosch, you don’t have the case anymore. We’re working it and you better stay the fuck away from it.”
“Yeah, you guys are working the case, all right,” Bosch said sarcastically. “I’m sure you’re pounding the pavement on this one. Let me know when you figure it out.”
“Bosch, it’s not like that. We care about it.”
“Give me one answer, Lindell.”
“What?”
“In the time you were under, did Tony Aliso ever bring his wife over there to make a pickup?”
Lindell was quiet a moment while he decided whether to answer. He finally shook his head.
“Not once,” he said. “Tony always said she hated the place. Too many bad memories, I guess.”
Bosch tried to remain cool.
“Memories of Vegas?”
Lindell smiled.
“For somebody who supposedly has all the answers, you don’t know much, do you, Bosch? Tony met her in the club something like twenty years ago. Long before my time. She was a dancer and Tony was going to make her a movie star. Same story he was using on ’em to the end. Only, after her I guess he got wise and learned not to marry every one of them.”
“Did she know Joey Marks?”
“Your one question is now up to three, Bosch.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was her name back then?”
“That’s another one I don’t know. I’ll see you around, Bosch.”
He turned and walked away. Bosch threw his cigarette into the street and walked back toward the Glass House. A few minutes later, after being properly buzzed through the door into the SID offices, Bosch found Donovan at his desk again. The criminalist lifted a thin file from the desk and handed it to Harry.
“You got copies in there,” he said. “Same thing I sent the bureau. What I did was shoot a copy of the negative and then shot the new negative and printed it in black-and-white contrast for comparison purposes. I also blew it up to actual size.”
Bosch didn’t understand what Donovan had just said except for the last part. He opened the file. There were two pages of copy paper with the shoe prints in black. Both were partial prints of the same right shoe. But between the two partials almost all of the shoe was there. Donovan got up and looked at the open file. He pointed to a tread ridge on one of the copies. It was a curving line on the heel. But the line was broken.
“Now, if you find the shooter and he still has the shoes, this is where you’ll get him. See how that line is broken there? That does not appear to be a manufacturer’s design. This guy stepped on glass or something at some point and it cut the tread there. It’s either that or a flaw in manufacturing. But if you find the shoe, we’ll be able to make an ID match that should send the boy away.”
“Okay,” Bosch said, still looking at the copies. “Now, did you get anything even preliminary from the bureau on this?”
“Not really. I’ve got a guy I go to pretty regularly with this kind of stuff. I know him, seen him at a couple of the SID conventions. Anyway, he called just to let me know he got the package and he’d get on it as soon as he could. He said that off the top of his head he thought it was one of those lightweight boots that are popular now. You know, they’re like work boots but they’re comfortable and wear like a pair of Nikes.”
“Okay, Artie, thanks.”
Bosch drove over to the County-USC Medical Center and around to the parking lot by the railroad yard. The coroner’s office was located at the far end of the medical center property, and Bosch went in through the back door after showing his badge to a security guard.
He checked Dr. Salazar’s office first but it was empty. He then went down to the autopsy floor and looked in the first suite, where the lowered table that Salazar always used was located. Salazar was there, working on another body. Bosch stepped in and Salazar looked up from the open chest cavity of what looked like the remains of a young black man.
“Harry, what are you doing here? This is a South Bureau case.”
“I wanted to ask about the Aliso case.”
“Kind of got my