Bosch saw a lot of pain in her eyes as she said it. He waited for the tears to start again but it didn’t happen.
“I just have a few more questions at this point,” he said. “How did you know the web page address and about how to get to the secret site?”
“You mean Charlotte’s Web? My husband is not a smart man, Detective Bosch. He is rich, and that always gives the appearance of intellect. He wrote the directions down so he wouldn’t have to memorize them and he hid them in his desk. I found them. I know how to use a computer. I went to that awful place… I saw Stacey there.”
Again no tears. Bosch was puzzled. Kate Kincaid had dropped her voice into a monotone. She was reciting the story, it seemed, out of duty. But whatever impact it personally had on her was done with and compartmentalized, put away from the surface.
“Do you believe that to be your husband on the images with Stacey?”
“No. I don’t know who that was.”
“How can you be sure?”
“My husband has a birthmark. A discoloration on his back. I said he wasn’t smart, but he was at least smart enough not to appear on that web site.”
Bosch thought about this. Though he did not doubt Kate Kincaid’s story, he also knew that hard evidence backing it up would be needed to prosecute Kincaid. For the same reason she felt she could not bring her story to the authorities, Bosch needed to be able to go into the district attorney’s office with Sam Kincaid solidly locked down by the evidence. Right now all he had was a wife saying evil things about her husband. The fact that Kincaid apparently was not the man in the web site images with his stepdaughter was a major loss of corroborative evidence. He thought about the searches. Teams were descending on Kincaid’s home and office at that moment. It was Bosch’s hope that they would find evidence that would prove his wife’s story.
“Your last note to Howard Elias,” he said. “You warned him. You said your husband knew. Did you mean your husband knew that Elias had found the secret web site?”
“At the time, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of the way he was acting – on edge, suspicious of me. He asked me if I had been on his computer. It made me think that they must have known someone was poking around. I sent the message, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Why is that? Howard Elias is dead.”
“I’m not sure he did that. He would have told me.”
“What?”
Bosch was thoroughly confused by her logic.
“He would have told me. He told me about Stacey, why wouldn’t he tell me about Elias as well? And the fact that you know about the web site. If they thought Elias knew, wouldn’t they have closed it down or hidden it somewhere else?”
“Not if they were just going to kill the intruder instead.”
She shook her head. She didn’t see it the way Bosch obviously did.
“I still think he would’ve told me.”
Still confused, Bosch said, “Wait a minute. Are you talking about the confrontation you mentioned at the start of this interview?”
Bosch’s pager went off and he reached down and silenced it without taking his eyes off Kate Kincaid.
“Yes.”
“Well, when was this confrontation?”
“Last night.”
“Last night?”
Bosch was shocked. He had jumped to the conclusion that the confrontation she had mentioned had been weeks or even months earlier.
“Yes. After you left. I knew by the questions you asked that you had probably found my notes to Howard Elias. I knew you would find Charlotte’s Web. It was a matter of time.”
Bosch looked down at his pager. The number belonged to Lindell’s cell phone. The emergency code 911 was printed on the little screen after it. He looked back up at Kate Kincaid.
“So I finally summoned the courage I didn’t have for all those months and years. I confronted him. And he told me. And he laughed at me. He asked me why I cared now since I didn’t care while Stacey was alive.”
Now Bosch’s cell phone began to ring inside his briefcase. Kate Kincaid slowly stood up.
“I’ll let you take that in private.”
As he reached to his briefcase, he watched her pick her purse up and walk across the room in the direction of the hallway to her dead daughter’s bedroom. Bosch fumbled with the briefcase’s release but eventually got it open and got to the phone. It was Lindell.
“I’m at the house,” the FBI agent said, his voice tight with adrenaline and excitement. “Kincaid and Richter are here. It’s not very pretty.”
“Tell me.”
“They’re dead. And it doesn’t look like it was an easy ride for them. They were knee-capped, both of them shot in the balls… You still with the wife?”
Bosch looked in the direction of the hallway.
“Yes.”
Just as he said it he heard a single popping sound from down the hallway. He knew what it was.
“Better bring her over here,” Lindell said.
“Right.”
Bosch closed the phone and placed it back in the briefcase, his eyes still on the hallway.
“Mrs. Kincaid?”
There was no answer. All he heard was the rain.
Chapter 32
BY the time Bosch cleared the scene in Brentwood and got up the hill to The Summit it was almost two o’clock. Driving through the rain on the way he could think only of Kate Kincaid’s face. He had gotten to Stacey’s room less than ten seconds after hearing the shot, but she was already gone. She had used a twenty-two and placed the muzzle in her mouth, firing the bullet up into her brain. Death was instant. The kick of the gun had knocked it out of her mouth and onto the floor. There was no exit wound, often the case with a twenty-two. She simply appeared as though she was sleeping. She had wrapped herself in the pink blanket that had been used by her daughter. Kate Kincaid looked as though she was serene in death. No mortician would be able to improve on that.
There were several cars and vans parked in front of the Kincaid residence. Bosch had to park so far away that his raincoat was soaked through by the time he got to the door. Lindell was there waiting for him.
“Well, this certainly’s turned all to shit,” the FBI agent said by way of greeting.
“Yeah.”
“Should we have seen it coming?”
“I don’t know. You never can tell what people are going to do.”
“How’d you leave it over there?”
“The coroner and SID are still there. A couple RHD bulls – they’re handling it.”
Lindell nodded.
“I saw what I needed to see. Show me what you have here.”
They went into the house and Lindell led the way to the huge living room where Bosch had sat with the Kincaids the afternoon before. He saw the bodies. Sam Kincaid was in the same spot on the couch where Bosch had last seen him. D.C. Richter was on the floor below the window that looked out across the Valley. There was no jetliner view now. It was just gray. Richter’s body was in a pool of blood. Kincaid’s blood had seeped into the material covering the couch. There were several technicians working in the room and lights were set up. Bosch saw that numbered plastic markers had been put in place where.22-caliber shells had been located on the floor and other furniture.
“You have the twenty-two over in Brentwood, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what she used.”
“You didn’t think about searching her before you started talking, huh?”
Bosch looked at the FBI agent and shook his head slightly in annoyance.
“Are you kidding me? It was a voluntary Q amp;A, man. Maybe you’ve never done one over there at the bureau, but rule number one is you don’t make the subject feel like a suspect before you even start. I didn’t search and it would have been a mistake if – ”