She held his eyes for a moment before replying.
“Yes, there is something else. It’s not about this, though.”
“Then, what is it?”
“You’ve got to give yourself a break on that phone call, Harry. You can’t let that bring you down. The work ahead is too important.”
Bosch nodded insincerely. It was easy for her to say that. She wouldn’t have to live with the ghosts of all the women Raynard Waits would begin to tell them about the next morning.
“Don’t just nod it off like that,” Rachel said. “Do you know how many cases I worked in Behavioral where the guy kept killing? How many times we got calls and notes from these creeps but still couldn’t get to them before the next victim was dead?”
“I know, I know.”
“We all have ghosts. It’s part of the job. With some jobs it’s a bigger part than with others. I had a boss once, he used to say, if you can’t stand the ghosts, get out of the haunted house.”
He nodded again, this time while looking directly at her. He meant it this time.
“How many murders have you solved, Harry? How many killers have you put away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t keep track.”
“Maybe you should.”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is, how many of those killers would have done it again if you hadn’t taken them down? More than a few, I bet.”
“Probably.”
“There you go. You’re way ahead in the long run. Think about that.”
“Okay.”
His mind flashed on one of those killers. Bosch had arrested Roger Boylan many years before. He drove a pickup with a camper shell on the back. He had used marijuana to entice a couple young girls into the back while parked up at Hansen Dam. He raped and killed them, injecting them with an overdose of a horse tranquilizer. He then threw their bodies into the dry bed of the nearby slough. When Bosch put the cuffs on him Boylan had only one thing to say.
“Too bad. I was just getting started.”
Bosch wondered how many victims there would have been if he hadn’t stopped him. He wondered if he could trade Roger Boylan for Raynard Waits and call it even. On the one hand, he thought he could. On the other hand, he knew it wasn’t a zero-sum game. The true detective knew that coming out even in homicide work was not good enough. Not by a long shot.
“I hope I’ve helped,” Rachel said.
He looked up from the memory of Boylan to Rachel’s eyes.
“I think you did. I think I’ll know better who and what I am dealing with when I go into the room with him tomorrow.”
She stood up from the table.
“I meant about the other thing.”
Bosch stood.
“That, too. You’ve helped a lot.”
He came around the table so he could walk her to the door.
“Be careful, Harry.”
“I know. You said that. But you don’t have to worry. It will be a full-security situation.”
“I don’t mean the physical danger as much as I mean the psychological. Guard yourself, Harry. Please.”
“I will,” he said.
It was time to go to the door but she was hesitating. She looked down at the contents of the file spread across the table and then at Bosch.
“I was hoping you would call me sometime,” she said. “But not about a case.”
Bosch had to take a few moments before coming back.
“I thought because of what I said-what we said-that…”
He wasn’t sure how to finish. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. She reached up and put her hand lightly on his chest. He took a step closer, coming into her space. He then put his arms around her and pulled her close.
9
LATER, AFTER THEY HAD made love, Bosch and Rachel remained in bed, talking about anything they could think of except what they had just done. Eventually they came back around to the case and the next morning’s interview with Raynard Waits.
“I can’t believe that after all this time I’m going to sit down face-to-face with her killer,” Bosch said. “It’s kind of like a dream. I actually have dreamed of catching the guy. I mean, it was never Waits in the dream but I dreamed about closing out the case.”
“Who was it in the dream?” she asked.
Her head was resting on his chest. He couldn’t see her face but he could smell her hair. Under the sheets she had one leg over one of his.
“It was this guy I always thought could be good for it. But I never had anything on him. I guess because he was always an asshole, I wanted it to be him.”
“Well, did he have any connection to Gesto?”
Bosch tried to shrug but it was difficult with their bodies so entwined.
“He knew about the garage where we found the car and had an ex-girlfriend who was a ringer for Gesto. And he had anger-management issues. No real evidence. I just thought it was him. I followed him once way back during the first year of the investigation. He was working as a security guard up in the oil fields behind Baldwin Hills. You know where that is?”
“You mean where you see the oil pumps when you’re coming in on La Cienega from the airport?”
“Yeah, right. That’s the place. Well, this kid’s family owned a chunk of those fields, and his old man was trying to straighten him out, I guess. You know, make him work for a living even though they had all the money in the world. So he was working security up there and I was watching him one day. He came across these kids who were fooling around up in there, just trespassing and messing around. They were just kids, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Two boys from the nearby neighborhood.”
“What did he do to them?”
“He drew down on them, then handcuffed them to one of the pumps. Their backs were to each other and they were cuffed around this pole that was sort of like an anchor for the pump. And then he got back in his pickup and drove away.”
“He just left them there?”
“That’s what I thought he was doing but he was coming back. I was watching with binoculars from a ridge all the way across La Cienega and could see the whole oil field from up there. He had another guy with him and they drove over to this shack where I guess they kept samples of the oil they were pumping out of the ground. They went in there and came out with two buckets of this stuff, put ’em in the back of the pickup and drove back. They then dumped that shit all over the two kids.”
Rachel got up on one elbow and looked at him.
“And you just watched this happen?”
“I told you, I was clear across La Cienega on the next ridge. Before they built houses up there. If he went any further I was going to try to intervene somehow, but then he let them go. Besides, I didn’t want him to know I was watching him. At that point he didn’t know I was thinking of him for Gesto.”
She nodded like she understood and no longer questioned his lack of action.
“He just let them go?” she asked.
“He uncuffed them, kicked one of them in the butt and let them go. I could tell they were crying and scared.”
Rachel shook her head in disgust.
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Anthony Garland. His father is Thomas Rex Garland. You might have heard of him.”
Rachel shook her head, not recognizing the name.
“Well, Anthony might not have been Gesto’s killer but he sounds like a complete asshole.”
Bosch nodded.
“He is. You want to see him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got a ‘greatest hits’ video. I’ve had him in an interview room three times in thirteen years. Each interview was on tape.”
“You have the tape here?”
Bosch nodded, knowing that she might find it strange or off-putting that he studied interrogation tapes at home.
“I had them copied onto one tape. I brought it home to watch the last time I worked the case.”
Rachel seemed to consider his answer before she responded.
“Then pop it in. Let’s take a look at this guy.”
Bosch got out of bed, slipped on his boxer shorts and turned on the lamp. He went out to the living room and looked in the cabinet beneath the television. He had several crime scene tapes from old cases, as well as various other tapes and DVDs. He finally located a VHS tape marked GARLAND on the box and took it back to the bedroom.
He had a television with a built-in VCR on the bureau. He turned it on, slid in the tape and sat on the edge of the bed with the remote. He kept his boxers on now that he and Rachel were working. Rachel stayed under the covers and as the tape was cuing up she reached a foot toward him and tapped her toes on his back.
“Is this what you do with all the girls you bring here? Show them your interrogation techniques?”
Bosch glanced back at her and was almost serious with his response.
“Rachel, I think you’re the only person in the world I could do this with.”
She smiled.
“I think I get you, Bosch.”
He looked back at the screen. The tape was playing. He hit the mute with the remote.
“This first one is March eleventh of ’ninety-four. It’s about six months after Gesto disappeared and we were grasping for anything. We didn’t have enough to arrest him-it wasn’t even close-but I was able to convince him to come into the station to give a statement. He didn’t know I had the bead on him. He thought he was just going to talk about the apartment where his ex-girlfriend had lived.”
On the screen was a grainy color picture of a small room with a table at which two men sat. One was a much younger-looking Harry Bosch and the other was a man in his early twenties with wavy surfer-white hair. Anthony Garland. He was wearing a T-shirt that said Lakers across the chest. The sleeves were tight on his arms, and tattoo ink was visible on his left biceps. Black barbed wire wrapped the muscles of the arm.