The report also said there was no record of mental-health or drug issues, and Lucinda was deemed by Kohut to be a good candidate for rehabilitation and eventual probation. However, Kohut’s recommendation was to sentence Sanz on the high end of the manslaughter term range because of the circumstances of the crime. Those centered on the fact that Roberto Sanz was shot twice in the back, once when he was apparently already on the ground.
Bosch planned to request a copy of the PSR, so he moved on to the official records that had been included in the support material. This was where Bosch lived as an investigator. He had a facility for digesting reports and being able to view the case from all angles. He could see the logic jumps as well as the discrepancies and conflicts between reports. He understood that this was where he would come to a decision about Lucinda Sanz’s claim of innocence.
He first reviewed the initial crime report on the killing. The summary stated that Lucinda Sanz told responding officers that she had argued with her ex-husband because he had been two hours late returning their son home from a weekend visit, a violation of their custody agreement. The argument continued until Roberto Sanz turned and walked out of the house in an apparent effort to leave the dispute behind. Lucinda Sanz said she slammed and locked the front door after he left but then heard what sounded like gunshots from the front exterior of the house. Unsure whether her ex-husband had fired at the house, she hid with her son in the boy’s bedroom and did not reopen the door. From her son’s room she called 911 on her cell phone and reported the gunfire. Arriving officers found Roberto Sanz lying facedown in the front yard. Paramedics were called but he was declared dead at the scene.
The medical examiner’s report on the autopsy of Roberto Sanz was part of the support package. Bosch flipped to it now so he could look at the diagram of exactly where the wounds were located.
The single-page diagram contained two side-by-side generic line drawings of a male human body, front and back. There were markings, measurements, and annotations hand-printed by the deputy medical examiner who had conducted the autopsy. Bosch’s eyes were immediately drawn to the two Xs on the upper back of the rear profile. A note indicated that the distance between the wounds was 5.7 inches.
There were also notations on the diagram about the angle of entry of the wounds, and from these it was determined that the two shots had distinctly different trajectories. One shot, presumed to be the first, was from a relatively flat angle, indicating the victim was likely standing when struck by the bullet from behind. The second shot entered the body at an acute angle, indicating that the victim was already down when fired on a second time. The trajectory was upward through the body from back to front, breaking the right collarbone before lodging in the upper pectoral muscle.
To Bosch the second shot was key because it undercut arguments of accidental discharge, self-defense, and heat of passion. The shooter took aim a second time at a victim who had been knocked down by the first shot. It was a coup de grâce.
Bosch took out his phone and photographed the diagram. He planned to get copies made of the entire file but he wasn’t sure how long that would take and he wanted to have the diagram with him when he talked to Haller about the case.
After putting the phone down on the table, he flipped through the other pages of the autopsy report. He noted that two 9-millimeter slugs were recovered from the body. Also included in the report were black-and-white copies of the photos of the body taken before the autopsy. The body was naked and lying on a stainless-steel autopsy table. The photos showed both front and rear views of the body as well as close-ups of the entry wounds.
Bosch was quickly flipping through these when something caught his eye, and he held on the page. There was a tattoo running below the beltline of the left hip. It was in script and Bosch could easily read it.
Que Viene el Cuco
Bosch picked up his phone again and took another photo, this time enlarging the field to clearly show the tattoo without revealing the rest of the body. He knew what the tattoo meant. Not just in terms of literal translation, but in a larger and more telling sense:
The Bogeyman’s Coming
7
Topside in Grand Park, Bosch sat in one of the pink chairs scattered randomly on the lawn in front of the Criminal Courts Building and overshadowed by “Old Faithful,” the familiar tower of City Hall. He texted Haller. He knew his docket and remembered that he had an arraignment on the schedule.
You in the CCB? Can you talk?
After sending the message, he switched to the phone’s internet browser and typed in L.A. County sheriff’s gangs. Before any results appeared, a call came in from Haller.
“Yes, I’m in the CCB,” he said. “And you should be at UCLA, correct?”
“I should be but I’m not,” Bosch said. “I gotta call them, push it till later.”
“Don’t fuck around with that program. Took me a lot of wheeling and dealing to get you in there.”
“And I appreciate that. But something came up. Your arraignment on the guitar fraud happen yet?”
“Just did. But this driving-myself thing is a pain in the ass. Gotta go all the way over to the garage where jurors park to get the Lincoln.”
“I’m in the park outside. In the pink chairs. It’ll be on your way. I need to talk to you about the Sanz case.”
“Okay, then. I’m heading out now. No telling how long the elevator is going to take, though.”
“I’ll be here.”
Bosch disconnected and went back to the phone’s browser. He eventually pulled up an L.A. Times story from seven years earlier that reported on the FBI’s wide-ranging investigation into corruption in the sheriff’s department. The department had an entrenched culture of deputies joining cliques that were formed in jail units as well as in certain substations and patrol areas.
Bosch scrolled down and found a list of known cliques with names like the Executioners, the Regulators, the Jump Out Boys, the Banditos, and the Bogeymen. The story noted that the far-reaching FBI investigation had started small, with an inquiry into alleged improprieties within the county’s massive jail system, which was operated by the sheriff’s department. The Bureau found that deputies assigned to the jail division had created cliques within each detention facility. Members engaged in illegal activities that ranged from betting on fights between inmates to passing messages to inmates from outside gang leaders to facilitating and looking the other way when gang beatdowns and even assassinations occurred.
The Bureau further found that when deputies rotated out of jail assignments to substations serving the public, they formed new cliques, leading to a variety of corrupt behaviors there as well.
When either the Bureau or the sheriff’s department referred to these groups publicly, they called them cliques. But to Bosch, they were no different from street gangs. These were gangsters with badges. And he now believed Roberto Sanz had been one of them.
“You check that chair for bird shit?”
Bosch looked up from his phone. Haller was approaching, carrying one of the pink chairs.
“I did,” Bosch said.
Haller put his chair down beside Bosch’s so they could sit next to each other with a view of City Hall across the park. He put his slim briefcase down on the grass between his feet.