Blood reflected brightly on the dark steel. It could not be mistaken for oil. It was as red and real as life. Bosch squatted down and pointed the light beneath the truck. It had been dark here, too, made all the more impervious to vision by the bright lights above.
He saw Mackey’s body crumpled against the rear axle differential. Fully one-half of his face was bathed in blood from a long and deep laceration that cut across the left side of his head. His blue uniform shirt was maroon down the front from blood from other unseen injuries. The crotch of his pants was stained with blood or urine or both. The one arm Bosch could see was bent oddly at the forearm and a jagged, ivory white bone protruded from the flesh. The arm was cradled against Mackey’s chest, which heaved with non-rhythmic gasps. He was still alive.
“Oh God!” Rider called out from behind Bosch.
“Get an ambulance!” Bosch ordered as he started to crawl under the truck.
Hearing Rider’s feet crunch on the gravel as she ran back to her car and the radio, Bosch moved as close to Mackey as he could get. He knew he might be destroying a crime scene but he had to get close.
“Ro, can you hear me? Ro, who did this? What happened?”
Mackey seemed to stir at the sound of his name. His mouth started moving and that was when Bosch could tell his jaw was broken or dislocated. Its movements were uncoordinated. It was like Mackey was trying it out for the first time.
“Take your time, Ro. Tell me who did this. Did you see him?”
Mackey whispered something but a car speeding by on the entrance ramp drowned it out.
“Tell me again, Ro. Say it again.”
Bosch pushed forward and leaned his head down by Mackey’s mouth. What he heard was half gasp, half whisper.
“… sworth…”
He pulled back and looked at Mackey. He put the light into his face, hoping it might rouse him. He saw that the bone structure around Mackey’s left eye was also crushed and hemorrhaging. He wasn’t going to make it.
“Ro, if you have something to say, say it now. Did you kill Rebecca Verloren? Were you there that night?”
Bosch leaned forward. If Mackey said anything it was drowned in the noise of another car going by. When Bosch pulled back to look at him again he appeared to be dead. Bosch pushed two fingers into the bloodied side of Mackey’s neck and could not find a pulse.
“Ro? Roland, are you still with me?”
The one undamaged eye was open but at half-mast. Bosch moved the light in close and saw no pupil movement. He was gone.
Bosch carefully crawled out from beneath the truck. Rider was standing there, her arms folded tightly in front of her.
“Ambulance on the way,” she said.
“Call ’em off.”
He handed her back her flashlight.
“Harry, if you think he’s dead, the paramedics should confirm it.”
“Don’t worry, he’s dead. They’ll just get under there and ruin our crime scene. Call them off.”
“Did he say anything?”
“It sounded like he said ‘Chatsworth.’ That was it. Anything else, I couldn’t hear.”
She seemed to be pacing now, in a small track, nervously moving back and forth.
“Oh God,” she said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Then move back over there, away from the scene.”
She walked off behind her car. Bosch felt sick to his stomach as well, but he knew he could keep it in. It wasn’t seeing Mackey’s torn and broken body that was causing the bile to rise in his throat. Bosch, like Rider, had seen far worse. It was the circumstances that were sickening. Instinctively he knew that this was no accident. This had been an assassination. And it was he who had put it all into motion.
He was sick because he had just gotten Roland Mackey killed. And with the death he might have lost the last, best link to Rebecca Verloren’s killer.
Part Three. DARKNESS WAITS
32
THE TAMPA AVENUE entrance ramp to the Ronald Reagan Freeway was closed and traffic was routed down Rinaldi to the Porter Ranch Drive entrance. The entire freeway ramp was choked with official police vehicles. The LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division, California Highway Patrol and the Medical Examiner’s Office were all represented, along with members of the Open-Unsolved Unit. Abel Pratt had made calls and had greased the takeover of the case by the unit. Because the murder of Roland Mackey had taken place on a state freeway entrance, the case technically belonged to the jurisdiction of the CHP. But the agency was more than happy to hand it off, especially since the death was seen as part of an ongoing LAPD investigation. In other words, the LAPD was going to be allowed to clean up its own mess.
The commander of the local CHP barracks did offer the use of his squad’s best accident expert, and Pratt took him up on that. Added to this, Pratt had assembled some of the best forensics people the department could muster, all in the middle of the night.
Bosch and Rider spent much of the time during the crime scene investigation sitting in the back of Pratt’s car, where they were interviewed at length by Pratt and then by Tim Marcia and Rick Jackson, who were called in from home to head up the investigation into Mackey’s death. Since Bosch and Rider were part of some events and witnesses to others, it was determined that they would not investigate the case as leads. This was a technical formality. It was clear that Bosch and Rider would be continuing to pursue the Verloren case, and in doing so they would obviously be pursuing Roland Mackey’s killer.
At about 3 a.m. the forensics investigators gathered with the homicide detectives to go over what they knew so far. Mackey’s body had just been removed from beneath the truck and the scene had been thoroughly photographed, videoed and sketched. It was now considered an open scene and everyone could walk freely about.
Pratt asked the CHP investigator, a tall man named David Allmand, to go first. Allmand used a laser pointer to delineate the tire marks on the roadway and the gravel that he believed were involved in the incident with Mackey. He also pointed to the back of the tow truck, where chalk circles had been drawn around several scratches, dents and breaks in the heavy steel gate. He said he concluded the same thing Bosch and Rider had concluded within seconds of finding Mackey. He was murdered.
“The tire markings tell us that the victim pulled the tow truck onto the shoulder about thirty yards west of this point,” Allmand said. “This was likely to avoid the disabled vehicle already on the shoulder. The tow truck was then backed down the shoulder to this position here. The driver put the transmission in park and set the parking brake before exiting the truck. If he was in a hurry, as some of the ancillary information indicates, he may have gone right to the tail here to lower the towing assembly. This is where he got it.
“The disabled car was obviously not disabled. The driver floored the accelerator and it lurched forward, striking the tow truck driver and pinning him against the back of the truck and the tow assembly. To get ready for the tow the vic would have bent over here to free the hook assembly. He was likely doing this when he was struck, and this would explain the head injuries. He went face first into the assembly. There’s blood on the tow arm. ”
Allmand ran the red eye of his laser over the tow truck’s hook assembly to illustrate.
“The car then backed up,” he continued. “And that’s where you get the striated markings on the asphalt here. He then moved forward for another strike. The victim was probably already fatally injured from the first impact. But he wasn’t dead yet. It is likely he fell to the ground after the first impact and with his last strength crawled under the truck to avoid the second impact. Either way, the vehicle did strike the tow truck a second time. And of course, the victim succumbed to his injuries while beneath the truck.”