City of Bones (28 page)

“Wait a minute, you—” Bosch said, able to hold himself from calling a superior officer an expletive. “If you’re trying to say I would lie about Stokes shooting Julia—uh, Officer Brasher—so he would stay in the clear for my case, then you—with all due respect—are out of your fucking mind.”

“Detective Bosch, I am exploring all possibilities here. It is my job to do so.”

“Well, you can explore them without me.”

Bosch stood up and went to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m done with this.”

He glanced at the mirror and opened the door, then looked back at Gilmore.

“I got news for you, Lieutenant. Your theory is for shit. Stokes is nothing to my case. A zero. Julia getting shot, it was for nothing.”

“But you didn’t know that until you got him in here, did you?”

Bosch looked at him and then slowly shook his head.

“Have a good day, Lieutenant.”

He turned to go through the door and almost stepped into Irving. The deputy chief stood ramrod straight in the hallway outside the room.

“Step back inside for a moment, Detective,” he said calmly. “Please.”

Bosch backed into the room. Irving followed him in.

“Lieutenant, give us some space here,” the deputy chief said. “And I want everyone out of the viewing room as well.”

He pointed at the mirror as he said this.

“Yes, sir,” Gilmore said and he left the room, closing the door behind him.

“Take your seat again,” Irving said.

Bosch moved back to the seat facing the mirror. Irving remained standing. After a moment he also started pacing, moving back and forth in front of the mirror, a double image for Bosch to track.

“We are going to call the shooting accidental,” Irving said, not looking at Bosch. “Officer Brasher apprehended the suspect and while reholstering her weapon inadvertently fired the shot.”

“Is that what she said?” Bosch asked.

Irving looked momentarily confused, then shook his head.

“As far as I know, she only spoke to you and you said she didn’t say anything specifically in regard to the shooting.”

Bosch nodded.

“So that’s the end of it?”

“I don’t see why it should go any further.”

Bosch thought of the photo of the shark on Julia’s mantel. About what he knew about her in such a short time with her. Again the images of what he saw in the garage played back in slow motion. And things didn’t add up.

“If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?”

Irving cleared his throat.

“I am not going to debate things with you, Detective. The decision has been made.”

“By you.”

“Yes, by me.”

“What about Stokes?”

“That will be up to the District Attorney’s Office. He could be charged under the felony-murder law. His action of fleeing ultimately led to the shooting. It will get technical. If it is determined he was already in custody when the fatal shot occurred, then he might be able to—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Bosch said, coming out of his chair. “Felony-
murder
law? Did you say
fatal
shot?”

Irving turned to face him.

“Lieutenant Gilmore did not tell you?”

Bosch dropped back into the chair and put his elbows on the table. He covered his face with his hands.

“The bullet hit a bone in her shoulder and apparently ricocheted inside her body. It cut through her chest. Pierced her heart. And she was dead on arrival.”

Bosch lowered his face so that his hands were now on top of his head. He felt himself get dizzy and he thought he might fall out of the chair. He tried to breathe deeply until it passed. After a few moments Irving spoke into the darkness of his mind.

“Detective, there are some officers in this department they call ‘shit magnets.’ I am sure you have heard the term. Personally, I find the phrase distasteful. But its meaning is that things always seem to happen to these particular officers. Bad things. Repeatedly. Always.”

Bosch waited in the dark for what he knew was coming.

“Unfortunately, Detective Bosch, you are one of those officers.”

Bosch unconsciously nodded. He was thinking about the moment that the paramedic put the breathing mask over Julia’s mouth as she was speaking.

Don’t let them
—

What did she mean? Don’t let them what? He was beginning to put things together and to know what she was going to say.

“Detective,” Irving said, his strong voice cutting through Bosch’s thoughts. “I have shown tremendous patience with you over the cases and over the years. But I have grown tired of it. So has this department. I want you to start thinking about retirement. Soon, Detective. Soon.”

Bosch kept his head down and didn’t respond. After a moment he heard the door open and close.

34

I
N keeping with the wishes of Julia Brasher’s family that she be buried in accordance with her faith, her funeral was late the next morning at Hollywood Memorial Park. Because she had been killed accidentally while in the line of duty, she was accorded the full police burial ceremony, complete with motorcycle procession, honor guard, twenty-one-gun salute and a generous showing of the department’s brass at graveside. The department’s aero squadron also flew over the cemetery, five helicopters flying in “missing man” formation.

But because the funeral was not even twenty-four hours after her death it was not well attended. Line-of-duty deaths routinely bring at least token representations of officers from departments all over the state and the southwest. It was not to be with Julia Brasher. The quickness of the ceremony and the circumstances of her death added up to it being a relatively small affair—by police burial standards. A death in a gun battle would have crowded the small cemetery from stone to stone with the trappings of the blue religion. A cop killing herself while holstering her weapon did not engender much of the mythology and danger of police work. The funeral simply wasn’t a draw.

Bosch watched from the outer edges of the funeral group. His head was throbbing from a night of drinking and trying to dull the guilt and pain he felt. Bones had come out of the ground and now two people were dead for reasons that made little sense to him. His eyes were badly bloodshot and swollen but he knew he could pass that off, if he had to, to being sprayed with the tire cleaner by Stokes the day before.

He saw Teresa Corazon, for once without her videographer, seated in the front row line of brass and dignitaries, what few of them there were in attendance. She wore sunglasses but Bosch could tell when she had noticed him. Her mouth seemed to settle into a hard, thin line. A perfect funeral smile.

Bosch was the first to look away.

It was a beautiful day for a funeral. Brisk overnight winds from the Pacific had temporarily cleared the smog out of the sky. Even the view of the Valley from Bosch’s home had been clear that morning. Cirrus clouds scudded across the upper reaches of the sky along with contrails left by high-flying jets. The air in the cemetery smelled sweet from all the flowers arranged near the grave. From his standpoint, Bosch could see the crooked letters of the Hollywood sign, high up on Mount Lee, presiding over the service.

The chief of police did not deliver the eulogy as was his custom in line-of-duty deaths. Instead, the academy commander spoke, using the moment to talk about how danger in police work always comes from the unexpected corner and how Officer Brasher’s death might save other cops by being a reminder never to let down the guard of caution. He never called her anything but Officer Brasher during his ten-minute speech, giving it an embarrassingly impersonal touch.

During the whole thing Bosch kept thinking about photos of sharks with open mouths and volcanoes disgorging their molten flows. He wondered if Julia had finally proven herself to the person she believed she needed to.

Amidst the blue uniforms surrounding the silver casket was a swath of gray. The lawyers. Her father and a large contingent from the firm. In the second row behind Brasher’s father Bosch could see the man from the photo on the mantel of the Venice bungalow. For a while Bosch fantasized about going up to him and slapping him or bringing a knee up into his genitals. Doing it right in the middle of the service for all to see, then pointing to the casket and telling the man that he sent her on the path to this.

But he let it go. He knew that explanation and assignment of blame was too simple and wrong. Ultimately, he knew, people chose their own path. They can be pointed and pushed, but they always get the final choice. Everybody’s got a cage that keeps out the sharks. Those who open the door and venture out do so at their own risk.

Seven members of Brasher’s rookie class were chosen for the salute. They pointed rifles toward the blue sky and fired three rounds of blanks each, the ejected brass jackets arcing through the light and falling to the grass like tears. While the shots were still echoing off the stones, the helicopters made their pass overhead and then the funeral was over.

Bosch slowly made his way toward the grave, passing people heading away. A hand tugged his elbow from behind and he turned around. It was Brasher’s partner, Edgewood.

“I, uh, just wanted to apologize about yesterday, about what I did,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

Bosch waited for him to make eye contact and then just nodded. He had nothing to say to Edgewood.

“I guess you didn’t mention it to OIS and I, uh, just want to say I appreciate it.”

Bosch just looked at him. Edgewood became uncomfortable, nodded once and walked away. When he was gone Bosch found himself looking at a woman who had been standing right behind the cop. A Latina with silver hair. It took Bosch a moment to recognize her.

“Dr. Hinojos.”

“Detective Bosch, how are you?”

It was the hair. Almost seven years earlier, when Bosch had been a regular visitor to Hinojos’s office, her hair had been a deep brown without a hint of gray. She was still an attractive woman, gray or brown. But the change was startling.

“I’m doing okay. How’re things in the psych shop?”

She smiled.

“They’re fine.”

“I hear you run the whole show now.”

She nodded. Bosch felt himself getting nervous. When he had known her before, he had been on an involuntary stress leave. In twice-a-week sessions he had told her things he had never told anyone before or since. And once he was returned to duty he had never spoken to her again.

Until now.

“Did you know Julia Brasher?” he asked.

It wasn’t unusual for a department shrink to attend a line-of-duty funeral; to offer on-the-spot counseling to those close to the deceased.

“No, not really. Not personally. As head of the department I reviewed her academy application and screening interview. I signed off on it.”

She waited a moment, studying Bosch for a reaction.

“I understand you were close to her. And that you were there. You were the witness.”

Bosch nodded. People leaving the funeral were passing on both sides of them. Hinojos took a step closer to him so that she would not be overheard.

“This is not the time or place but, Harry, I want to talk to you about her.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“I want to know what happened. And why.”

“It was an accident. Talk to Chief Irving.”

“I have and I’m not satisfied. I doubt you are, either.”

“Listen, Doctor, she’s dead, okay? I’m not going to—”

“I signed off on her. My signature put that badge on her. If we missed something—if I missed something—I want to know. If there were signs, we should have seen them.”

Bosch nodded and looked down at the grass between them.

“Don’t worry, there were signs I should’ve seen. But I didn’t put it together either.”

She took another step closer. Now Bosch could look nowhere but directly at her.

“Then I am right. There is something more to this.”

He nodded.

“Nothing overt. It’s just that she lived close to the edge. She took risks—she crossed the tube. She was trying to prove something. I don’t think she was even sure she wanted to be a cop.”

“Prove something to who?”

“I don’t know. Maybe herself, maybe somebody else.”

“Harry, I knew you as a man of great instincts. What else?”

Bosch shrugged.

“It’s just things she did or said. . . . I have a scar on my shoulder from a bullet wound. She asked me about it. The other night. She asked how I got shot and I told her how I had been lucky that it hit me where it did because it was all bone. Then . . . where she shot herself, it’s the same spot. Only with her . . . it ricocheted. She didn’t expect that.”

Hinojos nodded and waited.

“What I’ve been thinking I can’t stand thinking, know what I mean?”

“Tell me, Harry.”

“I keep replaying it in my head. What I saw and what I know. She pointed her gun at him. And I think if I hadn’t been there and yelled that maybe she would have shot him. Once he was down she would have wrapped his hands around the gun and fired a shot into the ceiling or maybe a car. Or maybe into him. It wouldn’t matter as long as he ended up dead with paraffin on his hands and she could claim he went for her gun.”

“What are you suggesting, that she shot herself in order to kill him and make herself look like a hero?”

“I don’t know. She talked about the world needing heroes. Especially now. She said she hoped to get a chance to be a hero one day. But I think there was something else in all of this. It was like she wanted the scar, the experience of it.”

“And she was willing to kill for it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m even right about any of this. All I know is that she might have been a rookie but she had already reached the point where there was a line between us and them, where everybody without a badge is a scumbag. She saw it happening to herself. She might have been just looking for a way out . . .”

Bosch shook his head and looked off to the side. The cemetery was almost deserted now.