Echo Park (12 page)

15

W
AITS LED THEM TOWARD
a dirt path that fed off the lower end of the gravel parking lot. It disappeared beneath a canopy created by a grove of acacia trees, white oaks and heavy brush. He walked without hesitation, like he knew just where he was going. Soon the troop was in shadow and Bosch figured the cameraman in the helicopter wasn’t getting much usable video from above the canopy. The only one who spoke was Waits.

“Not too much farther,” he said, as though he were a nature guide leading them to a secluded waterfall.

The path became narrower as the trees and brush encroached and the trail evolved from the well-trodden to the seldom used. They were in a stretch where few hikers ventured. Olivas had to change position from holding Waits by the arm and walking next to him to following the killer, with a hand grasping the waist chain from behind. It was clear that Olivas was not going to let go of his suspect and this was comforting to Bosch. What wasn’t comforting was that the new position blocked everybody else’s shot at Waits should he try to run.

Bosch had traversed numerous jungles in his life. Most often they were the kind where you kept your eyes and ears on the distance, alert and waiting for ambush, and at the same time watched each step you took, wary of the booby trap. This time he kept his eyes focused on the two men moving in front of him, Waits and Olivas, without waver.

The terrain grew more difficult as the path followed the downslope of the mountain. The soil was soft and moist from the overnight precipitation as well as all the rain in the past year. In some places Bosch felt his hiking boots sink and catch. And at one point, there was the sound of breaking branches behind him and then the thud of a body hitting the mud. Though Olivas and Deputy Doolan stopped and turned to see what the commotion was about, Bosch never moved his eyes from Waits. From behind him he heard Swann curse and the others ask if he was okay as they helped him up.

After Swann stopped swearing and the troop regrouped, they moved farther down the slope. Progress was slow, as Swann’s mishap caused everyone to step even more carefully than before. In another five minutes they stopped at the precipice of a steep drop-off. It was a place where the weight of water that pooled in the ground had caused a small mud slide in recent months. The ground had sheared away next to an oak tree, exposing half of its root system. The drop was almost ten feet down.

“Well, this wasn’t here last time I came,” Waits said in a tone that indicated he was put out by the inconvenience.

“Is that the way?” Olivas asked, pointing to the bottom of the drop-off.

“Yes,” Waits confirmed. “We go down there.”

“All right, wait a minute.”

Olivas turned and looked at Bosch.

“Bosch, why don’t you go down first and then I’ll send him down to you.”

Bosch nodded and moved past them. He grabbed one of the lower branches of the oak for balance as he tested the stability of the soil on the steep slope. It was loose and slippery.

“No good,” he said. “This is going to be like a sliding board going down. And once we get down, how do we get back up?”

Olivas blew out his breath in frustration.

“Then what do—”

“There was a ladder on top of one of the vans,” Waits suggested.

They all looked at him for a long moment.

“He’s right. Forensics has a ladder on top of the truck,” Rider said. “We get it, put it down on the incline and go up and down on it like stairs. Simple.”

Swann broke into the huddle.

“Simple, except my client is not going up and down that slope or up and down a ladder with his hands chained to his waist,” he said.

After a momentary pause everyone looked at O’Shea.

“I think we can work something out,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” Olivas said. “We’re not taking the—”

“Then he’s not going down there,” Swann said. “It’s that simple. I’m not allowing you to endanger him. He’s my client and my responsibility to him is not only in the arena of the law but in all—”

O’Shea held his hands up in a calming manner.

“One of
our
responsibilities is the safety of the accused,” he said. “Maury makes a point. If Mr. Waits falls going down the ladder without being able to use his hands, then we’re responsible. And then we’ve got a problem. I am sure that with all of you people holding guns and shotguns, we can control this situation for the ten seconds it takes him to go down a ladder.”

“I’ll go get the ladder,” said the forensic tech. “Can you hold this?”

Her name was Carolyn Cafarelli and Bosch knew most people called her Cal. She handed the gas probe, a yellow T-shaped device, to Bosch and started back through the woods.

“I’ll help her with it,” Rider said.

“No,” Bosch said. “Everybody carrying a weapon stays with Waits.”

Rider nodded, realizing he was right.

“I can handle it,” Cafarelli called out. “It’s lightweight aluminum.”

“I just hope she can find her way back,” O’Shea said after she was gone.

For the first few minutes they waited in silence, then Waits spoke to Bosch.

“Anxious, Detective?” he asked. “Now that we’re so close.”

Bosch didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to let Waits get inside his head.

Waits tried again.

“I think about all the cases you have worked. How many are like this one? How many are like Marie? I bet she—”

“Waits, shut the fuck up,” Olivas commanded.

“Ray, please,” Swann said in a soothing voice.

“Just making conversation with the detective.”

“Well, make it with yourself,” Olivas said.

The silence returned until a few minutes later, when they all heard the sound of Cafarelli carrying the ladder through the woods. She banged it a few times on low-level limbs but finally got it to their position. Bosch helped her slide it down the slope and they made sure it was steady on the steep incline. When he stood up and turned back to the group Bosch saw that Olivas was uncuffing one of Waits’s hands from the chain running around the prisoner’s waist. He left the other hand secured.

“The other hand, Detective,” Swann said.

“He can climb with one hand free,” Olivas insisted.

“I am sorry, Detective, but I am not going to allow that. He has to be able to hold on and break a fall if he happens to slip. He needs both hands free.”

“He can do it with one.”

While the posturing and debate continued, Bosch swung himself onto the ladder and went down the slope backwards. The ladder was steady. At the bottom he looked around and realized that there was no discernible path. From this point the trail to Marie Gesto’s body was not as obvious as it had been above. He looked back up at the others and waited.

“Freddy, just do it,” O’Shea instructed in an annoyed tone. “Deputy, you go down first and be ready with that shotgun in case Mr. Waits gets any ideas. Detective Rider, you have my permission to unholster your weapon. You stay up here with Freddy and be ready as well.”

Bosch climbed back up a few steps on the ladder so the deputy could carefully hand him the shotgun. He then stepped back down and the uniformed man came down the ladder. Bosch gave him back the weapon and returned to the ladder.

“Toss me the cuffs,” Bosch called up to Olivas.

Bosch caught the cuffs and then took a position two rungs up on the ladder. Waits began to go down while the videographer stood at the edge and recorded his descent. When Waits was three rungs from the bottom Bosch reached up and grabbed the waist chain to guide him the rest of the way to the lower ground.

“This is it, Ray,” he whispered in his ear from behind. “Your only chance. You sure you don’t want to make a run for it?”

Safely at the bottom, Waits stepped off the ladder and turned to Bosch, holding his hands up for the cuffs. His eyes held on Bosch’s.

“No, Detective, I think I like living too much.”

“I thought so.”

Bosch cuffed his hands to the waist chain and looked back up the slope at the others.

“Okay, we’re secure.”

One by one the others came down the ladder. Once they had regrouped at the bottom O’Shea looked around and saw that there was no longer a path. They could go in any direction.

“Okay, which way?” he said to Waits.

Waits turned in a half circle as if seeing the area for the first time.

“Ummmm . . .”

Olivas almost lost it.

“You better not be pulling—”

“That way,” Waits said coyly as he nodded to the right of the slope. “Lost my bearings there for a second.”

“No bullshit, Waits,” Olivas said. “You take us to the body right now or we go back, go to trial and you get the hot shot of Jesus juice you’ve got coming. You got that?”

“I got it. And like I said, this way.”

The group moved off through the brush with Waits leading the way, Olivas clinging to the chain at the small of his back and the shotgun never more than five feet behind.

The ground on this level was softer and more muddy. Bosch knew that runoff from last spring’s rains had likely gone down the slope and collected here. He felt his thigh muscles begin to tighten as every step was a labor to pull his work boots from the sucking mud.

In five minutes they came to a small clearing shaded by a tall, fully mature oak. Bosch saw Waits looking up and followed his eyes. A yellowish-white hair band hung limply from an overhead branch.

“It’s funny,” Waits said. “It used to be blue.”

Bosch knew that at the time of Marie Gesto’s disappearance she was believed to have had her hair tied back with a blue hair band known as a scrunchy. A friend who had seen her earlier on that last day had provided a description of what she was wearing. The scrunchy was not with the clothing found neatly folded in her car at the High Tower Apartments.

Bosch looked up at the hair band. Thirteen years of rain and exposure had taken its color.

Bosch lowered his eyes to Waits, and the killer was waiting for him with a smile.

“We’re here, Detective. You’ve finally found Marie.”

“Where?”

Waits’s smile broadened.

“You’re standing on her.”

Bosch abruptly stepped back a pace and Waits laughed.

“Don’t worry, Detective Bosch, I don’t think she minds. What was it the great man wrote about sleeping the big sleep? About not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell?”

Bosch looked at him for a long moment, wondering once again about the literary airs of the window washer. Waits seemed to read him.

“I’ve been in jail since May, Detective. I’ve done a lot of reading.”

“Step back,” Bosch said.

Waits opened his cuffed hands in a surrender move and stepped toward the trunk of the oak. Bosch looked at Olivas.

“You got him?”

“I got him.”

Bosch looked down at the ground. He had left footprints in the muddy earth but it also looked like there was another, recent disturbance in the soil. It looked as though an animal had made a small dig in the ground, either foraging or burying its own dead. Bosch signaled the forensics tech over to the center of the clearing. Cafarelli stepped forward with the gas probe and Bosch pointed to the spot directly below the colorless hair band. The tech pushed the point of the probe into the soft soil and easily sank it a foot into the earth. She clicked on the reader and began studying the electronic display. Bosch stepped toward her to look over her shoulder. He knew that the probe measured the level of methane in the soil. A buried body releases methane gas as it decomposes. Even a body wrapped in plastic.

“We’re getting a read,” Cafarelli said. “We’re above normal levels.”

Bosch nodded. He felt strange inside. Out of sorts. He had been with the case for more than a decade and a part of him liked holding on to the mystery of Marie Gesto. But, while he didn’t believe in something called closure, he did believe in the need to know the truth. He felt that the truth was about to reveal itself, and yet it was disconcerting. He needed to know the truth to move on, but how could he move on once he no longer needed to find and avenge Marie Gesto?

He looked at Waits.

“How far down is she?”

“Not too far,” Waits replied matter-of-factly. “Back in ’ninety-three we were in drought, remember? The ground was hard and, man, I wore my ass out digging a hole for her. I was lucky she was just a little thing. But, anyway, that’s why I changed it up. No more digging big holes for me after that.”

Bosch looked away from him and back at Cafarelli. She was taking another probe reading. She would be able to delineate the grave site by charting the highest methane readings.

They all watched the grim work silently. After taking several readings in a grid pattern Cafarelli finally moved her hand in a north-south sweep to indicate how the body was likely positioned. She then marked the limits of the grave site by dragging the point of the probe in the dirt. When she was finished she had marked out a rectangle about six feet by two feet. It was a small grave for a small victim.

“Okay,” O’Shea said. “Let’s get Mr. Waits back and secured in the car and then bring in the excavation group.”

The prosecutor told Cafarelli that she should stay at the site so there would be no crime scene integrity issues. The rest of the group headed back toward the ladder. Bosch was last in the single-file line, his mind deep in thought about the ground they were traversing. There was something sacred about it. It was hallowed ground. He hoped that Waits had not lied to them. He hoped that Marie Gesto had not been forced to make the walk to her grave while alive.

At the ladder Rider and Olivas went up first. Bosch then walked Waits to the ladder, uncuffed him and started him up.

As the killer climbed, the deputy trained the shotgun, finger on the trigger, on his back. In that moment, Bosch realized he could slip on the muddy soil, fall into the deputy and possibly cause the shotgun to discharge and hit Waits with the deadly fusillade. He looked away from the temptation and up at the top of the sheer facing. His partner was looking down at him with eyes that told him she had just read his thoughts. Bosch tried to put an innocent look on his face. He spread his hands while mouthing the word
What?