The Night Fire: A Ballard and Bosch thriller (Harry Bosch 22) (30 page)

Ballard had called Bosch on Sunday from Ventura, where she was visiting the grandmother who had raised her during most of her teenage years. The update on the Hilton case was that Ballard had gone to see a prosecutor who was ready to file on Elvin Kidd. There was a list of things Selma Robinson wanted covered on the case to shore it up on all sides. Among those was Hilton’s birth certificate. Robinson wanted no surprises and no missing pieces of the puzzle when she took the case to court.

Bosch didn’t expect that his text to his daughter would be answered quickly. She was almost never prompt in her replies. Even though she was inseparable from her phone and therefore got his messages in a timely fashion—even if she was in class—she always seemed to deliberate at length over his communications before responding.

But this time he was wrong. She hit him back before he was finished with his sandwich.

That might work. But I have a class 7–9. Early dinner okay?

Bosch sent back a message saying any time was a good time and that he would head south after lunch, take care of his business in Norwalk, then get to a coffee shop near Chapman University and be ready to meet whenever she was ready.

In answer, he got a thumbs-up.

He dumped his trash in a can and took the bottle of water with him back to his car.

Bosch descended the steps of the county records building in Norwalk with his head down and his thoughts so far away that he walked by the horde of document doctors without even noticing them waving application forms at him or offering translation help. He continued into the parking lot and toward his Jeep.

He pulled his phone to call Ballard, but it buzzed in his hand with a call from her before he got the chance.

“Guess what?” she said by way of a greeting.

“What?” Bosch replied.

“The D.A.’s Office just charged Elvin Kidd with counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. We fucking did it, Harry!”

“More like you did it. Did you pick him up yet?”

“No, probably tomorrow. It’s sealed for now. You want to be in on it?”

“I don’t think I should be part of that. Could make things complicated, me not having a badge. But you’re not going out there alone, right?”

“No, Harry, I’m not that reckless. I’m going to see if SWAT can spare a few guys. I’ll also have to call in Rialto PD because it’s their turf.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“So, where are you?”

“On my way down to see my daughter. I’ll be back up tonight.”

“Any chance you can go by Norwalk? I still haven’t gotten anything from Sacramento and it’s on Selma’s follow-up list. We need Hilton’s birth certificate.”

Bosch pulled the documents out of his inside coat pocket. He unfolded them on the center console.

“I just walked out. Had to show my San Fernando star to get access. I traced Hilton through his mother. Her maiden name was Charles but she was never married before she married his stepfather.”

“Donald Hilton.”

“Right.”

“So, she was an unwed mother.”

“Right. So I looked through births under her name and found a birth that matched the DOB on John Hilton’s driver’s license. It was him. And the father was listed as John Jack Thompson.”

Ballard had a delayed reaction.

“Holy shit,” she finally said.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Holy shit.”

“Oh my god, this means he sat on his own child’s murder case! He stole the book so no one else could work it, then didn’t work it himself. How could he do that?”

They were both silent for a long moment. Bosch returned to the thoughts that had preoccupied him as he left the records building: the gut punch of knowing his mentor had acted so unethically and had put pride ahead of finding justice for his own child.

“This explains Hunter and Talis,” Ballard said. “They found out and then took a dive on the case to save Thompson from being embarrassed by public knowledge in the department that his son was—take your pick—a drug addict, an ex-con, and a gay man in love with a black gangbanger.”

Bosch didn’t respond. Ballard had nailed it. The only thing she had left out was the possibility that Thompson’s actions may have been an effort to protect his wife from that knowledge too. Bosch also thought about what Thompson had told him that time about not bringing a child into the world. It made him wonder if he had known about Hilton before his death or learned of his son only when Hunter and Talis brought the news.

“I’m going to call Talis back,” Ballard said. “I’m going to tell him I know why he and his partner took a dive. See what he has to say then.”

“I know what he’ll say,” Bosch responded. “He’ll say it was a different time and the victim was a no-count. They weren’t going to ruin John Jack’s marriage or reputation by hanging all this on the clothesline for the world to see.”

“Yeah, well, fuck that. There is no valid reason for this.”

“No, there isn’t. Just be careful about going back to Talis.”

“Why should I? Don’t tell me you’re sticking up for that old-school bullshit.”

“No, I’m not. I’m just thinking about the case. Selma Robinson might have to bring him down to testify. You don’t want to turn him into a hostile witness for the prosecution.”

“Right. I didn’t think about that. And sorry about that ‘old-school’ crack, Harry. I know you’re not like that.”

“Good.”

They were both quiet again for a long moment before Bosch spoke.

“So who do you think redacted the report in the murder book?” he asked. “And why?”

“Talis will never own up to it now,” Ballard said. “But my guess is they interviewed Hilton’s mother and stepfather, were told the real father was Thompson, and put it in the report. They inform Thompson and he asks them to wipe all mention of it out of the murder book. You know—professional courtesy, scumbag to scumbag.”

Bosch thought that was a harsh assessment, even while feeling that what John Jack had done to his own son was unforgivable.

“Or it was in the book all along and Thompson did it after he stole it,” Ballard added. “Maybe that was why he stole it. To make sure any mention of the biological father’s identity was removed or redacted.”

“Then why not just throw the book away or destroy it?” Bosch asked. “Then there would be no chance any of this would ever come to surface.”

“We’ll never know about that. He died with that secret.”

“I’m hoping there was still enough detective in him to think someone would get the book after he was gone and look into the case.”

“That someone being you.”

Bosch was silent.

“You know what I wonder?” Ballard said. “Whether Thompson even knew about the kid before the murder. You have an unwed mother. Did she tell him? Or did she just go off and have the kid and put his name on the birth certificate? Maybe Thompson never knew till Talis and Hunter came around on the case and asked him about it.”

“It’s a possibility,” Bosch said.

More silence followed as both detectives contemplated the angles on this part of the case. Bosch knew there were always unanswered questions in every murder, every investigation. Those who were naive called them loose ends, but they were never loose. They stuck with him, clinging to him as he moved on, sometimes waking him up in the night. But they were never loose and he could never get free of them.

“Okay, I’m gonna go,” Bosch finally said. “My kid’s only free till seven and I want to get down there.”

“Okay, Harry,” Ballard said. “I forgot to ask. Did you go down there Saturday night?”

“I did. It was all clear.”

“Well, I guess that’s good.”

“Yeah. So let me know how it goes tomorrow with Kidd. Think he’ll talk?”

“I don’t know. You?”

“I think he’s one of those guys who will waive but then won’t say a thing of value and will try to work you to see what you’ve got on him.”

“Probably. I’ll be ready for that.”

“And don’t forget his wife. She either knows everything or doesn’t know anything, and either way you might be able to work some good stuff out of her.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“I had this case once. Arrested the guy on an old one-eighty-seven and at the preliminary the judge held him over but said the evidence was so thin he was going to set a low bail till the trial. So the guy makes bail and proceeds to do everything he can to delay the trial: he fires lawyers right and left, and every new guy asks the judge for more prep time. It goes on and on like that.”

“Enjoy your freedom as long as you can.”

“Right. I mean, why not if you’re out and about on bail? So enjoying his freedom includes meeting this woman and marrying her, apparently never telling her, ‘Oh by the way, baby, someday, eventually, I have to go on trial for murder.’ So—”

“No! You’re kidding?”

“No, this is what he did. I found out after. And so finally, four years into all of these delays, the judge has had enough, says no more delays, and the guy finally goes to trial. But he’s still out on bail and he had a shirt-and-tie job—he was like a Realtor or something. So every day he put on his suit and tie at home and told his wife he was going to work, but he was really going to his own murder trial and keeping it a secret from her. He was hoping he’d get a
Not Guilty
and she would never know.”

“What happened?”

“Guilty. Bail revoked on the spot and he’s taken away to jail. Can you imagine that? You get a collect call from your husband at the county jail and he says, ‘Honey, I won’t be home for dinner—I just got convicted of murder.’”

Ballard started laughing.

“Men are devious,” Bosch said.

“No,” Ballard said. “Everybody’s devious.”

“But I always wish I’d known the wife had been kept in the dark. Because I think I could have used that. You know—talked to her, enlightened her, maybe gotten her on my side, and who knows what would’ve come out. It’s a funny story but I always thought I should’ve known.”

“Okay, Harry, I’ll remember that. Safe travels and tell your daughter hello.”

“Will do. Happy hunting tomorrow.”

Bosch got back over to the 5 freeway and continued south. The amusement of the story he had told Ballard wore off and soon he was thinking about John Jack Thompson, what he had done, and his possible motives. It felt like such a betrayal to Bosch. The man who mentored him—who instilled in him the belief that every case deserved his best, that everybody counted or nobody counted—that man had submarined a case involving his own blood.

The only saving grace of the moment was that he was going to see his own daughter. Whether he got five minutes with her or fifty, he knew that she would pull him out of darkness, and he would be renewed and able to move on.

Bosch got to Old Towne in the city of Orange at 4:15 p.m. and drove around the Circle twice before finding a parking spot. He went into the Urth Café and ordered a coffee. He texted Maddie his location and said they could meet there or anywhere else she wanted. She texted back that she would let him know as soon as she was free from the meeting she was having with other students regarding a joint psychology project.

Bosch had brought his laptop in with him, as well as a file containing all the reports from the Montgomery murder book that referenced the short-lived Clayton Manley tangent. He tried to escape thoughts of John Jack Thompson by piggybacking on the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi and calling up stories on the case involving Dominick Butino. He found three stories that had run in the
Times
and he read them now to refresh his memory.

The first story was about Butino’s arrest in Hollywood for assault and mayhem after an attack on a man in the back of a catering truck parked outside an independent studio on Lillian Street. Police at the time said the man who operated the truck, which provided meals for film and TV crews, owed Butino money because he had financed the purchase of the truck. The story said that the man was attacked with a baseball bat and that Butino also went on a rampage inside the catering truck, using the bat to destroy several pieces of food-prep equipment. The victim, who was identified in the story as Angel Hopkins, was listed in critical-but-stable condition at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, with a fractured skull, a ruptured eardrum, and a broken arm.

According to the story, Butino was arrested when an off-duty police officer providing security at the studio on Lillian walked to the truck to purchase coffee and found the suspect standing outside the back door of the truck, wiping blood off a baseball bat with a kitchen apron. Hopkins was then found unconscious on the floor of the truck’s kitchen.

The second story was a follow-up published the next day that identified Butino, of Las Vegas, as a suspected member of a Chicago-based organized-crime family known simply as the Outfit. It also said he was known as “Batman” in organized-crime circles because of his prowess with the black baseball bat he was known to carry when collecting money as part of the Outfit’s loan-sharking operations.

The third story came three months later and it was about the District Attorney’s Office dropping all charges against Butino during the trial, when Angel Hopkins refused to testify against him. The prosecutor explained to reporters that despite the officer who happened on the scene being willing to tell his part of the story, the case could not move forward without the victim telling jurors what happened, who did it, and why. Butino’s attorney, William Michaelson, was quoted in the story as saying the whole thing was a misunderstanding and misidentification of his client. Michaelson praised the justice system for a just result in a case that had brought his client undue publicity and stress.

It was obvious to Bosch that Hopkins had been intimidated or paid off by Batman or his associates, maybe even his lawyers.

Bosch saw a few other mentions on Google of Butino being involved in activities in Las Vegas. One story was about a campaign donation he had made to a mayoral candidate being returned by the candidate because of Butino’s background. The story quoted the candidate as saying, “I don’t want any money from Batman.”

Another story was simply a name check in which the mobster was mentioned as being in front-row attendance at a boxing match at the MGM Grand.