Echo Park

the 51s until he found the page for September 29, 1993. He looked at the entry Olivas had told him about the evening before. It was, as it had been read to Bosch, the last entry of the day. Bosch felt the deep sense of regret tug at him all over again.
    “Detective Bosch, we all make mistakes,” O’Shea said. “Let’s just move on from it and do the best we can today.”
    Bosch looked up at him and eventually nodded. He closed the book and put it back on the desk. O’Shea continued.
    “I am told that Maury Swann is in the interview room with Mr. Waits and is ready to go. I have been thinking about this and I want to take the cases one at a time and in order. We start with Fitzpatrick and when we are satisfied by the confession, we move on to the Gesto case, and when we are satisfied there, we move on to the next one and so on.”
    Everybody nodded except for Bosch.
    “I am not going to be satisfied until we have her remains,” he said.
    Now O’Shea nodded. He lifted a document off his desk.
    “I understand that. If you can locate the victim based on the statements from Waits, then fine. If it is a matter of him leading us to the body, I have a release order ready to go to the judge. I would say that if we reach a point where we are taking this man out of lockup, then the security should be extraordinary. There will be a lot riding on this and we cannot have any mistakes.”
    O’Shea took the time to look from detective to detective to make sure they understood the gravity of the situation. He would be gambling his campaign and political life on the security of Raynard Waits.
    “We’ll be ready for anything,” Olivas said.
    The look of concern on O’Shea’s face didn’t change.
    “You’re going to have a uniformed presence, right?” he asked.
    “I don’t think it is necessary—uniforms draw attention,” Olivas said. “We can handle him. But if you want it we’ll have it.”
    “I think it would be good to have, yes.”
    “No problem, then. We’ll either get a car from Metro to go with us or a couple deputies from the jail.”
    O’Shea nodded his approval.
    “Then, are we ready to start?”
    “There’s one thing,” Bosch said. “We’re not sure who that is in the interview room waiting for us, but we’re pretty sure his name isn’t Raynard Waits.”
    A look of surprise played off O’Shea’s face and immediately became contagious. Olivas dropped his mouth open an inch and leaned forward.
    “We made him on fingerprints,” Olivas protested. “On the prior.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Yes, the prior. As you know, when he was popped thirteen years ago for prowling, he first gave the name Robert Saxon along with the birth date of eleven/three/’seventy-five. This is the same name he used later that year when he called about Gesto, only then he gave the birth date of eleven/three/’seventy-one. But when he was pulled in on the prowling and they ran his prints through the computer, they matched the thumb to the DL of Raynard Waits, with a birth date of eleven/three/’seventy-one. So we keep getting the same month and day but different years. Anyway, when confronted with the thumbprint he copped to being Raynard Waits, saying he had given the false name and year because he was hoping to be handled as a juvenile. This is all in the file.”
    “But where does all of it go?” O’Shea said impatiently.
    “Just let me finish. He got probation for the prowling because it was a first offense. In the probation report bio he said he was born and raised in L.A., okay? We just came from the Hall of Records. There is no record of Raynard Waits being born in L.A. on that date or any other. There have been a lot of Robert Saxons born in L.A. but none on November third of either of the years mentioned in the files.”
    “The bottom line,” Rider said, “is we don’t know who the man we are about to talk to is.”
    O’Shea pushed back from his desk and stood up. He paced around the spacious office as he thought and spoke about this latest information.
    “Okay, so what are you saying, that the DMV had the wrong prints on file or there was some sort of a mix-up?”
    Bosch turned in his seat so he could look at O’Shea while he answered.
    “I’m saying that this guy, whoever he really is, could have gone to the DMV thirteen, fourteen, years ago to set up a false ID. What do you need to get a driver’s license? Proof of age. Back then, you could buy phony IDs and birth certificates on Hollywood