Echo Park

Boulevard, no problem. Or he could have bribed a DMV employee, could have done a lot of things. The point is, there is no record of him being born here in L.A., as he said he was. That puts all the rest in doubt.”
    “Maybe that’s the lie,” Olivas said. “Maybe he
is
Waits and he lied about being born here. It’s like when you’re born out in Riverside, you tell everybody you’re from L.A.”
    Bosch shook his head. He didn’t accept the logic Olivas was slinging.
    “The name is false,” Bosch insisted. “Raynard is a take on a character from medieval folklore known as Reynard the Fox. It’s spelled with an
e
but it’s pronounced the same. Put that with the last name and you have ‘the little fox waits.’ Get it? You can’t convince me somebody gave him that name at birth.”
    That brought a momentary silence to the room.
    “I don’t know,” O’Shea said, thinking out loud. “Seems a little far-fetched, this medieval connection.”
    “It’s only far-fetched because we can’t nail it down,” Bosch countered. “You ask me, it’s more far-fetched that this would be his given name.”
    “So what are you saying?” Olivas asked. “That he changed his name and continued to use it, even after he had an arrest tail on it? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
    “Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. But we don’t know the story behind it yet.”
    “Okay, so what are you suggesting we do?” O’Shea asked.
    “Not much,” Bosch said. “I’m just bringing it up. But I do think we ought to go on the record with it up there. You know, ask him to state his name, DOB , and place of birth. As if it is the routine way to start one of these interviews. If he gives us Waits, then we might be able to catch him in the lie down the road and prosecute him for everything. You said that was the deal; if he lies, he fries. We can turn it all against him.”
    O’Shea was standing by the coffee table behind where Bosch and Rider sat. Bosch turned again, to watch him take in the suggestion. The prosecutor was grinding it over and nodding.
    “I don’t see where it could hurt,” he finally said. “Just get it on the record but let it go at that. Real subtle and routine. We can come back to him on it later—if we find out more about this.”
    Bosch looked at Rider.
    “You’ll be the one starting out with him, asking about the first case. Your first question can be about his name.”
    “Fine,” she said.
    O’Shea came back around the desk.
    “Okay, then,” he said. “Are we ready? It’s time to go. I will try to stay with it as long as my schedule allows. Don’t be offended if I jump in from time to time with a question.”
    Bosch answered by standing up. Rider followed suit and then Olivas.
    “One last thing,” Bosch said. “We picked up a Maury Swann story yesterday that maybe you guys ought to know.”
    Both Bosch and Rider took turns telling the story Abel Pratt had told them. By the end, Olivas was laughing and shaking his head and Bosch could tell by O’Shea’s face that he was trying to count how many times he had shaken Maury Swann’s hand in court. Maybe he was worrying about potential political fallout.
    Bosch headed to the door of the office. He felt a mixture of excitement and dread rising. He was excited because he knew he was finally about to find out what had happened to Marie Gesto so long ago. At the same time, he dreaded finding out. And he dreaded the fact that the details he would soon learn would place a heavy burden on him. A burden he would have to transfer to a waiting mother and father up in Bakersfield.

11

    TWO UNIFORMED SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES stood at the door to the interview room in which sat the man who called himself Raynard Waits. They stepped aside and allowed the prosecutorial entourage to enter. The room contained one long table. Waits and his defense attorney, Maury Swann, were sitting on one side of it. Waits was directly in the middle and Swann was to his left. When the investigators and the prosecutor entered, only Maury Swann stood. Waits was held to the arms of his chair with plastic snap cuffs. Swann, a thin man with black-framed glasses and a luxurious mane of silver hair, offered his hand but no one shook it.
    Rider took the chair directly across the table from Waits, and Bosch and O’Shea sat on either side of her. Since Olivas would not be up in the interview rotation for some time, he took the last remaining chair, which was next to the