Echo Park

door.
    O’Shea handled the introductions but again nobody bothered shaking anybody else’s hand. Waits was in an orange jumpsuit that had black letters stenciled across the chest.

    L.A. COUNTY JAIL
    KEEP AWAY

    The second line was not intended as a warning but it was just as good as one. It meant that Waits was on keep-away status within the jail, indicating he was housed by himself and not allowed into the general inmate population. This status was taken as a protective measure for both Waits and the other inmates.
    As Bosch studied the man he had been hunting for thirteen years he realized that the most frightening thing about Waits was how ordinary he looked. Slightly built, he had an everyman’s face. Pleasant, with soft features and short dark hair, he was the epitome of normality. The only hint of the evil that lay within was found in the eyes. Dark brown and deeply set, they carried an emptiness that Bosch recognized from other killers he had sat face-to-face with over the years. Nothing there. Just a hollowness that could never be filled, no matter how many other lives he stole.
    Rider turned on the tape recorder that was on the table and started the interview perfectly, giving Waits no reason to suspect he was stepping into a trap with the very first question of the session.
    “As was probably explained to you already by Mr. Swann, we are going to record each session with you and then turn the tapes over to your attorney, who will hold them until we have a completed agreement. Is that understood and approved by you?”
    “Yes, it is,” Waits said.
    “Good,” Rider said. “Then let’s begin with an easy one. Can you state your name, birth date and place of birth for the record?”
    Waits leaned forward and made a face like he was stating the obvious to schoolchildren.
    “Raynard Waits,” he said impatiently. “Born November third, nineteen seventy-one, in the city of angles—oh, I mean angels. The city of angels.”
    “If you mean Los Angeles, could you please say it?”
    “Yes, Los Angeles.”
    “Thank you. Your first name is unusual. Could you spell it for the tape?”
    Waits complied. Again, it was a good move by Rider. It would make it even more difficult for the man in front of them to argue later that he had not knowingly lied during the interview.
    “Do you know where the name came from?”
    “My father pulled it out of his ass, I guess. I don’t know. I thought we were here to talk about dead people, not the piddly basic shit.”
    “We are, Mr. Waits. We are.”
    Bosch felt an enormous sense of relief inside. He knew that they were about to sit through a retelling of horrors but he felt they already had Waits caught in a lie that might spring a fatal trap on him. There was now a chance that he was not going to walk away from this to a private cell and a life of public maintenance and celebrity.
    “We want to take these in order,” Rider said. “Your attorney’s proffer suggests that the first homicide you were ever involved in was the death of Daniel Fitzpatrick in Hollywood on April thirtieth, nineteen ninety-two. Is that correct?”
    Waits answered with the sort of matter-of-fact demeanor one would expect from someone giving directions to the nearest gas station. His voice was cold and calm.
    “Yes, I burned him alive behind his security cage. It turned out that he wasn’t so secure back there. Not even with all of his guns.”
    “Why did you do that?”
    “Because I wanted to see if I could. I had been thinking about it for a long time and I just wanted to prove myself.”
    Bosch thought about what Rachel Walling had said to him the night before. She had called it a “spree killing.” It looked like she had been right.
    “What do you mean by ‘prove yourself,’ Mr. Waits?” Rider asked.
    “I mean there is a line out there that everybody thinks about but not many have the guts to cross. I wanted to see if I could cross it.”
    “When you say you had been thinking about it for a long time, had you been thinking about Mr. Fitzpatrick in particular?”
    Annoyance flared in Waits’s eyes. It was as if he were putting up with her.
    “No, you stupid cunt,” he replied calmly. “I had been thinking about killing someone. You understand? All my life I had wanted to do it.”
    Rider shook off the insult without a flinch and kept moving.
    “Why did you choose Daniel Fitzpatrick? Why did you choose that night?”
    “Well, because I was watching TV and I saw the whole