Echo Park

word of what I have said here.”
    “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”
    Bosch pushed back his chair and told the others he would like to confer with them in the hallway. Leaving Waits and Swann behind, they stepped out of the room into the cooler air of the hallway.
    “Can you guys give us some space?” O’Shea said to the two deputies.
    When everybody else was in the hallway and the interview room door was closed, O’Shea continued.
    “Getting stuffy in there,” he said.
    “Yeah, with all of his bullshit,” Bosch said.
    “What now, Bosch?” the prosecutor asked.
    “‘What now’ is that I don’t believe him.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because he knows every answer. And some of them don’t work. We spent a week with the cab companies going over records for every pickup and drop. We knew that if the guy moved her car to the High Tower, then he needed some kind of ride back to his own car. The stables were one of the points we checked. Every cab company in the city. Nobody made a pickup or a drop-off up there that day or night.”
    Olivas injected himself into the conversation by stepping up next to O’Shea.
    “That’s not a hundred percent and you know it, Bosch,” he said. “A cabbie could’ve given him a ride off the books. They do it all the time. There’s also gypsy cabs. They hang outside restaurants all over the city.”
    “I still don’t buy his bullshit stories. He’s got an answer for everything. The shovel just happens to be leaning against the barn. How was he going to bury her if he didn’t happen to see it?”
    O’Shea spread his arms wide.
    “There’s one way to test him,” he said. “We take him out on a field trip and if he leads us to that girl’s body, then the little details that bother you aren’t going to matter. On the other hand, if there is no body, then there is no deal.”
    “When do we go?” Bosch asked.
    “I’ll go see the judge today. We’ll go tomorrow morning if you want.”
    “Wait a minute,” Olivas said. “What about the other seven? We still have a lot to talk to this bastard about.”
    O’Shea held one hand up in a calming motion.
    “Let’s make Gesto the test case. He either puts up or shuts up with this one. Then we’ll go from there.”
    O’Shea turned and looked directly at Bosch.
    “You going to be ready for this?” he asked.
    Bosch nodded.
    “I’ve been ready for thirteen years.”

13

    THAT NIGHT , RACHEL brought dinner up to the house after calling first to see if Bosch was home. Bosch put some music on the stereo, and Rachel laid the dinner out on the dining room table on plates from the kitchen. The dinner was pot roast with a side of creamed corn. She’d brought a bottle of Merlot, too, and it took Bosch five minutes of hunting through kitchen drawers to find a corkscrew. They didn’t talk about the case until they were sitting across from each other at the table.
    “So,” she said, “how did it go today?”
    Bosch shrugged before answering.
    “It went okay. Your take on everything was very helpful. Tomorrow’s the field trip, and in Rick O’Shea’s words, it will be put-up or shut-up time.”
    “Field trip? Where to?”
    “The top of Beachwood Canyon. He says that’s where he buried her. I drove up there today after the interview and looked around—couldn’t find anything, even using his description. Back in ’ninety-three we had the cadets looking in the canyon for three days and they found nothing. The woods are thick up there but he says he can find the spot.”
    “Do you believe he’s the guy?”
    “It looks like it. He’s convinced everybody else and there’s that call he made to us back then. That’s pretty convincing.”
    “But what?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s my ego not being ready to accept I was so wrong, that for thirteen years I was looking at one guy and I was wrong about him. Nobody wants to face that, I guess.”
    Bosch concentrated on eating for a few moments. He then chased a mouthful of pot roast with some wine and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
    “Man, this stuff is great. Where’d you get it?”
    She smiled.
    “Just another restaurant.”
    “No, this is the best pot roast I think I’ve ever had.”
    “It’s a place called Jar. They say it stands for Just Another Restaurant.”
    “Oh, I get it.”
    “It’s off Beverly near my place. They’ve got a long bar where you can eat. After moving out here I ate there a lot at first. Alone. Suzanne and Preech always