Echo Park
second.”
“No bullshit, Waits,” Olivas said. “You take us to the body right now or we go back, go to trial and you get the hot shot of Jesus juice you’ve got coming. You got that?”
“I got it. And like I said, this way.”
The group moved off through the brush with Waits leading the way, Olivas clinging to the chain at the small of his back and the shotgun never more than five feet behind.
The ground on this level was softer and more muddy. Bosch knew that runoff from last spring’s rains had likely gone down the slope and collected here. He felt his thigh muscles begin to tighten as every step was a labor to pull his work boots from the sucking mud.
In five minutes they came to a small clearing shaded by a tall, fully mature oak. Bosch saw Waits looking up and followed his eyes. A yellowish-white hair band hung limply from an overhead branch.
“It’s funny,” Waits said. “It used to be blue.”
Bosch knew that at the time of Marie Gesto’s disappearance she was believed to have had her hair tied back with a blue hair band known as a scrunchy. A friend who had seen her earlier on that last day had provided a description of what she was wearing. The scrunchy was not with the clothing found neatly folded in her car at the High Tower Apartments.
Bosch looked up at the hair band. Thirteen years of rain and exposure had taken its color.
Bosch lowered his eyes to Waits, and the killer was waiting for him with a smile.
“We’re here, Detective. You’ve finally found Marie.”
“Where?”
Waits’s smile broadened.
“You’re standing on her.”
Bosch abruptly stepped back a pace and Waits laughed.
“Don’t worry, Detective Bosch, I don’t think she minds. What was it the great man wrote about sleeping the big sleep? About not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell?”
Bosch looked at him for a long moment, wondering once again about the literary airs of the window washer. Waits seemed to read him.
“I’ve been in jail since May, Detective. I’ve done a lot of reading.”
“Step back,” Bosch said.
Waits opened his cuffed hands in a surrender move and stepped toward the trunk of the oak. Bosch looked at Olivas.
“You got him?”
“I got him.”
Bosch looked down at the ground. He had left footprints in the muddy earth but it also looked like there was another, recent disturbance in the soil. It looked as though an animal had made a small dig in the ground, either foraging or burying its own dead. Bosch signaled the forensics tech over to the center of the clearing. Cafarelli stepped forward with the gas probe and Bosch pointed to the spot directly below the colorless hair band. The tech pushed the point of the probe into the soft soil and easily sank it a foot into the earth. She clicked on the reader and began studying the electronic display. Bosch stepped toward her to look over her shoulder. He knew that the probe measured the level of methane in the soil. A buried body releases methane gas as it decomposes. Even a body wrapped in plastic.
“We’re getting a read,” Cafarelli said. “We’re above normal levels.”
Bosch nodded. He felt strange inside. Out of sorts. He had been with the case for more than a decade and a part of him liked holding on to the mystery of Marie Gesto. But, while he didn’t believe in something called closure, he did believe in the need to know the truth. He felt that the truth was about to reveal itself, and yet it was disconcerting. He needed to know the truth to move on, but how could he move on once he no longer needed to find and avenge Marie Gesto?
He looked at Waits.
“How far down is she?”
“Not too far,” Waits replied matter-of-factly. “Back in ’ninety-three we were in drought, remember? The ground was hard and, man, I wore my ass out digging a hole for her. I was lucky she was just a little thing. But, anyway, that’s why I changed it up. No more digging big holes for me after that.”
Bosch looked away from him and back at Cafarelli. She was taking another probe reading. She would be able to delineate the grave site by charting the highest methane readings.
They all watched the grim work silently. After taking several readings in a grid pattern Cafarelli finally moved her hand in a north-south sweep to indicate how the body was likely positioned. She then marked the limits of the grave site by dragging the point of the probe in the dirt. When she was finished she had marked out a
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