Echo Park

pole in one hand and a Corona in the other.
    But it didn’t work out that way. Bosch learned that the mission was best served with a badge and he came back to the job. After he was assigned with Rider to the Open-Unsolved Unit, one of the first murder books he pulled out of Archives was the Gesto case. The book he pulled was the live record, the investigative file that was updated each time he or anybody else worked it. What he had in front of him was a copy that had sat on a shelf in his closet and had not been updated in four years. Even so, how could one have a notation entered on a 51 form in 1993, while the other one didn’t?
    The logic of it dictated only one answer.
    The official record of the investigation had been tampered with. The notation entering the name Robert Saxon into the murder book was added after Bosch had made his copy of the book. That of course left a four-year window during which the false notation could have been added, but common sense told Bosch he was dealing with days, not years.
    Just a few days earlier Freddy Olivas had called him, looking for the murder book. Olivas took possession of the book and then became the one who discovered the Robert Saxon entry. It was Olivas who had brought it to light.
    Bosch flipped through the chronology. Almost all of the pages corresponding with the dates of the initial investigation were filled in completely with time-marked notations. Only the page marked September 29 had space at the bottom. This would have allowed Olivas to remove the page from the binder, type in the Saxon entry and then return it to its place, setting the stage for his supposed discovery of this link between Waits and Gesto. Back in 1993 Bosch and Edgar did the 51s on a typewriter in the Hollywood squad room. It was all done on computer now but there were still plenty of typewriters around most squad rooms for the old-school cops—like Bosch—who couldn’t quite grasp the idea of working on a computer.
    Bosch felt a heavy mixture of relief and anger start to overtake him. The burden of guilt over the mistake he and Edgar had supposedly made was lifting. They were in the clear and he needed to tell Edgar as soon as he could. But Bosch couldn’t embrace the feeling—not yet—because of the growing rage he felt at being victimized by Olivas. He stood up and walked away from the cubicle. He stepped out of the reference room and into the library’s main rotunda, where a circular mosaic high up on the walls told the story of the city’s founding.
    Bosch felt like yelling something, exorcising the demon, but he kept quiet. A security guard walked quickly across the floor of the cavernous structure, maybe on his way to put the collar on a book thief or a flasher in the stacks. Bosch watched him go and then went back to his own work.
    Back in the cubicle he tried to think through what had happened. Olivas had tampered with the murder book, typing a two-line entry into the chronology that would make Bosch believe he had made a profound mistake in the early stages of the investigation. The entry said that Robert Saxon had called to report seeing Marie Gesto at the Mayfair Supermarket on the afternoon she had disappeared.
    That was all. It wasn’t the content of the call that was important to Olivas. It was the caller. Olivas had wanted to somehow get Raynard Waits into the murder book. Why? To put Bosch on some sort of a guilt trip that would allow Olivas the upper hand and control of the current investigation?
    Bosch dismissed this. Olivas already had the upper hand and control. He was lead investigator in the Waits case and Bosch’s proprietary hold on the Gesto case would not change that. Bosch was along for the ride, yes, but he wasn’t steering the car. Olivas was steering, and therefore the Robert Saxon name plant was not necessary.
    There had to be another reason.
    Bosch worked it over for a while but only came to the weak conclusion that Olivas needed to connect Waits to Gesto. By putting the killer’s alias into the book, he was going back thirteen years in time and firmly tying Raynard Waits to Marie Gesto.
    But Waits was about to admit he murdered Gesto. There could be no stronger tie than an uncoerced confession. He was even going to lead authorities to the body. The notation in the chronology would be a minor connection compared with these two. So then why put it in?
    Ultimately, Bosch was confounded by the risk Olivas had taken. He had tampered with the official