Echo Park

had no idea if I’d be able to punch holes in it, so he wanted some insurance. He put Waits in the file. And it put me in a position of being preconditioned to believe the confession.”
    “Okay, and two?”
    “This is where it gets tricky,” he said. “Putting Waits in the book was a way of preconditioning me but it was also about knocking me off my game.”
    She looked at him, but what he was saying didn’t register.
    “You’d better explain that.”
    “This is where we go off the known facts and talk about what the facts might mean. Theory, conjecture, whatever you want to call it. Olivas put that line in the chronology and then threw it in my face. He knew that if I saw it and believed it, then I would believe that my partner and I had horribly messed up back in ’ninety-three, that I would believe people were dead because of our mistake. The weight of all those women Waits killed since then would be on me.”
    “Okay.”
    “And it would connect me with Waits on an emotional level of pure hate. Yes, I’ve wanted the guy who killed Marie Gesto for thirteen years. But adding in all those other women and putting their deaths on me would bring things to a raw edge when I finally came face-to-face with the guy. It would distract me.”
    “From what?”
    “From the fact that Waits didn’t kill her. He was confessing to killing Marie Gesto but he didn’t kill her. He made some sort of deal with Olivas and probably O’Shea to take the fall for it because he was already going down for all the others. I was so overcome with my hatred that I didn’t have my eyes on the prize. I wasn’t paying attention to the details, Rachel. All I wanted to do was jump across the table and choke the guy out.”
    “You are forgetting something.”
    “What?”
    Now she leaned across the table, keeping her voice down so as not to disturb the other diners.
    “He
led
you to her body. If he didn’t kill her, how did he know where to go in the woods? How did he lead you right to her?”
    Bosch nodded. It was a good point but one he had already thought about.
    “It could have been done. He could have been schooled in his cell by Olivas. It could’ve been a Hansel and Gretel trick, a trail marked in such a way that only he would notice the markers. I’m going back up to Beachwood this afternoon. My guess is that when I go through there this time, I’ll find the markers.”
    Bosch reached over and took her empty plate and exchanged it with his untouched plate. She didn’t object.
    “So you’re saying that the whole field trip was a setup to convince you,” she said. “That Waits was fed the basic information about the Marie Gesto murder and he just regurgitated it all in the confession, then happily led you like Little Red Riding Hood through the woods to the spot where she was buried.”
    He nodded.
    “Yeah, that’s what I am saying. When you boil it all down to that, it sounds a little far-fetched, I know, but—”
    “More than a little.”
    “What?”
    “More than a little far-fetched. First of all, how did Olivas know the details to give Waits? How did he know where she was buried so he could mark a trail for Waits to follow? Are you saying
Olivas
killed Marie Gesto?”
    Bosch shook his head emphatically. He thought she was going over the top with her devil’s advocate logic and he was getting annoyed.
    “No, I’m not saying that Olivas was the killer. I am saying he was gotten to by the killer. He and O’Shea. The real killer came to them and made some sort of a deal.”
    “Harry, this just sounds so . . .”
    She didn’t finish. She pushed the sashimi on her plate around with her chopsticks but ate very little of it. The waiter used the moment to approach the table.
    “You didn’t like your sashimi?” he said to her in a trembling voice.
    “No, I—”
    She stopped when she realized she had almost a full portion on the plate in front of her.
    “I guess I wasn’t very hungry.”
    “She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Bosch said, smiling. “I thought it was great.”
    The waiter took the plates off the table and said he would be back with dessert menus.
    “‘I thought it was great,’” Walling said in a mocking voice. “You jerk.”
    “Sorry.”
    The waiter brought the dessert menus and they both handed them back and ordered coffee. Walling remained quiet after that and Bosch decided to wait her out.
    “Why now?” she finally asked.
    Bosch shook his head.
    “I don’t know