The Closers

go ahead and ask the girl if she wanted to partake of it. Did I mention that the girl’s father was LAPD Metro Division and happened to be off-duty and home at the time of this incident? He stepped outside and put Mr. Mackey on the ground. In fact, Mr. Mackey later complained that coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally he had been put on the ground right on top of the puddle he had just made. He was rather unhappy about that.”
    Kibble smiled at the story. Bosch nodded. Her version was more colorful than the case summary in the file.
    “And he just pleaded out.”
    “That’s right. He got a probation deal and took it. He came to me.”
    “Any problems during his twelve months?”
    “Nothing other than his problem with me. He asked for another agent and it got turned down and he got stuck with me. He kept it in check but it was there. Underneath, you know? Couldn’t ever tell which bugged his ass more, me being black or me being a woman.”
    She looked at Rider as she said this last part and Rider nodded.
    The file contained details of Mackey’s past crimes and life. It had photos taken during earlier arrests. It would become the baseline resource on their target. There was too much in it to go through in front of Kibble.
    “Can we get this copied?” Bosch asked. “We’d also like to borrow one of these early photos if we could.”
    Kibble’s eyes narrowed for a moment.
    “You two working an old case, huh?”
    Rider nodded.
    “From way back,” she said.
    “Like a cold case, huh?”
    “We call it open-unsolved,” Rider said.
    Kibble nodded thoughtfully.
    “Well, nothing surprises me in this place-I’ve seen people shoplift a frozen pizza and get popped two days before the end of a four-year tail. But from what I remember of this guy Mackey, he didn’t seem to me to have the killer instinct. Not if you ask me. He’s a follower, not a doer.”
    “That’s a good read,” Bosch said. “We’re not sure he is the one. We just know he was involved.”
    He stood up, ready to go.
    “What about the photo?” he asked. “A photocopy won’t be clear enough to show.”
    “You can borrow that one as long as I get it back. I need to keep the file complete. People like Mackey have a tendency to come back to me, know what I mean?”
    “Yes, and we’ll get it back to you. Also, can I get a copy of your story there? I want to read it.”
    Kibble looked at the newspaper clip tacked to the cubicle’s wall.
    “Just don’t look at the picture. That’s the old me.”
    After clearing the DOC office Rider and Bosch crossed the street to the Van Nuys Civic Center and walked between the two courthouses to get to the plaza in the middle. They sat down on a bench by the library. Their next appointment was with Arturo Garcia in the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division, which also was one of the buildings in the government center, but they were early and wanted to study the DOC file first.
    The file contained detailed accounts of all the crimes Roland Mackey had been arrested for since his eighteenth birthday. It also contained biographical summaries used by probation and parole agents over the years in determining aspects of his supervision. Rider handed Bosch the arrest reports while she started going through the biographical details. She then immediately proceeded to interrupt his reading of a burglary case by calling out details of Mackey’s bio that she thought might be pertinent to the Verloren case.
    “He got a general education degree at Chatsworth High the summer of ’eighty-eight,” she said. “So that puts him right in Chatsworth.”
    “If he got a GED, then he dropped out first. Does it say from where?”
    “Nothing here. Says he grew up in Chatsworth. Dysfunctional family. Poor student. He lived with his father, a welder at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Doesn’t sound like Hillside Prep material.”
    “We still need to check. Parents always want their kid to do better. If he went there and knew her and then dropped out, it would explain why he was never interviewed back in ’eighty-eight.”
    Rider just nodded. She was reading on.
    “This guy never left the Valley,” she said. “Every address is in the Valley.”
    “What’s the last known?”
    “ Panorama City. Same as the AutoTrack hit. But if it’s in here, then it’s probably old.”
    Bosch nodded. Anybody who had been through the system as many times as Mackey would know to move house the day after clearing a probation