The Closers

pen or face.
    As expected, Roland Mackey was no longer at the auto towing company he had worked for while on his most recent stint of probation. But also as expected, the ex-con was not particularly smart when it came to covering his trail. The probation file contained his entire work history through a life that had largely been spent on probation or parole. He drove a tow truck for two other concerns during past periods of state monitoring. Posing as an acquaintance, Rider called each of them and easily located his current employer: Tampa Towing. She then called the tow service and asked if Mackey was working today. After a moment she closed the phone and looked at Bosch.
    “ Tampa Towing. He comes on at four.”
    Bosch checked his watch. Mackey reported for work in ten minutes.
    “Let’s go by and get a look at him. We’ll check his address after. Tampa and what?”
    “ Tampa and Roscoe. Must be across from the hospital.”
    “The hospital is Roscoe and Reseda. I wonder why they didn’t call it Roscoe Towing.”
    “Funny. Then what do we do after we get a look at him?”
    “Well, we go up to him and ask him if he killed Becky Verloren seventeen years ago and then he says yes and we take him downtown.”
    “Come on, Bosch.”
    “I don’t know. What do you want to do next?”
    “We check his address like you said, and then I think we’re ready for the parents. I’m thinking that we need to talk to them about this guy before we set up on him and make a play-especially in the newspaper. I say we go by the house and see the mother. We’re already up here. Might as well.”
    “You mean if she’s still there,” he said. “Did you run an AutoTrack on her, too?”
    “Didn’t have to. She’ll be there. You heard how Garcia was talking. Her baby’s ghost is in that house. I doubt she’ll ever leave it.”
    Bosch guessed that she was right about that but didn’t respond. He drove east on Devonshire Boulevard to Tampa Avenue and then dropped down to Roscoe Boulevard. They got to the intersection a few minutes before four. Tampa Towing was actually a Chevron service station with two mechanics’ bays. Bosch parked in the lot of a small strip shopping plaza across the street and killed the engine.
    Bosch wasn’t surprised when four o’clock came and went without any sign of Roland Mackey. He didn’t strike Bosch as somebody who would be excited to come to work to tow cars.
    At four-fifteen Rider said, “What do you think? You think my call could have -”
    “There he is.”
    A thirty-year-old Camaro with gray primer on all four fenders pulled into the service station and parked near the air pump. Bosch had caught only a glimpse of the driver but it was enough for him to know. He reached over to the glove compartment and took out a pair of field glasses he had bought through an airline catalog he had read while on a flight to Las Vegas.
    He slouched down in his seat and watched through the glasses. Mackey got out of the Camaro and walked toward the service station’s open garage. He was wearing a uniform of dark blue pants and a lighter blue shirt. There was an oval-shaped patch over the left breast pocket that said
Ro.
He had work gloves sticking out of one of his back pockets.
    There was an old Ford Taurus up on a hydraulic lift in the garage and a man working beneath it with an air wrench. When Mackey entered, the man with the wrench nonchalantly reached out and gave him a high five. Mackey stopped while the man told him something.
    “I think he’s telling him about the phone call,” Bosch said. “Mackey doesn’t look too concerned about it. He just pulled a cell out of his pocket. He’s calling the person he probably thinks called him.”
    Reading Mackey’s lips, Bosch said, “Hey, did you call me?”
    Mackey quickly ended the conversation.
    “I guess not,” Bosch said.
    Mackey put his phone back into his pocket.
    “He tried one person,” Rider said. “Must not have much of a social life.”
    “The name on the patch on his shirt is Ro,” Bosch said. “If his buddy told him that the caller asked for Roland, then he may have narrowed it down to the one person who calls him that. Maybe it was dear old dad, the welder.”
    “So what’s he doing?”
    “Can’t see him. He went into the back.”
    “Maybe we should get out of here before he starts looking around.”
    “Come on. One call and you think he’s going to think somebody’s onto him after seventeen years?”
    “No, not