The Overlook

continued.
    “You narrow it down by continuing to go backwards. Where would Alicia Kent’s life have intersected with one of those people in the agencies who knew about Moby?”
    Walling frowned and shook her head.
    “That could have been anywhere with those kinds of parameters. In line at the supermarket, or when she was buying fertilizer for her roses. Anywhere.”
    Bosch now had her right where he wanted her to be.
    “Then narrow the parameters,” he said. “Where would she have intersected with someone who knew about Moby but also knew that her husband had access to the sort of radioactive materials Moby might be interested in?”
    Now she shook her head in a dismissive way.
    “Nowhere. It would take a monumental coincidence to-”
    She stopped when it came to her. Enlightenment. And shock as she fully understood where Bosch was going.
    “My partner and I visited the Kents to warn them early last year. I guess what you’re saying is that that makes me a suspect.”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “I said ‘he,’ remember? You didn’t come here alone.”
    Her eyes fired when she registered the implication.
    “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way. I can’t believe you would…”
    She didn’t finish as her mind snagged on something, some memory that undermined her trust and loyalty to her partner. Bosch picked up on the tell and moved in closer.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “What?”
    “Look,” she insisted, “take my advice and tell no one this theory of yours. You’re lucky you told me first. Because this makes you sound like some kind of crackpot with a vendetta. You have no evidence, no motive, no incriminating statements, nothing. You just have this thing you’ve spun out of… out of a yoga poster.”
    “There is no other explanation that fits with the facts. And I’m talking about the facts of the case. Not the fact that the bureau and Homeland Security and the rest of the federal government would love this to be a terrorism event so they can justify their existence and deflect criticism from other failings. Contrary to what you want to think, there
is
evidence and there
are
incriminating statements. If we put Alicia Kent on a lie detector, you’ll find out that everything she told me, you and the master interrogator downtown is a lie. The real master was Alicia Kent. As in master manipulator.”
    Walling leaned forward and looked down at the floor.
    “Thank you, Harry. That master interrogator you love deriding happens to have been me.”
    Bosch’s mouth dropped open for a moment before he spoke.
    “Oh… well… then, sorry… but it doesn’t matter. The point is, she is a master liar. She lied about everything and now that we know the story, it will be easy to smoke her out.”
    Walling got up from her seat and walked over to the front picture window. The vertical blinds were closed but she split them with a finger and stared out into the street. Bosch could see her working the story over, grinding it down.
    “What about the witness?” she asked without turning around. “He heard the shooter yell
Allah
. Are you saying he’s part of this? Or are you saying they just happened to know he was there and yelled
Allah
as part of this master manipulation?”
    Bosch gently tried to clear his throat. It was burning and making it difficult for him to talk.
    “No, on that I think it’s just a lesson in hearing what you want to hear. I plead guilty to not being much of a master interrogator myself. The kid told me that he heard the shooter yell it as he pulled the trigger. He said he wasn’t sure but that it sounded like
Allah
and that, of course, worked with what I was thinking at the time. I heard what I wanted to hear.”
    Walling came away from the window, sat back down and folded her arms. Bosch finally sat down on a chair directly across from her. He continued.
    “But how would the witness know it was the shooter and not the victim who yelled?” he asked. “He was more than fifty yards away. It was dark. How would he know that it wasn’t Stanley Kent yelling out his last word before execution? The name of the woman he loved, because he was about to die not even knowing that she’d betrayed him.”
    “Alicia.”
    “Exactly.
Alicia
interrupted by a gunshot becomes
Allah
.”
    Walling relaxed her arms and leaned forward. As body language went, it was a good sign. It told Bosch he was pushing through.
    “You said the
first
set of snap ties before,” she said.