Vol Ii Part 138 (2/2)
”Fine. The point I'm making is that it appears Detective Sheehan was drinking-drinking heavily-and firing his weapon. What is your interpretation of what happened?”
”Interpretation?” Bosch said, staring blankly at the table.
”Accidental or intentional.”
”Oh.”
Bosch almost laughed but held back.
”I don't think there's much of a doubt about it,” he said. ”He killed himself. Suicide.”
”But there is no note.”
”No note, just a lot of beers and wasted shots into the sky. That was his note. That said all he had to say. Cops go out that way all the time.”
”The man had been cut loose. Why do this?”
”Well ... I think it's pretty clear ...”
”Then make it clear for us us, would you please?”
”He called his wife tonight. I talked to her after. She said he might have been cut loose but he thought that it wouldn't last.”
”The ballistics?” Irving asked.
”No, I don't think that's what he meant. I think he knew that there was a need to hook somebody up for this. A cop.”
”And so then he kills himself? That does not sound plausible, Detective.”
”He didn't kill Elias. Or that woman.”
”Right now that is only your opinion. The only fact we have is that it appears this man killed himself the night before the day we would get the ballistics. And you, Detective, talked me into cutting him loose so that he could do it.”
Bosch looked away from Irving and tried to contain the anger that was building inside.
”The weapon,” Irving said. ”An old Baretta twenty-five. Serial number acid-burned. Untraceable, illegal. A throw-down gun. Was it your weapon, Detective Bosch?”
Bosch shook his head.
”Are you sure, Detective? I would like to handle this now, without the need for an internal investigation.”
Bosch looked back at him.
”What are you saying? I gave him the gun so he could kill himself? I was his friend-the only friend he had today. It's not my gun, okay? We stopped by his house so he could get some things. He must've gotten it then. I might have helped him do it but that didn't include giving him the gun.”
Bosch and Irving held each other's stares.
”You're forgetting something, Bosch,” Lindell said, interrupting the moment. ”We searched Sheehan's place today. There was no weapon found there.”
Bosch broke away from Irving and looked at Lindell.
”Then your people missed it,” he said. ”He came here with that gun in his bag, because it wasn't mine.”
Bosch moved away from them before he let his anger and frustration get the better of him and he said something that might bring departmental charges. He slid down into one of the stuffed chairs in the living room. He was wet but didn't care about the furniture. He stared blankly out the gla.s.s doors.
Irving stepped over but didn't sit down.
”What did you mean when you said you helped him?”
Bosch looked up at him.
”Last night I had a drink with him. He told me things. Told me about how he got carried away with Harris, how the things Harris claimed in his lawsuit-the things he said the cops did to him-were true. All of it was true. You see, he was sure Harris had killed the girl, there was no doubt in him about that. But it bothered him what he had done. He told me that in those moments in the room with Harris he had lost it. He said he became the very thing he had hunted all these years. A monster. It bothered him a lot. I could see it had been eating at him. Then I come along tonight and drive him home ...”
Bosch felt the guilt rising up like a tide in his throat. He had not been thinking. He had not seen the obvious. He had been too consumed with the case, with Eleanor and his empty house, with things other than Frankie Sheehan.
”And?” Irving prompted.
”And I knocked down the one thing he believed in all these months, the one thing that kept him safe. I told him we had cleared Michael Harris. I told him he was wrong about Harris and that we could prove it. I didn't think about what it would do to him. I was only thinking about my case.”
”And you think that put him over,” Irving said.
”Something happened to him in that room with Harris. Something bad. He lost his family after that, he lost the case ... I think the one thread he held on to was his belief that he'd had the right guy. When he found out he was wrong-when I stumbled into his world and told him it was bulls.h.i.+t-the thread snapped.”
”Look, this is bulls.h.i.+t, Bosch,” Lindell said. ”I mean, I respect you and your friends.h.i.+p with this guy, but you aren't seeing what is right here in front of us. The obvious. This guy did himself because he's the guy and he knew we'd come back to him. This suicide is a confession.”
Irving stared at Bosch, waiting for him to come back at Lindell. But Bosch said nothing. He was tired of fighting it.
”I find myself agreeing with Agent Lindell on this,” the deputy chief finally said.
Bosch nodded. He expected as much. They didn't know Sheehan the way Bosch did. He and his former partner had not been close in recent years but they had been close enough at one time for Bosch to know that Lindell and Irving were wrong. It would have been easier for him to agree. It would lift a lot of the guilt off him. But he couldn't agree.
”Give me the morning,” he said instead.
”What?” Irving asked.
”Keep this wrapped up and away from the press for half a day. We proceed with the warrants and the plan for tomorrow morning. Give me time to see what comes up and what Mrs. Kincaid says.”
”If she talks.”
”She'll talk. She's dying to talk. Let me have the morning with her. See how things go. If I don't come up with a connection between Kincaid and Elias, then you do what you have to do with Frankie Sheehan. You tell the world what you think you know.”
Irving thought about this for a long moment and then nodded.
”I think that would be the most cautious route,” he said. ”We should have a ballistics report by then as well.”
Bosch nodded his thanks. He looked out through the open doors to the deck again. It was starting to rain harder. He looked at his watch and saw how late it was getting. And he knew what he still needed to do before he could sleep.
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