It was almost as if the killer wanted to make it easy for the landlord to clean up and re-rent the place. Martin Perez had been made to kneel in a walk-in shower with yellowed tiles and a glass sliding door. He was then popped once in the back of the head. He crumpled forward and to his right, the splatter of blood and brains contained within the enclosure, some of it even conveniently dripping down the drain.
The forensics team had not yet removed the business card that had been snugged between Perez’s two front teeth and was easily readable as it protruded from his mouth.
It was clear to Bosch that the weapon had not been a .38, as this bullet had gone through the victim’s skull and exited explosively. Bosch saw chipped tile on the wall Perez had been facing as well as on the floor near the drain. The marks were clean white and not yellowed by time and grime.
“You find the round?” Bosch asked.
It was the first question he asked after five minutes of studying the crime scene. He had driven out to Alhambra with Lourdes. Sheriff’s investigator Lannark and his partner, Boyce, had taken an initial debriefing on the Martin Perez investigation and then escorted them into the bathroom to view the crime scene. At the moment, it was interdepartmental cooperation at its finest.
“No,” Lannark said. “But we haven’t moved him. We think he could have it in the gut. Goes through his head, hits down-angle on the wall in front of him, bounces down to the floor and then up into him before he hits the ground. New meaning to the double-tap, huh?”
“Yeah,” Bosch said.
“Seen enough? How ’bout we back on out of here and talk some more outside?”
“Sure.”
They went outside to a courtyard in the center of the two-story apartment building. Boyce joined the huddle. Both of the sheriff’s men were seasoned detectives, calm in demeanor, with eyes that never stopped moving and observing. Lannark was black and Boyce was white.
Bosch started with questions before they got the chance.
“Has TOD been established?” he asked.
“Another resident of this fair place heard voices, then a muffled shot about five this morning,” Lannark said. “After that, she heard some more yelling and then running toward the street. At least two people.”
“Two voices yelling after the shooting?” Bosch asked.
“Yes, after,” Boyce said. “But this isn’t about you asking us questions, Bosch. We’re still asking you.”
“Right,” Bosch said. “Ask away.”
“Number one,” Boyce said, “if this guy was some kind of witness in a case, why wasn’t he under protection?”
“We thought he was protected,” Bosch said. “He thought he was protected. He was out of the neighborhood, ten years removed from the gang. He said nobody knew where he was and he turned down physical protection or relocation. We didn’t use his real name in reports or on the search warrant application.”
“Besides that, we were early into his information and had not confirmed any of it,” Lourdes said. “That was what the search we were conducting this morning was for.”
Lannark nodded and looked from Lourdes to Bosch.
“When did you give him your business card?” he asked.
“At the end of the first interview,” Bosch said. “I’ll have to look up the exact date—about four weeks ago.”
“And you’re saying he was not associated with anybody from the old neighborhood?” Lannark asked.
“That’s what he told me,” Bosch said. “Confirmed by our gang intel guys.”
“So, what’s your gut on this?” Boyce asked.
“My gut?” Bosch said. “My gut is that we sprang a leak. Somebody on our side told somebody on that side about the search. It got to somebody who knew what we would find in the wall of that garage, so he took out the witness who could connect the dots.”
“And that’s this guy Tranquillo Cortez?” Boyce said.
“Somebody working for him,” Bosch said.
“Cortez is a shot caller now,” Lourdes said. “He’s top rank in the gang.”
The sheriff’s men looked at each other and nodded.
“All right,” Lannark said. “That’s going to be it for now. We’ll finish up here and I’m sure we’ll be in touch soon.”
On the way out of the center courtyard to the gated entrance, Bosch scanned the concrete, looking for blood drops. He didn’t see any and soon was in the passenger seat of the city car assigned to Lourdes.
“So, what do you think?” Lourdes said as she pulled the car away from the curb. “Did we fuck up?”
“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “Maybe. Bottom line is Perez refused protection.”
“You really think somebody leaked to the SanFers?”
“I don’t know about that either. We’ll look at it for sure. If there was a leak, we’ll find it. It could have been Martin saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. We may never know how it happened.”
Bosch thought about the judge who had signed the warrant. He had asked Bosch several questions about the unnamed source in the affidavit, but it seemed he was only being thorough, and he had never specifically requested the real name. Judge Landry had been on the bench at least twenty years and was a second-generation jurist, having run for the superior court spot his father had occupied for thirty years until his death. It seemed unlikely that information in the warrant or discussed in his chambers would somehow have gotten to Tranquillo Cortez or any of the SanFers. The leak, intentional or otherwise, had to have come from somewhere else. Bosch started thinking about Yaro, the LAPD gang detective assigned to be on hand for the search. All gang detectives had sources in the gangs. The steady flow of intel from the gang was vital and sometimes information had to be traded in exchange.
Lourdes was working her way up to the 10 freeway so they could head west and back toward San Fernando.
“It seemed like you were looking for something when we were walking out,” she said. “Anything specific?”
“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Blood.”
“Blood? Whose blood?”
“The shooter’s. Did you work out the ricochet angle in the shower?”
“No, I couldn’t get in there because you men were clogging up the whole bathroom. I stood back. You think the shooter got hit with the ricochet?”
“It’s possible. Might explain the yelling the witness heard after the shooting. The sheriffs were thinking it hit Perez, but the angles didn’t look right to me. I’m thinking the bullet came low, went between Perez’s legs and hit our shooter. Maybe in the leg.”
“That would be good.”
“As soon as they roll that body, they’ll know, but we might have a chance at getting ahead of them on this. You think your boy J-Rod has an idea who the SanFers use these days to do their patching?”
“I’ll ask him.”
She pulled her phone and called her cousin Jose Rodriguez, who was the SFPD’s resident gang intel expert. By law, every hospital emergency room and legitimate physician had to report to authorities any case involving a gunshot wound, even if the injury is claimed by the victim to be accidental. This meant that criminal organizations had illegitimate doctors on call whom they could rely on to do medical patchwork at any time of the day or night and to keep quiet about it afterward. If Martin Perez’s killer was hit with the ricocheting bullet, then it was likely that he and his accomplices would have gone back to their own turf to seek medical attention. The SanFers’ turf was wide-ranging in the north valley and there was no shortage of shady doctors and clinics an injured man could go to. Bosch was hoping that J-Rod would be able to point them in the right direction.
While Lourdes talked in Spanish to her cousin on the phone, Bosch considered for the first time the question that had been hanging since he’d gotten the call from Lannark. Had he gotten Martin Perez killed? It was the kind of weight no cop needed or wanted but it was a risk that came with every case. Asking questions could be dangerous. It could get people killed. Perez had been out of the gang for years, had a job, and was a productive member of society when Bosch approached him behind the shoe store and asked for a light. Bosch believed he had taken appropriate precautions but there were always variables and potential risks. Perez hadn’t voluntarily pointed the finger at Tranquillo Cortez. Bosch had used age-old police tactics and squeezed the information out by threat. It was from that decision that Bosch’s guilt came.
Lourdes finished her call and reported to Bosch.
“He’s going to put together a list,” she said. “He doesn’t know how current it will be but it’s doctors who have been go-to guys for the SanFers and the eMe.”
“When do we get it?” Bosch asked.
“He’ll have it for us by the time we get back to the station.”
“All right, good.”
They drove in silence for a while. Bosch kept going back to his decision to squeeze Martin Perez. His review of it still had him doing the same thing.
“You know the irony of this?” Lourdes said.
“What irony?” Bosch responded.
“Well, Perez led us to that garage and we found the bullets but they were no good for comparison purposes. The reinvestigation would have probably ended there this morning.”
“True. Even if we got a metallurgy match, the D.A. wouldn’t have gotten too excited about it.”
“No way. But now with Perez getting taken out, there’s a case. And if we get the shooter, it may get us to Cortez. That’s the definition of irony, right?”
“I’d have to ask my daughter. She’s good at that stuff.”
“Well, it’s like they say, the cover-up is worse than the crime. It always gets them in the end.”
“Hopefully that’s how it works here. I want to put the cuffs on Cortez for this.”
Bosch’s phone started buzzing and he pulled it out. The caller was unknown.
“They rolled the body,” he predicted.
He accepted the call. It was Lannark.
“Bosch, we pulled the body out of the shower,” he said. “Perez wasn’t hit on the ricochet.
“Really,” Bosch said, acting surprised.
“Yeah, so we’re thinking, maybe the shooter got hit by his own bullet. Maybe the leg or the balls—if we’re lucky.”
“That would be true justice.”
“Yeah, so we’re going to do hospital checks, but we figure the gang behind this probably has its own people for situations like this.”
“Probably.”
“Maybe you could help us out and get us some names of people we can check on.”
“We can do that. We’re still on the road but we’ll see what we can come up with.”
“Call me back, okay?”
“As soon as we have something.”
Bosch disconnected and looked over at Lourdes.
“No bullet in the victim?” she asked.
Bosch stifled a yawn. He was beginning to feel the effects of the all-nighter he had spent with Ballard in Hollywood.
“No bullet,” he said. “And they want our help.”
“Of course they do,” Lourdes said.