The Drop(104)

Standing still in the entry, Bosch pulled on a set of latex gloves. The place was as dark as night. He swept the wall with his freshly gloved hand until he found a switch.

A dim ceiling light exposed 6A as a house of horrors. A jerry-built wall had been constructed across the front windows, ensuring darkness and privacy as well as a layer of soundproofing. All four walls of the front room had been used as a gallery for photo collages and newspaper stories of murder and rape and torture. Newspapers from as far as San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Stories about unexplained abductions, body dumps, missing people. It was clear that if these cases were the work of Hardy, then he was a traveler. His hunting territory was immense.

Bosch studied the photos. Hardy’s victims included both young men and women. Some were children. Bosch moved slowly, studying the horrible images. He stopped when he came to a full front page of the Los Angeles Times, yellowed and cracked now, with the smiling face of a young girl in a photo next to a story about her disappearance from a West Valley mall. He leaned closer to read the story until it said her name. He knew the name and the case and he now remembered why the address on Hardy’s driver’s license had sounded familiar to him.

Eventually he had to break away from the ghastly images. This was a pre-search sweep. He had to keep moving. When he came to the door to the garage, Bosch knew what he would find before he opened it. There in the bay sat a white work van. Hardy’s most important abduction tool.

It was a late-model Dodge. Bosch used the key to unlock it and look inside. It was empty except for a mattress and a hanging tool rack with two rolls of duct tape on it. Bosch put the key in the ignition and started the engine so he could check the mileage. The van had over 140,000 miles on it, another indication of the killer’s territory. He cut the engine and relocked the van.

Bosch had seen enough to know what they had, but he was drawn upstairs, anyway. He checked the front bedroom first and found it empty of furniture. All that was here were several small piles of clothing. There were T-shirts with pop stars’ faces on them, several pairs of blue jeans, separate piles just for bras and underwear and belts. The clothing of the victims.

The walk-in closet had a hasp and padlock on it. Bosch pulled the key ring again and fitted the smallest key into the padlock. He opened the closet door and flicked the switch on the outside wall. The small room was empty. The walls, ceiling and floor had been painted black. Two thick steel eyebolts protruded from the back wall, three feet off the ground. It was clearly a storage room for Hardy’s victims. Bosch thought about all of the people who had spent their last hours in this room, gagged, secured to the bolts, waiting for Hardy to end their agony.

In the back bedroom, there was a bed with a bare mattress on it. In the corner was a camera tripod without a camera. Bosch opened the closet doors and found it to be the electronics center. There were video cameras, archaic still and Polaroid cameras and a laptop computer, and the upper shelves were lined with DVD cases and VHS tapes. On one of the shelves were three old shoeboxes. Bosch pulled one down and opened it. It was filled with old Polaroids, mostly bleached out now, depicting many different young women and men engaged in oral sex with a man whose face was never seen.

Bosch put the box back in its place and closed the closet doors. He went back into the hallway. The bathroom was just as dirty as the bathroom in 6B but the tub ring was brownish-red and Bosch knew that this was where Hardy washed the blood off. He backed out of the room and checked the hallway closet. It was empty except for a black plastic case that stood about four and a half feet high and was roughly the shape of a bowling pin. There was a handle on the top of it. Bosch grabbed it and tipped it forward. There were two wheels on the bottom and he rolled it out into the hallway. The case felt empty and Bosch wondered if it had contained a musical instrument.

But then he saw a manufacturer’s plate on the side of the container. It said Golf+Go Systems and Bosch realized it was a case for transporting golf clubs on planes. He laid it down on the carpet and opened it, noting that the two latches could be locked with a key. It was empty but Bosch saw that there were three rough-edged holes the size of dimes cut into the top facing of the container.

Bosch closed it, righted it and put it back in the closet to be found later during the official search. He shut the door and headed back downstairs.

When he was halfway down the stairs, Bosch suddenly stopped and gripped the banister. He knew the dime-sized holes in the golf clubs carrier were to allow air into the case. And he knew a child or small person could fit inside. The inhumanity and depravity suddenly seized him. He could smell the blood. He could hear the muffled pleas. He knew the misery of this place.