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The Drop(30)

By:Michael Connelly


Soon after, that situation ended when his mother moved on from Johnny. But the horrors of Pell’s childhood veered in a new direction when he was thirteen years old and his mother overdosed on a motel bed while he was sleeping right next to her. He was taken into the custody of the Department of Children and Family Services and placed in a series of foster homes. But he never stayed in one place for long, choosing to run away whenever the opportunity presented itself. He told the evaluator that he had been living on his own since he was seventeen. When asked if he had ever held a job, he said the only thing he had ever been paid for was sex with older men.

It was a gruesome story and Bosch knew that a version of it was shared by many of the denizens of the streets and the prisons, the traumas and depravities of childhood manifesting themselves in adulthood, often in repetitive behavior. It was the mystery Hannah Stone said she investigated on a regular basis.

Bosch checked the two other PSI reports and found variations of the same story, though some of Pell’s recollections of the dates and ages shifted slightly. Still, it was largely the same story and its repeated nature was either a testament to the laziness of the evaluators or to Pell’s telling the truth. Bosch guessed that it was somewhere in the middle. The evaluators only reported what they had been told or they copied it off a prior report. No effort had been made to confirm Pell’s story or even to find the people who had abused him.

Bosch took out his notebook and wrote down a summary of the story about the man named Johnny. He was now sure that there had been no screwup in the handling of evidence. In the morning, he and Chu had an appointment at the regional lab and Chu at least would keep it—if only to eventually be able to testify that they had exhaustively investigated all possibilities.

But Bosch had no doubt that the lab was in the clear. He could feel the trickle of adrenaline dripping into his bloodstream. He knew it would soon become a relentless torrent and he would move with its flow. He believed he now knew who had killed Lily Price.





12




In the morning Bosch called Chu from his car and told him to handle the visit to the crime lab without him.

“But what are you doing?” his partner asked.

“I have to go back to Panorama City. I’m checking out a lead.”

“What lead, Harry?”

“It involves Pell. I read his file last night and came up with something. I need to check it. I don’t think there’s a problem at the lab but we have to check it out in case it ever came up at trial—if there ever is a trial. One of us has to be able to testify that we checked out the lab.”

“So what do I tell them when I get there?”

“We have an appointment with the deputy director. Just tell her you need to double-check how the evidence from the case was handled. You interview the lab rat that ran the case and that will be it. Twenty minutes, tops. Take notes.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“Hopefully talking to Clayton Pell about a man named Johnny.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back to the PAB. I gotta go.”

“Har—”

Bosch disconnected. He didn’t want to get bogged down with explanations. That slowed things down. He wanted to keep his momentum.

Twenty minutes later he was cruising Woodman looking for a parking slot near the Buena Vista apartments. There was nothing and he ended up parking on a red curb and walking a block back to the halfway house. He reached through the gate to buzz the office. He identified himself and asked for Dr. Stone. The gate was unlocked and he entered.

Hannah Stone was waiting for him with a smile in the office suite’s lobby area. He asked if she had her own office or a place where they could speak privately and she took him into one of the interview rooms.

“This will have to do,” she said. “I share an office with two other therapists. What’s going on, Harry? I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.”

Bosch nodded, agreeing that he had thought the same thing.

“I want to talk to Clayton Pell.”

She frowned as though he was putting her in a difficult position.

“Well, Harry, if Clayton is a suspect, then you’ve put me in a very—”

“He’s not. Look, can we sit down for a second?”

She pointed him to what he assumed was the client/patient chair while she took a chair facing it.

“Okay,” Bosch started. “First, I have to tell you that what I say here will probably sound too coincidental to be coincidence—in fact, I don’t even believe in coincidence. But what we talked about last night at dinner hooked into what I did after dinner and here I am. I need your help. I need to talk to Pell.”