The Closers by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online

department. I can wait longer.”
    Bosch expected more but that was it. Irving nodded once and stood up. He quickly turned and headed out of the cafeteria. Bosch felt the anger rise in his throat. He looked down at the two cups of coffee in his hands and felt like an idiot for having sat there like a defenseless errand boy while Irving had verbally punched him out. He got up and threw both cups into a trash can. He decided that when he got back to room 503 he would tell Jean Nord to get her own damn coffee.

6
    WITH THE UNEASE of the Irving confrontation still lingering, Bosch took the second half of the murder book over to his desk and sat down. He thought the best way to forget about the threat that Irving posed was to immerse himself in the case again. What he found left in the file was a thick sheaf of ancillary reports and updates, the things investigators always lumped into the back of the book, the reports that Bosch called the tumblers because they often seemed disparate but nevertheless could unlock a case when seen from the right angle or put together in the right pattern.
    First was a lab report stating that testing was unable to determine exactly how long the blood and tissue sample taken from the murder weapon could have been in the gun. The report said that while most of the sample was preserved for comparison purposes, an examination of selected blood cells indicated decomposition was not extensive. The criminalist who wrote the report could not say the blood was deposited on the gun at the time of the killing-no one could. But he would be prepared to testify that the blood was deposited on the gun “close to or at the time of the killing.”
    Bosch knew this was a key report in terms of mounting a prosecution of Roland Mackey. It might also give Mackey the opportunity to build a defense around having had possession of the gun before the murder but not at the time of the murder. It would be a risky move to admit being in possession of the murder weapon, but the DNA match dictated that it was a move he would likely have to make. With the science unable to pinpoint exactly when the deposit of blood and tissue on the gun occurred, Bosch saw a gaping hole in the prosecution’s case. The defense could clearly jump through it. Again, he felt the certainty of the cold hit DNA match slipping away. Science gives and takes at the same time. They needed more.
    Next in the murder book was a report from the Firearms Unit, which had been assigned the ownership trace of the murder weapon. The serial number on the Colt had been filed down, but the number was raised in the lab with the application of an acid which accentuated the compressions in the metal where the number had been stamped during manufacture. The number was traced to a gun purchased from the manufacturer in 1987 by a Northridge gun shop. It was then traced through its sale that year to a man who lived in Chatsworth on Winnetka Avenue. The gun had then been reported stolen by the owner when his home was burglarized June 2, 1988, just a month before it was used in the murder of Rebecca Verloren.
    This report helped their case somewhat because unless Mackey had a relationship with the gun’s original owner, the burglary compressed the time period during which Mackey would have had possession of the gun. It made it more likely that he had the gun on the night Becky Verloren was taken from her home and murdered.
    The original burglary report was contained in the file. The victim was named Sam Weiss. He lived alone and worked as a sound technician at Warner Bros. in Burbank. Bosch scanned the report and found only one other note of interest. In the investigating officer’s comments section it was stated that the burglary victim had recently purchased the gun for protection after being harassed by anonymous phone calls in which the caller threatened him because he was Jewish. The victim reported that he did not know how his unlisted number fell into the hands of his