The Crossing by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

drive by the house where Lexi Parks had been murdered. He thought it would be good to get out of the paper and to see some of the physical touchstones of the case.
    The home was located on Orlando south of Melrose in a neighborhood of modest bungalows. Bosch pulled to the opposite curb and studied the house. It was almost entirely hidden by a tall privacy hedge with an arched entry cut through it. He could see the front door beyond the passage. There was a FOR SALE sign posted in front of the hedge. Bosch wondered how difficult it would be to sell a house where a brutal murder had recently occurred. He decided that living in the house where your wife had been the victim of that murder would be even more difficult.
    His phone buzzed and he answered while still staring at the house.
    “Bosch,” he said.
    “It’s me,” Haller said. “How’s it going?”
    “It’s going.”
    “You still reading the discovery material?”
    “About halfway through.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing. I’m still reading.”
    “I just thought maybe you might have—”
    “Look, don’t push me on this, Mick. I’m doing what I have to do. If I want to take it further when I’m finished, I’ll tell you. If I don’t, I’ll drop all of this stuff back with you.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “Good. I’ll catch you later.”
    Bosch disconnected. He continued to look at the house. He noticed that there was a BEWARE OF DOG sign posted in a planter beside the front door. He had not read anything in the discovery so far that mentioned Parks and her husband having a dog. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought about that. He felt strongly that if the couple owned a dog it would have been noted up front in the reports. House pets always leave trace evidence in a home. It was something that had to be accounted for in an investigation.
    Bosch’s conclusion was that there was no dog and that the sign was posted as a deterrent. The next best thing to having a dog was pretending you had a dog. The question was did the killer know there was no dog? And if so, how?
    Finally, he drove away and went up Orlando to Santa Monica Boulevard. He turned east toward home but pulled over again when he spotted a Starbucks at Fairfax. This time he bought four hours of time on the meter and went in with the discovery file.
    With a cup of steaming black coffee in hand, he settled into a chair in the corner with a small round table next to it. There was no room to open the file and spread the stack, so he just pulled out the chrono to continue reading where he had left off. Before doing so he took a pen out of his shirt pocket and wrote a quick note on the outside of the file folder.
     

     
    He needed to confirm his conclusion about the dog. Jotting the one-word question down was an almost involuntary response to what he had seen while sitting outside the murder house. But as soon as he wrote it, he realized that something as small as writing a single word on the file was a big step toward buying into the case. He had to ask himself the question. Did he miss the work so much that he could actually cross the aisle and work for an accused murderer? Because that was what it would be. Haller was the attorney of record but the client was sitting in a cell accused of raping a woman and beating her to death. If he accepted the job offer, Bosch would be working for him.
    He felt the burn of humiliation on the back of his neck. He thought of all the guys before him who retired and the next thing you know they were working for defense lawyers or even the Public Defender’s Office. He had dropped relationships with those guys as though they were criminals themselves. The moment he heard someone had crossed, Bosch considered him persona non grata.
    And now …
    He took a sip of scalding coffee and tried to put the discomfort aside. He then took up the investigation where he had left off.
    After picking up Foster at his studio, the Sheriff’s investigators drove