The Drop by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online

was unmistakable.

6
     
    A fter finally clearing the scene, they took Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the hill to the San Fernando Valley. Along the way, Bosch and Chu traded reports on their efforts of the previous two hours, starting with the fact that the knocking on doors in the hotel had produced not a single guest who had heard or seen anything in regard to Irving’s death. Bosch found this surprising. He was sure that the sound of the impact of the body landing would have been loud, and yet no one in the hotel had reported hearing even that.
    “A waste of time,” Chu said.
    Which, of course, Bosch knew, was not the case. There was value in knowing that Irving had not shouted as he came down. This fact lent itself to the two scenarios Van Atta had mentioned; Irving had intentionally jumped or was unconscious when he was dropped.
    “It’s never a waste of time,” he said. “Did any of you knock on the doors of the pool bungalows?”
    “Not me. They’re all the way over on the other side of the building. I didn’t figure it was—”
    “What about Crate and Barrel?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Bosch pulled his phone. He called Solomon.
    “What’s your location?” he asked.
    “We’re on Marmont Lane, knocking on doors. Like we were told.”
    “Did you get anything out of the hotel?”
    “Nope, nobody heard nothing.”
    “Did you hit any of the bungalows?”
    There was a hesitation before Solomon answered.
    “Nope, we weren’t told to hit the bungalows, remember?”
    Bosch was annoyed.
    “I need you to go back and talk to a guest named Thomas Rapport in bungalow two.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “He’s supposedly some kind of famous writer. He checked in right after Irving and might’ve talked to him.”
    “Let’s see, that’s about six hours or so before our guy jumped. And you want us to talk to a guy who was next in line to check in?”
    “That’s right. I’d do it myself but I need to get to Irving’s wife.”
    “Bungalow two, got it.”
    “Today. You can e-mail me the report.”
    Bosch closed the phone, annoyed with Solomon’s tone during the entire call. Chu immediately hit him with a question.
    “How’d you know about this guy Rapport?”
    Bosch reached into the side pocket of his suit coat and pulled free a clear plastic sleeve containing a DVD.
    “There are not a lot of cameras in that hotel. But there is one over the front desk. It’s got Irving checking in and the rest of the night right up until the body’s discovered. Rapport came in right after Irving. He might’ve even ridden up in the elevator from the garage with him.”
    “Did you look at the disc?”
    “Just the part with him checking in. I’ll watch the rest later.”
    “Anything else from the manager?”
    “The hotel call logs and the combination that was entered on the room safe.”
    Bosch told him the combination on the room safe was 1492 and that it was not a default number. Whoever had locked Irving’s possessions in the safe had keyed the number in either randomly or intentionally.
    “Christopher Columbus,” Chu said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Harry, I’m the foreigner. Don’t you know your history lessons? ‘In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue’—remember?”
    “Yeah, sure. Columbus. But what’s it have to do with this?”
    It seemed like a stretch to Bosch that the discovery of America was the inspiration for the combination.
    “And that’s not even the oldest date connected to this thing,” Chu added excitedly.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The hotel, Harry. The Chateau Marmont is a duplicate of a French chateau built in the thirteenth century in the Loire Valley.”
    “Okay, so?”
    “I looked it up on Google. That’s what I was doing on my phone. Turns out that back then, the average height of Western Europeans was five foot three. So if they copied that place, that would explain why the balcony walls are so short.”
    “The balustrades. But what’s