The Black Echo

“The DEA looked at every name on the boxholder list and drew a blank. We ran the names through NCIC. We got a few hits but nothing serious, mostly old stuff.” She gave another one of those short fake laughs. “One of the holders of one of the bigger boxes had a kiddy porn conviction from the seventies. Served a deuce at Soledad. Anyway, after the bank job he was contacted and he reported nothing was taken, said he had recently emptied his box. But they say these pedophiles can never part with their stuff, their photos and films, even letters written about kids. And there was no record at the bank of him going into the box in the two months before the burglary. So we figured that the box was for his collection. But, anyway, that had nothing to do with the job. Nothing we turned up did.”

Bosch found the way on the map and pulled out of the service station. Charlie Company was in grove country. He thought about her story about the pedophile. Something about it bothered him. He rolled it around in his head but couldn’t get to it. He let it drift and went on to another question.

“Why was nothing ever recovered? All that jewelry and bonds and stocks, and nothing ever turns up except for a single bracelet. Not even any of the other worthless things that were taken.”

“They are sitting on it until they think they are clear,” Wish said. “That’s why Meadows was smoked. He went out of line and pawned the bracelet before he should have, maybe before everyone agreed they were clear. They found out he’d sold it. He wouldn’t say where, so they buzzed him until he told them. Then they killed him.”

“And by coincidence, I get the call.”

“It happens.”

“There is something in that story that doesn’t work,” Bosch said. “We start out with Meadows getting juiced, tortured, right? He tells them what they want, they put the hot load in his arm and they go get the bracelet from the pawnshop, okay?”

“Okay.”

“But, see, it doesn’t work. I’ve got the pawn slip. It was hidden. So he didn’t give it to them, and they had to go break in the shop and take the bracelet, covering the scam by also taking a lot of other junk. So if he didn’t give them the pawn slip, how’d they know where the bracelet was?”

“He told them, I guess,” Wish said.

“I don’t think so. I don’t see him giving up one and not the other. He had nothing to gain from holding back the slip. If they got the name of the shop out of him, they would’ve gotten the slip.”

“So, you’re saying he died before he told them anything. And they already knew where the bracelet was pawned.”

“Right. They worked him to get the ticket, but he wouldn’t give it up, wouldn’t break. They killed him. Then they dump the body and roll his place. But they still don’t find the pawn stub. So they hit the pawnshop like third-rate burglars. The question is, if Meadows didn’t tell them where he had sold the bracelet and they didn’t find the stub, how did they know where it was?”

“Harry, this is speculation on top of speculation.”

“That’s what cops do.”

“Well, I don’t know. Could have been a lot of things. They could have had a tail on Meadows ’cause they didn’t trust him and could have seen him go into the pawnshop. Could’ve been a lot of things.”

“Could’ve been they had somebody, say a cop, who saw the bracelet on the monthly pawn sheets and told them. The sheets go to every police department in the county.”

“I think that kind of speculation is reckless.”

They were there. Bosch braked the car at a gravel entranceway below a wooden sign with a green eagle painted on it and the words Charlie Company. The gate was open and they drove down a gravel road with muddy irrigation ditches running along both sides. The road split the farmland, with tomatoes on the right and what smelled like peppers on the left. Up ahead there was a large aluminum-sided barn and a sprawling ranch-style house. Behind these Bosch could see a grove of avocado trees. They drove into a circular parking area in front of the ranch house and Bosch cut the engine.

***

A man wearing a white apron that was as clean as his shaven head came to the screen at the front door.

“Mr. Scales here?” Bosch asked.

“Colonel Scales, you mean? No, he is not. It’s almost time for chow, though. He’ll be coming in from the fields then.”