Read Online Echo Park by Michael Connelly - Free Book Online

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When you’re a dozer-drivin’ man . . .
     
    He took a left on Chavez Ravine and in a few moments he came to Stadium Way and the spot where Waits had first drawn the attention of the CRT patrol as he passed on his way down into Echo Park.
    At the stop sign he surveyed the intersection. Stadium Way was the feeder line to the stadium’s huge parking lots. For Waits to have come into the neighborhood this way, as the arrest report stated, he would have to have come in from downtown, the stadium, or the Pasadena Freeway. This would not have been the way in from his home in West Hollywood. Bosch puzzled with this for a few moments but determined there was not enough information to draw any conclusion. Waits could have driven through Echo Park, making sure he was not followed, and then drawn the CRT tail after turning around to go back.
    He realized that there was much about Waits he didn’t know and it bothered him that he would come face-to-face with the killer the next day. Bosch felt unprepared. He once again considered the idea he’d had earlier, but this time he didn’t hesitate. He opened his phone and called the FBI field office in Westwood.
    “I’m looking for an agent named Rachel Walling,” he told the operator. “I’m not sure what squad she’s with.”
    “Hold one.”
    By “one” she had apparently meant a minute. As he waited he was honked at by a car that had come up from behind. Bosch moved through the intersection, made a U-turn and then pulled off the road into the shade of a eucalyptus tree. Finally near the two-minute mark his call was transferred and picked up and a male voice said, “Tactical.”
    “Agent Walling, please.”
    “Hold one.”
    “Right,” Bosch said after he heard the click.
    But this time the transfer was made quickly and Bosch heard Rachel Walling’s voice for the first time in a year. He hesitated and she almost hung up on him.
    “Rachel, it’s Harry Bosch.”
    Now she hesitated before responding.
    “Harry . . .”
    “So what’s ‘Tactical’ mean?”
    “It’s just the squad designation.”
    He understood. She didn’t answer because it was eyes-only stuff and the line was probably on tape somewhere.
    “Why are you calling, Harry?”
    “Because I need a favor. I could use your help, actually.”
    “With what? I’m sort of in the middle of something here.”
    “Then don’t worry about it. I thought maybe you’d . . . well, never mind, Rachel. It’s no big deal. I can handle it.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll let you get back to Tactical, whatever that is. You take care.”
    He closed the phone and tried not to let her voice and the memory it conjured distract him from the task at hand. He looked back across the intersection and realized he was probably in the same position the CRT car had been in when Gonzalez and Fennel spotted Waits’s van. The eucalyptus tree and night shadows had provided them cover.
    Bosch was hungry now, having missed lunch. He decided he would cross over the freeway into Chinatown and grab takeout to bring back to the squad room. He pulled back onto the street and was debating whether to call the office to see if anybody wanted anything from Chinese Friends when his cell rang. He checked the screen but saw the ID was blocked. He answered anyway.
    “It’s me.”
    “Rachel.”
    “I wanted to switch to my cell.”
    There was a pause. Bosch knew he had been right about the phones at Tactical.
    “How have you been, Harry?”
    “I’ve been fine.”
    “So you did like you said you were going to do. You went back to the cops. I read about you last year with that case up in the Valley.”
    “Yeah, my first case back. Everything’s been below the radar since then. Until this thing I’ve got working now.”
    “And that’s why you called me?”
    Bosch noted the tone in her voice. It had been more than eighteen months since they had spoken. And that was at the end of an intense week when they had crossed paths on