Read Online Lost Light by Michael Connelly - Free Book Online Page A

Mercedes, or so it seemed. And every fifth one of them was a black M-class SUV. I think maybe I knew where I was going long before I started the journey. Eight months before I would need it I’d bought an automobile that would serve me well as a private investigator. It had speed and comfort, it had dark smoked windows, and if you looked in your mirror and saw one of these behind you in L.A. it wouldn’t cause a second thought.
    The Mercedes took some getting used to. In terms of comfort as well as routine operation and maintenance. In fact, I had already run out of gas on the road twice. It was one of those little things that came with giving up the badge. For several years before my retirement I had been a detective third grade, a supervisory-level position that came with a take-home car. That car was a Ford Crown Victoria, the Police Interceptor model that rode like a tank, had vinyl wash-off seats, heavy-duty suspension and the expanded gas tank. I never needed gas when on the job. And the car was routinely refueled at the station by the guys from the motor pool. As a citizen I had to re-learn to watch the needle. Or else I found myself sitting on the side of the road.
    From the center console I retrieved my cell phone and turned it on. I’d had little need for a cell phone but had kept the one I carried on the job. I don’t know, maybe I thought somebody from the division would call and ask my advice on a case or something. For four months I kept it charged and turned it on every day. Nobody ever called. After the second time I ran out of gas I plugged it into the charger in the center console and left it there for the next time I would need roadside assistance.
    Now I needed assistance but not of the roadside variety. I called information and got the number for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles. I called the number and asked for the supervisory agent in the bank squad. I figured the agent that had contacted Dorsey might have worked in the unit that handled bank robberies. It was the unit that most often dealt with currency numbers.
    My call was transferred and picked up by someone who simply said, “Nunez.”
    “Agent Nunez?”
    “Yes, what can I help you with?”
    I knew that handling a supervising FBI agent would not be the same as handling the secretary of a movie mogul. I had to be as up-front as I could with Nunez.
    “Yes, my name is Harry Bosch. I just retired from the LAPD after about thirty years and I -”
    “Good for you,” he said curtly. “What can I do for you?”
    “Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. About four years ago I was working a homicide case that was connected to a large cash robbery involving currency that had been recorded.”
    “What case?”
    “Well, you probably won’t recognize it by case name but it was the murder of Angella Benton. The murder preceded the robbery, which took place on a movie set in Hollywood. It made a big splash. The bad guys got away with two million dollars. Eight hundred of the hundred-dollar bills had been recorded.”
    “I remember it. But we did not work it. We had noth-”
    “I know that. Like I told you, I worked the case.”
    “Then go on, what can I do for you?”
    “Several months into the case an agent from your office contacted the LAPD to report an anomaly in the recorded numbers. She had received the list of serials because we had sent it all over.”
    “An anomaly, what is that?”
    “An anomaly is a deviation, something that doesn’t -”
    “I know what the word means. What anomaly are you talking about?”
    “Oh, sorry. This agent called and said one of the numbers was a misprint or a couple of the numbers got inverted, something like that. But that’s not what I’m calling about. She said she had a computer program that cross-referenced and cross-matched numbers from these sorts of cases. I think it was her own program, something that she worked up on her own. Does any of this ring a bell? Not the