Free Angle of Investigation by Michael Connelly Page A

would be to go to the records archives, which were housed over at Piper Tech, the storage facility and air squadron base at the edge of downtown.
    Bosch went to his side of the desk and wrote a note to Rider telling her he had come up with a hot angle and was chasing it through Piper Tech. The phone on his desk started to ring. He finished the note and grabbed the phone while standing up to reach the note over to Rider’s desk.
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    “Open-Unsolved, this is Bosch.”
    “Harry, it’s Larkin.”
    “I was just going to call you.”
    “Really? Why?”
    “I have a name for you.”
    “Funny, I have a name for you. I matched your palm and you’re not going to like it.”
    “Jonathan Gillespie.”
    “What?”
    “Jonathan Gillespie.”
    “Who is that?”
    “That’s not your match?”
    “Not quite.”
    Bosch sat back down at his desk. He pulled a pad over in front of him and got ready to write.
    “Who did you come up with?”
    “The palm print belonged to one of ours. Guy must have left it while at the crime scene. Sorry about that.”
    “Who is it?”
    “The name is Ronald Eckersly. He worked for us ’sixty-five to ’eighty-five, then he pulled the pin.”
    Bosch almost didn’t hear anything else Larkin said.
    “… shows that he was a patrol lieutenant upon retirement. You could go to personnel and get a current location if you need to talk to him. But it looks like he might have just screwed up and put his hand on the wall while he was at the scene. Back then they didn’t know anything about crime scene protocol and some of these guys would—hell, about twenty years ago I was dusting a homicide scene and one of the detectives who had been there all night started frying an egg in the dead guy’s kitchen. He said, ‘He ain’t gonna miss it and I’m goddamn starved.’ You believe that? So no matter how hard you drill into them not to touch—”
    “Thanks, Larkin,” Bosch said. “I’ve got to go.”
    Bosch hung up, grabbed the note off Rider’s desk and crumpled it in his hand. He took his cell phone off his belt and called Rider’s cell number. She answered right away.
    “Where are you?” Bosch asked.
    “Having a coffee.”
    “You want to take a ride?”
    “I’ve got the case"0egot the summary to finish. A ride where?”
    “Ten Thousand Palms.”
    “Harry, that’s not a ride. That’s a journey. That’s at least ninety minutes each way.”
    “Get me a coffee for the road. I’ll be right down.”
    He hung up before she could protest.
    On the drive out Bosch told Rider about the moves he had made with the case and how the print had come back to his old partner. He then recounted the morning he and Eckersly had found the lady in the tub. Rider listened without interrupting, then she had only one question at the end.
    “This is important, Harry,” she said. “You are dealing with your own memory and you know from case experience how faulty memories can be. We’re talking thirty-three years ago. Are you sure there wasn’t a moment when Eckersly could have put his hand on the wall?”
    “Yeah, like he might’ve leaned against the wall and taken a leak while I didn’t notice.”
    “I’m not talking about taking a leak. Could he have leaned against the wall when you found the body, like he got grossed out or sick and leaned against the wall for support?”
    “No, Kiz. I was in that room the whole time he was. He said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and he was the first one out. He did not go back in. We called in the detectives and then stood outside keeping the neighbors away when everybody showed up.”
    “Thirty-three years is a long time, Harry.”
    Bosch waited a moment before responding.
    “I know this sounds sad and sick but your first DB is like your first love. You remember the details. Plus…”
    He didn’t finish.
    “Plus what?”
    “Plus my mother was murdered when I was a kid. I think it’s why I became a cop. So finding that woman—my second day on the