The Closers by Michael Connelly Page A
Authors: Michael Connelly
Verloren case.
“He got a general education degree at Chatsworth High the summer of ’eighty-eight,” she said. “So that puts him right in Chatsworth.”
“If he got a GED, then he dropped out first. Does it say from where?”
“Nothing here. Says he grew up in Chatsworth. Dysfunctional family. Poor student. He lived with his father, a welder at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Doesn’t sound like Hillside Prep material.”
“We still need to check. Parents always want their kid to do better. If he went there and knew her and then dropped out, it would explain why he was never interviewed back in ’eighty-eight.”
Rider just nodded. She was reading on.
“This guy never left the Valley,” she said. “Every address is in the Valley.”
“What’s the last known?”
“ Panorama City. Same as the AutoTrack hit. But if it’s in here, then it’s probably old.”
Bosch nodded. Anybody who had been through the system as many times as Mackey would know to move house the day after clearing a probation tail. Don’t leave an address with the man. Bosch and Rider would go to the Panorama City address to check it out but Bosch knew that Mackey would be gone. Wherever he had moved, he had not used his name on public utility applications and he had not updated his driver’s license or vehicle registration. He was flying below radar.
“Says he was in the Wayside Whities,” Rider said as she reviewed a report.
“No surprise.”
The Wayside Whities was the name of a jail gang that had existed for years in the Wayside Honor Rancho in the northern county. Gangs usually formed along racial lines in the county jails as a means of protection rather than out of racial enmity. It was not unusual to find members of the Nazi-leaning Wayside Whities to secretly be Jewish. Protection was protection. It was a way of belonging to a group and staving off assault from other groups. It was a measure of jail survival. Mackey’s membership was only a tenuous connection to Bosch’s theory that race possibly played a part in the Verloren case.
“Anything else on that?” he asked.
“Not that I see.”
“What about physical description? Any tattoos?”
Rider rifled through the paperwork and pulled out a jail intake form.
“Yeah, tattoos,” she said, reading. “He’s got his name on one bicep and I guess a girl’s name on the other. RaHoWa.”
She spelled the name and Bosch started to get the first tingling sense that his theory was coming strongly into play.
“It’s not a name,” he said. “It’s code. Means ‘racial holy war.’ First two letters of each word. The guy’s one of the believers. I think Garcia and Green missed this and it was right there.”
He could feel the adrenaline picking up.
“Look at this,” Rider said urgently. “He also has the number eighty-eight tattooed on his back. The guy’s got a reminder of what he did in ’eighty-eight.”
“Sort of,” Bosch replied. “It’s more code. I worked one of these white power cases once and I remember all the codes. To these guys eighty-eight stands for double H because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Eighty-eight equals H-H equals Heil Hitler. They also use one ninety-eight for Sieg Heil. They’re pretty clever, aren’t they?”
“I still think the year ’eighty-eight might have something to do with this.”
“Maybe it does. You got anything in there about employment?”
“Looks like he drives a tow truck. He was driving a tow truck when he stopped to take the leak that got him the lewd and lash last time. This lists three different previous employers-all tow services.”
“That’s good. That’s a start.”
“We’ll find him.”
Bosch looked back down at the arrest report in front of him. It was a burglary from 1990. Mackey had been caught by a police dog in the concessions shop of the Pacific Drive-in Theater. He had broken in after hours, setting off a silent alarm. He had pilfered the cash drawer and
“He got a general education degree at Chatsworth High the summer of ’eighty-eight,” she said. “So that puts him right in Chatsworth.”
“If he got a GED, then he dropped out first. Does it say from where?”
“Nothing here. Says he grew up in Chatsworth. Dysfunctional family. Poor student. He lived with his father, a welder at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Doesn’t sound like Hillside Prep material.”
“We still need to check. Parents always want their kid to do better. If he went there and knew her and then dropped out, it would explain why he was never interviewed back in ’eighty-eight.”
Rider just nodded. She was reading on.
“This guy never left the Valley,” she said. “Every address is in the Valley.”
“What’s the last known?”
“ Panorama City. Same as the AutoTrack hit. But if it’s in here, then it’s probably old.”
Bosch nodded. Anybody who had been through the system as many times as Mackey would know to move house the day after clearing a probation tail. Don’t leave an address with the man. Bosch and Rider would go to the Panorama City address to check it out but Bosch knew that Mackey would be gone. Wherever he had moved, he had not used his name on public utility applications and he had not updated his driver’s license or vehicle registration. He was flying below radar.
“Says he was in the Wayside Whities,” Rider said as she reviewed a report.
“No surprise.”
The Wayside Whities was the name of a jail gang that had existed for years in the Wayside Honor Rancho in the northern county. Gangs usually formed along racial lines in the county jails as a means of protection rather than out of racial enmity. It was not unusual to find members of the Nazi-leaning Wayside Whities to secretly be Jewish. Protection was protection. It was a way of belonging to a group and staving off assault from other groups. It was a measure of jail survival. Mackey’s membership was only a tenuous connection to Bosch’s theory that race possibly played a part in the Verloren case.
“Anything else on that?” he asked.
“Not that I see.”
“What about physical description? Any tattoos?”
Rider rifled through the paperwork and pulled out a jail intake form.
“Yeah, tattoos,” she said, reading. “He’s got his name on one bicep and I guess a girl’s name on the other. RaHoWa.”
She spelled the name and Bosch started to get the first tingling sense that his theory was coming strongly into play.
“It’s not a name,” he said. “It’s code. Means ‘racial holy war.’ First two letters of each word. The guy’s one of the believers. I think Garcia and Green missed this and it was right there.”
He could feel the adrenaline picking up.
“Look at this,” Rider said urgently. “He also has the number eighty-eight tattooed on his back. The guy’s got a reminder of what he did in ’eighty-eight.”
“Sort of,” Bosch replied. “It’s more code. I worked one of these white power cases once and I remember all the codes. To these guys eighty-eight stands for double H because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Eighty-eight equals H-H equals Heil Hitler. They also use one ninety-eight for Sieg Heil. They’re pretty clever, aren’t they?”
“I still think the year ’eighty-eight might have something to do with this.”
“Maybe it does. You got anything in there about employment?”
“Looks like he drives a tow truck. He was driving a tow truck when he stopped to take the leak that got him the lewd and lash last time. This lists three different previous employers-all tow services.”
“That’s good. That’s a start.”
“We’ll find him.”
Bosch looked back down at the arrest report in front of him. It was a burglary from 1990. Mackey had been caught by a police dog in the concessions shop of the Pacific Drive-in Theater. He had broken in after hours, setting off a silent alarm. He had pilfered the cash drawer and