Echo Park by Michael Connelly Page A

because it shows another dimension of his skills. But my interest in it is not just because he ran his own business. I’m also curious about the choice of business. It allowed him to be mobile and to travel throughout the city. If you saw his van in your neighborhood, there would be no cause for concern—except late at night, which obviously led to his downfall. And the job also allowed him inside people’s homes. I’m curious as to whether he started the job to help him fulfill his fantasies—the killings—or already had the business before he began acting on these impulses.”
    Bosch made a few more notes. Rachel had a good point with her questions about the job. He had questions that ran along the same lines. Could Waits have had his business thirteen years before? Had he cleaned windows at the High Tower and known about the vacant apartment? Maybe it was another mistake, a connection they had missed.
    “I know I don’t need to tell you this, Harry, but you are going to have to be careful and cautious with him.”
    He looked up from his notes.
    “Why?”
    “Something about what I see here—and obviously this is a very rushed response to a lot of material—but something doesn’t fit right about this.”
    “What?”
    She composed her thoughts before answering.
    “You have to remember that it was a fluke that he was even caught. Officers looking for a burglar stumbled onto a killer. Up until the moment those officers found the bags in his van, Waits was completely unknown to law enforcement. He had been flying below the radar for years. As I said, it shows he had a certain level of cunning and skill. And it says something about the pathology as well. He wasn’t sending notes to the police like the Zodiac or BTK . He wasn’t displaying his victims as an affront to society or a taunt to police. He was quiet. He moved below the surface. And he chose victims, with the exception of the first two killings, who could be pulled under without leaving so much as a ripple behind. You understand what I mean?”
    Bosch hesitated for a moment, not sure he wanted to tell her about the mistake he and Edgar had made so many years ago.
    She read him.
    “What?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Harry, I don’t want to be spinning my wheels here. If there is something you know that I need to know, then tell me or I might as well get up and go.”
    “Just hold on until I get the coffee. I hope you like it black.”
    He got up and went into the kitchen and poured coffee into two mugs. He found some packets of sugar and sweetener in a basket where he threw condiments that came with to-go orders and brought them out for Rachel. She put sweetener in her mug.
    “Okay,” she said after the first sip. “What aren’t you telling me?”
    “My partner and I made a mistake back when we worked this in ’ninety-three. I don’t know if it contradicts what you just said about Waits staying beneath the radar but it looks like he called us back then. About three weeks into the case. He talked to my partner on the phone and he used an alias. At least we think it was an alias. With this Reynard the Fox thing you’ve brought up, maybe he used his real name. Anyway, we blew it. We never checked him out.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He slowly, reluctantly, told her in detail about the call from Olivas and his finding of Waits’s alias in the 51s. She cast her eyes down at the table and nodded as he told it. She worked the pen she was holding in a circle on the page of notes in front of her.
    “And the rest is history,” he said. “He kept right on going . . . and killing people.”
    “When did you find this out?” she asked.
    “Right after I left you today.”
    She nodded.
    “Which explains why you were hitting the vodka so hard.”
    “I guess so.”
    “I thought . . . never mind what I thought.”
    “No, it wasn’t because of seeing you, Rachel. Seeing you was—I mean, is—actually very nice.”
    She took up her mug and drank from