Suicide Run

by Michael Connelly

Genres: Police Procedurals; Mystery

Synopsis

LAPD Detective Harry Bosch as we've never seen him before, in three never-before-collected stories.

In "Suicide Run," the apparent suicide of a beautiful young starlet turns out to be much more sinister than it seems. In "Cielo Azul," Bosch is haunted by a long-ago closed case -- the murder of a teenage girl who was never identified. As her killer sits on death row, Bosch tries one last time to get the answers he has sought for years. In "One Dollar Jackpot," Bosch works the murder of a professional poker player whose skills have made her more than one enemy.

Whether investigating a cold case or fresh blood, Bosch relentlessly pursues his quarry, always on the lookout for the "tell." In this first collection of Harry Bosch stories, Michael Connelly once again demonstrates that he is the master of "fast-paced, brilliantly plotted crime fiction.... Harry Bosch is back on the case, and not a moment too soon" (Chicago Sun Times).

Release date: October 1, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 100

Sample

It was slow on night watch. They were submarining—cruising close to the station so at end of watch they could quickly pull
into the back lot, dump the car and check out. Jerry Edgar was driving. It was his idea to submarine. He always had some place
to get to, even at midnight. Harry Bosch had no place to go but an empty house.


Whatever plans Edgar had, they changed when they got the call from the watch commander and were sent to the Orchidia Apartments.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jerry Edgar muttered. “Fifteen minutes and we’d a been clear.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Harry Bosch told him. “If it checks out we’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

Edgar turned off La Brea onto Franklin and they were less than two minutes away. Bosch and Edgar were the night shift detectives
in Hollywood Division, part of a new roving response team instituted by the commander. Captain LeValley wanted a detective
team to roll to any crime of violence instead of pulling the patrol reports the following morning. On paper it was a good
theory and Bosch and Edgar had in fact cleared two armed robberies and a rape in their first four days spent working nights.
But for the most part they took reports and did little more than pass cases off to the appropriate investigators the following
day.


The air they drove through was clear and crisp. They kept the windows up and their expectations down. The call was a suicide
run. They needed to make a confirmation for the patrol sergeant on scene and then they’d be on their way. With any luck they’d
still make it back to the station by midnight.


The Orchidia was a sprawling pink apartment complex off Orchid and nestled into the hillside behind the Magic Castle parking
lot. It was an apartment complex that had been around for as long as Bosch remembered. In the old days it was a place where
studios put up the new starlets just signed to contracts. These days the people who lived there paid their own way.


There were two patrol cars with flashing blues out front. A van from the Scientific Investigation Division and a station wagon
from the coroner’s office were already there as well. This told Bosch that the sergeant on scene either had forgotten about
the night shift detectives or didn’t think them necessary. He told Edgar to park behind the patrol car that didn’t have a
light bar on the roof. That would be the sergeant’s car. Bosch would make sure he didn’t go anywhere until Bosch wanted him
to.


As they got out Edgar looked over the roof of their cruiser at Bosch.

“I hate night watch in Hollywood,” he said. “All the suicides come out at night.”

It was true. This would be their third suicide in four nights.

“In Hollywood, everything comes out at night,” Bosch said.

There was a patrol officer at the entrance and he took badge numbers from Bosch and Edgar and then directed them to apartment
6. The front door of the apartment was open and they walked into a nest of activity. It was the end of shift for everybody
and everybody was in a hurry. Bosch saw the watch sergeant, who turned out to be a woman named Polly Fulton, standing in a
hallway that most likely led to a bedroom.


“Detectives,” she said. “Glad you could swing by. Right in here.”

“What do you mean, we just got the call,” Edgar said.

“Really?” Fulton said. “I called it in at least forty-five minutes ago. The watch must have his hands full.”

She gestured for them to pass by her and they did. The hall ended at three doors: a closet, a bathroom and a bedroom. They
entered the bedroom and saw that all the activity was centered on a naked woman lying on the bed. Two coroner’s investigators,
a forensics tech, a photographer and another patrol officer were all hovering around the bed.


The woman was on her back, her arms at her sides. She had been young and beautiful and remained so even in death. Her hair
was blond and it wreathed her face, curving under her chin. Her skin was pale white and her breasts were full, even while
she was lying down. A slight line of discoloration could be seen running along the bottom curve of each breast. Surgical scars.


There was a diamond teardrop pendant on a silver chain on her chest between her breasts. Her stomach was flat and her pubic
hair was neatly trimmed short and in a perfect inverted triangle.


Edgar made a light catcall whistle between his teeth.

“Now why would she want to go and do the Marilyn Monroe?” he asked. “A girl lookin’ like that.”

No one answered. Bosch just stared at the woman on the bed while pulling on a pair of latex gloves. He knew that the knee-jerk
reaction was to think that beauty solved all other problems. Same thing with money. But he had seen enough suicides to know
that neither was true. Not even close.


“Lizbeth Grayson,” Sergeant Fulton said. “Twenty-four. Hasn’t been here in the City of Angels long. Still has an Oregon driver’s
license in her purse.”


Fulton had come up next to Bosch and spoke while they both stared at the body. There was no embarrassment about the dead woman
being naked and exposed. It was police work.


Fulton held up a clipboard. Lizbeth Grayson’s driver’s license was clipped to it. Bosch noted that she was from Portland.

“What else?” he asked.

“She’s an actress—aren’t they all. She’s got a drawer full of headshots over there. Looks like she did a walk-on bit on Seinfeld last year. You know they film that here, even though it’s supposed to be New York. Anyway, the résumé is on the back of the
latest headshot. She hasn’t worked a lot—at least not the kind of jobs that she wanted to put on the résumé.”


Bosch could almost feel Fulton’s eyes drop to the small, perfect triangle of pubic hair. He knew what she was thinking. The
silicone and the trim job might indicate a certain lifestyle and other means of income. Bosch looked back up at the face.
Lizbeth Grayson hadn’t needed anything in life but that face. He wondered if anybody besides her mother had ever told her
that.


“Anyway,” Fulton said, “on the side table we’ve got an empty bottle of Percodan left over from breast enhancement surgery
last year and a ‘good-bye, cruel world’ note. It’s looking pretty cut-and-dried, Detective. We won’t be wasting your time
on this.”


Bosch moved his focus to the table next to the bed and stepped over.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

On the table was an empty glass with a white residue at the bottom, a plastic pill bottle and a notepad. Nothing else. Bosch
bent down to study the pill vial, which was standing up on the table. It was a painkiller prescribed to Lizbeth Grayson eight
months earlier. Take as needed for the pain. He wondered if that pain included the need to end it all. He took out a notebook
and wrote down the name of the physician who prescribed the drug and presumably performed the breast enhancement surgery.


He next looked at an open spiral notebook that was on the table next to the pill bottle. There were four lines written. . .