Resurrection Walk

“If she’s innocent.”

“Yeah, the big if.”

Maddie pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Bosch’s house.

“You want to come in?” Bosch asked. “I got a Miles Davis triple album from the Third Man Vault. Live at the Fillmore East in 1970. The late great Wayne Shorter’s on the sax. I’m going to give it a listen.”

At Christmas, she had gifted Bosch with a subscription to the distributor of rare vinyl out of Nashville.

“No, but thanks,” Maddie said. “I think I’m going over to the reservoir for a run. Will you be okay?”

“Of course. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride and for being there today. It means a lot.”

“Anytime, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Bosch got out and decided to enter his house through the carport. As he unlocked the side door to the kitchen, he thought about how empty his life would feel without the connection to his daughter. It was more than the shared experience of police work. It was sacred. She was his legacy. He knew that she was what made everything he did seem worth it.

15

It was Monday before Bosch felt steady enough on his feet and mentally focused enough to return to the Lucinda Sanz case. Early on he had put together a lengthy to-do list but there had been no bigger priority than finding and interviewing the victim’s girlfriend, Matilda “Matty” Landas. Bosch had exhausted all the means of locating her that were available to a man without a badge and the access that came with it. Having learned his lesson in asking Renée Ballard to do something that could get her disciplined or even fired, he refrained from calling on her or his daughter for help. When he reported his failure, Haller said he would put his other investigator on the quest for Matilda.

And Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski came through, locating the woman who had previously been known as Matilda Landas in less than a day. He didn’t pay off a cop to make a computer run and he didn’t have to use his size and muscles to intimidate anyone. Because she had not been found through voter registration, property records, or utility records, Cisco had a hunch that she had changed her name, possibly through marriage but also possibly out of fear resulting from the Sanz case. When he found no records substantiating this in Los Angeles County, he hopped on his Harley and headed to San Bernardino County, where public birth records showed that Landas had been born in the town of Hesperia. Legally changing a name in California required petitioning a court and publishing the petition in a local newspaper. If Landas was operating out of fear, it was unlikely that she would advertise her plan to change her identity in the L.A. area. Cisco thought she would go to her hometown, where she might even know a lawyer who could help with her legal task. The Hesperian was a weekly newspaper that didn’t offer access to online archives. So he went to the Hesperian offices, and after less than an hour combing through hard copies of old editions, he found the public notice of Matilda Landas’s intent to change her legal name to Madison Landon. He then went to the courthouse in Victorville and confirmed that a court order had been issued three weeks later. It appeared that Matty had become Maddy.

The name change had been made seven months after Roberto Sanz was murdered.

Once Cisco had the name Madison Landon, he returned to L.A. and ran it through the usual means of tracing an individual. He was able to learn that Landon was a Democrat, had a mortgage on a home in South Pasadena, and had a matching address on her driver’s license.

Cisco passed this information to Bosch and now it was time to talk to her. He called Cisco, who’d kept a loose surveillance on Landon while Bosch was on the mend.

“I’m heading out,” he said. “Where is she?”

“She’s in a bookstore,” Cisco said. “Vroman’s. You know it?”

“Yes, on Colorado Boulevard.”

“She’s parked in the back lot. She’s only been in there a few minutes.”

“I’m probably a half hour out. Call me back if she leaves.”

“Will do. But I’m happy to take the interview if you’re not feeling up to it.”

“I’m fine. Mickey wants me to do it. In case I have to testify at the hearing.”

“Got it. Well, I’m here.”

“On the bike?”

“No, I don’t do surveillance on the bike. Too conspicuous. I’m in Lorna’s Tesla.”

“Where do I meet you?”

“You’re in that old Cherokee, right?”

“Yeah, old, but new to me.”

“Just pull in and park at Vroman’s. I’ll see you.”

“On my way.”

A half hour later Bosch was in the bookstore’s back lot. He parked, and by the time he killed the engine and got out, Cisco was waiting for him behind the Cherokee.

“You know what she looks like?” Cisco asked.

“Just from the driver’s license you came up with,” Bosch said.

“She looks different now. Dyed her hair, wears glasses.”

“Huh.”

Cisco held up his phone and showed Bosch a photo of a woman with blond hair and black-framed glasses walking across the parking lot they were standing in. He had obviously gotten the shot earlier.

“That’s her?” Bosch asked.