FaceOff Read Free Page A

have had nothing to do with the murder of Letitia Williams all those years ago. But if he did, he hadn’t survived the last fifteen years without checking windshields and being cautious.
    All Bosch was hoping for, and that he’d be happy with, was to see some activity at the home to confirm that Paisley was at the address. If he got lucky, Paisley would go out and grab a cup of coffee or a bite to eat at lunch. Bosch would be able to get all the DNA he’d need off a discarded cup or a pizza crust. Maybe Paisley was a smoker. A cigarette butt would do the trick as well.
    Harry pulled a file out of the locking briefcase he took on trips and opened it to look at the enlargement of the photo he’d pulled the day before from the Massachusetts DMV. It was taken three years earlier. Paisley was white, balding, and then fifty-three years old. He no longer had the driver’s license, thanks to the suspension that followed the DUI arrest four months ago. Paisley tipped a school bus and then blew a point-oh-two on the machine and with it blew his job with the school district and possibly his freedom. The arrest put his fingerprints into the system where they were waiting for Bosch. Sometimes Harry got lucky that way. If he had pulled the Williams case eleven months earlier and submitted the prints collected at the crime scene for electronic comparison therewould have been no resulting match. But Bosch pulled the case four months ago and here he was in Boston.
    Two hours into his surveillance Bosch had seen no sign of Paisley and was growing restless. Perhaps Paisley had left the house for the day before Bosch could set up on the street. Bosch could be wasting his time, watching an empty house. He decided to get out and do a walk-by. He’d seen a convenience store a block past the target address. He could walk by Paisley’s address, eyeball the place up close, then go down and pick up a newspaper and a gallon of milk. Back at the car he would pour the milk into the gutter and keep the jug handy if he had to urinate. It could be a long day watching the house.
    The paper would come in handy as well. He’d be able to check the late baseball scores. The Dodgers had gone into extra innings the night before against the hated Giants and Bosch had gotten on the plane not knowing the game’s outcome.
    But at the last moment Bosch decided to stay put. He watched a dinged-up Jeep Cherokee pull into a curbside slot directly across the street from his own position. There was a lone man in the car and what made Bosch curious was that he never got out. He stayed slumped a bit in his seat and appeared to be keeping an eye on the same address as Bosch.
    Bosch could see he was on a cell phone when he first arrived but then for the next hour the man remained behind the wheel of his Jeep, simply watching the goings-on on the street. He was too young to be Paisley. Late thirties or early forties, wearing a baseball cap and a thin gray hoodie over a dark-blue graphic tee. Something about the cap gave Bosch pause until he realized it was the first one he’d seen in a city filled with them that didn’t have a B on it. Instead, it had what appeared to be a crooked smiley face on it,though Bosch couldn’t be positive from the other side of the street. It looked to Bosch like the guy was waiting for somebody, possibly the same somebody Bosch was waiting for.
    Eventually, Bosch realized he had become a similar object of curiosity for the man across the street, who was now surreptitiously watching Bosch as Bosch was surreptitiously watching him.
    They kept at this careful cross-surveillance until a siren split the air and a fire truck trundled down the road between them. Bosch tracked the truck in the side mirror and when he looked back across the street he saw that the Jeep was empty. The man had either used the distraction of the passing fire truck to slip out, or he was lying down inside.
    Bosch assumed it was the former. He sat up straight and checked