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“Here we go again,” Novak said. “Now you’re gonna put Alexi Jerkoff on me. Might as well. Put ’em all on me, Detective Ballard. Clear the shelves on me.”

“We want to give credit where credit is due,” Ballard said. “But if you were there, tell us about Wonderland.”

“What does it matter?” Novak said. “You can’t get to me. I got a deal signed, sealed, and delivered. You’re wasting your time coming up here.”

“Not if we get answers so we can close cases,” Ballard said.

Novak stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing. But Bosch could see it happening. Ballard had skillfully played to his ego — the criminal ego that would keep a murder weapon to use again and again, that would keep a transistor radio stolen from one of his earliest victims. The ego that for forty-five years carried the secrets of Wonderland and the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in a city of mysteries. The ego that for all those years had wanted to brag about it, take credit for it, but had kept silent. Now he felt he was protected by his federal deal and not at risk. He was bulletproof.

Novak continued to stare. He was at the edge of the cliff, needing only a slight push to go over.

“You were there, weren’t you?” Ballard pressed.

And Novak finally nodded.

“There were four of us,” he said. “You won’t get their names from me, but we needed four because we knew they’d be spread out all over the house. We went in and took care of business. But we went on the wrong night, because two of the targets weren’t there.”

“But you killed the women anyway,” Bosch said. “Why did you have to do that?”

“Because that was the order,” Novak said. “Nobody gets out of that house alive. That was the order and we followed orders. If we didn’t, we’d end up like those people in that house.”

Ballard looked at Bosch and nodded. She had what she needed. She looked back across the table at Novak.

“Nikolai Novak,” she said. “I am placing you under arrest for first-degree murder times four.”

Novak laughed.

“Well, good luck with that,” he said. “I’ll see you in about forty years. If I make it.”

“Maybe it’ll be that long,” Ballard said. “Maybe not.”

“Yeah? How do you figure that?”

“Well, we’ve been working with the Justice Department. They have an office in Washington where all they do is process pardon requests that go to the president. He’s the only one who can issue a federal pardon. So we’re working with them on a pardon package for you. If you are given a pardon on your federal conviction, they’ll hold you on the homicide charges till I can get up here to take you back.”

Bosch watched Novak’s jaw drop as he realized he had just been played.

“That’s bullshit,” Novak said. “You can’t do that. I have a deal.”

“I’ll admit it’s a bit unorthodox,” Ballard said, “asking for a pardon for someone who’s pleaded guilty. But we’ll put together a package that shows the greater good in prosecuting you on multiple counts of murder. We’ll put some media heat on it, and I think the president — even this president, or at least his handlers — will see the light and do what’s right. They’ll like the positive publicity it will bring.”

Ballard picked up the mini-recorder and held it up to Novak.

“This is going to help,” she said.

The reality was that seeking a presidential pardon was part of the deception. The hope was that Novak would believe it and respond by attempting to escape. If he walked away from the minimum-security prison, his deal with the feds would be voided and that would leave him open, once he was recaptured, to state prosecution for the murders he had just admitted to.

Bosch could see Novak processing what Ballard had just said and he decided to give the play one final push.

“Pelican Bay,” he said. “That’s where you’re going. Or maybe Corcoran. Maximum security for sure. And, bad news: Last I heard, neither one of those prisons has pickleball.”

51

1966

HARRY HAD PLANNED it well. He knew from his days on kitchen duty that the supply truck came Tuesdays and Thursdays between breakfast and lunch. It was a cargo van tall enough to stand in and long enough that when it was backed up to the kitchen door, its front end stuck out through the gate and into the street. Because the gate was temporarily open, a Poe was assigned to keep watch until the delivery was completed and the gate resecured. For the past year, it was always the same guy. His name was Bechtel.

However, there was a flaw in this practice. Bechtel was usually more concerned with what he could snag from the truck than with keeping watch on the open gate. Whenever the deliveryman carried a box of goods into the kitchen, Bechtel would sneak into the truck and grab something off the supply shelves. He’d hide it behind the row of trash cans and take it home at the end of his shift. Bechtel thought no one was wise to his petty larceny, but Harry had seen it happen several times when he worked in the kitchen.