The Harry Bosch Novels Vol Ii Part 49

"Did you pull the papers yet?"

"Not yet."

"Don't do it."

"Why not? I can't do this anymore. It's like I'm walking around handcuffed to a chain of ghosts."

He shook his head. They were having the same debate that he had been having in his mind for the last two days, since the night at Meredith Roman's house.

"Give it some time," Hinojos said. "All I'm saying is, think about it. You're on paid leave now. Use it. Use the time. I'll tell Irving he's not getting an RTD from me yet. Meantime, you just give it some time and think hard on it. Go away somewhere, sit on the beach. But think about it before you turn in your papers."

Bosch raised his hands in surrender.

"Please, Harry. I want to hear you say it."

"All right. I'll do some more thinking."

"Thank you."

She let some silence underline his agreement.

"Remember what you said about seeing the coyote on the street last week?" she asked quietly. "About it being the last coyote?"

"I remember."

"I think I know how you felt. I'd hate to think that I was seeing the coyote for the last time, too."

Chapter 51

From the airport Bosch took the freeway to the Armenia exit and then south to Swann. He found that he didn't even need the rent-a-car map. He went east on Swann into Hyde Park and then down South Boulevard to her place. He could see the bay s.h.i.+mmering in the sun at the end of the street.

At the top of the stairs the door was open but the screen door was closed. Bosch knocked.

"Come in. It's open."

It was her. Bosch pushed through the screen into the living room. She wasn't there but the first thing he noticed was a painting on the wall where before there had been only the nail. It was a portrait of a man in shadows. He was sitting at a table alone. The figure's elbow was on the table and the hand was up against his cheek, obscuring the face and making the deep set of the eyes the focal point of the painting. Bosch stared at it a moment until she called again.

"h.e.l.lo? I'm in here."

He saw the door to her studio was open a half foot. He stepped over and pushed it open. She was there, standing in front of the easel, dark earth-tone oils on the palette in her hand. There was a single errant slash of ocher on her right cheek. She immediately smiled.

"Harry."

"h.e.l.lo, Jasmine."

He moved in closer to her and stepped around the side of the easel. The portrait had only just been started. But she had begun with the eyes. The same eyes in the portrait that hung on the wall in the other room. The same eyes he saw in the mirror.

She hesitantly came closer to him. There was not a glimmer of embarra.s.sment or unease in her face.

"I thought that if I painted you, you would come back."

She dropped her brush into an old coffee can bolted to the easel and came even closer. She embraced him and they kissed silently. At first it was a gentle reunion, then he put his hand against her back and pulled her tightly against his chest as if she were a bandage that could stop his bleeding. After a while she pulled back, brought her arms up and held his face in her hands.

"Let me see if I got the eyes right."

She reached up and took off his sungla.s.ses. He smiled. He knew the purple below his eyes was almost gone but they were still red-rimmed and shot with swollen capillaries.

"Jesus, you took the red-eye."

"It's a long story. I'll tell you later."

"G.o.d, put these back on."

She hooked the gla.s.ses back on and laughed.

"It's not that funny. It hurt."

"Not that. I got paint on your face."

"Well, then I'm not alone."

He traced the slash on her face. They embraced again. Bosch knew they could talk later. For now he just held her and smelled her and looked over her shoulder to the brilliant blue of the bay. He thought of something the old man in the bed had told him. When you find the one that you think fits, then grab on for dear life. Bosch didn't know if she was the one, but for the moment he held on with everything he had left.

Trunk Music

This is for my editor, Michael Pietsch

I

As he drove along Mulholland Drive toward the Cahuenga Pa.s.s, Bosch began to hear the music. It came to him in fragments of strings and errant horn sequences, echoing off the brown summer-dried hills and blurred by the white noise of traffic carrying up from the Hollywood Freeway. Nothing he could identify. All he knew was that he was heading toward its source.

He slowed when he saw the cars parked off to the side of a gravel turn-off road. Two detective sedans and a patrol car. Bosch pulled his Caprice in behind them and got out. A single officer in uniform leaned against the fender of the patrol car. Yellow plastic crime-scene tape- the stuff used by the mile in Los Angeles- was strung from the patrol car's sideview mirror across the gravel road to the sign posted on the other side. The sign said, in black-on-white letters that were almost indistinguishable behind the graffiti that covered the sign: L.A.F.D. FIRE CONTROL MOUNTAIN FIRE DISTRICT ROAD NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE- NO SMOKING!

The patrol cop, a large man with sun-reddened skin and blond bristly hair, straightened up as Bosch approached. The first thing Bosch noted about him other than his size was the baton. It was holstered in a ring on his belt and the business end of the club was marred, the black acrylic paint scratched away to reveal the aluminum beneath. Street fighters wore their battle-scarred sticks proudly, as a sign, a not so subtle warning. This cop was a headbanger. No doubt about it. The plate above the cop's breast pocket said his name was Powers. He looked down at Bosch through Ray-Bans, though it was well into dusk and a sky of burnt orange clouds was reflected in his mirrored lenses. It was one of those sundowns that reminded Bosch of the glow the fires of the riots had put in the sky a few years back.

"Harry Bosch," Powers said with a touch of surprise. "When did you get back on the table?"

Bosch looked at him a moment before answering. He didn't know Powers but that didn't mean anything. Bosch's story was probably known by every cop in Hollywood Division.

"Just did," Bosch said.

He didn't make any move to shake hands. You didn't do that at crime scenes.

"First case back in the saddle, huh?"

Bosch took out a cigarette and lit it. It was a direct violation of department policy but it wasn't something he was worried about.

"Something like that." He changed the subject. "Who's down there?"

"Edgar and the new one from Pacific, his soul sister."

"Rider."

"Whatever."

Bosch said nothing further about that. He knew what was behind the contempt in the uniform cop's voice. It didn't matter that he knew Kizmin Rider had the gift and was a top-notch investigator. That would mean nothing to Powers, even if Bosch told him it was so. Powers probably saw only one reason why he was still wearing a blue uniform instead of carrying a detective's gold badge: that he was a white man in an era of female and minority hiring and promotion. It was the kind of festering sore better left undisturbed.

Powers apparently registered Bosch's nonresponse as disagreement and went on.

"Anyway, they told me to let Emmy and Sid drive on down when they get here. I guess they're done with the search. So you can drive down instead of walking, I guess."

It took a second for Bosch to register that Powers was referring to the medical examiner and the Scientific Investigation Division tech. He'd said the names as if they were a couple invited to a picnic.

Bosch stepped out to the pavement, dropped the half cigarette and made sure he put it out with his shoe. It wouldn't be good to start a brush fire on his first job back with the homicide table.

"I'll walk it," he said. "What about Lieutenant Billets?"

"Not here yet."

Bosch went back to his car and reached in through the open window for his briefcase. He then walked back to Powers.

"You the one who found it?"

"That was me."

Powers was proud of himself.

"How'd you open it?"

"Keep a slim jim in the car. Opened the door, then popped the trunk."

"Why?"

"The smell. It was obvious."

"Wear gloves?"

"Nope. Didn't have any."

"What did you touch?"

Powers had to think about it for a moment.

"Door handle, the trunk pull. That'd be about it."

"Did Edgar or Rider take a statement? You write something up?"

"Nothing yet."

Bosch nodded.

"Listen, Powers, I know you're all proud of yourself, but next time don't open the car, okay? We all want to be detectives but not all of us are. That's how crime scenes get f.u.c.ked up. And I think you know that."

Bosch watched the cop's face turn a dark shade of crimson and the skin go tight around his jaw.

"Listen, Bosch," he said. "What I know is that if I just called this in as a suspicious vehicle that smells smells like there's a stiff in the trunk, then you people would've said, 'What the f.u.c.k does Powers know?' and left it there to rot in the sun until there was nothing left of your G.o.dd.a.m.n crime scene." like there's a stiff in the trunk, then you people would've said, 'What the f.u.c.k does Powers know?' and left it there to rot in the sun until there was nothing left of your G.o.dd.a.m.n crime scene."

"That might be true but, see, then that would be our f.u.c.kup to make. Instead, we've got you f.u.c.king us up before we start."

Powers remained angry but mute. Bosch waited a beat, ready to continue the debate, before dismissing it.

"Can you lift the tape now, please?"

Powers stepped back to the tape. He was about thirty-five, Bosch guessed, and had the long-practiced swagger of a street veteran. In L.A. that swagger came to you quickly, as it had in Vietnam. Powers held the yellow tape up and Bosch walked under. As he pa.s.sed, the cop said, "Don't get lost."

"Good one, Powers. You got me there."

The fire road was one lane and overgrown at its sides with brush that came as high as Bosch's waist. There was trash and broken gla.s.s strewn along the gravel, the trespa.s.ser's answer to the sign at the gate. Bosch knew the road was probably a favorite midnight haunt for teenagers from the city below.

The music grew louder as he went further in. But he still could not identify it. About a quarter mile in, he came to a gravel-bedded clearing that he guessed was a staging point for fire-fighting apparatus in the event that a brush fire broke out in the surrounding hills. Today it would serve as a crime scene. On the far side of the clearing Bosch saw a white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Standing near it were his two partners, Rider and Edgar. Rider was sketching the crime scene on a clipboard while Edgar worked with a tape measure and called out measurements. Edgar saw Bosch and gave an acknowledging wave with a latex-gloved hand. He let the tape measure snap back into its case.

"Harry, where you been?"