Майкл Коннелли - Dark Sacred Night

Bosch nodded. He had seen the SUV in the Public Works yard by the old jail. It had arrived from the manufacturer in black-and-white paint but the SFPD identifiers had not been applied to its doors and rear hatch. It could blend in with the LAPD vehicles and help disguise that the search was part of an SFPD investigation. It would further insulate the investigation from the VSF.

“In case we have to take out the whole wall, we’ll have a Public Works crew with us,” Bosch said. “They’ll be using an unmarked truck.”

“So what’s our cover?” Luzon asked.

“Burglary,” Lourdes said. “If anybody asks, we say somebody broke in during the night and there’s a crime scene. It should do it. The place is no longer owned by the suspect’s uncle. As far as we can tell, the new owner is clean, and we expect his full cooperation with both the search and the cover story.”

“Good,” Trevino said. “When do we go?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Bosch said. “Right when the place opens at seven. With any luck we’ll be in and out before most gangsters in the neighborhood open their eyes for the day.”

“Okay,” Trevino said. “Let’s rally here at six and be in Pacoima when they open the doors.”

The meeting broke up after that and Bosch followed Lourdes back to her workstation.

“Hey, I had a visitor to my cell earlier,” he said. “Did you send her over?”

Lourdes shook her head.

“No, nobody came in here,” she said. “I’ve been doing reports all day.”

Bosch nodded. He wondered about Ballard and how she knew where to find him. His guess was that Lucia Soto had told her.

He knew he would find out soon enough.

Bosch got home early. He smelled cooking as soon as he opened the door, and found Elizabeth Clayton in the kitchen. She was sautéing chicken in butter and garlic.

“Hey,” Bosch said. “Smells good.”

“I wanted to make you something,” she said.

They awkwardly hugged while she was in front of the stove. When Bosch first met her, she was an addict trying to bury her daughter’s murder under a mountain of pills. She had had a shaved head, weighed ninety pounds, and would have willingly traded sex for thirty milligrams of guilt- and memory-blurring oxycodone.

Seven months later, she was clean and had put on twenty pounds, and her sandy-blond hair was long enough to frame the pretty face that had emerged during recovery. But the guilt and memories were still there at the edge of darkness and threatening every day.

“That’s great,” he said. “I’m going to clean up first, okay?”

“It’ll be a half hour,” she said. “I have to boil the noodles.”

Bosch walked down the hallway, past Elizabeth’s room, and into his own. He took off his work clothes and got into the shower. As the water cascaded down on his head, he thought about cases and victims. The woman cooking his dinner was a victim of the fallout that comes from murder, her daughter taken in a way too horrible to contemplate. Bosch thought he had rescued Elizabeth the year before. He had helped her through addiction and now she was straight and healthy, but the addiction had been what buffered reality and kept that contemplation away. He had promised her he would solve her daughter’s killing but now found that he could not talk to her about the case without causing her the kind of pain she used to vanquish with pills. He was left with the question of whether he had rescued her at all.

After showering he shaved, because he knew it might be a couple days before he got the next chance. He was finishing up when he heard Elizabeth call him to dinner.

In the months since Elizabeth had moved in, Bosch had returned the dining room to its rightful purpose. He had moved his laptop and the files from the cases he was working into his bedroom, where he had a folding table set up. He didn’t think she should be constantly reminded of murder, especially when he wasn’t around.

She had place settings across from each other at the table and the food on another plate between them. She served him. There were two glasses of water. No alcohol.

“Looks great,” Bosch said.

“Well, let’s hope it tastes great,” she said.

They ate silently for a few minutes and Bosch complimented her. The chicken had a good garlic kick that tasted great going down. He knew it would kick back later on but didn’t mention that.

“How was group?” he asked.

“Mark Twain dropped out,” she said.

She always referred to others in her daily group therapy meetings by code names drawn from famous people they reminded her of. Mark Twain had white hair and a bushy mustache. There was a Cher, an Albert (as in Einstein), an OJ, a Lady Gaga, and a Gandhi, who was also referred to as Ben, as in Ben Kingsley, the actor who won an Oscar for portraying him.

“Permanently?” Bosch asked.

“Looks like it,” she said. “He had a slip and went back into lockdown.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. I liked hearing his stories. They were funny.”

More silence passed between them. Bosch tried to think of something to say or ask. The awkwardness of the relationship had grown to be the main part of it. Bosch had long known that inviting her to use a room in his house had been a mistake. He wasn’t sure what he had thought would come of it. Elizabeth reminded Bosch of his former wife, Eleanor, but that was only a physical resemblance. Elizabeth Clayton was a badly damaged person with dark memories to work through and a difficult path ahead.

It had been only a temporary invitation — an until-you-get-on-your-feet thing. Bosch had converted a large storage room off the hallway into a small bedroom and furnished it with purchases from Ikea. But it had been almost six months and Bosch was unsure that Elizabeth would or could ever stand on her feet alone again. The call of her addiction was always there. The memory of her daughter was like a malignant ghost that followed her. And she had nowhere to go, except maybe back up to Modesto, where she had lived until her world fell apart with a midnight call from the LAPD.

Meantime, Bosch had alienated his daughter, who had not been consulted before he extended the invitation. She was away at college and came home less and less already, but the addition of Elizabeth Clayton to the household served to stop all visitation. Now Bosch saw Maddie only when he ventured down to Orange County to grab a quick breakfast or late dinner with her. On the last visit, she had announced that she planned to stay the summer in the house she rented with three other students near campus. Bosch took the news as a direct reaction to having Elizabeth in his house.

“I have to work tonight,” Bosch said.

“I thought you said you had that search warrant thing tomorrow morning,” Elizabeth said.

“I do but this is something else. It’s about Daisy.”

He said nothing further until he could gauge her response. A few moments went by and she didn’t try to change the subject.

“There’s a Hollywood detective who’s interested in the case,” he said. “She came to me today and asked questions. She’s on the late show and is going to work it when she has time.”

“‘The late show’?” Elizabeth asked.

“That’s what they call the midnight shift at Hollywood Division, because of all the crazy stuff that happens there in the middle of the night. Anyway, she found some old records I’d been looking for: cards where patrol officers took names of people on the street, people they stopped or were suspicious of.”

“Was Daisy one of them?”

“Probably, but that’s not why I want to see them. I want to see who else was floating around Hollywood at that time. It could lead to something.”