Майкл Коннелли - Dark Sacred Night

Lourdes finished her call and reported to Bosch.

“He’s going to put together a list,” she said. “He doesn’t know how current it will be but it’s doctors who have been go-to guys for the SanFers and the eMe .”

“When do we get it?” Bosch asked.

“He’ll have it for us by the time we get back to the station.”

“All right, good.”

They drove in silence for a while. Bosch kept going back to his decision to squeeze Martin Perez. His review of it still had him doing the same thing.

“You know the irony of this?” Lourdes said.

“What irony?” Bosch responded.

“Well, Perez led us to that garage and we found the bullets but they were no good for comparison purposes. The reinvestigation would have probably ended there this morning.”

“True. Even if we got a metallurgy match, the D.A. wouldn’t have gotten too excited about it.”

“No way. But now with Perez getting taken out, there’s a case. And if we get the shooter, it may get us to Cortez. That’s the definition of irony, right?”

“I’d have to ask my daughter. She’s good at that stuff.”

“Well, it’s like they say, the cover-up is worse than the crime. It always gets them in the end.”

“Hopefully that’s how it works here. I want to put the cuffs on Cortez for this.”

Bosch’s phone started buzzing and he pulled it out. The caller was unknown.

“They rolled the body,” he predicted.

He accepted the call. It was Lannark.

“Bosch, we pulled the body out of the shower,” he said. “Perez wasn’t hit on the ricochet.

“Really,” Bosch said, acting surprised.

“Yeah, so we’re thinking, maybe the shooter got hit by his own bullet. Maybe the leg or the balls — if we’re lucky.”

“That would be true justice.”

“Yeah, so we’re going to do hospital checks, but we figure the gang behind this probably has its own people for situations like this.”

“Probably.”

“Maybe you could help us out and get us some names of people we can check on.”

“We can do that. We’re still on the road but we’ll see what we can come up with.”

“Call me back, okay?”

“As soon as we have something.”

Bosch disconnected and looked over at Lourdes.

“No bullet in the victim?” she asked.

Bosch stifled a yawn. He was beginning to feel the effects of the all-nighter he had spent with Ballard in Hollywood.

“No bullet,” he said. “And they want our help.”

“Of course they do,” Lourdes said.

Ballard awoke to the sound of panicked voices and an approaching siren so loud she could not hear the ocean. She sat up, registering that it was not a dream, and pulled the inside zipper down on her tent. Looking out, she reacted to the sharp diamonds of light reflecting off the dark blue surface of the ocean. Using her hand to shield her eyes, she looked for the source of the commotion and saw Aaron Hayes, the lifeguard assigned to the Rose Station tower, on his knees in the sand, huddled over a man’s body lying supine on the rescue board. A group of people were standing or kneeling beside them, some onlookers, some the fretful and crying friends and loved ones of the man on the board.

Ballard climbed out of the tent, told her dog, Lola, to stay at her post in front of it, and walked quickly across the sand toward the rescue effort. She pulled her badge as she approached.

“Police officer, police officer!” she shouted. “I need everybody to stand back and give the lifeguard room to work.”

No one moved. They turned and stared at her. She wore after-swim sweats and her hair was still wet from that morning’s surf and shower.

“Move back!” she said with more authority. “Now! You are not helping the situation.”

She got to the group and started pushing people into a semicircle formation ten feet back from the board.

“You too,” she said to a young woman who was crying hysterically and holding the drowning victim’s hand. “Ma’am, let them work. They are trying to save his life.”

Ballard gently pulled the woman away and turned her toward one of her friends, who grabbed her into a hug. Ballard checked the parking lot and saw two EMTs running toward them, a stretcher between them, their progress slowed by their work boots slogging through the sand.

“They’re coming, Aaron,” she said. “Keep it going.”

When Aaron raised his head to get a breath, Ballard saw that the lips of the man on the board were blue.

The EMTs arrived and took over from Aaron, who rolled away and stayed on the sand, panting for breath. He was wet from the rescue. He watched intently as the EMTs worked, first intubating and pumping water out of the victim’s lungs, then adding a breathing bag.

Ballard squatted next to Aaron. They had a casual romantic relationship, sometime lovers with no commitment beyond the time they were together. Aaron was a beautiful man with a V-shaped, muscular body and angular face, his short hair and eyebrows burned almost white by the sun.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“He got caught in a rip,” Aaron whispered back. “Took me too long to get out of it once I got him on the board. Shit, the warning signs were out, up and down the beach.”

Aaron sat forward when he saw the EMTs react to getting a pulse on the victim. They started moving quickly and transferred the man to the stretcher.

“Let’s help them,” Ballard said.

She and Hayes moved across the sand and took sides on the stretcher behind the EMTs. They lifted and moved quickly across the sand to the parking lot, where the ambulance waited. One of the EMTs carried his share of the weight one-handed while continuing to squeeze the air bag.

Three minutes later the rescue ambulance was gone and Ballard and Hayes stood there, hands on their hips and winded. Soon the family and friends caught up, and Aaron told them which hospital the victim was being taken to. The hysterical woman hugged him and then followed the others to their cars.

“That was weird to see,” Ballard said.

“Yeah,” Hayes said. “Third one for me this month. The riptides have been off the charts.”

Ballard was thinking of something else, of a time many years before on a beach far away. The image of a broken surfboard carried in by the waves. Young Renée searching the diamonds on the surface for her father.

“You okay?” Hayes asked.

Ballard came out of the memory and noticed the strange look on his face.

“Fine,” she said.

She checked her watch. Most days she tried to get six hours in the tent after a morning on the water, whether it be surfing or paddling. But the commotion from the rescue had gotten her up after just four. The adrenaline rush with the rescue and run across the beach guaranteed she would not be going back to sleep.

She decided on an early start to work. There was follow-up to do on John the Baptist and several boxes of shake cards still to get through, whether or not the man from the Moonlight Mission turned out to be a valid suspect.

“Don’t you have a debriefing now or something?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “The beach captain will come interview me and we’ll write it up.”

“Let me know if you need anything from me.”

“Thanks. Will do.”

She hesitantly gave him a hug, then turned and walked back toward her tent to collect her things and her dog. The memory of Hawaii returned as she looked out at the sea: her lost father and the need to be by the water’s edge, waiting for something that could never be.

Before heading into the station, Ballard parked her van on Selma a half block from the Moonlight Mission. Through the iron bars of the gate surrounding the back parking area she could see John the Baptist’s van. It meant he was presumably home.