Michael Connelly - Angle of Investigation - Three Harry Bosch Stories

South of Santa Monica they took a left on Fourth Street and Bosch started reading numbers off of mailboxes. In a few seconds Eckersly pulled the squad car to a stop in front of a small bungalow with a driveway down the side to a single garage in the back. They both got out, Bosch taking his nightstick out of the plastic pipe on the door and sliding it into the ring on his equipment belt.

“Oh, you won’t need that,” Eckersly said. “Unless you want to use it to knock on the door.”

Bosch turned back to the car to put the club back.

“Come on, come on,” Eckersly said. “I didn’t tell you to put it back. I just said you wouldn’t need it.”

Bosch hustled to catch up to him on the flagstone walkway leading to the front door. He walked with both hands on his belt. He was still getting used to the weight and the awkward bulk of it. When he was in Vietnam his job had been to go into the tunnels. He’d kept his body profile as trim as possible. No equipment belt. He carried all of his equipment-a flashlight and a forty-five-in his hands.

Eckersly had sat out the war in a patrol car. He was eight years older than Bosch and had that many years on the job. He was taller and heavier than Bosch and carried the weight and bulk of his equipment belt with a practiced ease. He signaled to Bosch to knock on the front door, as if that took training. Bosch knocked three times with his fist.

“Like this,” Eckersly corrected.

He rapped sharply on the door.

“Police, Mrs. Wilkins, can you come to the door, please?”

His fist and voice had a certain authority. A tone. That was what he was trying to teach his rookie partner.

Bosch nodded. He understood the lesson. He looked around and saw that the windows were all closed even though it was a nice cool morning. Nobody answered the door.

“You smell that?” he asked Eckersly.

“Smell what?”

The one area where Bosch didn’t need any training from Eckersly was in the smell of death. He had spent two tours in the dead zone. In the tunnels the enemy put their dead into the walls. Death was always in the air.

“Somebody’s dead,” Bosch said. “I’ll check around back.”

He stepped off the front porch and took the driveway to the rear of the property. The odor was stronger back here. To Bosch, at least. The dispatcher on the radio had said June Wilkins lived alone and hadn’t answered phone calls from her daughter in Philadelphia for seven days.

There was a small enclosed yard with a clothesline stretching from the corner of the garage to the corner of the house. There were a few things hanging on the line, two silk slips and other women’s undergarments. There were more clothing items on the ground, having fallen or been blown off the line. The winds came up at night. People didn’t leave their clothes on the line overnight.

Bosch went to the garage first and stood on his toes to look through one of two windows set high in the wooden door. He saw the distinctive curving roofline of a Volkswagen Beetle inside. The car and the clothing left out on the line seemed to confirm what the odor already told him. June Wilkins had not left on a trip, simply forgetting to tell her daughter back east. She was inside the house waiting for them.

He turned to the house and went up the three concrete steps to the back door stoop. There was a glass panel in the door that allowed him to see into the kitchen and partway down a hallway that led to the front rooms of the house. Nothing seemed amiss. No rotting food on the table. No blood on the floor.

He then saw on the floor next to a trash can a dog food bowl with flies buzzing around the rotting mound inside it.

Bosch felt a quickening of his pulse. He took his stick out and used it to rap on the glass. He waited but there was no response. He heard his partner knock on the front door again and announce once more that it was the police.

Bosch tried the knob on the back door and found it unlocked. He slowly opened the door and the odor came out with an intensity that made him drop back off the stoop.

“Ron!” he called out. “Open door in the back.”

After a moment he could hear his partner’s equipment belt jangling as he hustled to the back, his footfalls heavy. He came around the corner to the stoop.

“Did you-oh, shit! That is rank! I mean, that is bad! We’ve got a DB in there.” Bo mothere.sch nodded. He assumed DB meant dead body.

“Should we go in?” he asked.

“Yeah, we better check it out,” Eckersly said. “But wait a second.”

He went over to the clothesline and yanked the two slips off the line. He threw one to Bosch.

“Use that,” he said.

Eckersly bunched the silk slip up against his mouth and nose and went first through the door. Bosch did the same and followed him in.

“Let’s do this quick,” Eckersly said in a muffled voice.

They moved with speed through the house and found the DB in the bathroom off the hallway. There was a clawfoot bathtub filled to the brim with still dark water. Breaking the surface were two rounded shapes, one at either end, with hair splayed out on the water. Flies had collected on each as if they were lifeboats on the sea.

“Let me see your stick,” Eckersly said.

Not comprehending, Bosch pulled it out of his belt ring and handed it to his partner. Eckersly dipped one end of the stick into the tub’s dark water and prodded the round shape near the foot of the tub. The flies dispersed and Bosch waved them away from his face. The object in the water shifted its delicate balance and turned over. Bosch saw the jagged teeth and snout of a dog break the surface. He involuntarily took a step back.

Eckersly moved to the next shape. He probed it with the stick and the flies angrily took flight, but the object in the water did not move so readily. It was not free-floating like the dog. It went down deep like an iceberg. He dipped the stick down farther and then raised it. The misshapen and decaying face of a human being came up out of the water. The small features and long hair suggested a woman but that could not be determined for sure by what Bosch saw.

The stick had found leverage below the dead person’s chin. But it quickly slipped off and the face submerged again. Dark water lapped over the side of the tub and both of the police officers stepped back again.

“Let’s get out of here,” Eckersly said. “Or we’ll never get it out of our noses.”

He handed the nightstick back to Bosch and pushed past him to the door.

“Wait a second,” Bosch said.

But Eckersly didn’t wait. Bosch turned his attention back to the body and dipped the stick into the dark water again. He pulled it through the water until it hooked something and he raised it up. The dead person’s hands came out of the water. They were bound at the wrists with a dog collar. He slowly let them back down into the water again.

On his way out of the house, Bosch carried the stick at arm’s length from his body. In the backyard he founth=yard hed Eckersly standing by the garage door, gulping down fresh air. Bosch threw the slip he had used to breathe through over the clothesline and came over.

“Congratulations, boot,” Eckersly said, using the department slang for rookie. “You got your first DB. Stick with the job and it will be one of many.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. He tossed his nightstick onto the grass-he planned to get a new one now-and took out his cigarettes.

“What do you think?” Eckersly asked. “Suicide? She took the pooch with her?”

“Her hands were tied with the dog’s collar,” Bosch said.

Eckersly’s mouth opened a little but then he recovered and became the training officer again.

“You shouldn’t have gone fishing in there,” he said sternly. “Suicide or homicide, it’s not our concern anymore. Let the detectives handle it from here.”