Michael Connelly: The Drop

Bosch jumped out and moved toward the front door of the bus, holding his badge high. He hammered the heel of his palm hard on the steel door.

“LAPD! Open up. This is an emergency.”

The door was cranked open and Bosch was looking at the business end of a shotgun held by a uniformed sheriff’s deputy. Behind him, the driver — also a uniformed deputy — held his sidearm aimed at Bosch as well.

“Let’s see some ID to go with that badge.”

“Call your dispatch. MDC put through a stop order.”

He threw his ID case up to the driver.

“You got a guy on there who’s going to try to take out another.”

Bosch had no sooner said it than he heard sounds of a commotion erupt from the back of the bus, followed by shouts of encouragement.

“ Do it! Do it! Kill that motherfucker! ”

Both deputies turned back to look but froze.

“Let me on!” Bosch yelled.

The driver finally yelled, “ Go! Go! Get in there! ”

He slapped his hand down on a red button that unlocked the cage door leading to the rear of the bus. The deputy with the shotgun went through and Bosch ran up the steps into the bus to follow.

“Get backup!” he yelled as he passed the driver and followed the other deputy into the back.

Almost immediately the deputy went down as he was tripped somehow by a prisoner able to extend his shackled feet into the aisle. Bosch didn’t stop. He jumped over the deputy’s back and moved farther toward the rear of the bus. The attention of every prisoner on the bus was directed to the rear right side, where Bosch saw Clayton Pell standing and leaning over the seat in front of him. He had wrapped a chain around Chilton Hardy’s neck and was strangling him from behind. Hardy’s face was purple and his eyes bugged. He could do nothing to defend himself because his wrists were shackled at his waist.

“Pell!” Bosch yelled. “Let him go!”

His shout was lost in the chorus of men shouting for Pell to do the opposite. Bosch took two more steps and launched his body into Pell, knocking him back from Hardy but not away. Bosch realized that Pell was cuffed to the chain that was around Hardy’s neck. It was the chain that was supposed to be around Pell’s waist.

Bosch moved his hands toward the chain, shouting at Pell to let it go. The deputy soon recovered but couldn’t take his hands off the shotgun to help. Chu moved past him and tried to grab the chain pulled tightly against Hardy’s throat.

“No, pull his hand,” Bosch yelled.

Chu worked one of Pell’s hands while Bosch worked the other and they soon overpowered the smaller man. Bosch pulled the chain off Hardy’s neck and he collapsed forward, his face hitting the back of the seat in front of him before his body fell into the aisle at Chu’s feet.

“Let him die!” Pell yelled. “Let that fucker die!”

Bosch shoved Pell back into his seat and then leaned his whole weight on top of him.

“You stupid fool, Clayton,” Bosch said. “You’ll go back in for this.”

“I don’t care. I got nothing outside, anyway.”

His body shuddered and he seemed to give up strength. He started moaning and crying, repeating, “I want him dead, I want him dead.”

Bosch turned to look into the aisle. Chu and the deputy were tending to Hardy. He was either unconscious or dead and the deputy was checking his neck for a pulse. Chu had his head down and his ear turned toward Hardy’s mouth.

“We need paramedics,” the deputy yelled to the driver. “Fast! I’m not finding a pulse.”

“On the way,” the driver yelled back.

The report regarding the lack of a pulse brought cheering and renewed energy from the other prisoners on the bus. They shook their chains and stomped their feet on the floor. It was unclear to Bosch whether they knew who Hardy was or if it was simply blood lust that had them calling for murder.

Through it all Bosch heard coughing and looked down to see Hardy coming to. His face was still a deep shade of red and his eyes were glassy. But they focused for a moment on Bosch until the deputy’s shoulder moved between them.

“Okay, we got him back,” the deputy reported. “He’s breathing.”

This report was greeted with a chorus of boos from the men on the bus. Pell let out a high-pitched keening sound. His whole body shook beneath Bosch. The sound seemed to sum up a lifetime of anguish and despair.

That night, Bosch stood on the back deck, looking down at the ribbon of lights on the freeway. He was still wearing his best suit, though the left shoulder had been scuffed with dirt during the struggle with Pell on the bus. He wanted a drink but wasn’t drinking. He’d left the sliding door open so he could hear the music. He’d gone back to the music he always went to in the solemn moments. Frank Morgan on the tenor sax. Nothing better to sculpt the mood.

He had canceled his date with Hannah Stone. The events of the day eliminated any desire to celebrate, any desire to even talk.

Chilton Hardy had survived the attack on the sheriff’s bus largely unscathed. He was transported to the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center and would remain there until doctors discharged him. His arraignment would be postponed until then.

Clayton Pell was rearrested and additional charges stemming from the attack were added. A parole violation was also added and it was clear that Pell was heading back to prison.

Normally, Bosch would be pleased to learn that a serial sex offender was going back into lockup. But he couldn’t help but be wistful about Pell’s situation and to feel somewhat responsible. And guilty.

Guilty about intervening.

When Bosch had put it all together while standing on First Street, he could have let things run their course, and the world would now be rid of a monster, a man as depraved as any Bosch had ever encountered. But Bosch had intervened. He had acted to save the monster and now his thoughts were clouded with regret. Hardy deserved death but would likely never get it, or would get it only when it was so far distant in time from his crimes as to be almost meaningless. Until then he would hold forth in court and in prison and would enter the halls of the criminal zeitgeist, where men like him were talked about, written about and in some dark corners even revered.

Bosch could have stopped all of that but didn’t. Adhering to a code of everybody counts or nobody counts hardly seemed to cover it. Or excuse it. He knew he would carry the guilt for his actions of the day for a long time.

Bosch had spent most of the day writing reports and being interviewed by fellow investigators about the events on the sheriff’s bus. It was determined that Pell knew how to get to Hardy because he knew the system. He knew the methods and routines. He knew that whites were segregated and transported separately and that he had a good chance of getting on the bus with the man he wanted to kill. He knew that he would be shackled at the hands and feet and that his hands would be locked to a waist chain. He knew that he could slip that waist chain down over his small hips and beneath his feet and that it would become his murder weapon.

It had been a grand plan and Bosch had ruined it. The incident was being investigated by the sheriff’s department because it had taken place on their jail bus. The deputy who interviewed Bosch had asked him point blank why he had intervened. Bosch simply said he didn’t know. He had acted on instinct and impulse, without thinking that the world would be a better place without Hardy in it.

As Bosch stared down at the unending river of metal and glass, Pell’s anguish clawed at him. He had robbed Pell of his one chance at redemption, the moment when he would make up for all the damage inflicted on him and, to his way of thinking, the damage he had inflicted on others. Bosch didn’t necessarily agree with it but he understood it. Everybody is looking for redemption. For something.