Michael Connelly - The Reversal

“Gotcha.”

“Daaaad!”

He locked the door behind them and put his bag in the backseat of the Mustang.

“You have your key, right?”

“Yes!”

“Just making sure.”

“Can we go? I don’t want to be late.”

They drove down the hill in silence after that. When they got to the school, he saw Sue Bambrough working the drop-off lane, getting the slow-moving kids out of the cars and into the school, keeping things moving.

“You know the routine, Mads. Call me, text me, vid me, let me know you’re doing okay.”

“I’ll get out here.”

She opened the door early, before they got to where the assistant principal was stationed. Maddie got out and then reached back in to grab her bag. Bosch waited for it, the sign that everything was really okay.

“Be safe, Dad.”

There it was.

“You, too, baby.”

She closed the door. He lowered the window and drove down to Sue Bambrough. She leaned into the open window.

“Hey, Sue. She’s a little upset but she’ll get over it by the end of the day. I told her that Aurora Smith could come by but not to make it late. Who knows, maybe they’ll do some homework.”

“She’ll be fine, Harry.”

“I left the check on the kitchen counter and there’s some cash there for anything you guys’ll need.”

“Thanks, Harry. Just let me know if you think it will be more than one night. No problem on my end.”

Bosch checked the rearview. He wanted to ask a question but didn’t want to hold people up.

“What is it, Harry?”

“Uh, to say you’re done doing something, is that wrong? You know, bad English?”

Sue tried to hide a smile.

“If she’s correcting you, that’s the natural course of things. Don’t take it personally. We drill it into them here. They go home and want to drill somebody else. It would be proper to say you finished doing something. But I know what you meant.”

Bosch nodded. Somebody in the line behind him tapped the horn-Bosch assumed it was a man hurrying to make drop-off and then get to work. He waved his thanks to Sue and pulled out.

Maggie McFierce had called Bosch the night before and told him that there was nothing out of Burbank, so they were taking a direct flight out of LAX. That meant it would be a brutal drive in morning traffic. Bosch lived on a hillside right above the Hollywood Freeway but it was the one freeway that wouldn’t help him get to the airport. Instead, he took Highland down into Hollywood and then cut over to La Cienega. It bottlenecked through the oil fields near Baldwin Hills and he lost his cushion of time. He took La Tijera from there and when he got to the airport he was forced to park in one of the expensive garages close in because he didn’t have time to ride a shuttle bus in from an economy lot.

After filling out the Law Enforcement Officer forms at the counter and being walked through security by a TSA agent, he finally got to the gate while the plane was in the final stages of loading its passengers. He looked for McPherson but didn’t see her and assumed she was already on the plane.

He boarded and went through the required meet-and-greet, stepping into the cockpit, showing his badge and shaking the hands of the flight crew. He then made his way toward the back of the plane. He and McPherson had exit-row seats across the aisle from each other. She was already in place, a tall Starbucks cup in hand. She had obviously arrived early for the flight.

“Thought you weren’t going to make it,” she said.

“It was close. How’d you get here so early? You have a daughter just like me.”

“I dropped her with Mickey last night.”

Bosch nodded.

“Exit row, nice. Who’s your travel agent?”

“We’ve got a good one. That’s why I wanted to handle it. We’ll send LAPD the bill for you.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

Bosch had put his bag in an overhead compartment so he would have room to extend his legs. After he sat down and buckled in, he saw that McPherson had shoved two thick files into the seat pocket in front of her. He had nothing out to prep with. His files were in his bag but he didn’t feel like getting them out. He pulled his notebook out of his back pocket and was about to lean across the aisle to ask McPherson a question when a flight attendant came down the aisle and stooped down to whisper to him.

“You’re the detective, right?”

“Uh, yes. Is there a-”

Before he could finish the Dirty Harry line, the flight attendant informed him that they were upgrading him to an unclaimed seat in the first-class section.

“Oh, that’s nice of you and the captain, but I don’t think I can do that.”

“There’s no charge. It’s-”

“No, it’s not that. See, I’m with this lady here and she’s my boss and I-I mean we-need to talk and go over our investigation. She’s a prosecutor, actually.”

The attendant took a moment to track his explanation and then nodded and said she’d go back to the front of the plane and inform the powers that be.

“And I thought chivalry was dead,” McPherson said. “You gave up a first-class seat to sit with me.”

“Actually, I should’ve told her to give it to you. That would have been real chivalry.”

“Uh-oh, here she comes back.”

Bosch looked up the aisle. The same smiling attendant was headed back to them.

“We’re moving some people around and we have room for you both. Come on up.”

They got up and headed forward, Bosch grabbing his bag out of the overhead and following McPherson. She looked back at him, smiled and said, “My tarnished knight.”

“Right,” Bosch said.

The seats were side by side in the first row. McPherson took the window. Soon after they were resituated, the plane took off for its three-hour flight to Seattle.

“So,” McPherson said, “Mickey told me our daughter has never met your daughter.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yeah, I guess we need to change that.”

“Definitely. I hear they’re the same age and you guys compared photos and they even look alike.”

“Well, her mother sort of looked like you. Same coloring.”

And fire, Bosch thought. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. He showed her a photo of Maddie.

“That’s remarkable,” McPherson said. “They could be sisters.”

Bosch looked at his daughter’s photo as he spoke.

“It’s just been a tough year for her. She lost her mother and moved across an ocean. Left all her friends behind. I’ve been kind of letting her move at her own pace.”

“All the more reason she should know her family here.”

Bosch just nodded. In the past year he had fended off numerous calls from his half brother seeking to get their daughters together. He wasn’t sure if his hesitation was about the potential relationship between the two cousins or the two half brothers.

Sensing that angle of conversation was at an end, McPherson unfolded her table and pulled out her files. Bosch turned his phone off and put it away.

“So we’re going to work?” he asked.

“A little. I want to be prepared.”

“How much do you want to tell her up front? I was thinking we just talk about the ID. Confirm it and see if she’s willing to testify again.”

“And not bring up the DNA?”

“Right. That could turn a yes into a no.”

“But shouldn’t she know everything she’s going to be getting into?”

“Eventually, yes. It’s been a long time. I did the trace. She hit some hard times and rough spots but it looks like she might’ve come out okay. I guess we’ll see when we get up there.”

“Let’s play it by ear, then. I think if it feels right, we need to tell her everything.”