Michael Connelly - The Reversal

Bosch moved back to the door and knelt down in front of the lock. He held the light with his mouth and extracted two lock picks from his wallet. He went to work on the padlock and quickly determined that it had only four tumblers. He got it open in less than five minutes.

He entered the storage corral and found it largely empty. There was a folded blanket on the ground with a pillow on top of it. Nothing else. The SIS surveillance report had said that the night before, Jessup had walked down the beach carrying a blanket. It did not say that he had left it behind under the pier, and there had been nothing in the report about a pillow.

Harry wasn’t even sure he was in the same spot that Jessup had come to. He moved the light over the wall and then up to the underside of the pier, where he held it. He could clearly see the outline of a door. A trapdoor. It was locked from underneath with another new padlock.

Bosch was pretty sure that he was standing beneath the pier’s parking lot. He had occasionally heard the sound of vehicles up above as the pier crowd went home. He guessed that the trapdoor had been used as some sort of loading door for materials to be stored. He knew he could grab one of the scaffolds and climb up to examine the second lock but decided not to bother. He retreated from the corral.

As he was relocking the door with the padlock he felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket. He quickly pulled it out, expecting to learn from SIS dispatch that Jessup was on the move. But the caller ID told him the call was from his daughter. He opened the phone.

“Hey, Maddie.”

“Dad? Are you there?”

Her voice was low and the sound of crashing waves was loud. Bosch yelled.

“I’m here. What’s wrong?”

“Well, when are you coming home?”

“Soon, baby. I’ve got a little bit more work to do.”

She dropped her voice even lower and Bosch had to clamp a hand over his other ear to hear her. In the background he could hear the freeway on her end. He knew she was on the rear deck.

“Dad, she’s making me do homework that isn’t even due until next week.”

Bosch had once again left her with Sue Bambrough, the assistant principal.

“So next week you’ll be thanking her when everybody else is doing it and you’ll be all done.”

“Dad, I’ve been doing homework all night!”

“You want me to tell her to let you take a break?”

His daughter didn’t respond and Bosch understood. She had called because she wanted him to know the misery she was suffering. But she didn’t want him to do anything about it.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “When I get back I will remind Mrs. Bambrough that you are not in school when you are at home and you don’t need to be working the whole time. Okay?”

“I guess. Why can’t I just stay at Rory’s? This isn’t fair.”

“Maybe next time. I need to get back to work, Mads. Can we talk about it tomorrow? I want you in bed by the time I get home.”

“Whatever.”

“Good night, Madeline. Make sure all the doors are locked, including on the deck, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

The disapproval in her voice was hard to miss. She disconnected the call ahead of Bosch. He closed his phone and just as he slid it into his pocket he heard a noise, like a banging of metal parts, coming from the direction of the hole he had slid through into the storage area. He immediately killed his flashlight and moved toward the tarp that covered the boat.

Crouching behind the boat, he saw a human figure stand up by the wall and start moving in the darkness without a flashlight. The figure moved without hesitation toward the storage corral with the new lock on it.

There were streetlights over the parking lot above. They sent slivers of illumination down through the cracks formed by retreating planks in the boardwalk. As the figure moved through these, Bosch saw that it was Jessup.

Harry dropped lower and instinctively reached his hand to his belt just to make sure his gun was there. With his other hand he pulled his phone and hit the mute button. He didn’t want the SIS dispatcher to suddenly remember to call him to alert him that Jessup was moving.

Bosch noticed that Jessup was carrying a bag that appeared to be heavily weighted. He went directly to the locked storage room and soon swung the door open. He obviously had a key to the padlock.

Jessup stepped back and Bosch saw a slash of light cross his face as he turned and scanned the entire storage area, making sure he was alone. He then went inside the room.

For several seconds, there was no sound or movement, then Jessup reappeared in the doorway. He stepped out and closed the door, relocking it. He then stepped back into the light and did a 180-degree scan of the larger storage area. Bosch lowered his body even further. He guessed that Jessup was suspicious because he had found the hole under the wall freshly dug out.

“Who’s there?” he called out.

Bosch didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe.

“Show yourself!”

Bosch snaked his hand under the raid jacket and closed his hand on his gun’s grips. He knew the indications were that Jessup had obtained a weapon. If he made even a feint in Bosch’s direction, Harry was going to pull his own weapon and be ready to fire first.

But it never happened. Jessup started moving quickly back to the entrance hole and soon he disappeared in the darkness. Bosch listened but all he could hear was the crashing of the waves. He waited another thirty seconds and then started moving toward the opening in the wall. He didn’t turn on the light. He wasn’t sure Jessup had actually left.

As he moved around the stack of scaffolding frames, he banged his shin hard on a metal pipe that was extending out from the pile. It sent a sudden burst of pain up his left leg and shifted the balance of metal frames. The top two loudly slid off stack, clattering to the sand. Bosch threw himself to the sand next to the pile and waited.

But Jessup didn’t appear. He was gone.

Bosch slowly got up. He was in pain and he was angry. He pulled his phone and called SIS dispatch.

“You were supposed to call me when Jessup moved!” he whispered angrily.

“I know that,” said the dispatcher. “He hasn’t moved.”

“What? Are you-patch me through to whoever’s in charge out there.”

“I’m sorry, Detective, but that’s not how-”

“Look, shithead, Jessup is not tucked in for the night. I just saw him. And it almost turned bad. Now let me talk to somebody out there or my next call is to Lieutenant Wright at home.”

While he waited Bosch moved to the sidewall so he could get out of the storage area. His leg hurt badly and he was walking with a limp.

In the darkness he couldn’t find the spot where he could slip under the wall. Finally, he put the light on, holding it low to the ground. He found the spot but saw that Jessup had pushed sand into the hole, just as he had the night before.

A voice finally came to him over the phone.

“Bosch? This is Jacquez. You claim you just saw our subject?”

“I don’t claim I saw him. I did see him. Where are your people?”

“We’re sitting on his zero, man. He hasn’t left.”

Zero was a surveillance subject’s home location.

“Bullshit, I just saw him under the Santa Monica pier. Get your people up here. Now.”

“We got his zero down tight, Bosch. There’s no-”

“Listen, Jackass, Jessup is my case. I know him and he almost just crawled up my ass. Now call your men and find out which one went off post because-”

“I’ll get back to you,” Jacquez said curtly and the line went dead.

Bosch turned the phone’s ringer back on and put it in his pocket. Once again he dropped to his knees and quickly dug out the hole, using his hands as a scoop. He then pushed his body through, half expecting Jessup to be waiting for him when he came up on the other side.