Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote

“Good night, Harry.”

He waited a while, until he heard the measured breathing of her sleep, and then he was finally able to drift off. There was no dream this time. Just warmth and darkness.

IN THE MORNING Bosch awoke first. He took a shower and borrowed Jasmine’s toothbrush without asking. Then he dressed in the clothes he’d worn the day before and went out to his car to retrieve his overnight bag. Once he was dressed in fresh clothes he ventured into the kitchen to see about coffee. All he found was a box of tea bags.

Leaving the idea behind, he walked around the apartment, his steps creaking on the old pine floors. The living room was as spare as the bedroom. A sofa with an off-white blanket spread on it, a coffee table, an old stereo with a cassette but no CD player. No television. Again, nothing on the walls but the telltale indication that there had been. He found two nails in the plaster. They weren’t rusted or painted over. They hadn’t been there very long.

Through a set of French doors the living room opened up to a porch enclosed in windows. There was rattan furniture out here and several potted plants, including a dwarf orange tree with fruit on it. The entire porch was redolent with its smell. Bosch stepped close to the windows and by looking south down the alley behind the property, he could see the bay. The morning sun’s reflection on it was pure white light.

He walked back across the living room to another door on the wall opposite the French doors. Immediately upon opening this door, he could smell the sharp tang of oils and turpentine. This was where she painted. He hesitated but only for a moment, then walked in.

The first thing he noticed was that the room had a window that gave a direct view of the bay across the backyards and garages of three or four houses down the alley. It was beautiful and he knew why she chose this room for her art. At center on a paint-dappled drop cloth was an easel but no stool. She painted standing. He saw no overhead lamp or artificial light source anywhere else in the room. She painted only by true light.

He walked around the easel and found the canvas on it had been untouched by the painter. Along one of the side walls was a high work counter with various tubes of paint scattered about. There were palette boards and coffee cans with brushes stacked in them. At the end of the counter was a large laundry sink for washing up.

Bosch noticed more canvases leaning against the wall under the counter. They were faced inward and appeared to be unused pieces like the one on the easel, waiting for the artist’s hand. But Bosch suspected otherwise. Not with the exposed nails in the walls in the other rooms of the apartment. He reached under the counter and slid a few of the canvases out. As he did this he almost felt as if he was on some case, solving some mystery.

The three portraits he pulled out were painted in dark hues. None were signed though it was obvious all were the work of one hand. And that hand was Jasmine’s. Bosch recognized the style from the painting he had seen at her father’s house. Sharp lines, dark colors. The first one he looked at was of a nude woman with her face turned away from the painter and into the shadows. The sense Bosch felt was that the darkness was taking the woman, rather than her turning to the darkness. Her mouth was completely in shadow. It was as if she was mute. The woman, Bosch knew, was Jasmine.

The second painting seemed to be part of the same study as the first. It was the same nude in shadow, though she was now facing the viewer. Bosch noted that in the portrait Jasmine had given herself fuller breasts than in reality and he wondered if this was done on purpose and had some meaning, or was perhaps a subliminal improvement made by the painter. He noticed that beneath the veneer of gray shadow over the painting there were red highlights on the woman. Bosch knew little about the art, but he knew this was a dark portrait.

Bosch looked at the third painting he had pulled out and found this to be unattached to the first two, save for the fact that again it was a nude portrait of Jasmine. But this piece he clearly recognized as a reinterpretation of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, a painting that had always fascinated Bosch but that he had only seen in books. In the piece before him, the figure of the frightened person was Jasmine. The location had been transferred from Munch’s horrific, swirling dreamscape, to the Skyway bridge. Bosch clearly recognized the bright yellow vertical piping of the bridge’s support span.

“What are you doing?”

He jumped as if stabbed in the back. It was Jasmine, at the door of the studio. She wore a silk bathrobe she held closed with her arms. Her eyes were puffy. She had just woken up.

“I’m looking at your work, is that okay?”

“This door was locked.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She reached to the doorknob and turned it, as if that could disprove his claim.

“It wasn’t locked, Jazz. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you didn’t want me in here.”

“Could you put those back under there, please?”

“Sure. But why’d you take them off the walls?”

“I didn’t.”

“Was it because they’re nudes, or is it because of what they mean?”

“Please don’t ask me about this. Put them back.”

She left the doorway and he put the paintings back where he found them. He left the room and found her in the kitchen filling a tea kettle with water from the sink. Her back was to him and he walked in and lightly put a hand on her back. Even so, she started slightly at his touch.

“Jazz, look, I’m sorry. I’m a cop. I get curious.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You want some tea?”

She had stopped filling the kettle but did not turn around or make a move to put it on the stove.

“No. I was thinking maybe I could take you out for breakfast.”

“When do you leave? I thought you said the plane’s this morning.”

“That was the other thing I was thinking about. I could stay another day, leave tomorrow, if you want me to. I mean, if you’ll have me. I’d like to stay.”

She turned around and looked at him.

“I want you to stay, too.”

They embraced and kissed but she quickly pulled back.

“It’s not fair, you brushed your teeth. I have monster breath.”

“Yeah, but I used your toothbrush, so it evens out.”

“Gross. Now I have to get a new one.”

“That’s right.”

They smiled and she gave him a tight hug around the neck, his trespass in her studio seemingly forgotten.

“You call the airline and I’ll get ready. I know where we can go.”

When she pulled away he held her in front of him. He wanted to bring it up again. He couldn’t help it.

“I want to ask you something.”

“What?”

“How come those paintings aren’t signed?”

“They’re not ready to be signed.”

“The one at your father’s was signed.”

“That was for him, so I signed it. Those others are for me.”

“The one on the bridge. Is she going to jump?”

She looked at him a long time before answering.

“I don’t know. Sometimes when I look at it, I think she is. I think the thought is there, but you never know.”

“It can’t happen, Jazz.”

“Why not?”

“Because it can’t.”

“I’ll get ready.”

She broke away from him then and left the kitchen.

He went to the wall phone next to the refrigerator and dialed the airline. While making the arrangements to fly out Monday morning, he decided on a whim to ask the airline agent if it was possible to route his new flight back to Los Angeles through Las Vegas. She said not without a three-hour-and-fourteen-minute layover. He said he’d take it. He had to pay fifty dollars on top of the seven hundred they already had from him in order to make the needed changes. He put it on his credit card.