Michael Connelly: The Black Echo

“I was thinking we would take a walk. Talk alone.”

“I have to get my keycard so I can come back in.” She made a move to go back in and then stopped. “I doubt you heard this, because they haven’t put the word out. But they found the diamonds.”

“What?”

“Yes. They traced Rourke to some public storage lockers in Huntington Beach. They found receipts somewhere. They got the court order this morning and just opened them. I’ve been listening to the scanner. They’re saying hundreds of diamonds. They’ll have to get an appraiser. We were right, Harry. Diamonds. You were right. They also found all the other stuff-in a second locker. Rourke hadn’t gotten rid of it. The boxholders will get their stuff back. There’s going to be a press conference, but I doubt they will be saying whose lockers they were.”

He just nodded, and she disappeared through the door. Bosch wandered over to the elevators and pushed the button while waiting for her. She had her purse with her when she came out. It made him conscious of not having a gun. And it privately embarrassed him that he momentarily thought that was a concern. They didn’t speak on the way down, not until they were out of the building and on the sidewalk, heading toward Wilshire. Bosch had been weighing his words, wondering if the finding of the diamonds meant anything. She seemed to be waiting for him to begin but uncomfortable in the silence.

“I like the blue sling,” she finally said. “How do you feel, anyway? I’m surprised they let you out of there so soon.”

“I just left. I feel fine.” He stopped to put a cigarette in his mouth. He had bought a pack from a machine in the lobby. He lit it with the lighter.

“You know,” she said, “this would be a good time to quit those. Make a new start.”

He ignored the suggestion and breathed the smoke in deeply.

“Eleanor, tell me about your brother.”

“My brother? I told you.”

“I know. I want to hear again. About what happened to him and what happened when you visited the wall in Washington. You said it changed things for you. Why did it change things for you?”

They were at Wilshire. Bosch pointed across the street and they crossed toward the cemetery. “I left my car over here. I’ll drive you back.”

“I don’t like cemeteries. I told you.”

“Who does?”

They walked through the opening in the hedge and the sound of traffic was quieted. Before them was the expanse of green lawn, white stones and American flags.

“My story’s the same as a thousand others,” she said. “My brother went over there and didn’t come back. That’s all. And then, you know, going to the memorial, well, it filled me with a lot of different feelings.”

“Anger?”

“Yes, there was that.”

“Outrage?”

“Yes, I guess. I don’t know. It was very personal. What’s going on, Harry? What has this got to do with… with anything?”

They were on the gravel drive that ran alongside the rows of white stone. Bosch was leading her toward the replica.

“You said your father was career military. Did you get the details of what happened to your brother?”

“He did, but he and my mother never really said anything to me. About details. I mean, they just said he was coming home soon, and I had gotten a letter from him saying he was coming. Then, like the next week, you know, they said he had been killed. He didn’t make it home after all. Harry, you are making me feel… What do you want? I don’t understand this.”

“Sure you do, Eleanor.”

She stopped and just looked down at the ground. Bosch saw the color in her face change to a lighter shade of pale. And her expression became one of resignation. It was subtle, but it was there. Like the faces of mothers and wives he had seen while making next-of-kin notification. You didn’t have to tell them somebody was dead. They opened the door; they knew the score. And now Eleanor’s face showed that she knew Bosch had her secret. She lifted her eyes and looked off, away from him. Her gaze settled on the black memorial gleaming in the sun at the top of the rise.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You brought me here to see that.”

“I guess I could ask you to show me where your brother’s name is. But we both know it’s not on there.”

“No… it’s not.”

She was transfixed by the sight of the memorial. Bosch could see in her face that the hard-shell resistance was gone. The secret wanted to come out.

“So, tell me about it,” he said.

“I did have a brother, and he died. I never lied to you, Harry. I never actually said he was killed over there. I said he never came back, and he didn’t. That is true. But he died here in L.A. On his way home. It was 1973.”

She seemed to go off on a memory. Then she came back.

“Amazing. I mean, to make it through that war and then to not make the trip home. It doesn’t make sense. He had a two-day layover in L.A. on the way back to D.C. to the hero’s welcome we were going to have for him. There was a nice safe job, arranged through Father at the Pentagon. Only they found him in a brothel in Hollywood. The spike was still in his arm. Heroin.”

She looked up at Bosch’s face and then looked away.

“That’s the way it looked, but that wasn’t the way it was. It was ruled an OD, but he was murdered. Just like Meadows so many years later. But my brother was written off the way Meadows was supposed to have been written off.”

Bosch thought she might be beginning to cry. He needed to keep her on track, telling the story.

“What’s going on, Eleanor? What’s it got to do with Meadows?”

“Nothing,” she said, and looked back along the trail they had walked.

Now she was lying. He knew there was something. He had the dreadful feeling in his gut that the whole thing revolved around her. He thought of the daisies she had sent to his hospital room. The music they had played at her apartment. The way she had found him in the tunnel. Too many coincidences.

“Everything,” he said, “it was all part of your plan.”

“No, Harry.”

“Eleanor, how did you know there are daisies growing on the hill below my house?”

“I saw them when I-”

“You visited me at night. Remember? You couldn’t see anything below the porch.” He let that sink in a little. “You had been there before, Eleanor. When I was taking care of Sharkey. And then the visit later that night, that wasn’t a visit. That was a test. Like the hang-up phone call. That was you. Because it was you who put the bug in my phone. This whole thing was… Why don’t you just tell me?”

She nodded without looking at him. He could not take his eyes off her. She composed herself and began.

“Did you ever have one thing that was at your center, was the very seed of your existence? Everybody has one unalterable truth at their core. For me, it was my brother. My brother and his sacrifice. That’s how I dealt with his death. By making it and him larger than life. Making him a hero. It was the seed that I protected and nurtured. I built a hard shell around it and watered it with my adoration, and as it grew it became a bigger part of me. It grew into the tree that shaded my life. Then, all of a sudden, one day it was gone. The truth was false. The tree was chopped down, Harry. No more shade. Just the blinding sun.”

She was quiet a moment and Bosch studied her. She seemed all at once to be so fragile he wanted to rush her to a chair before she collapsed. She cupped one elbow with her hand and held the other hand to her lips. It dawned on him what she was saying.

“You didn’t know, did you?” Bosch said. “Your parents… nobody told you the truth.”

She nodded. “I grew up thinking he was the hero my mother and father told me he was. They shielded me. They lied. But how could they know that one day a monument would be made and they would put every name on it… Every name but my brother’s.”