Michael Connelly - Lost Light

“I don’t want him coming back here,” she said. “He’s not good for you.”

“Yes, he is. He’s fine. He cares.”

“He’s using you. He pours booze into you so he gets the information he needs.”

“So what’s wrong with that? I think it’s a good trade.”

“Yes, until the morning, when the pain comes.”

“Danny, if one of my friends comes here, you let him in.”

“What did you tell him this time, that I’m starving you? That I abandon you at night? Which lie this time?”

“I don’t want to talk now.”

“Fine. Don’t talk.”

“I want to dream.”

“Be my guest. At least one of us still can.”

She turned and left the room and the picture held on Lawton’s motionless body. Soon his eyes closed.

“There’s a sixty-second cutoff,” Andre explained. “The camera stays on for a minute after motion ceases.”

“Fast-forward,” I said.

We spent the next ten minutes fast-forwarding and then stopping to watch mundane yet heart-ripping scenes of Lawton being fed and cleaned by Danny. At the end of the first night he was wheeled out by his wife and the camera went dark for nearly eight hours before he was wheeled back into the room. A new round of feedings and cleanings began.

It was horrible to look at, made more so because the clock was positioned just to the left of the television. Lawton Cross spent his time looking at the TV but the angle was so close it almost looked like he was staring up at the camera, looking right at us.

“This is pathetic,” Andre finally said. “And there’s nothing here. She treats him fine. Better than I would.”

“You want to see it through, Harry?” Burnett asked.

I nodded.

“I think you’re right. She’s clean. But there’s something coming up. He had visitors last night. I want to see that. You can fast-forward if you want. It was near midnight.”

Andre worked the toggle and sure enough at 12:10 A.M. on the surveillance clock two men entered the room. I recognized Parenting Today and his partner. The first thing Parenting Today did was walk behind Lawton to turn off the baby monitor on the bureau. He then signaled his partner to close the door. Lawton’s eyes were open and alert. He’d been awake before they had come into the room and the camera had activated. His eyes moved about in their sunken sockets as he tried to track the agent moving behind him.

“Mr. Cross, we need to have a little talk,” Parenting Today said.

He moved forward past Cross’s chair and reached up and turned off the television.

“Thank God for that,” Andre said.

“Who are you people?” Cross rasped from the screen.

Parenting Today turned and looked at him.

“We’re the FBI, Mr. Cross. Who the fuck are you?”

“What do you mean? I don’t -”

“I mean who the fuck do you think you are, compromising our investigation?”

“I don’t-what is this?”

“What did you tell Bosch that put the fire under his ass?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. He came to me, I didn’t go to him.”

“Doesn’t look like you can go anywhere now, does it?”

There was a short silence and I could see Lawton’s eyes working. The man couldn’t move a single limb but his eyes showed all the body language necessary.

“You’re not FBI,” he said gallantly. “Let me see badges and IDs.”

Parenting Today moved two steps toward Cross, his back blocking our view of the man in the chair.

“Badges?” he said in his best Mexican accent. “We don’t need no steenking badges.”

“Get out of here,” Cross said, his voice the clearest and strongest I had heard since I first visited him. “When I tell Harry Bosch about this, you better watch your ass.”

Parenting Today turned in profile to smile at his partner.

“Harry Bosch? Don’t worry about Harry Bosch. We’re taking care of him. Worry about yourself, Mr. Cross.”

He leaned down now, putting his face close to Cross’s. We now could see Lawton’s eyes as they looked into the agent’s.

“Because you are in harm’s way. You are trespassing on a federal case. That is federal with a capital F. You understand?”

“Fuck you. And that is fuck you with a capital F. You understand?”

I had to smile. Lawton was doing his best to stand up to him. The bullet had taken away his body but not his spine and not his balls.

On the screen Parenting Today moved away from the chair and to the left. The camera caught his face and I could see the anger in his eyes. He leaned against the bureau, just out of the reach of Cross’s view.

“Your hero, Harry Bosch, is gone and he might not be coming back,” he said. “The question is, do you want to go where he’s gone? A guy like you, in your condition, I don’t know. You know what they do to guys like you in lockup? They wheel them into the corner and make them give blow jobs all day. Nothing they can do about it but sit there and take it. You into that, Cross? That what you want?”

Cross closed his eyes for a moment but then came back strong.

“You think you can pull that off, then take your best shot, Big Man.”

“Yeah?”

Parenting Today came off the bureau and up behind Cross. He leaned over his right shoulder as if to whisper in his ear. But he didn’t.

“What if I take my shot here? Huh? How would that be?”

The agent brought his hands up on both sides of Cross’s face. He took hold of the plastic breathing tubes that were attached to Cross’s nostrils. With his fingers he crimped the tubes closed, cutting off the air supply.

“Hey, Milton…,” the other agent said.

“Shut up, Carney. This guy thinks he’s smart. Thinks he doesn’t have to cooperate with the federal government.”

Cross’s eyes grew wide and he opened his mouth to gulp for air. He wasn’t getting any.

“Motherfucker,” Burnett Biggar said. “Who is this guy?”

I said nothing. I watched silently, the anger rising in me. Biggar had it right, though. In the lexicon of cop talk “motherfucker” was the ultimate expletive, the one reserved for the worst offender, the worst enemy. I felt like saying it but my voice wouldn’t come. I was too consumed by what I saw on the screen. What they had done to me was nothing compared to the humiliation and scarring they were putting on Lawton Cross.

On the screen Cross was trying to speak but couldn’t get the words out with no air in his lungs. There was a sneer on the face of the agent I now knew was named Milton.

“What?” he asked. “What’s that? You want to talk to me?”

Cross tried again to talk but couldn’t.

“Nod your head if you want to tell me something. Oh, that’s right, you can’t nod your head, can you?”

He finally let go of the tubes and Cross began to pull in air like a man coming up out of the water from fifty feet down. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared as he tried to recover.

Milton came around in front of the chair. He looked down upon his victim and nodded.

“You see? That’s how easy it is. You want to cooperate now?”

“What do you want?”

“What did you tell Bosch?”

Cross’s eyes flicked up toward the camera for a moment and then back to Milton. In that moment I didn’t think he was checking the time. I suddenly thought that maybe Lawton knew about the camera. He’d been a good cop. Maybe he knew what I had been doing all along.

“I told him about the case. That’s all. He came to me and I told him what I knew. I don’t remember it all. I got hurt, you know. I got hurt and my memory isn’t so good. Things are just starting to come back to me. I -”

“Why did he come here tonight?”

“Because I forgot I had some files. My wife called for me and I left him a message. He came for the files.”