Michael Connelly - Lost Light

But by the time I finished my plate I thought I had something. Something that worked. I looked around to make sure the man three stools down and nobody else was looking at me. I poured a little more syrup onto my plate and then dipped my fork into it and ate it. I was about to dip again when the wide hips of the waitress appeared in front of me.

“Finished?”

“Uh, yes, sure. Thank you.”

“More coffee?”

“Can I get a to-go cup?”

“Yes, you may.”

She took the plate and my syrup away. I thought about my next moves until she came back with the coffee and reworked my bill. I left two bucks on the counter and took the bill to the cashier, where I noticed bottles of the restaurant’s syrup were on display and for sale. The cashier noticed my gaze.

“How about a bottle of syrup to go?”

I was tempted but decided to stick with the coffee.

“Nah, I think I’ve had enough sweetness for today. Thanks.”

“You need sweetness. It’s a nasty world out there.”

I agreed with her, paid my bill and left with my cup of harsh black coffee. Back in the car I opened the phone and called Roy Lindell’s cell number.

“This is Roy.”

“This is Bosch. We still talking?”

“What do you want, an apology? Fuck you, you’re not getting one.”

“No, I can live without an apology from you, Roy. So fuck you, too. I want to know if you still want to find her.”

There was no need to use a name.

“What do you think, Bosch?”

“Okay, then.”

I thought for a moment about how to do this.

“Bosch, you still there?”

“Yeah, listen, I’ve got to go see somebody right now. Can you meet me in two hours?”

“Two hours. Where?”

“You know where Bronson Canyon is?”

“Above Hollywood, right?”

“Yeah, Griffith Park. Meet me at the end of Bronson Canyon. Two hours. If you’re not there, I won’t wait.”

“What’s up there? What do you have?”

“Right now just a hunch. You going to meet me?”

There was a pause.

“I’ll be there, Bosch. What should I bring?”

Good question. I tried to think of what we’d need.

“Bring flashlights and a bolt cutter. I guess you better bring a shovel too, Roy.”

That brought another pause before he replied.

“What are you bringing?”

“I guess just my hunch for now.”

“Where are we going up there?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll show you.”

I closed the phone then.

The garage door at Lawton Cross’s house was closed. The van was parked in the driveway but there were no other vehicles. Kiz Rider hadn’t gotten there yet. Nobody had. I pulled in behind the van and got out and knocked on the front door. It didn’t take too long for Danny Cross to answer it.

“Harry,” she said. “We were just watching it on the TV. Are you all right?”

“Never better.”

“Are they the ones? The ones who did this to Law?”

She had a pleading look in her eyes. I nodded.

“It was them. The one who was in the bar that day, who shot Law, I took his face off with his own shotgun. Does that make you happy, Danny?”

She pressed her lips together in an effort to hold back tears.

“Revenge tastes sweet, doesn’t it? Just like pancake syrup.”

I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder but not to comfort her. I gently pushed her to the side of the doorway and stepped in. Rather than head left toward Lawton Cross’s sitting room I went to the right. I went into the kitchen and found the door to the garage. I went to the file cabinets in front of the Malibu and pulled the file on the Antonio Markwell case, the abduction-murder that had made Cross and Dorsey in the department.

I returned to the house and entered the sitting room. I didn’t know where Danny had gone but her husband was waiting for me.

“Harry, you’re all over the tube,” he said.

I looked up at the television screen. It was a helicopter view of my house. I could see all the official cars and media vans on the street in front. I could see the black tarps covering the bodies in the back. I hit the power button with the side of my fist and the screen went blank. I turned back to Cross and dropped the Markwell file on his lap. He couldn’t move. All he could do was lower his eyes to it and try to read the tab.

“How does it feel? Does it give you a hard-on watching what you did? In your case, a make-believe hard-on?”

“Harry, I -”

“Where is she, Law?”

“Where is who? Harry, I don’t know what -”

“Sure you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You sat there like a puppet but the whole time you were pulling the strings. My strings.”

“Harry, please.”

“Don’t ‘Harry, please’ me. You wanted revenge on them and I was your ticket. Well, you got it, partner. I took care of all of them, just like you thought. Like you hoped. You played me just right.”

He didn’t say anything. His eyes were cast down, away from mine.

“Now there’s one thing I want from you. I want to know where you and Jack hid Marty Gessler. I want to bring her home.”

He remained silent, his eyes away from me. I reached down and took the file off his lap. On the bureau I opened it and started leafing through the documents.

“You know, I didn’t see it until somebody I taught the job to saw it first,” I said as I looked through the file. “She’s the one who said it had to be a cop. It was the only way Gessler could’ve been taken so easily. And she was right. Those four punks didn’t have the steel.”

I gestured toward the empty television screen.

“I mean, look what happened when they came for me.”

I found what I was looking for in the file. A map of Griffith Park. I started unfolding it. Its creases cracked and split. It had been folded in the file for maybe five years. It was marked by the location where Antonio Markwell’s body had been found in Bronson Canyon.

“Once I started in that direction, then I began to see it. The gas had always been a problem. Somebody used her card and they bought more gas than her car could hold. That was a mistake, Law. A big one. Not buying the gas. That was part of the misdirection. But getting so much of it. The bureau thought maybe it was a truck, that they were looking for a trucker. But now I’m thinking Crown Vic. The Police Interceptor model they make for all the departments. The cars with extra-capacity gas tanks so you don’t get caught out there on the hunt without any juice.”

I had delicately spread the map open. It depicted the many winding roads and footpaths of the huge mountain park. It showed the public road up through Bronson Canyon and then the fire road which extended further up into the rocky terrain. It showed the area of caves and tunnels left behind when the canyon had been a quarry, its rock payload crushed and used for railroad beds across the west. I laid the map across Cross’s lap and over his dead arms.

“The way I figure it, you guys followed her from Westwood. Then in the Pass you pulled her over in one of the quiet spots. Used the blue light on your Crown Vic and she thought, No problem, they’re cops. But then you put her in the trunk of that big car with the big gas tank. One of you drove her car to the airport and the other followed and picked him up. Probably you backed her car into another car or a pillar or something somewhere. Nice touch. Sell the misdirection. Then you drive up to the desert and use the gas card. Again, sell that misdirection. And then you turn around and take her back to the real hiding place. Which one of you did it, Law? Which one actually took from her everything she had or would ever have?”