Michael Connelly: Lost Light

I didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. I pointed to the map.

“That’s my bet. You guys went to a place you were familiar with, a place nobody would be looking for Marty Gessler because they’d all be looking up in the desert. You wanted her hidden but you wanted access to her, right? You wanted to know exactly where she was. She was your ace in the hole, right? You would use her to get to them. Marty and her computer. The connection was on that box. Find her and find the box, the connection would be made and there’d be a knock on Linus Simonson’s door.”

I paused to give him a chance to protest, to tell me to get the hell out or call me a liar. But he didn’t do any of that. He didn’t say a word.

“It all seemed to work,” I said. “And then that day at Nat’s you guys were supposed to cut the deal, right? Shake hands and share the wealth? Only Linus Simonson had other ideas about that. Turned out he didn’t want to share anything and he’d take his chances with Gessler’s computer. That must have shocked you. There you two were, waiting in there, probably already counting your money. And he comes in and opens up on you…

“I think you should’ve seen it coming, Law. ”

I leaned down and tapped the map with a finger.

“Bronson Canyon. All those tunnels, caves. Where you found the boy.”

My eyes came up from the map.

“That’s my guess. They’ve got the roads going up there locked. But you two had a key, didn’t you? From the boy’s case. You kept that key and then it came in handy. Where is she?”

Cross finally brought his eyes up to mine and spoke.

“Look what they did to me,” he said. “They deserved what they got.”

I nodded in agreement.

“And you deserved what you got. Where is she?”

His eyes turned and he looked up at the empty TV. He said nothing. Anger bloomed inside of me. I thought of Milton squeezing the air tubes shut. Of becoming a monster, of becoming the thing I hunted. I took a step toward his chair and looked down on him with eyes dark with rage. Slowly I raised my hands toward his face.

“Tell him.”

I turned and Danny Cross was in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she had been there or what she had heard. I didn’t know if it was a story that was new to her or not. All I knew is that she brought me back from the edge of the abyss. I turned and looked back at Lawton Cross. His eyes were on his wife and his frozen face still somehow took on an expression of sadness and misery.

“Tell him, Lawton,” she said. “Or I won’t be there beside you.”

A look of fear immediately took over his face. Then there was pleading in his eyes.

“You promise to stay with me?”

“I promise.”

His eyes dropped to the map spread across the chair.

“You don’t need this,” he said. “Just go up there. You go in the big cave and then take the tunnel on the right. It comes to an open clearing. Somebody told us they call it The Devil’s Punchbowl. Anyway, that’s where we found him. She’s there now.”

He could no longer hold my eyes and looked away, back down at the map.

“Where do I look, Lawton?”

“Where the kid was. That family marked the spot. You’ll know when you get there.”

I nodded. I understood. Slowly I took the map from him and refolded it. I watched him as I did it. He seemed becalmed, his face now returned to expressionless. I’d seen the look a thousand times before in the eyes and faces of those who have confessed. A lifting of the burden.

There was nothing else to say. I slipped the map back into the file and took it with me as I left the room. Danny Cross remained just outside the door, looking in at her husband. I stopped as I passed her.

“He’s a black hole,” I said. “He’ll suck you in and take you down. Save yourself, Danny.”

“How?”

“You know how.”

I left her there and went out. I got in my car and started driving south toward Hollywood and the secret the hills had hidden for so long.

It wasn’t raining yet but the sky was full of the low rumbling of thunder by the time I got to Hollywood. From the freeway I took Franklin over to Bronson and then up into the hills. Bronson Canyon had been in more movies than I had probably seen in my whole life. Its rugged terrain and jagged rock outcroppings formed the backdrop of countless westerns and more than a few low-budget interplanetary explorations. I had been there as a kid and I had been there on cases. I knew that if you weren’t careful you could get lost on the trails or in the caves and quarried-out spaces. The rock facings would begin to crowd you and after a while they all looked the same. You could lose your bearings. In that sameness was the danger.

I took the park road up until it terminated at the fire road. Entrance to this dirt and crushed-gravel extension was blocked by a steel gate with a padlock on it. The key to that lock resided with the fire department and the city’s film bureau, but thanks to Lawton Cross I knew better than that.

I got there before Lindell and I was tempted not to wait. It would be a long walk up to the caves on foot, but my anger had forged into resolve and momentum. Sitting at the locked gate was not the way to stoke those fires and keep them burning. I wanted to get up into the hills and get it over with. I pulled out the cell phone and called him to see where he was.

“Right behind you.”

I checked the mirror. He was coming around the last bend in a federal Crown Vic. It made me think about how he would react when he found out the last clue I had put together had been so close all along.

“It’s about time,” I said.

I hung up and got out of the Mercedes. When Lindell pulled up I leaned into his window.

“Did you bring the bolt cutter?”

Lindell looked out the windshield at the gate.

“For that? I’m not going to cut that. They’ll climb all over me if I break their lock.”

“Roy, I thought you were a big-time federal agent. Give me the cutter, I’ll do it.”

“And you can take all the heat. Just tell them you had a hunch.”

I threw him a look, hoping to communicate that I was operating on more than a hunch now. He popped the trunk lid and I went back and pulled out the bolt cutter he had probably checked out of the federal equipment shed. He stayed in the car while I walked over and cut the lock and pushed the gate open.

I walked by his window on the way back to the trunk.

“By any means, Roy,” I said as I passed. “I think I’m getting the idea why you weren’t picked for the squad.”

I threw the tool in the trunk, slammed it and told him to follow me up the hill.

We drove up the winding road, the gravel crunching under our wheels sounding like the rain that was still coming. The road up took a final 180 and terminated in front of the main tunnel entrance, a fifteen-foot-high opening cut into a granite deposit the size of an office building. I parked next to Lindell and met him at the trunk. He’d brought two shovels and two flashlights. As I was reaching in for mine he put his hand on my arm.

“Okay, Bosch, what are we doing?”

“She’s here. We’re going to go in and find her.”

“Confirmed?”

I looked at him and nodded. In my life I have told a lot of people-too many to count-about loved ones they weren’t going to see alive again. I knew Lindell had long ago given up hope for Marty Gessler, but the final confirmation is still never easy to get. Or to give.

“Yes, confirmed. Lawton Cross told me.”

Lindell nodded and turned away from the trunk. He looked up at the crest of the granite mountain. I busied myself with getting the tools from the trunk and checking to see if my cell phone was catching a signal. Over my shoulder I heard him say, “It’s going to rain.”