Michael Connelly - A Darkness More Than Night

“And I… I got so panicked with him right there next to me I just got off the machine and ran into the locker room. I stayed in there for an hour and even then I was scared that he might still be out there waiting for me. Watching me.”

She started crying. Bosch got up and left the room and looked into the bathroom in the hallway. There was a box of tissues. He took it back with him to the conference room and handed it to Annabelle Crowe. He sat back down.

“Where is Crunch?”

“Just down the street from here. Sunset and Crescent Heights.”

Bosch nodded. He knew where it was now. The same shopping and entertainment complex where Jody Krementz had met David Storey in a coffee shop. He wondered if there was a connection. Maybe Storey belonged to Crunch. Maybe he got a workout pal to threaten Annabelle Crowe.

“Did you get a look at the guy?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t know who he was. I never saw him before or since.”

Bosch thought about Rudy Tafero.

“Do you know who the defense team’s investigator is? A guy named Rudy Tafero? He’s tall, black hair and a nice tan. Good-looking guy?”

“I don’t know who that is but he’s not the man who was there that day. This man was short and bald. He had glasses.”

The description didn’t register with Bosch. He decided to let it go for the time being. He’d have to let Langwiser and Kretzler know about the threat. They might want to take it to Judge Houghton. They might want to have Bosch go to Crunch and start asking questions, see if he could confirm anything.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Are you going to make me testify?”

“It’s not up to me. The prosecutors will decide after I tell them your story.”

“Do you believe it?”

Bosch hesitated and then nodded.

“You still have to show up. You’re under subpoena. Be there between twelve and one tomorrow and they’ll let you know what they want to do.”

Bosch knew that they would make her testify. They wouldn’t care if the threat was real or not. They had the case to worry about. Annabelle Crowe would be sacrificed to get David Storey. A small fish to get a big fish, the name of the game.

Bosch made her empty her purse. He looked through her things and found an address and phone number written down. It was a temp apartment in Burbank. She admitted that she had put her belongings in storage and was living in the temp, waiting for the trial to be over.

“I’m going to give you a break, Annabelle, and not hold you in lockup overnight. But I found you this time and I can find you again. You don’t show up tomorrow and I’ll come looking for you. And you’ll go right to lockup at Sybil Brand, you understand that?”

She nodded her head.

“You going to be there?”

She nodded again.

“I should’ve never come to you people.”

Bosch nodded. She was right.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “You did the right thing. Now you have to live with it. That’s the funny thing about the courts. You decide to be brave and stick your neck out and they don’t let you back down from it.”

Art Pepper was on the stereo and Bosch was on the telephone with Janis Langwiser when there was a knock on his screen door. He stepped into the hallway from the kitchen and saw a figure looking in through the mesh. Annoyed by the intrusion of a solicitor, he walked to the door and was about to simply close it without a word when he recognized the visitor as Terry McCaleb. Still on the phone and listening to Langwiser fume about possible witness tampering, he flicked on the outside light, opened the screen door and signaled McCaleb in.

McCaleb made a signal that he would be quiet until Bosch was off the call. Bosch watched him walk through the living room and step out onto the rear deck to look down at the lights of the Cahuenga Pass. He tried to concentrate on what Langwiser was saying but he was curious as to why McCaleb would drive all the way up into the hills to see him.

“Harry, are you listening?”

“Yeah. What was that last part?”

“I said do you think Shootin’ Houghton will delay the trial if we open up an investigation.”

Bosch didn’t have to think long to answer that.

“No way. The show must go on.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure. I’m going to call Roger and see what he wants to do. Anyway, it’s the least of our worries. As soon as you mention Alicia Lopez on the stand there’s going to be a brutal fight.”

“I thought we already won that. Houghton ruled -”

“It doesn’t mean Fowkkes won’t try a new attack. We’re not clear yet.”

There was a pause. There had not been much confidence in her voice.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Harry.”

“All right, Janis, I’ll see you.”

Bosch clicked the phone off and put it back in its cradle in the kitchen. When he stepped back out McCaleb was standing in the living room, looking at the shelves over the stereo, at a framed photograph of Bosch’s wife in particular.

“Terry, what’s up?”

“Hey, Harry, sorry to drop in unannounced like this. I didn’t have your home number to call first.”

“How’d you find the place? You want a beer or something?”

Bosch pointed to his chest.

“Can you have a beer?”

“I can now. Just got clearance, in fact. I can drink again. With moderation. A beer sounds good.”

Bosch went into the kitchen. McCaleb continued talking from the living room.

“I’ve been here before. You don’t remember?”

Bosch came out with two open bottles of Anchor Steam. He handed one to McCaleb.

“You need a glass? When were you here?”

McCaleb took the bottle.

“Cielo Azul.”

He took a long pull from the bottle, answering Bosch’s question about the glass.

Cielo Azul, Bosch thought and then he remembered. They had gotten drunk on the back porch once, both of them dulling the edges of a case that was too terrible to think deeply about with a sober mind. He remembered being embarrassed about it the next day, about how he had lost control and kept rhetorically asking in an alcohol-slowed voice, “Where is God’s hand, where is God’s hand?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bosch said. “One of my finer existential moments.”

“Yeah. Except the place is different now. The old one slide down the hill in the quake?”

“Just about. Red-tagged, the whole bit. Started over from the ground up.”

“Yeah, I didn’t recognize it. I drove up here looking for the old place. But then I saw the Shamu and figured there couldn’t be another cop in the neighborhood.”

Bosch thought about the black-and-white parked in the carport. He hadn’t bothered to take it to the station to exchange for his personal car. It would save him time in the morning by allowing him to drive straight to court. The car was a slickback – a black-and-white without the emergency lights on top. Detectives from the divisions used them as part of a program designed to make it look as if there were more cops on the street than there really were.

McCaleb reached over and clicked Bosch’s bottle with his own.

“To Cielo Azul,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bosch said.

He drank from the bottle. It was ice cold and good. His first beer since the start of the trial. He decided he would keep it to one, even if McCaleb pressed on.

“This your ex?” McCaleb asked, pointing to the photo on the shelves.

“My wife. Not my ex, yet – at least as far as I know. But I guess it’s heading that way.”

Bosch stared at the photo of Eleanor Wish. It was the only picture of her he had.

“That’s too bad, man.”

“Yeah. So what’s up, Terry? I’ve got some stuff I have to go over for -”