Michael Connelly - A Darkness More Than Night

“And then sometimes it wasn’t that dark down there. In the tunnels. Somehow there was just enough light to make your way. And the thing is, I never knew where it came from. It was like it was trapped down there with the rest of us. My buddies and me, we called it lost light. It was lost but we found it.”

McCaleb waited but that was all Bosch said.

“What are you telling me, Harry?”

“That you missed something. I don’t know what it is but you missed something.”

He held McCaleb with his dark eyes. He reached back to the desk and picked up the stack of copied documents from Jaye Winston. He tossed them across the small room onto McCaleb’s lap. McCaleb made no move to catch them and they spilled to the floor in a jumble.

“Look again. You missed something and what you did see added up to me. Go back in and find the missing piece. It will change the addition.”

“I told you, man, I’m off it.”

“I’m putting you back on it.”

It was said with a tone of permanence, as if there was no choice for McCaleb.

“You’ve got till Wednesday. That writer’s deadline. You have to stop his story with the truth. You don’t, and you know what J. Reason Fowkkes will do with it.”

They sat in silence for a long moment looking at each other. McCaleb had met and talked with dozens of killers in his time as a profiler. Few of them readily admitted their crimes. So in that Bosch was no different. But the intensity with which he stared unblinkingly at him was something McCaleb had never seen before in any man, guilty or innocent.

“Storey’s killed two women, and those are just the two we know about. He’s the monster you spent your life chasing, McCaleb. And now… and now you’re giving him the key that unlocks the door to the cage. He gets out, he’ll do it again. You know his kind. You know he will.”

McCaleb could not compete with Bosch’s eyes. He looked down at the gun in his hands.

“What made you think I would listen, that I would do this?” he asked.

“Like I said, you take somebody’s measure. I got yours, McCaleb. You’ll do this. Or the monster you set free will haunt you the rest of your life. If God is really in your daughter’s eyes, how will you be able to look at her again?”

McCaleb unconsciously nodded and immediately wondered what he was doing.

“I remember you once told me something,” Bosch said. “You said if God is in the details, so is the devil. Meaning, the person you are looking for is usually right there in front of us, hiding in the details all the time. I always remember that. It still helps me.”

McCaleb nodded again. He looked down at the documents on the floor.

“Listen, Harry, you should know. I was convinced about this when I took it to Jaye. I’m not sure I can be turned the other way. If you want help, I’m probably the wrong one to go to.”

Bosch shook his head and smiled.

“That’s exactly why you’re the right one. If you can be convinced, the world can be convinced.”

“Yeah, where were you on New Year’s Eve? Why don’t we start with that.”

Bosch shook his shoulders.

“Home.”

“Alone?”

Bosch shook his shoulders again and didn’t answer. He stood up to go. He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He went through the narrow door first and up the steps to the salon. McCaleb followed, now holding the gun at his side.

Bosch slid the door open with his shoulder. As he stepped out onto the cockpit he looked up at the cathedral of the hillside, then he looked at McCaleb.

“So all that talk at my place about finding God’s hand, was that bullshit? Interview technique or something? A statement designed to get a response that could fit into a profile?”

McCaleb shook his head.

“No, no bullshit.”

“Good. I was hoping it wasn’t.”

Bosch climbed over the transom to the fantail. He untied his rental boat and got in and sat down on the rear bench. Before starting the engine he looked once more at McCaleb and pointed to the back of the boat.

“The Following Sea. What’s that mean?”

“My father named the boat. It was his originally. The following sea is the wave that comes up behind you, that hits you before you see it coming. I guess he named the boat as sort of a warning. You know, always watch your back.”

Bosch nodded.

“Overseas we used to tell each other, ‘Watch six.’”

Now McCaleb nodded.

“Same thing.”

They were silent a moment. Bosch put his hand on the boat motor’s pull handle but didn’t start the engine.

“You know the history of this place, Terry? I’m talking about back before the missionaries came.”

“No, do you?”

“A little. I used to read a lot of history books. When I was a kid. Whatever they had in the library. I liked local history. L.A. mostly, and California. I just liked reading it. We took a field trip here from the youth hall once. So I read up on it.”

McCaleb nodded.

“The Indians that lived out here – the Gabrielinos – were sun worshippers,” Bosch said. “The missionaries came and changed all of that – in fact, they were the ones who called them Gabrielinos. They called themselves something else but I don’t remember what it was. But before all that happened they’d been here and they worshipped the sun. It was so important to life on the island I guess they figured it had to be a god.”

McCaleb watched Bosch’s dark eyes scan across the harbor.

“And the mainland Indians thought of the ones out here as these fierce wizards who could control weather and waves through worship and sacrifices to their God. I mean, they had to be fierce and strong to be able to cross the bay so they could trade their pottery and sealskins on the mainland.”

McCaleb studied Bosch, trying to get a bead on the message he was sure the detective was trying to convey.

“What are you saying, Harry?”

Bosch shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m saying that people find God where they need Him to be. In the sun, in a new baby’s eyes… in a new heart.”

He looked at McCaleb, his eyes as dark and as unreadable as the painted owl’s.

“And some people,” McCaleb began, “find their salvation in truth, in justice, in that which is righteous.”

Now Bosch nodded and offered his crooked smile again.

“That sounds good.”

He turned and started the engine with one pull. He then mock saluted McCaleb and pulled away, angling the rental boat back toward the pier. Not knowing the etiquette of the harbor, he cut across the fairway and between unused mooring buoys. He didn’t look back. McCaleb watched him all the way. A man all alone on the water in an old wooden boat. And in that thought came a question. Was he thinking about Bosch or himself?

On the ferry ride back Bosch bought a Coke at the concession stand and hoped it would settle his stomach and prevent seasickness. He asked one of the stewards where the steadiest ride on the boat was and he was directed to one of the middle seats on the inside. He sat down and drank some of the Coke, then pulled the folded pages he had printed in McCaleb’s office out of his jacket pocket.

He had printed two files before he had seen McCaleb approaching in the Zodiac. One was titled SCENE PROFILE and the other was called SUBJECT PROFILE. He had folded them into his jacket and disconnected the portable printer from the laptop before McCaleb entered the boat. He’d only had time to glance at them on the computer and now began a thorough reading.

He took the scene profile first. It was only one page. It was incomplete and appeared to be simply a listing of McCaleb’s rough notes and impressions from the crime scene video.