Michael Connelly: A Darkness More Than Night

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance.

Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be.

He could still smell burned gunpowder. McCaleb stood in the master cabin and looked around. There were rubber gloves and other debris scattered on the floor. Black fingerprint dust was everywhere, on everything. The door to the room was gone and so was the doorjamb, cut right out of the wall. In the hallway an entire wall panel had been removed as well. McCaleb walked over and looked down at the floor where the little brother had died from the bullets he had fired. The blood had dried brown and would permanently stain the alternating light and dark wood strips in the floor. It would always be there to remind him.

Staring at the blood, he replayed the shots he had fired at the man, the images in his mind moving much slower than real time. He thought about what Bosch had said to him, out on the deck. About letting the little brother follow him. He considered his own culpability. Could his guilt be any less than Bosch’s? They had both set things in motion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You don’t go into the darkness without the darkness going into you.

“We do what we have to do,” he said out loud.

He went up into the salon and looked out the door at the parking lot. The reporters were still up there with their vans. He had sneaked in. Parked at the far end of the marina and then borrowed a skiff from somebody’s boat to get to The Following Sea. He had climbed aboard and slipped in without anyone seeing him.

He noticed that the vans had their microwave towers cranked up and each crew was getting ready for the eleven o’clock report, the camera angles set so that The Following Sea would once more be in all the shots. McCaleb smiled and opened his phone. He hit a number on speed dial and Buddy Lockridge answered.

“Buddy, it’s me. Listen, I’m on the boat and I gotta go home. I want you to do me a favor.”

“You gotta go tonight? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, this is what I want you to do. When you hear me turn the Pentas over, you come over and untie me. Do it fast. I’ll do the rest.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. Catch an Express over on Friday. We’ve got the charter on Saturday morning.”

“All right, Terror. I heard on the radio it’s pretty flat out there tonight and no fog, but be careful.”

McCaleb closed the phone and went to the salon door. Most of the reporters and their crews were preoccupied and not looking at the boat because they had already assured themselves it was empty. He slid open the door and stepped out, shut the door and then quickly climbed the ladder to the bridge. He unzipped the plastic curtain that enclosed the bridge and slipped in. Making sure both throttles were in neutral, he engaged the choke and slid his key into the ignition.

He turned the key and the starters began to whine loudly. Looking back through the plastic curtain he saw the reporters had all turned to the boat. The engines finally turned over and he worked the throttles, revving the engines into a quick-start warm-up. He glanced back again and saw Buddy coming down the dock to the boat’s stern. A couple of the reporters were hurrying down the gangway to the dock behind him.

Buddy quickly uncleated the two stern lines and threw them into the cockpit. He then moved down the side pier to get the bow line. McCaleb lost sight of him but then heard his call.

“Clear!”

McCaleb took the throttles out of neutral and moved the boat out of the slip. As he made the turn into the fairway he looked back and saw Buddy standing on the side pier and the reporters behind him on the dock.

Once he was away from the cameras he unzipped the curtains and took them down. The cool air swept into the bridge and braced him. He sighted the flashing red lights of the channel markers and put the boat on course. He looked ahead, past the markers, into the darkness but saw nothing. He turned on the Raytheon and saw that which he could not see ahead. The island was there on the radar screen.

Ten minutes later, after he had cleared the harbor break line, McCaleb pulled the phone out of his jacket and speed-dialed home. He knew it was too late to call and that he was risking waking the children. Graciela answered in a whispered urgency.

“Sorry, it’s just me.”

“Terry, are you all right?”

“I am now. I’m coming home.”

“You’re crossing in the dark?”

McCaleb thought a moment about the question.

“I’ll be all right. I can see in the dark.”

Graciela didn’t say anything. She had an ability to know when he was saying one thing and talking about something else.

“Put the deck light on,” he said. “I’ll look for it when I get close.”

He closed the phone and pushed the throttles up. The bow started to rise and then leveled off. He passed the last channel marker twenty yards to his left. He was right on course. A three-quarter moon was high in the sky ahead and laying down a shimmering path of liquid silver for him to follow home. He held on tightly to the wheel and thought about the moment when he had truly thought he was going to die. He remembered the image of his daughter that had come to him and had comforted him. Tears started to roll down his cheeks. Soon the wind off the water dried them on his face.