Michael Connelly - The Black Ice

He thought of the note found in Cal Moore’s back pocket. I found out who I was . He wondered if she realized the significance of this in terms of the place he grew up. Where each young boy had to find out who he was. A saint or a sinner.

Sylvia interrupted his thoughts.

“You know, you didn’t really say why you were already here. Sitting in the dark thinking. You had to come here to do that?”

“I came to look around, I guess. I was trying to shake something loose, get a feel for your husband. That sound stupid?”

“Not to me.”

“Good.”

“And did you? Did you shake something loose?”

“I don’t know yet. Sometimes it takes a little while.”

“You know, I asked Irving about you. He said you weren’t on the case. He said you only came out the other night because the other detectives had their hands full with the reporters and… and the body.”

Like a schoolboy, Bosch felt a tingling of excitement. She had asked about him. It didn’t matter that now she knew he was freelancing on the case, she had made inquiries about him.

“Well,” he said, “that’s true, to a degree. Technically, I am not on the case. But I have other cases that are believed to be tied in with the death of your husband.”

Her eyes never left his. He could see she wanted to ask what cases but she was a cop’s wife. She knew the rules. In that moment he was sure she did not deserve what she had been handed. None of it.

He said, “It really wasn’t you, was it? The tip to IAD. The letter.”

She shook her head no.

“But they won’t believe you. They think you started the whole thing.”

“I didn’t.”

“What did Irving say? When he gave you the key to this place.”

“Told me that if I wanted the money, the pension, I should let it go. Not get any ideas. As if I did. As if I cared anymore. I don’t. I knew that Cal went wrong. I don’t know what he did, I just knew he did it. A wife knows without being told. And that as much as anything else ended it between us. But I didn’t send any letter like that. I was a cop’s wife to the end. I told Irving and the guy who came before him that they had it wrong. But they didn’t care. They just wanted Cal.”

“You told me before it was Chastain who came?”

“It was him.”

“What exactly did he want? You said something about he wanted to look inside the house.”

“He held up the letter and said he knew I wrote it. He said I might as well tell him everything. Well, I told him I didn’t write it and I told him to get out. But at first he wouldn’t leave.”

“What did he say he wanted, specifically?”

“He-I don’t really remember it all. He wanted bank account statements and he wanted to know what properties we had. He thought I was sitting there waiting for him to come so I could give him my husband. He said he wanted the typewriter and I told him we didn’t even have one. I pushed him out and closed the door.”

He nodded and tried to compute these facts into those he already had. It was too much of a whirlwind.

“You don’t remember anything about what the letter said?”

“I didn’t really get the chance to read it. He didn’t show it to me to read because he thought-and he and the others still believe-that it came from me. So I only read a little before he put it back in his briefcase. It said something about Cal being a front for a Mexican. It said he was giving protection. It said something along the lines that he had made a Faustian pact. You know what this is, right? A deal with the devil.”

Bosch nodded. He was reminded that she was a teacher. He also realized that they had been standing in the living room for at least ten minutes. But he made no move to sit down. He feared that any sudden movement would break the spell, send her out the door and away from him.

“Well,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have gotten so allegorical if I had written it, but essentially that letter was correct. I mean, I didn’t know what he had done but I knew something happened. I could see it was killing him inside.

“Once-this was before he left-I finally asked him what was happening and he just said he had made a mistake and he would try to correct it himself. He wouldn’t talk about it with me. He shut me out.”

She sat down on the edge of an upholstered chair, holding the dress blues on her lap. The chair was an awful green color and there were cigarette burns on its right arm. Bosch sat down on the couch next to the bag of photos.

She said, “Irving and Chastain. They don’t believe me. They just nod their heads when I tell them. They say the letter had too many intimate details. It had to be me. Meanwhile, I guess somebody is happy out there. Their little letter brought him down.”

Bosch thought of Kapps and wondered if he could have known enough details about Moore to have written the letter. He had set up Dance. Maybe he had tried to set up Moore first. It seemed unlikely. Maybe the letter had come from Dance because he wanted to move up the ladder and Moore was in the way.

Harry thought of the coffee can he had seen in the kitchen cabinet and wondered if he should ask her if she wanted some. He didn’t want the time with her to end. He wanted to smoke but didn’t want to risk having her ask him not to.

“Do you want any coffee? There is some in the kitchen I could make.”

She looked toward the kitchen as if its location or cleanliness had a role in her answer. Then she said no, she wasn’t planning to stay that long.

“I am going to Mexico tomorrow,” Bosch said.

“Mexicali?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the other cases?”

“Yes.”

Then he told her about them. About black ice and Jimmy Kapps and Juan Doe #67. And he told her of the ties to both her husband and Mexicali. It was there he hoped to unravel the whirlwind.

He finished the story by saying, “As you can tell, people like Irving, they want this to go by. They don’t really care who killed Cal because he had crossed. They write him off like a bad debt. They are not going to pursue it because they don’t want it to blow up in their faces. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I was a cop’s wife, remember?”

“Right. So you know. The thing about this is I care. Your husband was putting a file together for me. A file on black ice. It makes me think like maybe he was trying to do something good. He might have been trying to do the impossible. To cross back. It might’ve been what got him killed. And if it is, then I’m not letting it go by.”

They were quiet a long time after that. Her face looked pained but her eyes remained sharp and dry. She pulled the suit up higher on her lap. Bosch could hear a police helicopter circling somewhere in the distance. It wouldn’t be L.A. without police helicopters and spotlights circling at night.

“Black ice,” she said after a while in a whispery voice.

“What about it?”

“It’s funny, that’s all.” She was quiet a few moments and seemed to look around the room, realizing this was the place her husband had come to after leaving her. “Black ice. I grew up in the Bay Area-San Francisco mostly-and that was something we always were told to watch out for. But, you know, it was the other black ice we were told about.”

She looked at him then and must have read his confusion.

“In the winter, on those days when it really gets cold after a rain. When the rain freezes on the road, that’s black ice. It’s there on the road, on the black asphalt, but you can’t see it. I remember my father teaching me to drive and he was always saying, ‘Watch out for the black ice, girl. You don’t see the danger until you are in it. Then it’s too late. You’re sliding out of control.’”