Michael Connelly - The Black Ice

Bosch could see the problem. It was friendly fire. Kirth had been hit with fire from one of the 636s. The wounds were too big, too devastating and bunched too close together to have come from the weapons stacked near the prisoners.

“Looks like he came running out this back door when he heard the shooting,” Ramos was saying. “Ground Two was already in a crossfire. Someone from Two’s unit must have opened on the door, hit Kirth here.”

“God damn it!” Corvo yelled. Then in a lower voice, he said, “All right, come over here, Ramos.”

They huddled together and this time Bosch could not hear what was said but didn’t have to. He knew what they would do. Careers were at stake here.

“Got it,” Ramos said, returning to a normal voice and breaking away from Corvo.

“Good,” Corvo said. “When you are done with that, I want you to get to a secure line and call L.A.Operations. We are going to need Public Info Officers down here and up there to work on this ASAP. The media is going to be crawling all over this. From all over.”

“You got it.”

Corvo started to go into the house but came back.

“Another thing, keep the Mexicans away from this.”

He meant the militia. Ramos nodded and then Corvo stalked off. Ramos looked over at Bosch standing in the shadows of the porch. A silent acknowledgement passed between them. Bosch knew that the media would be told that Kirth had been fatally wounded by Zorrillo’s men. Nobody would say anything about friendly fire.

“You got a problem?” Ramos said.

“I don’t have a problem with anything.”

“Good. Then I’m not going to have to worry about you. Right, Bosch?”

Bosch stepped to the door.

“Ramos, where’s Zorrillo?”

“We’re still searching. Still a lot of space in these buildings to cover. All I can tell you is we’ve cleared the hacienda and he isn’t here. Only three inside are dead and he ain’t one of them. So no one’s talking. But your cop killer’s in there, Bosch. The man with the tears.”

Bosch silently stepped around Ramos and the body and into the hacienda. He was careful not to step into the blood. As he passed, he looked down into the dead man’s eyes. They were already filming and looked like chips of dirty ice.

He followed a hallway to the front of the house, where he heard voices from a doorway at the bottom of the stairs in the front entry. As he approached he could see the room beyond was an office. There was a large polished wood desk, its center drawer open. Behind the desk was a wall of bookshelves.

Inside the room were Corvo and one of the CLET agents. And two bodies. One was on the floor next to an overturned couch. The other was in a chair near the room’s only window, off to the right of the desk.

“C’mon in here, Bosch,” Corvo said. “We can probably use your expertise here.”

The body in the chair held Bosch’s attention. The man’s expensive black leather jacket was open, revealing a gun still holstered on the belt. It was Grena, though this was not easy at first to tell because a bullet fired into the police captain’s right temple had obliterated much of the face when it exited beneath the left eye. Blood had flowed down both shoulders and ruined the jacket.

Bosch pulled his eyes away and looked at the man on the floor. One leg was over the back of the couch, which had been knocked backwards. He had at least five holes in his chest that Bosch could make out in the blood. The three teardrops tattooed on the cheek were also unmistakable. Arpis. The man he had seen at Poe’s. There was a chrome-plated forty-five on the floor next to his right leg.

“That your man?” Corvo asked.

“One of ’em, yeah.”

“Good. Don’t have to worry about him, then.”

“The other one is SJP. He’s a captain named Grena.”

“Yeah, I just pulled the ID out of his pocket. He also had six grand in his wallet. Not bad, since SJP captains make about three hundred bucks a week. Take a look over here.”

He moved to the other side of the desk. Bosch followed and saw that the rug had been folded back, exposing a floor safe about the size of a hotel refrigerator. Its thick steel door was propped open and the interior was empty.

“This is how it was found when the CLETs came in. What do you think? These stiffs don’t look too old. I think we got here just a little late for the show, huh?”

Bosch studied the scene for a few moments.

“Hard to say. Looks like the end of a business deal. Maybe Grena got greedy. Asked for more than he deserved. Maybe he was making some kind of play with Zorrillo, some kind of scam, and it went to shit. I saw him a few hours ago at the bullfight.”

“Yeah, what did he say? That he was heading over to the pope’s for a shot?”

Corvo didn’t laugh and neither did Bosch.

“No, he just told me to get out of town.”

“So, who shot him?”

“Looks like a forty-five to me. Just guessing. That would make Arpis over here a likely candidate.”

“Then who shot Arpis?”

“Got me. But if I was guessing, it looks like Zorrillo or whoever was behind the desk pulls a gun out of the drawer there and starts popping him right here in front of the desk. He goes backwards and over the couch.”

“Why would he shoot him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Zorrillo didn’t like what he did to Grena. Maybe Zorrillo was starting to get scared of him. Maybe Arpis made the same play Grena did. Could’ve been a lot of things. We’ll never know. I thought Ramos said it was three bodies.”

“Across the hall.”

Bosch crossed the hall into a long and wide living room. It had deep-pile, white shag carpet and a white piano. There was a painting of Elvis on the wall above a white leather couch. The rug was stained with blood from the third man, who was lying in front of the couch. It was Dance. Bosch recognized him from the mug shot even with the bullet wound in his forehead and the blond hair now dyed black. The practiced sulk had been replaced on his face with a look of wonder. His eyes were open and almost seemed to be looking up at the hole in his forehead.

Corvo walked in behind him.

“What do you think?”

“I think it looks like the pope had to get out of here in a hurry. And he didn’t want to leave these three behind to talk about it… Shit, I don’t know, Corvo.”

Corvo raised the hand-held radio to his mouth.

“Search teams,” he said. “Status.”

“Search Leader here. We’ve got the underground lab. Entrance is through the bunker structure. It’s major. We have product sitting in the drying pans. Multiweight. We’re home. We’re gold.”

“What about the priority suspect?”

“Negative at this time. No suspects in the lab.”

“Shit,” Corvo said after signing off. He rubbed the edge of the Motorola against the scar on his cheek as he thought about what to do next.

“The Jeep,” Bosch said. “We have to go after it.”

“If he’s heading to EnviroBreed, the militia is there waiting. At the moment, I can’t cut people loose to go running around the ranch. It’s six thousand fucking acres.”

“I’ll go.”

“Wait a minute, Bosch. This is not your action.”

“Fuck it, Corvo. I’m going.”

Bosch came out of the house looking in the dim light for Aguila and finally saw him standing near the prisoners and the militia. Bosch realized he probably felt more like an outsider here than Harry did himself.

“I am going after the Jeep we saw. I think it was Zorrillo.”

“I am ready,” the Mexican said.

Before they could move Corvo came running up. But it was not to stop them.

“Bosch, I’ve got Ramos in the chopper. It’s all I can spare.”