Michael Connelly - The Overlook

Bosch remembered the case Jerry Edgar had mentioned.

“Yeah?”

Bosch knew that the medical examiner wouldn’t have called to waste his time. There was a reason.

“So, we’re here now and I go into the break room to grab some caffeine and I overhear a couple of paramedics talking about a pickup that they just made. They said they just brought in a guy and the ER evaluation was ARS and it just made me wonder if it could be connected with the guy up on the overlook. You know, since he was wearing the radiation alert rings.”

Bosch calmed his voice.

“Joe, what is ARS?”

“Acute radiation syndrome. The medics said they didn’t know what the guy had. He was burned and he was puking all over the place. They transported him and the ER doc said it was a pretty bad exposure, Harry. Now the medics are waiting to see if they’re exposed.”

Bosch started walking toward Rachel Walling.

“Where’d they find this guy?”

“I didn’t ask but I assume it was somewhere in Hollywood if they brought him in here.”

Bosch started picking up speed.

“Joe, I want you to hang up and get somebody from hospital security to watch this guy. I’m on my way.”

Bosch clapped the phone closed and began running toward Rachel as fast as he could.

THE TRAFFIC ON THE HOLLYWOOD FREEWAY was all flowing into downtown at a slow crawl. Under the laws of traffic physics-that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-Harry Bosch had clear sailing on the northbound lanes out. Of course, this was aided by the siren and flashing lights on his car, making what little traffic there was in front of him move quickly to the side and out of the way. Applied force was another law Bosch knew well. He had the old Crown Vic up to ninety and his hands were white-knuckled on the wheel.

“Where are we going?” Rachel Walling yelled over the sound of the siren.

“I told you. I’m taking you to the cesium.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means paramedics just brought a man with acute radiation syndrome into the emergency room at Queen of Angels. We’ll be there in four minutes.”

“Damn it! Why didn’t you tell me?”

The answer was that he wanted a head start but he didn’t tell her this. He remained silent while she opened her cell phone and punched in a number. She then reached up to the car’s roof and flicked off the siren toggle.

“What are you doing?” Bosch exclaimed. “I need that to-”

“I need to be able to talk!”

Bosch took his foot off the accelerator and dropped it down to seventy to be safe. A moment later her call was connected and Bosch listened to her bark commands. He hoped it was at Brenner and not Maxwell.

“Divert the team from the Mark Twain to Queen of Angels. Scramble a contamination team and get them there, too. Send backup units and a DOE assessment team. We have an exposure case that may lead us to the missing materials. Do it and call me back. I’ll be on-site in three minutes.”

She closed the phone and Bosch hit the siren toggle.

“I said four minutes!” he yelled.

“Impress me!” she yelled back.

He pinned the accelerator again even though he didn’t need to. He was confident they would be first to the hospital. They were already past Silver Lake on the freeway and closing in on Hollywood. But the truth was that any time he could legitimately hit ninety on the Hollywood Freeway he took advantage. There were not many in the city who could say they had done that during daylight hours.

“Who is the victim?” Rachel shouted.

“No idea.”

They were silent for a long period. Bosch concentrated on the driving. And his thoughts. There were so many things that bothered him about the case. Soon he had to share them.

“How do you think they targeted him?” he said.

“What?” Walling replied, coming out of her own thoughts.

“Moby and El-Fayed. How’d they zero in on Stanley Kent?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if this is one of them at the hospital, we’ll get to ask.”

Bosch let some time go by. He was tired of yelling. But then he called over another question.

“Doesn’t it bother you that everything came out of that house?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The gun, the camera, the computer they used. Everything. There’s Coke in liter bottles in the pantry and they tied Alicia Kent up with the same snap ties she uses to hold her roses up in the backyard. Doesn’t that bother you? They had nothing but a knife and ski masks when they went through that door. Doesn’t that bother you at all about this case?”

“You have to remember, these people are resourceful. They teach them that in the camps. El-Fayed was trained in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. He in turn taught Nassar. They make do with what’s available. You could say that they took down the World Trade Center with a couple of airliners or a couple of box cutters. It’s all in how you look at it. More important than what tools they have is their relentlessness-something I am sure you can appreciate.”

Bosch was about to respond but they came up on the exit and he had to concentrate on weaving around the traffic on surface streets. In two minutes he finally killed the siren and pulled into the ambulance run at Queen of Angels.

Felton met them in the crowded emergency room and led the way to the treatment area, where there were six ER bays. A private security cop stood outside one of the curtained spaces and Bosch moved forward, showing his badge. After barely acknowledging the rent-a-cop he split the curtain and moved into the treatment bay.

Alone in the curtained space was the patient, a small, dark-haired man with brown skin lying beneath a spider web of tubes and wires extending from overhead medical machinery to his limbs, chest, mouth and nose. The hospital bed was encased in a clear, plastic tent. The man barely took up half the bed and somehow looked like a victim under attack by the apparatus around him.

His eyes were half-lidded and unmoving. Most of his body was exposed. Some sort of modesty towel had been taped over his genitals but his legs and torso were visible. The right side of his stomach and right hip were covered with blooms of thermal burns. His right hand exhibited the same burns-painful-looking red rings surrounding purplish wet eruptions in the skin. A clear gel had been spread over the burns but it didn’t look like it was helping.

“Where is everybody?” Bosch asked.

“Harry, don’t get close,” Walling warned. “He’s not conscious so let’s just back out and talk to the doctor before we do anything.”

Bosch pointed to the patient’s burns.

“Could this be from the cesium?” Bosch asked. “It can happen that fast?”

“From direct exposure in a concentrated amount, yeah. It depends on how long the exposure was. It looks like this guy was carrying the stuff in his pocket.”

“Does he look like Moby or El-Fayed?”

“No, he doesn’t look like either one of them. Come on.”

She stepped back through the curtain and Bosch followed. She ordered the security man to get the ER doctor who was treating the man. She flipped open her phone and pushed a single button. Her call was answered quickly.

“This is legit,” she said. “We have a direct exposure. We need to set up a command post and a containment protocol here.”

She listened and then answered a question.

“No, neither one. I don’t have an ID yet. I’ll call it in as soon as I do.”

She closed the phone and looked at Bosch.

“The radiation team will be here inside of ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll be directing the command post.”