A Darkness More Than Night (36 page)

Authors: Michael Connelly

Tags: #FIC031000

BOOK: A Darkness More Than Night

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Bosch wasn’t sure how to interpret the notes. His eyes were drawn to the last line and he repeatedly read it, unsure what it was that McCaleb was saying about him.

After a while he carefully folded the page closed and sat still for a long moment. It felt somehow surrealistic to be sitting there on the boat, having just tried to interpret someone else’s notes and reasons as to why he should be considered a murder suspect. He felt himself getting queasy and realized he might be getting seasick. He gulped down the rest of the Coke and got up, putting the pages back into his jacket pocket.

Bosch headed toward the front of the boat and pushed through the heavy door to the bow. The cool air blasted him immediately. He could see the dim outline of the mainland in the distance. He kept his eyes on the horizon and breathed in deeply. In a few minutes he started feeling better.

McCaleb sat on the old couch in the salon thinking about his encounter with Bosch for a long time. It was the first time in all of his experiences as an investigator that a murder suspect had come to him to enlist his aid. He had to decide if it had been the act of a desperate or a sincere man. Or, possibly, something else. What if McCaleb had not noticed the rental skiff and come to the boat. Would Bosch have waited for him?

He went down to the front stateroom and looked at the documents spread on the floor. He wondered if Bosch had intentionally tossed them so that they would fall to the floor and become mixed up. Had he taken something?

He went to the desk and studied his laptop. It was not attached to the printer but he knew that didn’t mean anything. He closed the file that was on the screen and opened the print manager window. He clicked the jobs file and saw that two files had been printed that day — the scene and suspect profiles. Bosch had taken them.

McCaleb imagined Bosch riding on the
Express
ferry back across, sitting by himself and reading what McCaleb had written about him. It made him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t think any suspect he had ever profiled had read the report McCaleb had put together on him.

He shook it off and decided to occupy his mind with something else. He slid off the chair to his knees and began picking up the murder book reports, putting them into a neat pile first before worrying about putting them back in order.

Once he had the mess cleaned up he sat down at the desk, the reports in a squared-off pile in front of him. McCaleb took a blank page of typing paper out of a drawer and wrote on it with the thick black marker he used for labeling cardboard boxes containing his files.

YOU MISSED SOMETHING

He took a piece of tape off a dispenser on the desk and taped the page to the wall behind the desk. He looked at it for a long time. Everything Bosch had said to him came down to that one line. He now had to decide if it was true, if it was possible. Or if it was the last manipulation of a desperate man.

He heard his cell phone begin to chirp. It was in the pocket of his jacket, which he had left on the couch in the salon. He hustled up the stairs and grabbed the jacket. When he reached into the pocket his hand closed around his gun. He then tried the other pocket and got the phone. It was Graciela.

“We’re home,” she said. “I thought you’d be here. I thought maybe we could all go down to lunch at El Encanto.”

“Um . . .”

McCaleb didn’t want to leave the office or his thoughts about Bosch. But the last week had strained things with Graciela. He needed to talk to her about that, about how he saw things changing.

“Tell you what,” he finally said. “I’m just finishing some stuff here. Why don’t you take the kids down and I’ll meet you there.”

He looked at his watch. It was quarter of one.

“Is one-thirty too late?”

“Fine,” she said abruptly. “What stuff?”

“Oh, just . . . I’m sort of wrapping up this thing for Jaye.”

“I thought you told me you were off it.”

“I am but I have all the reports and I wanted to write up my final . . . you know, just wrap it up.”

“Don’t be late, Terry.”

She said it with a tone that implied that he would miss more than his lunch if he was.

“I won’t. I’ll see you there.”

He closed the phone and went back down to the office. He looked at his watch again. He had about a half hour before he’d have to get on the skiff and go back to the pier. The El Encanto was about a five-minute walk from there. It was one of the few restaurants that remained open on the island during the winter months.

He sat down and started putting the stack of investigative documents in order. It was not a difficult task. Each page had a date stamp on the upper right-hand corner. But McCaleb stopped almost as soon as he started. He looked up at the message he had taped on the wall. He decided that if he was going to look for something he had not noticed before, that he had missed, he should come at the information from another angle. He decided not to put the documents in their correct order. Instead, he would read them in the random order they were now in. Doing it this way he would avoid thinking about the flow of the investigation and how one step followed the other. He would simply have each report to consider as a single piece of the puzzle. It was a simple mind trick but he had done it before on cases with the bureau. Sometimes it shook something new out, something he had previously missed.

He checked his watch again and began with the first document on the pile. It was the autopsy protocol.

McCaleb walked briskly to the front steps of the El Encanto. He saw his golf cart parked at the curb. Mostly, the carts on the island looked the same, but he could identify his because of the baby seat with the pink-and-white cushioning. His family was still here.

He went up the steps and the hostess, recognizing him as a local, pointed to the table where his family was seated. He hurried over and pulled out a chair next to Graciela. They were close to being finished. He noticed that the waitress had already left the check on the table.

“Sorry I’m late.”

He took a chip out of the basket at the center of the table and dragged it through the salsa and guacamole bowls before shoving it into his mouth. Graciela looked at her watch and then pierced him with her deep brown eyes. He weathered it and got ready for the next one which he knew was surely coming.

“I can’t stay.”

She loudly put her fork down on her plate. She was finished.

“Terry . . .”

“I know, I know. But something’s come up. I have to go across tonight.”

“What could’ve possibly come up? You’re off the case. It’s Sunday. People are watching football, not running around trying to solve murders that they’re not even asked to.”

She pointed to a television mounted in the upper corner of the room. Three talking heads with thick necks sat at a counter with a football field behind them. McCaleb knew that the day’s game would determine the Super Bowl contenders. He couldn’t care less, though he did suddenly remember he had promised Raymond that they would watch at least one of the games together.

“I have been asked, Graciela.”

“What are you talking about? You said they asked you
off
the case.”

He told her about discovering Bosch on the boat that morning and what he had asked McCaleb to do.

“And this is the guy you told Jaye probably did it?”

McCaleb nodded.

“How’d he know where you lived?”

“He didn’t. He knew about the boat, not where we live. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I think I do. Terry, you are going too far with this and you are going completely blind to the dangers to yourself and your family. I think —”

“Really? I think —”

He stopped and reached into his pocket and pulled out two quarters. He turned to Raymond.

“Raymond, are you finished eating?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean yes?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, take these. Go play the video machine over there by the bar.”

The boy took the quarters.

“You’re excused.”

Raymond hesitantly hopped down and then trotted into the next room where there were tabletop video games that they had played before. He chose a game McCaleb knew was Pac-Man and sat down. He was not out of McCaleb’s sight.

McCaleb looked back at Graciela, who had her purse up on her lap and was taking money out and putting it down on the check.

“Graciela, forget about that. Look at me.”

She finished with the money and pushed her wallet back into the purse. She looked at him.

“We have to go. CiCi has to take her nap.”

The baby was in her bouncing chair on the table, one hand grasping the blue-and-white ball on the wire.

“She’s fine. She can sleep right there. Just listen to me for a minute.”

He waited and she put a conceding look on her face.

“All right. Say what you have to say and then I have to leave.”

McCaleb turned and leaned close to Graciela so that his words would be heard only by her. He noticed the edge of one of her ears poking through her hair.

“We are heading toward a big problem here, aren’t we?”

Graciela nodded and immediately the tears came down her cheeks. It was as if his saying the words out loud had knocked down the thin defensive mechanism she had constructed inside to protect herself and her marriage. McCaleb pulled the unused napkin out from beneath his silverware setting and handed it to her. He then put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her toward him and kissed her on the cheek. Over the top of her head he saw Raymond watching them with a scared look on his face.

“We’ve talked about this, Graci,” he began. “You have it in your head that we can’t have our home and our family and everything else if this is what I do. The problem is in that word ‘if.’ That is the mistake here. Because there is no ‘if’ here. It’s not ‘if this is what I do.’ It
is
what I do. And I’ve gone too long thinking otherwise, trying to convince myself of something else.”

More tears came and she held the napkin to her face. She cried silently but McCaleb was sure people in the restaurant had noticed and were watching them instead of the television above them. He checked on Raymond and saw the boy was back to playing the video game.

“I know,” Graciela managed to say.

He was surprised by her acknowledgment. He took it as a good sign.

“So then what do we do? I’m not talking about just now and this case. I mean, for now and forever. What do we do? Graci, I am tired of trying to be what I’m not and of ignoring the thing inside that I know is what I am truly all about. It took this case to finally make me realize it and admit it to myself.”

She didn’t say anything. He wasn’t expecting her to.

“You know I love you and the kids. That’s not the issue. I think I can have both and you think I can’t. You’ve adopted this one-or-the-other attitude and I don’t think it’s right. Or fair.”

He knew his words were hurting her. He was drawing a line. One of them had to capitulate. He was saying it wasn’t going to be him.

“Look, let’s think about this. This isn’t a good place to talk. What I am going to do is finish my work on this thing and then we’ll sit down and talk about our future. Is that okay?”

She slowly nodded but didn’t look at him.

“You do what you have to do,” she said in a tone McCaleb knew would make him feel guilty forever. “I just hope you’ll be careful.”

He pulled himself over and kissed her again.

“I’ve got too much here with you not to be.”

He got up and came around the table to the baby. He kissed her on top of the head and then unhitched the chair’s safety belt and lifted her out.

“I’ll take her down to the cart,” he said. “Why don’t you get Raymond?”

He carried the baby down to the cart and secured her in the safety seat. He put her bouncing chair in the rear storage compartment. Graciela came down with Raymond a few minutes later. Her eyes were swollen from the crying. McCaleb put his hand on Raymond’s shoulder and walked him to the front passenger seat.

“Raymond, you’re going to have to watch the second game without me. I have some work I have to do.”

“I can go with you. I can help you.”

“No, it’s not a charter.”

“I know, but I can still help you.”

McCaleb knew Graciela was looking at him and he felt the guilt like the sun on his back.

“Thanks but maybe next time, Raymond. Put on your seat belt.”

Once the boy was safely in, McCaleb stepped back from the cart. He looked at Graciela, who was no longer looking at him.