Lost Light (39 page)

In this book my plan was to make the story an exploration of Harry Bosch’s character and the cost of his going into the darkness. By darkness, I mean the underworld of crime and moral corruption where he toils as a cop. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss that the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work. By virtue of his job as a police detective Harry Bosch has spent most of his life looking into the abyss, into the darkness of the human soul. What has this cost him? What did going into the darkness do to him? These questions became the basis of this book. To me this book is a study of the price that is paid by those in our society who must go into the darkness to right wrongs and solve the crimes of the morally corrupt.

At one point a character in the book takes a basic law of physics—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—and adopts it to human or spiritual physics, concluding that you can’t go into the darkness without changing it and yourself. If that conclusion is correct, then Harry Bosch’s years of carrying a badge have had an unseen cost attached. Exactly what that is forms the exploration of
A Darkness More Than Night
.

 

Because all of the prior books about Harry Bosch have been constructed so that the world is seen through his eyes, my goal with this book was to change that a bit. There are many sections of the book where this is still the case. But the majority of the book is seen through another character’s eyes—Terry McCaleb—who I brought back from the novel
Blood Work
. In
Darkness
we get a view of Bosch and his world through McCaleb’s eyes. This allowed me to reveal things about him that would have been awkward or even impossible in the prior Bosch books. I think it allows the reader a different view of Harry. My hope is that the reader will be surprised by what they see from this new angle.

The other key part of the book, for me, at least, was the use of the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Harry’s real name is Hieronymus Bosch. He is named for the 15th Century painter whose work is replete with depictions of the wages of sin. When I first created Harry Bosch and gave him the painter’s name, I did it with the idea that the name was metaphor. Bosch the painter created strange landscapes where good and bad actions are played out in chaotic scenes. Five centuries later Bosch the detective moves across a chaotic city where good and bad actions are played out before his and therefore, the readers’ eyes. I wanted with this book to explore this correlation and therefore I made the paintings a pivotal part of the story.

A strange coincidence occurred to me while I was researching this part of the book. I was very familiar with the works of the painter Hieronymus Bosch. I had a collection of books featuring his works and writings about him. I had written several of my Harry Bosch novels in an office where prints of the paintings hung as well. But I was unfamiliar with the workings of an art museum, which would be important to describe in the novel. A friend set me up with a curator at the newly built Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Sitting atop a mountain like a foreboding post-modern castle, the museum itself was a perfect location to use in a crime novel. I told the curator my plan for the book was to have my character McCaleb come to the museum seeking an expert on the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. He would then be shown a Bosch painting and the fictional art expert would comment that the night sky in the painting showed “a darkness more than night,” thereby giving the title of the book life and metaphor all at once.

The catch was I knew that the Getty did not have a Bosch painting in its collection and that I would be creating fiction about a real Los Angeles place. Not to worry, the curator told me. He escorted me to the Getty’s restoration laboratory where coincidentally a Bosch expert was restoring a Bosch painting sent to the Getty from a museum in Brazil. I watched the restoration process for a long time and in the night sky of the painting I saw a darkness that was certainly more than night. It was a strange coincidence, a case of art imitating life imitating art. Or vice versa.

 

I think that what is also explored in the book is the difference in styles between Bosch and McCaleb. I wanted to show how clearly different these two men are. Both are very good investigators and both are bonded by an earlier case that is referenced in the book. But they operate on different levels of motivation. They are not fueled by the same pump.

Bosch has deep emotional conflicts from which he draws his fire. In a way, he is making up for wrongs done to him when he rights wrongs as a homicide detective. In a way, he is an avenging angel, as McCaleb himself notes in the book.

But McCaleb is different. He is less instinctual and more intellectual about putting the puzzles of crimes together. He is not an avenger. I think he is some one who is motivated by common decency and a desire to see that no bad deed go unpunished. He carries inside a transplanted heart, and with it the knowledge that someone had to die in order for him to live. It has given him a view of the world, and his place in it, unique from Bosch.

I think putting these two different men and different views of the world and different styles together makes for interesting conflict and story. This was not to be a “Butch and Sundance” story. I felt certain as I wrote this book that these two men could not share the same pages easily, that when Terry McCaleb looked into the darkness of Harry Bosch’s eyes that he would see something that haunted him. Perhaps, the cost of looking so long into the abyss.

—Michael Connelly,
Los Angeles January 2, 2001

 

 

Little, Brown and Company
Boston   New York    London

B
osch looked through the small square of glass and saw that the man was alone in the tank. He took his gun out of its holster and handed it to the watch sergeant. Standard procedure. The steel door was unlocked and slid open. Immediately the smell of sweat and vomit stung Bosch’s nostrils.

“How long’s he been in here?”

“About three hours,” said the sergeant. “He blew a one-eight, so I don’t know what you’re going to get.”

Bosch stepped into the holding tank and kept his eyes on the prone form on the floor.

“All right, you can close it.”

“Let me know.”

The door slid closed with a jarring bang and jolt. The man on the floor groaned and moved only slightly. Bosch walked over and sat down on the bench nearest to him. He took the tape recorder out of his jacket pocket and put it down on the bench. Glancing up at the glass window he saw the sergeant’s face move away. He used the toe of his shoe to probe the man’s side. The man groaned again.

“Wake up, you piece of shit.”

The man on the floor of the tank slowly rolled his head and then lifted it. Paint flecked his hair and vomit had caked on the front of his shirt and neck. He opened his eyes and immediately closed them against the harsh overhead lighting of the holding tank. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper.

“You again.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yeah. Me.”

“Our little dance.”

A smile cut across the three-day-old whiskers on the drunk’s face. Bosch saw that he was missing a tooth he hadn’t been missing last time. He reached down and put his hand on the recorder but did not turn it on yet.

“Get up. It’s time to talk.”

“Forget it, man. I don’t want —”

“You’re running out of time. Talk to me.”

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

Bosch looked up at the window. It was clear. He looked back down at the man on the floor.

“Your salvation is in the truth. Now more than ever. I can’t help you without the truth.”

“What’re you, a priest now? You here to take my confession?”

“You here to give it?”

The man on the floor said nothing. After a while Bosch thought he might have fallen back asleep. He pushed the toe of his shoe into the man’s side again, into the kidney. The man erupted in movement, flailing his arms and legs.

“Fuck you!” he yelled. “I don’t want you. I want a lawyer.”

Bosch was silent a moment. He picked up the recorder and slid it back into his pocket. He then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together. He looked at the drunk and slowly shook his head.

“Then I guess I can’t help you,” he said.

He stood up and knocked on the window for the watch sergeant. He left the man lying on the floor.

“S
omeone’s coming.” Terry McCaleb looked at his wife and then followed her eyes down to the winding road below. He could see the golf cart making its way up the steep and winding road to the house. The driver was obscured by the roof of the cart.

They were sitting on the back deck of the house he and Graciela had rented up on La Mesa Avenue. The view ranged from the narrow winding road below the house to the whole of Avalon and its harbor, and then out across the Santa Monica Bay to the haze of smog that marked overtown. The view was the reason they had chosen this house to make their new home on the island. But at the moment his wife spoke, his gaze had been on the baby in his arms, not the view. He could look no farther than his daughter’s wide blue and trusting eyes.

McCaleb saw the rental number on the side of the golf cart passing below. It wasn’t a local coming. It was somebody who had probably come from overtown on the
Catalina Express.
Still, he wondered how Graciela knew that the visitor was coming to their house and not any of the others on La Mesa.

He didn’t ask about this—she’d had premonitions before. He just waited and soon after the golf cart disappeared from sight, there was a knock at the front door. Graciela went to answer it and soon came back to the deck with a woman McCaleb had not seen in three years.

Sheriff’s detective Jaye Winston smiled when she saw the child in his arms. It was genuine, but at the same time it was the distracted smile of someone who wasn’t there to admire a new baby. McCaleb knew the thick green binder she carried in one hand and the videocassette in the other meant Winston was there on business. Death business.

“Terry, howya been?” she asked.

“Couldn’t be better. You remember Graciela?”

“Of course. And who is this?”

“This is CiCi.”

McCaleb never used the baby’s formal name around others. He only liked to call her Cielo when he was alone with her.

“CiCi,” Winston said, and hesitated as if waiting for an explanation of the name. When none came, she said, “How old?”

“Almost four months. She’s big.”

“Wow, yeah, I can see . . . And the boy . . . where’s he?”

“Raymond,” Graciela said. “He’s with some friends today. Terry had a charter and so he went with friends to the park to play softball.”

The conversation was halting and strange. Winston either wasn’t really interested or was unused to such banal talk.

“Would you like something to drink?” McCaleb offered as he passed the baby to Graciela.

“No, I’m fine. I had a Coke on the boat.”

As if on cue, or perhaps indignant about being passed from one set of hands to another, the baby started to fuss and Graciela said she would take her inside. She left them standing on the porch. McCaleb pointed to the round table and chairs where they ate most nights while the baby slept.

“Let’s sit down.”

He pointed Winston to the chair that would give her the best view of the harbor. She put the green binder, which McCaleb recognized as a murder book, on the table and the video on top of it.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah, she’s amazing. I could watch her all —”

He stopped and smiled when he realized she was talking about the view, not his child. Winston smiled, too.

“She’s beautiful, Terry. She really is. You look good, too, so tan and all.”

“I’ve been going out on the boat.”

“And your health is good?”

“Can’t complain about anything other than all the meds they make me take. But I’m three years in now and no problems. I think I’m in the clear, Jaye. I just have to keep taking the damn pills and it should stay that way.”

He smiled and he did appear to be the picture of health. As the sun had turned his skin dark, it had worked to the opposite effect on his hair. Close cropped and neat, it was almost blond now. Working on the boat had also defined the muscles of his arms and shoulders. The only giveaway was hidden under his shirt, the ten-inch scar left by transplantation surgery.

“That’s great,” Winston said. “It looks like you have a wonderful setup here. New family, new home . . . away from everything.”

She was silent a moment, turning her head as if to take in all of the view and the island and McCaleb’s life at once. McCaleb had always thought Jaye Winston was attractive in a tomboyish way. She had loose sandy-blond hair that she kept shoulder length. She had never worn makeup back when he worked with her. But she had sharp, knowing eyes and an easy and somewhat sad smile, as if she saw the humor and tragedy in everything at once. She wore black jeans and a white T-shirt beneath a black blazer. She looked cool and tough and McCaleb knew from experience that she was. She had a habit of hooking her hair behind her ear frequently as she spoke. He found that endearing for some unknown reason. He had always thought that if he had not connected with Graciela he might have tried to know Jaye Winston better. He also sensed that Winston intuitively knew that.