The Narrows (29 page)

I lowered my eyes and decided to move as close to the wall as I could without getting pushed hard into it. Then I saw a more immediate salvation. The tree I had seen in the channel from the window of Turrentine’s house was a hundred yards ahead of me in the river. It must have gotten hung up at the bridge or in the shallows and I had caught up to it.

Using my last reserve of strength I started swimming with the current, picking up speed and heading to the tree. I knew it would be my boat. I’d be able to ride it all the way to the Pacific if I needed to.

RACHEL LOST THE RIVER. The streets took her further away from it and soon she had lost it. She couldn’t get back to it. There was a GPS screen in the car but she didn’t know how to work it and doubted she’d be able to get a satellite fix in this weather anyway. She pulled over and banged the wheel angrily with the heel of her palm. She felt like she was deserting Harry, that it was going to be her fault if he drowned.

Then she heard the helicopter. It was low flying and moving fast. She leaned forward to see up through the windshield. She didn’t see anything. She got out in the rain and turned circles on the street looking. She could still hear it but she couldn’t see it.

It had to be the rescue, she thought. In this weather, who else would be flying? She got a bead on the sound and jumped back into the Mercedes. She took the first right she came to and started heading to the sound. She drove with the window down, with the rain coming in but her not caring. She listened to the sound of the helicopter in the distance.

Soon she saw it. It was circling ahead and to the right. She kept going and when she came to Reseda Boulevard she turned right again and could see there were actually two helicopters, one low and the other above it. Both were red with white lettering on the side. Not television or radio call letters. The helicopters were marked LAFD.

There was a bridge ahead and Rachel could see cars stopped and people getting out in the rain to rush to the railing. They were looking down into the river.

She pulled up, stopped in a traffic lane and did the same. She rushed to the railing in time to see the rescue. Bosch was in a yellow safety harness being lifted on a wire out of a fallen tree that was stalled in the shallows where the river widened to fifty yards across.

As he was raised to the helicopter Bosch looked down into the raging current below him. Soon the tree broke free of its catch and tumbled over and over in the cascades. It picked up speed and washed beneath the bridge, its branches crashing into the support pylons and shearing off.

Rachel watched the rescuers bring Bosch into the helicopter. Not until he was inside and safe and the helicopter started to bank away did she look away. And that was only when some of the others on the bridge had started to yell and point down into the river. She looked down and saw what it was. Another man in the water. But for this man there would be no rescue. He floated facedown, his arms loose and his body limp. Red and black jumper cables were tangled around his body and neck. His shaven skull looked like a child’s lost ball bobbing in the current.

The second helicopter followed the body from above, waiting for it to get hung up like the tree had before any extraction was risked. There was no hurry this time.

As the current thickened to move between the pylons of the bridge, the body’s fluid travel was disturbed and it turned over in the water. Just before it went under the bridge Rachel caught a glimpse of Backus’s face. His eyes were open beneath the glaze of water. But it seemed to her that he was looking right at her before he disappeared under the bridge.

MANY YEARS AGO, when I served in the army in Vietnam, I was wounded in a tunnel. I was extracted by my comrades and put on a helicopter back to base camp. I remember that as the chopper rose and took me from harm’s way, I felt an elation that far obscured the pain of my wound and the exhaustion I had felt.

I felt the same way that day on the river. D??vu all over again, as they say. I had made it. I had survived. I was out of harm’s way. I was smiling as a fireman in a safety helmet wrapped a blanket around me.

“We’re taking you to USC to get checked out,” he yelled over the roar of the rotor and the rain. “ETA in ten minutes.”

He gave me the okay sign and I gave it back to him, noticing that my fingers were a bluish white and that I was shaking with something more than cold.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” the fireman yelled.

I saw he was looking down through a glass panel on the lower part of the door he had just slid closed. I leaned over and looked and I could see Backus in the water below. He was faceup and moving languidly in the current.

“I’m not sorry,” I said, but not loud enough to be heard.

I leaned back on the jump seat they had put me on. I closed my eyes and nodded to the conjured image of my silent partner, Terry McCaleb, smiling and standing in the stern of his boat.

43

T
HE SKIES CLEARED A COUPLE DAYS later and the city started to dry out and dig out. There had been landslides in Malibu and Topanga. The coast highway was down to two lanes for the foreseeable future. In the Hollywood Hills there had been flooding in the lower streets. One house on Fareholm Drive had broken free and was washed into the street, leaving an aging movie star homeless. Two deaths were attributed to the storm—a golfer who had inexplicably decided to get in a few holes between bands of the storm and was hit on a backswing by a bolt of lightning, and Robert Backus, the fugitive serial killer. The Poet was dead, the headlines and news anchors said. Backus’s body was fished out of the river at the Sepulveda Dam. Cause of death: drowning.

The seas calmed, too, and I took a morning ferry out to Catalina to see Graciela McCaleb. I rented a golf cart and drove up to the house, where she answered the door and received me with her family. I met Raymond, the adopted son, and Cielo, the girl Terry had told me about. Meeting her made me miss my own daughter and reminded me of the new vulnerability I would soon have in my life.

The house was filled with boxes and Graciela explained that the storm had delayed their move back to the mainland. In another day their belongings would be shuttled down to a barge and then taken across to the port, where a moving truck would be waiting. It was complicated and expensive but she had no regrets. She wanted to leave the island and the memories it held.

We went out to the table on the porch so we could talk without the children hearing. It was a nice spot with a view of all of Avalon Harbor. It made it hard to believe she wanted to leave. I could see
The Following Sea
down there and I noticed there was someone in the stern and that one of the deck hatches was open.

“Is that Buddy down there?”

“Yes, he’s getting ready to move the boat. The FBI brought it back yesterday without calling ahead. I would have told them to take it to Cabrillo. Now Buddy has to do it.”

“What’s he going to do with it?”

“He’s going to continue the business. He’ll run the charters from over there and pay me rent on the boat.”

I nodded. It sounded like a decent plan.

“Selling the boat wouldn’t bring that much in. And, I don’t know, Terry worked so hard on that boat. It feels wrong to just sell it to a stranger.”

“I understand.”

“You know, you could probably get a ride back with Buddy instead of waiting for the ferry. If you want. If you’re not sick of Buddy.”

“No, Buddy’s fine. I like Buddy.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. I didn’t feel I needed to explain anything about the case to her. We had talked on the phone—because I wanted to explain things before it hit the media—and the story had been all over the papers and television. She knew the details, large and small. There was little left to say but I thought I needed to visit with her in person one last time. It had all started with her. I figured it should end with her as well.

“Thank you for what you did,” Graciela said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Just a few scratches and bruises from the river. It was a wild ride.”

I smiled. The only visible injuries I had were scrapes on my hands and one above my left eyebrow.

“But thank you for calling me. I’m glad I got the chance. That’s why I came, just to say thanks and to say good luck with everything.”

The sliding door opened and the little girl came out carrying a book.

“Mommy, will you read this to me now?”

“I’m visiting with Mr. Bosch right now. In a little while, okay?”

“No, I want you to read it now.”

The girl looked like it was a life-or-death request and her face knotted up, ready for a cry.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Mine’s like that, too. You can read it.”

“It’s her favorite book. Terry used to read it to her just about every night.”

She pulled the girl up onto her lap and brought the book up to read. I saw that it was the same book Eleanor had just gotten for my daughter.
Billy’s Big Day
, with the monkey receiving the gold medal on the cover. Cielo’s copy was worn around the edges from reading and rereading. The cover had been ripped in two places and then taped.

Graciela opened it and started to read.

“One bright summer day the circus animal Olympics were held under the big top in Ringlingville. All the animals had the day off from all of the circuses and were allowed to compete in the many different events.”

I noticed that Graciela had changed her voice and was reading the story with an inflection of excitement and anticipation.

“All the animals lined up at the bulletin board outside Mr. Farnsworth’s office. The list of events was posted on the board. There were races and relays and many other contests. The big animals got closest to the board and were crowding it, so the others couldn’t see. A little monkey squeezed between the legs of an elephant and then climbed the pachyderm’s trunk so that he could see the list. Billy Bing smiled when he finally saw it. There was one race called the hundred-yard dash and he knew he was very good at dashing.”

I didn’t hear the rest of the story after that. I got up and went to the railing and looked down into the harbor. But I didn’t see anything down there either. My mind was too busy for the external world. I was flooded with ideas and emotions. I suddenly knew that the name William Bing, the name Terry McCaleb had scrawled on the flap of his file, belonged to a monkey. And I suddenly knew that the story wasn’t finished, not by a long shot.

44

R
ACHEL CAME TO SEE ME at my house later that day. I had just gotten in after filing my paperwork with Kiz Rider at Parker Center and was listening to a phone message from Ed Thomas. He was thanking me for saving his life when all along it was I who owed him an apology for not warning him in the first place. I was feeling guilty about that and thinking about calling the bookstore when Rachel knocked. I invited her in and we went out to the back deck.

“Wow, nice view.”

“Yeah, I like it.”

I pointed down to the left, where a small cut of the river was in the view behind the soundstages on the Warner Brothers lot.

“There it is, the mighty Los Angeles River.”

She squinted and looked and then found it.

“The narrows. Looks pretty weak right now.”

“It’s resting. Next storm, it will be back.”

“How are you feeling, Harry?”

“Good. Better. I’ve been sleeping a lot. I’m surprised you’re still in town.”

“Well, I took a few days. I’m actually looking at apartments.”

“Really?”

I turned with my back to the railing so I could just look at her.

“I’m pretty sure this whole thing will be my ticket out of South Dakota. I don’t know what squad they’ll put me on but I’m going to ask for L.A. Or I was, until I saw what some of these apartments go for. In Rapid City I pay five-fifty a month for a really nice and secure place.”

“I could find you five-fifty here but you probably won’t like the location. You’d probably have to learn another language, too.”

“No, thanks. I’m working on it. So what have you been doing?”

“I just came back from Parker Center. I put in my papers. I’m going back on the job.”

“Then I guess this is it for us. I heard the FBI and the LAPD don’t talk.”

“Yeah, there is a wall there. But it’s been known to come down from time to time. I have some friends with the bureau. Believe it or not.”

“I believe it, Harry.”

I noticed that she was back to calling me by my first name. I wondered if that meant the relationship was over.

“So,” I said, “when did you know about McCaleb?”

“What do you mean? Know what?”

“I mean when did you know that Backus didn’t kill him? That he killed himself.”

She put both hands on the railing and looked down into the arroyo. But she wasn’t really looking at anything down there.

“Harry, what are you talking about?”

“I found out who William Bing is. He’s a monkey from the pages of his daughter’s favorite book.”

“So? What’s that mean?”

“It means he checked himself into the hospital in Vegas under a phony name. He had something wrong with him, Rachel. Something inside.”

I touched the center of my chest.

“Maybe he was chasing the case, maybe not. But he knew something was wrong and he went over there to that hospital to have it checked and to keep it quiet. He didn’t want his wife and his family to know. And so they checked him out and gave him the bad news. His second heart was going the way his first one went. Cardio . . . myo . . . whatever it’s called. Bottom line was he was dying. He needed another heart or he was going to die.”

Rachel shook her head like I was a fool.

“I don’t know how you think you know all of this but you can’t possib —”

“Look, I know what I know. And I know he had already burned through his medical insurance and if he was going to get in line for another heart, they would lose everything, the house, the boat, everything. Everything for another heart.”

I paused and then continued in a quiet and calm voice.

“He didn’t want that. He also didn’t want his family to see him waste away and die, on the public dole. And he didn’t like the idea of another person dying so he could live. He had already been through that, too.”

I stopped there to see if she would protest again and try to dissuade me. She remained silent this time.

“The only things he had left were his life insurance and his pension. He wanted them to have that. So he was the one who changed out his pills. There’s a receipt for a health food store under the seat of his car. I called there this morning to see if they sell powdered shark cartilage. They do.

“He changed out his pills and just kept on taking them. He figured as long as he made a show of taking them there’d be no autopsy and everything would work out fine.”

“But it didn’t, did it?”

“No, but he had a backup plan for that, too. That’s why he waited for the long charter. He wanted to die out there on the boat. He wanted it to be in waters that would come under federal jurisdiction. His hope was that if anything came of it, his friends in the bureau would take care of everything for him.

“The only problem with his whole big plan was that he had no idea about the Poet. He had no idea his wife would come to me or that a few lines scribbled in a file would lead to all that happened.”

I shook my head.

“I should have seen it. The med switch wasn’t Backus’s style. Too complicated. The complicated ones are usually inside jobs.”

“What about the threat to his family? Whether or not he knew it was Backus, he knew somebody had threatened his family. He got those photographs—somebody stalking his family. You are saying he checked out and left his family at risk? That’s not the Terry McCaleb I knew.”

“Maybe he thought he was ending the risk. The threat to his family was aimed at him. If he was gone, then so, too, was the threat.”

Rachel nodded, but it wasn’t in any sort of confirmation.

“If nothing else, your fact chain is interesting, Harry. I’ll give you that. But what makes you think we know about this, that I know about it?”

“Oh, you know. The way you dismissed my questions about William Bing for one thing. But the other is what you did in that house the other day. When I had the gun on Backus, he was about to say something about Terry and you cut him off. You jumped all over what he was about to say. I think he was about to say he didn’t kill Terry.”

“Oh, yeah, a killer denying one of his victims. Isn’t that unusual.”

Her sarcasm sounded defensive to me.

“This time it would have been. He was no longer hiding. He was out in the open and he would have taken credit if credit was due him. You knew that and that’s why you cut him off. You knew he was going to deny it.”

She came away from the railing and stood in front of me.

“Okay, Harry, you think you’ve got it all figured out. You found a sad little suicide hidden in all the murders. What are you going to do with it? You going to go out there and announce it to the world? The only thing that might do is take the money away from the family. Is that what you want? Maybe you can get a piece of it as the whistleblower reward.”

Now I turned away from her and leaned down on the railing.

“No, I don’t want that. I just don’t like being lied to.”

“Oh, I get it. This really isn’t about Terry. It’s about you and me, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what it’s about, Rachel.”

“Well, when you do, when you figure it all out, let me know, okay?”

She suddenly came up next to me and kissed me hard on the cheek.

“Good-bye, Bosch. Maybe I’ll see you around once the transfer comes through.”

I didn’t turn around to watch her go. I listened as her angry footsteps crossed the deck and then the maple floor inside. I heard the front door slam with a finality that reverberated right through me. It was that tumbling bullet again.