“What happened?”
“Me and Edgar – that’s my partner, Jerry Edgar – we went down the hall to get a cup of coffee and talk about how we were going to play it. While we were down there the squad lieutenant sees Gunn sitting in the interview room and doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing there. He takes it upon himself to go in and make sure the guy’s been properly advised of his rights.”
McCaleb could see the anger working its way into Bosch’s face, even six years after the fact.
“You see, Gunn had come in as a witness and ostensibly as the victim of a crime. He said she came at him with the knife and he turned it on her. So we didn’t need to advise him. The plan was to go in there, shake his story down and get him to make a mistake. Once we had that, then we were going to advise him. But this dipshit lieutenant didn’t know any of this and he just went in and advised the guy. After that, we were dead. He knew we were coming after him. He asked for a lawyer as soon as we walked into the room.”
Bosch shook his head and looked out onto the street. McCaleb followed his eyes. Across Victory Boulevard was a used-car lot with red, white and blue pennants flapping in the wind. To McCaleb, Van Nuys was always synonymous with car lots. They were all over, new and used.
“So what did you say to the lieutenant?” he asked.
“Say? I didn’t say anything. I just shoved him through the window of his office. I got a suspension out of it – involuntary stress leave. Jerry Edgar eventually took the case in to the DA and they sat on it a while and then finally kicked it.”
Bosch nodded. His eyes rested on his empty paper plate.
“I sort of blew it,” he said. “Yeah, I blew it.”
McCaleb waited a moment before speaking. A gust of wind blew Bosch’s plate off the table and the detective watched it skitter across the picnic area. He made no move to chase it down.
“You still working for that lieutenant?”
“Nope. He’s no longer with us. Not too long after that he went out one night and didn’t come home. They found him in his car up in the tunnel in Griffith Park near the Observatory.”
“What, he killed himself?”
“No. Somebody did it for him. It’s still open. Technically.”
Bosch looked back at him. McCaleb dropped his eyes and noticed that Bosch’s tie tack was a tiny pair of silver handcuffs.
“What else can I tell you?” Bosch said. “None of this had anything to do with Gunn. He was just a fly in the ointment – the ointment being the bullshit they call the justice system.”
“Doesn’t sound like you had time to do much background on him.”
“None, actually. All that I told you took place in the span of eight or nine hours. Afterward, with what happened, I was off the case and the guy walked out the door.”
“But you didn’t give up. Jaye told me you visited him in the drunk tank the night before he got himself killed.”
“Yeah, he got popped on a duice while cruising whores on Sunset. He was in the tank and I got a call. I went in to take a look, maybe jerk his chain a little, see if he was ready to talk. But the guy was piss drunk, just lying there on the floor in the puke. So that was it. You could say that we didn’t communicate.”
Bosch looked at McCaleb’s unfinished chili dog and then his watch.
“Sorry, but that’s all I got. You going to eat that or can we go?”
“Couple more bites, couple more questions. Don’t you want to have a smoke?”
“I quit a couple years ago. I only smoke on special occasions.”
“Don’t tell me, it was the Marlboro-man-gone-impotent sign on Sunset.”
“No, my wife wanted us both to quit. We did.”
“Your wife? Harry, you’re full of surprises.”
“Don’t get excited. She’s come and gone. But at least I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t know about her.”
McCaleb just nodded, feeling he had stepped too far into the other man’s personal world. He got back to the case.
“So any theories on who killed him?”
McCaleb took another bite while Bosch answered.
“My guess is he probably met up with somebody just like himself. Somebody who crossed a line somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I hope you and Jaye get the guy. But so far, whoever he or she is hasn’t done anything I’m too upset about. Know what I mean?”
“It’s funny you mentioned a ‘she.’ You think it could have been a woman?”
“I don’t know enough about it. But like I said, he preyed on women. Maybe one of them put a stop to it.”
McCaleb just nodded. He couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Bosch had been a long shot anyway. Maybe he’d known it would come to this and he just wanted to reconnect with Bosch for other reasons. He spoke with his eyes down on his paper plate.
“You still think about the girl on the hill, Harry?”
He didn’t want to say out loud the name Bosch had given her.
Bosch nodded.
“From time to time I do. It sticks with me. They all do, I guess.”
McCaleb nodded.
“Yeah. So nothing… nobody ever made a claim on her?”
“Nope. And I tried with Seguin one last time, went up to see him at Q last year, about a week before he got the juice. Tried one more time to find out from him but he just smiled at me. It was like he knew it was the last thing he could hold over me or something. He enjoyed it, I could tell. So I got up to leave and I told him to enjoy himself in hell and know what he said to me? He said, ‘I hear it’s a dry heat.’”
Bosch shook his head.
“Fucker. I drove up and back on my day off. Twelve hours in the car and the air-conditioner didn’t work.”
He looked directly at McCaleb and even through the shades McCaleb again felt the bond he had known so long ago with this man.
Before he could say anything he heard his phone begin to chirp from the pocket of his windbreaker, which was folded on the bench next to him. He struggled with the jacket to find the pocket and got to the phone before the caller hung up. It was Brass Doran.
“I have some stuff for you. Not a lot, but maybe a start.”
“You someplace I can call you back in a few minutes?”
“Actually, I’m in the central conference room. We’re about to brainstorm a case and I’m the leader. It could be a couple hours before I’m free. You could call me at home tonight if you -”
“No, hold on.”
He held the phone down and looked at Bosch.
“I better take this. I’ll talk to you later if anything comes up, okay?”
“Sure.”
Bosch started getting up. He was going to carry his Coke with him.
“Thanks,” McCaleb said, extending his hand. “Good luck with the trial.”
Bosch shook his hand.
“Thanks. We’ll probably need it.”
McCaleb watched him walk out of the picnic area and to the sidewalk leading back to the courthouse. He brought the phone back up then.
“Brass?”
“Here. Okay, you were talking about owls in general, right? You don’t know the specific kind or breed, right?”
“Right. It’s just a generic owl, I think.”
“What color is it?”
“Uh, it’s brown mostly. Like on the back and the wings.”
As he spoke he took a couple of folded pages of notebook paper and a pen out of his pockets. He shoved his half-eaten chili dog out of the way and got ready to take notes.
“Okay, modern iconography is what you’d expect. The owl is the symbol of wisdom and truth, denotes
