knowledge, the view of the greater picture as opposed to the small detail. The owl sees in the night. In other words, seeing through the darkness is seeing the truth. It is learning the truth, therefore, knowledge. And from knowledge comes wisdom. Okay?”
McCaleb didn’t need to take notes. What Doran had said was obvious. But just to keep his head in it he wrote down a line.
Seeing in the dark = Wisdom He then underlined the last word.
“Okay, fine. What else?”
“That’s basically what I have as far as contemporary application. But when I go backward it gets pretty interesting. Our friend the owl has totally rejuvenated his reputation. He used to be a bad guy.”
“Tell me, Brass.”
“Get your pencil out. The owl is seen repeatedly in art and religious iconography from early medieval through late Renaissance periods. It is found often depicted in religious allegorical displays – paintings, church panels and stations of the cross. The owl was -”
“Okay, Brass, but what did it mean?”
“I’m getting to that. Its meaning could be different from depiction to depiction and according to species depicted. But essentially its depiction was the symbol of evil.”
McCaleb wrote the word down.
“Evil. Okay.”
“I thought you’d be more excited.”
“You can’t see me. I’m standing on my hands here. What else you have?”
“Let me run down the list of hits. These are taken from the extracts, the critical literature of the art of the period. References to depictions of owls come up as the symbol of – and I quote – doom, the enemy of innocence, the Devil himself, heresy, folly, death and misfortune, the bird of darkness, and finally, the torment of the human soul in its inevitable journey to eternal damnation. Nice, huh? I like that last one. I guess they didn’t sell too many bags of potato chips with owls on them back in the fourteen hundreds.”
McCaleb didn’t answer. He was busy scribbling down the descriptions she had read to him.
“Read that last one again.”
She did and he wrote it down verbatim.
“Now, there is more,” Doran said. “There is also some interpretation of the owl as being the symbol of wrath as well as the punishment of evil. So it obviously was something that meant different things at different times and to different people.”
“The punishment of evil,” McCaleb said as he wrote it down.
He looked at the list he had written.
“Anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Probably. Was there anything about books showing some of this stuff or the names of artists or writers who used the so-called ‘bird of darkness’ in their work?”
McCaleb heard some pages turning over the phone and Doran was silent for a few moments.
“I don’t have a lot here. No books but I can give you the name of some of the artists mentioned and you could probably get something over the Internet or maybe the library at UCLA.”
“All right.”
“I have to do this quickly. We’re about to go here.”
“Give it to me.”
“All right, I have an artist named Bruegel who painted a huge face as the gateway to hell. A brown owl was nesting in the nostril of the face.”
She started laughing.
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “I’m just giving you what I found.”
“Fine,” McCaleb said, writing the description down. “Go on.”
“Okay, two others noted for using the owl as the symbol of evil were Van Oostanen and Durer. I don’t have specific paintings.”
He heard more pages turning. He asked for spellings of the artists’ names and wrote them down.
“Okay, here it is. This last guy’s work is supposedly replete with owls all over the place. I can’t pronounce his first name. It’s spelled H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S. He was Netherlandish, part of the northern Renaissance. I guess owls were big up there.”
McCaleb looked at the paper in front of him. The name she had just spelled seemed familiar to him.
“You forgot his last name. What’s his last name?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s Bosch. Like the spark plugs.”
McCaleb sat frozen. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. He stared at the name on the page, unable to write the last part that Doran had just given him. Finally, he turned his head and looked out of the picnic area to the spot on the sidewalk where he had last seen Harry Bosch walking away.
“Terry, you there?”
He came out of it.
“Yeah.”
“That’s really all I have. And I have to go. We’re starting here.”
“Anything else on Bosch?”
“Not really. And I’m out of time.”
“Okay, Brass. Listen, thanks a lot. I owe you one for this.”
“And I’ll collect one day. Let me know how it all comes out, okay?”
“You got it.”
“And send me a photo of that little girl.”
“I will.”
She hung up and McCaleb slowly closed his phone. He wrote a note at the bottom of the page reminding him to send Brass a photo of his daughter. It was just an exercise in avoiding the name of the painter he had written down.
“Shit,” he whispered.
He sat with his thoughts for a long time. The coincidence of receiving the eerie information just minutes after eating with Harry Bosch was unsettling. He studied his notes for a few more moments but knew they did not contain the immediate information he needed. He finally reopened the phone and called 213 information. A minute later he called the personnel office of the Los Angeles Police Department. A woman answered after nine rings.
“Yes, I’m calling on behalf of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and I need to contact a particular LAPD officer. Only I don’t know where he works. I only have his name.”
He hoped the woman wouldn’t ask what he meant by on behalf of. There was what seemed to be a long silence and then he heard the sound of typing on a keyboard.
“Last name?”
“Uh, it’s Bosch.”
He spelled it and then looked down at his notes, ready to spell the first name.
“And the first na – never mind, there’s only one. Higher – ronny – mus. Is that it? I can’t pronounce it, I don’t think.”
“Hieronymus. Yes, that’s it.”
He spelled the name and asked if it was a match. It was.
“Well, he’s a detective third grade and he works in Hollywood Division. Do you need that number?”
McCaleb didn’t answer.
“Sir, do you need -”
“No, I have it. Thank you very much.”
He closed the phone, looked at his watch, and then reopened the phone. He called Jaye Winston’s direct number and she picked up right away. He asked if she had gotten anything back from the lab on the examination of the plastic owl.
“Not yet. It’s only been a couple hours and one of them was lunch. I’m going to give it until tomorrow before I
