cheeks.
“It’s hard to find God’s hand in what we do. What we see.”
Bosch just nodded and they didn’t speak about the name again.
McCaleb lifted the last page of the file marked Cielo Azul and looked at the inside rear flap of the manila folder. It had become his habit over time at the bureau to jot notes on the back flap, where they would not readily be seen because of the attached file pages. These were notes he made about the investigators who submitted the cases for profiling. McCaleb had come to realize that insights about the investigator were sometimes as important as the information in the case file. For it was through the investigator’s eyes that McCaleb first viewed many aspects of the crime.
His case with Bosch had come up more than ten years earlier, before he began his more extensive profiling of the investigators as well as the cases. On this file he had written Bosch’s name and just four words beneath it.
Thorough – Smart – M. M. – A. A.
He looked at the last two notations now. It had been part of his routine to use abbreviations and shorthand when making notes that needed to be kept confidential. The last two notations were his reading on what motivated Bosch. He had come to believe that homicide detectives, a breed of cop unto themselves, called upon deep inner emotions and motivations to accept and carry out the always difficult task of their job. They were usually of two kinds, those who saw their jobs as a skill or a craft, and those who saw it as a mission in life. Ten years ago he had put Bosch into the latter class. He was a man on a mission.
This motivation in detectives could then be broken down even further as to what gave them this sense of purpose or mission. To some the job was seen as almost a game; they had some inner deficit that caused them to need to prove they were better, smarter and more cunning than their quarry. Their lives were a constant cycle of validating themselves by, in effect, invalidating the killers they sought by putting them behind bars. Others, while carrying a degree of that same inner deficit, also saw themselves with the additional dimension of being speakers for the dead. There was a sacred bond cast between victim and cop that formed at the crime scene and could not be severed. It was what ultimately pushed them into the chase and enabled them to overcome all obstacles in their path. McCaleb classified these cops as avenging angels. It had been his experience that these cop/angels were the best investigators he ever worked with. He also came to believe that they traveled closest to that unseen edge beneath which lies the abyss.
Ten years before, he had classified Harry Bosch as an avenging angel. He now had to consider whether the detective had stepped too close to that edge. He had to consider that Bosch might have gone over.
He closed the file and pulled the two art books out of his bag. Both were simply titled Bosch. The larger one, with full-color reproductions of the paintings, was by R. H. Marijnissen and P. Ruyffelaere. The second book, which appeared to carry more analysis of the paintings than the other, was written by Erik Larsen.
McCaleb started with the smaller book and began scanning through the pages of analysis. He quickly learned that, as Penelope Fitzgerald had said, there were many different and even competing views of Hieronymus Bosch. The Larsen book cited scholars who called Bosch a humanist and even one who believed him to be part of a heretical group that believed the earth was a literal hell ruled over by Satan. There were disputes among the scholars about the intended meanings of some of the paintings, about whether some paintings could actually be attributed to Bosch, about whether the painter had ever traveled to Italy and viewed the work of his Renaissance contemporaries.
Finally, McCaleb closed the book when he realized that, at least for his purposes, the words about Hieronymus Bosch might not be important. If the painter’s work was subject to multiple interpretations, then the only interpretation that mattered would be that of the person who killed Edward Gunn. What mattered was what that person saw and took from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.
He opened the larger book and began to slowly study the reproductions. His viewing of reproduction plates of the paintings at the Getty had been hurried and encumbered by his not being alone.
He put his notebook on the arm of the couch with the plan to keep a tabulation of the number of owls he saw in the paintings as well as descriptions of each bird. He quickly realized that the paintings were so minutely detailed in the smaller-scale reproductions that he might be missing things of significance. He went down to the forward cabin to find the magnifying glass he had always kept in his desk at the bureau for use while examining crime scene photos.
As he was bent over a box full of office supplies he had cleared out of his desk five years before, McCaleb felt a slight bump against the boat and straightened up. He had tied the Zodiac up on the fantail, so it could not have been his own skiff. He was considering this when he felt the unmistakable up-and-down movement of the boat indicating that someone had just stepped aboard. His mind focused on the salon door. He was sure he had left it unlocked.
He looked down into the box he had just been sorting through and grabbed the letter opener.
As he came up the steps into the galley McCaleb surveyed the salon and saw no one and nothing amiss. It was difficult seeing past the interior reflection on the sliding door but outside in the cockpit, silhouetted by the streetlights on Crescent Street, there was a man. He stood with his back to the salon as if admiring the lights of the town going up the hill.
McCaleb moved quickly to the slider and pulled it open. He held the letter opener at his side but with the point of the blade up. The man standing in the cockpit turned around.
McCaleb lowered his weapon as the man stared at it with wide eyes.
“Mr. McCaleb, I -”
“It’s all right, Charlie, I just didn’t know who it was.”
Charlie was the night man in the harbor office. McCaleb didn’t know his last name. But he knew that he often visited Buddy Lockridge on nights Buddy stayed over. McCaleb guessed that Buddy was a soft touch for a quick beer every now and then on the long nights. That was probably why Charlie had rowed his skiff over from the pier.
“I saw the lights and thought maybe Buddy was here,” he said. “I was just paying a visit.”
“No, Buddy’s overtown tonight. He probably won’t be back till Friday.”
“Okay, then. I’ll just be going. Everything all right with you? The missus isn’t making you sleep on the boat, is she?”
“No, Charlie, everything’s fine. Just doing a little work.”
He held up the letter opener as if that explained what he was doing.
“All right then, I’ll be heading back.”
“Good night, Charlie. Thanks for checking on me.”
He went back inside and down to the office. He found the magnifying glass, with a light attachment, at the bottom of the box of office supplies.
For the next two hours he went through the paintings. The eerie landscapes of phantasmic demons surrounding human prey enthralled him once again. As he studied each work he marked particular findings such as the owls with yellow Post-its so that he could easily return to them.
McCaleb amassed a list of sixteen direct depictions of owls in the paintings and another dozen portrayals of owl-like creatures or structures. The owls were darkly painted and lurking in all the paintings like sentinels of judgment and doom. He looked at them and couldn’t help but think of the analogy of the owl as detective. Both creatures of the night, both watchers and hunters – firsthand observers of the evil and pain humans and animals inflict upon each other.
The single most significant finding McCaleb made during his study of the paintings was not an owl. Rather, it was the human form. He made the discovery as he used the lighted glass to examine the center panel of a painting called The Last Judgment. Outside the depiction of hell’s oven, where sinners were thrown, there were several bound victims waiting to be dismembered and burned. Among this grouping McCaleb found the image of a nude man bound with his arms and legs behind him. The sinner’s extremities had been stretched into a painful reverse fetal position. The image closely reflected what he had seen at center focus in the crime scene videotape and photos of Edward Gunn.
