on Rinaldi. It takes us back to Tampa. We either wait up on top of the overpass and watch or we just keep circling.”
“I think we wait up on top,” Rider said. “If we keep going down that ramp in the same car he might notice.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I don’t like it but I don’t know what choice we have.”
They covered the distance to the Porter Ranch exit quickly.
“Did you check out the tow car?” Bosch asked. “I was looking for the map book.”
“Small foreign job,” Rider responded. “It looked like one person behind the wheel and that was it. The lights from the truck were too bright to see anything else.”
Rider kept her speed up until they pulled into the exit lane for Porter Ranch Drive. As instructed, she took a right and then another right and they were quickly heading back toward Tampa. They got stopped at the light at Corbin but then Rider drove through it after checking to make sure it was clear. Less than three minutes after passing the tow truck they were back on Tampa. Rider pulled to the side of the road in the middle of the overpass. Bosch cracked his door.
“I’ll check it out,” he said.
He stepped out of the car. At this angle he couldn’t see the tow truck but the spreader lights on the top of the cab cast a glow above the entrance ramp.
“Harry, take this,” Rider called.
Bosch ducked back into the car and took the rover Rider was holding out to him.
He walked back along the overpass. The freeway wasn’t crowded, but it was still loud with the cars passing beneath him. When he got to the top of the ramp and looked down, it took him a few moments to adjust his vision because the lights from the back of the tow truck were still slashing through the darkness.
But soon he realized that the blinking lights of the disabled car were not there. He looked closer and saw that the car was no longer on the shoulder. His eyes traveled down the ramp to the freeway and he saw the red taillights of dozens of cars moving westbound into the distance.
He looked back at the tow truck. Everything was still. There was no sign of Mackey.
Bosch raised the radio to his mouth and keyed the mike.
“Kiz?”
“Yeah, Harry?”
“You better get over here.”
Bosch started walking down the ramp. As he did so he drew his weapon and carried it down by his side. In thirty seconds lights flashed behind him and Rider pulled her car onto the shoulder. She got out with a flashlight and they continued down the ramp.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
There was still no sign of Mackey in or around the tow truck. Bosch felt his chest tighten. He instinctively knew something was wrong. The closer they got the more he knew it.
“What do we say if he’s here and everything’s okay?” Rider whispered.
“It isn’t,” Bosch said.
The light from the back of the truck was almost blinding and Bosch knew they were in a vulnerable position. He could not see anyone on the front side of the tow truck. He moved to his right so that he and Rider would be spread apart. Rider could not move to the left or she would be walking into the entrance lane.
A semi-truck roared by on the ramp, wafting petroleum-tinged wind and sound over them and making the ground shake like an earthquake. Bosch was now walking in the weeds that were on the upward slope off the shoulder. He still didn’t see anyone up ahead.
Bosch and Rider did not communicate. The noise from passing traffic on the freeway just below was echoing from beneath the overpass. They would have to shout now and that would detract from their concentration.
They came back together when they got to the tow truck. Bosch checked the cab and there was no sign of Mackey. The truck was still running. He stepped back to the rear and looked at the ground illuminated by the spreader lights. There were curving black tire marks leading right up to the truck’s rear gate. And on the gravel was one of the leather gloves, grease-stained in the palm, that he had seen Mackey wearing earlier in the day.
“Let me borrow this,” he said, taking the flashlight from Rider. He noticed that it was one of the short rubber models approved by the police chief after an officer was videotaped beating a suspect with one of the heavy steel lights.
Bosch pointed the beam at the truck’s rear gate, running it over the underside that had been cast in shadows by the bright glare from the spreader above.
Blood reflected brightly on the dark steel. It could not be mistaken for oil. It was as red and real as life. Bosch squatted down and pointed the light beneath the truck. It had been dark here, too, made all the more impervious to vision by the bright lights above.
He saw Mackey’s body crumpled against the rear axle differential. Fully one-half of his face was bathed in blood from a long and deep laceration that cut across the left side of his head. His blue uniform shirt was maroon down the front from blood from other unseen injuries. The crotch of his pants was stained with blood or urine or both. The one arm Bosch could see was bent oddly at the forearm and a jagged, ivory white bone protruded from the flesh. The arm was cradled against Mackey’s chest, which heaved with non-rhythmic gasps. He was still alive.
“Oh God!” Rider called out from behind Bosch.
“Get an ambulance!” Bosch ordered as he started to crawl under the truck.
Hearing Rider’s feet crunch on the gravel as she ran back to her car and the radio, Bosch moved as close to Mackey as he could get. He knew he might be destroying a crime scene but he had to get close.
“Ro, can you hear me? Ro, who did this? What happened?”
Mackey seemed to stir at the sound of his name. His mouth started moving and that was when Bosch could tell his jaw was broken or dislocated. Its movements were uncoordinated. It was like Mackey was trying it out for the first time.
“Take your time, Ro. Tell me who did this. Did you see him?”
Mackey whispered something but a car speeding by on the entrance ramp drowned it out.
“Tell me again, Ro. Say it again.”
Bosch pushed forward and leaned his head down by Mackey’s mouth. What he heard was half gasp, half whisper.
“… sworth…”
He pulled back and looked at Mackey. He put the light into his face, hoping it might rouse him. He saw that the bone structure around Mackey’s left eye was also crushed and hemorrhaging. He wasn’t going to make it.
“Ro, if you have something to say, say it now. Did you kill Rebecca Verloren? Were you there that night?”
Bosch leaned forward. If Mackey said anything it was drowned in the noise of another car going by. When Bosch pulled back to look at him again he appeared to be dead. Bosch pushed two fingers into the bloodied side of Mackey’s neck and could not find a pulse.
“Ro? Roland, are you still with me?”
The one undamaged eye was open but at half-mast. Bosch moved the light in close and saw no pupil movement. He was gone.
Bosch carefully crawled out from beneath the truck. Rider was standing there, her arms folded tightly in front of her.
“Ambulance on the way,” she said.
“Call ’em off.”
He handed her back her flashlight.
“Harry, if you think he’s dead, the paramedics should confirm it.”
“Don’t worry, he’s dead. They’ll just get under there and ruin our crime scene. Call them off.”
“Did he say anything?”
“It sounded like he said ‘Chatsworth.’ That was it. Anything else, I couldn’t hear.”
She seemed to be pacing now, in a small track, nervously moving back and forth.
“Oh God,” she said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
