spray was used. Not because it was a woman, but because it would make it fast.
Bosch pulled off the road, got out and looked around. The spot had the right feel to him. It was as quiet as death. He decided that he would come back that night to see it in darkness, to further confirm what he felt in his gut to be true.
He crossed the street and looked down into the arroyo where her accomplice would have hidden and waited. Looking down he tried to find a spot just off the road where a man could have ducked down and been concealed. He noticed a dirt trail going into the woods and stepped down to it, looking for shoe prints. There were many prints and he squatted down to study them. The ground here was dusty and some of the prints were fully recognizable. He found prints from two distinctly different sets of shoes, an old pair of shoes with worn heels and a much newer pair with heels that left sharp lines in the dirt. Neither pair was what he was looking for, the work-shoe pattern with the cut in the sole that Donovan had noticed.
Bosch’s eyes looked up from the ground and followed the trail into the brush and trees. He decided to take a few more steps in, lifted a branch of an acacia and ducked under it. After his eyes adjusted to the darkness under the canopy of foliage, they were drawn to a blue object he could see but not identify about twenty yards further into the dense growth. He would have to leave the trail to get to it, but he decided to investigate.
After slowly moving ten feet into the brush, he could see that the blue object was part of a plastic tarp, the kind you saw on roofs all over the city after an earthquake knocked down chimneys and opened up the seams of buildings. Bosch stepped closer and saw that two corners of the tarp were tied to trees and it was hung over the branch of a third, creating a small shelter on a level portion of the hillside. He watched for a few moments but saw no movement.
It was impossible to come up on the shelter quietly. The ground was covered with a thick layer of dead and dried leaves and twigs that crackled under Bosch’s feet. When he was ten feet from the canvas tarp, a man’s hoarse voice stopped him.
“I’ve got a gun, you fuckers!”
Bosch stood stock-still and stared at the tarp. Because it was draped over the long branch of an acacia tree, he was in a blind spot. He could not see whoever it was who had yelled. And the man who yelled probably couldn’t see him. Bosch decided to take a chance.
“I’ve got one, too,” he called back. “And a badge.”
“Police? I didn’t call the police!”
There was a hysterical tinge to the voice now, and Bosch suspected he was dealing with one of the homeless wanderers who were dumped out of mental institutions during the massive cutbacks in public assistance in the 1980s. The city was teeming with them. They stood at almost every major intersection holding their signs and shaking their change cups, they slept under overpasses or burrowed like termites into the woods on the hillsides, living in makeshift camps just yards from million-dollar mansions.
“I’m just passing through,” Bosch yelled. “You put down yours, I’ll put down mine.”
Bosch guessed that the man behind the scared voice didn’t even have a gun.
“Okay. It’s a deal.”
Bosch unsnapped the holster under his arm but left his gun in place. He walked the final few steps and came slowly around the trunk of the acacia. A man with long gray hair and beard flowing over a blue silk Hawaiian shirt sat cross-legged on a blanket under the tarp. There was a wild look in his eyes. Bosch quickly scanned the man’s hands and the surroundings within his immediate reach and saw no weapon. He eased up a bit and nodded at the man.
“Hello,” he said.
“I didn’t do nothin’.”
“I understand.”
Bosch looked around. There were folded clothes and towels under the shelter of the tarp. There was a small folding card table with a frying pan on it along with some candles and Sterno cans, two forks and a spoon, but no knife. Bosch figured the man had the knife under his shirt or maybe hidden in the blanket. There was also a bottle of cologne on the table, and Bosch could tell that it had been liberally sprinkled about the shelter. Also under the tarp were an old tar bucket filled with crushed aluminum cans, a stack of newspapers and a dog-eared paperback copy of Stranger in a Strange Land.
He stepped to the edge of the man’s clearing and squatted like a baseball catcher so they could face each other on the same level. He took a look around the outer edge of the clearing and saw that this was where the man discarded what he didn’t need. There were bags of trash and remnants of clothing. By the base of another acacia there was a brown-and-green suit bag. It was unzipped and lying open like a gutted fish. Bosch looked back at the man. He could see he wore two other Hawaiian shirts beneath the blue one on top, which had a pattern of hula girls on surfboards. His pants were dirty but had a sharper crease in them than a homeless man’s pants would usually have. His shoes were too well polished for a man of the woods. Bosch guessed that the pair he wore had made some of the prints up on the trail, the ones with the sharp-edged heels.
“That’s a nice shirt,” Bosch said.
“It’s mine.”
“I know. I just said it was nice. What’s your name?”
“Name’s George.”
“George what?”
“George whatever the hell you want it to be.”
“Okay, George whatever the hell you want it to be, why don’t you tell me about that suit bag over there and those clothes you’re wearing? The new shoes. Where did it all come from?”
“It was delivered. It’s mine now.”
“What do you mean by delivered?”
“Delivered. That’s what I mean. Delivered. They gave it all to me.”
Bosch took out his cigarettes, took one and offered the pack to the man. He waved them away.
“Can’t afford it. Take me half a day to find enough cans to buy a pack of smokes. I quit.”
Bosch nodded.
“How long you been livin’ up here, George?”
“All my life.”
“When did they kick you out of Camarillo?”
“Who told you that?”
It had been an educated guess, Camarillo being the nearest state institution.
“They did. How long ago was that?”
“If they told you about me, then they would’ve told you that. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“You got me there, George. About the bag and the clothes, when was it all delivered?”
“I don’t know.”
Bosch got up and went over to the suit bag. There was an identification tag attached to the handle. He turned it over and read Anthony Aliso’s name and address. He noticed the bag was lying on top of a cardboard box that was damaged from a tumble down the hill. Bosch tipped the box with his foot and read the markings on the side.
Scotch standard HS/T-90 VHS 96-count
He left the box and the suit bag there and went back to the man and squatted again.
“How’s last Friday night sound for the delivery?”
“Whatever you say is good.”
“It’s not what I say, George. Now if you want me to leave you alone and you want to stay here, you’ve got to help me. If you go into your nut bag, you’re not helping me. When was it delivered?”
George tucked his chin down on his chest like a boy who’d been chastised by a teacher. He brought a thumb and forefinger up and pressed them against his eyes. His voice came out as if it were being strangled with piano wire.
“I don’t know. They just came and dropped it off for me. That’s all I know.”
“Who dropped it off?”
George looked up, his eyes bright, and pointed upward with one of his dirty fingers. Bosch looked up and saw a patch of blue sky through the upper limbs of the trees. He blew out his breath in exasperation. This wasn’t going
