“Cosmo!”
The man had shouted from the pathway to the house. The dog stopped in midstride, its hind legs sliding out from beneath as it struggled to respond to the command.
“Get over here!”
The dog looked back at Bosch, and for a moment Harry thought he saw its eyes glowing red. It then took off, heading back to its master. It was chastised anyway.
“Bad boy! You don’t run off! And no barking!”
The man clapped the dog on the haunch as it ran by him. The dog moved ahead on the path and then crouched into a pose of submission. A moment ago it was going to tear Bosch’s throat out. Now Bosch felt sorry for it.
Harry waited until the man and his dog were inside the chateau before he headed back into the grove, hoping he would not get lost on the way back to his car.
Bosch got back to the Blu-Lite Motel by eleven. He went straight into the bathroom and stripped off his wet and muddy clothes, throwing them into the bathtub. He was about to step into the tub and turn on the shower when he heard his phone buzzing—he had turned the ringer setting down after the incident at the Steers.
He walked out of the bathroom with a towel as stiff as cardboard wrapped around his waist. The caller ID was blocked. Bosch sat down on the bed and took the call.
“Bosch.”
“Harry, it’s me. Are you all right?”
Chu.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“’Cause I haven’t heard from you and you didn’t respond to my emails.”
“I’ve been on the road all day and haven’t looked at email. I just got to the motel and am not sure about the Wi-Fi yet.”
“Harry, you get email on your phone.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s a pain with the password and all of that. It’s too small and I don’t like doing that. I text.”
“Whatever. You want me to tell you what I sent?”
Bosch was dead tired. The exhaustion of the day and the slog back and forth through the almond grove had set into his bones. The muscles in his thighs ached from what felt like ten thousand steps through the sucking mud. He wanted to take a shower and go to sleep, but he told Chu to go ahead.
“Basically two things,” his partner said. “First, I made a pretty solid connection between two of the names on the list you gave me.”
Bosch looked around for his notebook and realized he had left it in the car. He couldn’t go out for it now.
“Go ahead, what?”
“Well, you know how Drummond is running for Congress?”
“Yeah, I saw one sign today but nothing else.”
“That’s because the election is next year. So it’s not going to get hot and heavy for a while. In fact, he doesn’t even have an opponent yet. The incumbent is retiring and Drummond probably announced early to scare away the competition.”
“Yeah, whatever. What’s the connection?”
“It’s Cosgrove. Cosgrove personally and Cosgrove Agriculture are two of the biggest donors to his campaign. I pulled the initial campaign report that he filed when he announced.”
Bosch nodded. Chu was right, a good solid connection between two members of the conspiracy. Now all he needed was the conspiracy.
“Harry, you there? You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”
“Just about to. But that was good work, Dave. If he’s backing him now, he probably backed his two runs for sheriff as well.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too, but those records aren’t accessible online. You might be able to pull them from the county clerk’s office up there.”
Bosch shook his head.
“No,” he said. “This is a small town. I do that and word will get back to both of them. I don’t want that yet.”
“I get you. How is it going up there?”
“It’s going. Today was just a recon day. Tomorrow I’m going to start pushing things. What was the other thing? You said two things.”
There was a pause before Chu spoke, so Bosch knew the second bit of news was not going to be good.
“The Tool called me into his office today.”
Of course, Bosch thought. O’Toole.
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to know what I was working on, but I could also tell he was worried that you weren’t really on vacation. He asked if I knew where you went, stuff like that. I told him that as far as I knew, you were home painting the house.”
“Painting the house. Okay, I’ll remember that. You warned me about this in an email?”
“Yeah, right after lunch.”
“Don’t put stuff like that in an email. Just call me. Who knows how far O’Toole will go if he’s trying to blow somebody out of the unit.”
“Okay, Harry, I won’t. Sorry.”
Bosch got a call-waiting beep. He looked at his screen and saw it was his daughter.
“Don’t worry about it, Dave, but I gotta go now. My daughter’s calling. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
“Okay, Harry, get some sleep.”
Bosch switched over to his daughter. She spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper.
“How was your day, Dad?”
Bosch thought for a moment about what to say. “Actually, it was kind of boring,” he said. “How was yours?”
“Mine was boring, too. When are you coming home?”
“Well . . . let’s see, I have a little more work up here tomorrow. A couple interviews. So maybe not till Wednesday. Are you in your room?”
“Uh-huh.”
Meaning she was alone and hopefully out of earshot of Hannah. Bosch leaned back on the pillows. They were thin and hard but it felt like the Ritz-Carlton to him.
“So how’s it going with Hannah?” he asked.
“It’s okay, I guess,” she said.
“You sure?”
“She was trying to get me to go to bed early. Like ten o’clock or something.”
Bosch smiled. He knew the score. The inverse law of waking a teenage girl too early was to suggest she go to bed too early.
“I told her before I left to let you do your own thing. I can talk to her again, remind her that you know your own body clock.”
It was the argument she had put to him when he had made the same mistake as Hannah.
“No, it’s okay. I can deal.”
“What about dinner? Don’t tell me you ordered in pizza.”
“No, she made dinner and it was really good.”
“What was it?”
“It was chicken with like a yogurt sauce. And mac and cheese.”
“Gotta have mac and cheese.”
“She made it different from me.”
Meaning Maddie liked her own better. Bosch could feel himself falling off. He tried to rally.
“Yeah, well, the chef gets to choose. If you do the cooking, then you make it your way.”
