Table of Contents

Blue On Black (A Harry Bosch Story)

Blood Washes Off (A Harry Bosch Story)

Homicide Special (A Harry Bosch Story)

A Fine Mist Of Blood (A Harry Bosch Story)

The Perfect Triangle (A Mickey Haller Story)

After Midnight

Shortcut

Short Stories

Michael Connelly

Collection of Michael Connelly's short stories previously published in print in various short story anthologies.

"Blue On Black" originally published in Hook, Line And Sinister.

"Blood Washes Off" originally published in The Rich And The Dead.

"Homicide Special" originally published in the special edition of The Drop for Waterstones.

"A Fine Mist Of Blood" originally published in Vengeance.

"The Perfect Triangle" originally published in The Dark End Of The Street.

"After Midnight" originally published in Men From Boys.

"Shortcut" originally published in Half-Minute Horrors.

Compiled by eltiomolonio.

"Homicide Special" courtesy of Alan B.

Blue On Black (A Harry Bosch Story)

Blood Washes Off (A Harry Bosch Story)

Homicide Special (A Harry Bosch Story)

A Fine Mist Of Blood (A Harry Bosch Story)

The Perfect Triangle (A Mickey Haller Story)

After Midnight

Shortcut

BLUE ON BLACK

Bosch had left her alone in the room for almost an hour. It was time. He knocked once on the door and entered. Rachel Walling looked up from the table. She had the photos spread out across it so she could view them all at once.

He moved into the room and sat down across from her.

"It looks like you like the photos," he said.

"There isn't much else here," she said. She waved her hand dismissively at the record of his work on the case. He nodded. She was right. He didn't have jack.

"You see anything? You said you could only give me an hour. I don't want to--"

"But you knew I would start to look at the photos and I'd get caught up in it. That's why you called me, Harry."

"No, I called you because I'm desperate. I know this is the guy. I can put him in close proximity to both women. He was following them. He's got the history and profile - the guy's an apex predator. But after that, I've got nothing. So what have you got, Rachel? Can you help me or not?"

She dropped her eyes from Bosch's without answering. She returned the focus to the photos. Denninger's prior mug shots and prison ID shots from the rape conviction. Denninger posed with a number of prize fish he'd caught in Santa Monica Bay. Denninger on his boat. On the Avalon Pier on Catalina. Photos of his home, inside and out.

"He likes to fish," she finally said.

"Yeah. That and poker. He told us those are his hobbies."

"Does he own this boat?"

"Uh-huh. He keeps it down in Marina del Rey on a trailer lot. We were thinking he probably used the boat to dump the bodies. Because we sure haven't found anything in his house or pickup. Nothing on land."

"And you searched the boat."

"Yeah, we searched it. And got nothing. We took it to the police garage and put it in the blackout room. Lumed the whole thing and it glowed like Christmas. Blood everywhere, but it was all fish blood. Not a drop of human blood, not even his own."

She nodded and picked up the photo taken off the ATM video that showed the first missing woman, Olivia Martz, making a withdrawal. It was taken through a fisheye lens, designed to capture the entire environment around the ATM. Denninger was behind her and to the right, probably never thinking he would be on the film.

"So," Walling said. "You have his prior record as a sexual predator and then the two videos. The parking garage video puts him in the Grove at the same time Allison Beaumont was there on the day she disappeared, and likewise you have the ATM video of Olivia Martz making a withdrawal that puts him right behind her at the Third Street Promenade. Together this got you probable cause for search warrants, and the searches turned up nothing."

Bosch nodded in defeat.

"That's about the size of it."

"Are you watching Denninger?"

"We have a loose tail on him for now. But that won't last forever. There's no overtime left in the budget. That's why I called you."

"You should have called Behavioral. You'd get the whole package from them."

"Yeah, in about six months. How many more girls might go missing by then? Look, Rachel, I know this isn't your beat anymore, but you're good at it and you're fast. That's why I called you. Now is there anything in all of that that can help me? Your lunch hour's over."

She glanced at her watch to confirm the time and picked up one of the photos. It was the one of Denninger on his boat, holding up a fish with both hands. The seas were choppy in the background and the spine of an island rose in the distance. Catalina, probably.

"When I was in Behavioral, a significant number of the predators we encountered had hobbies like hunting or fishing. The percentage was higher than the percentage in the general population. It wasn't anything we could really quantify, but it was there. It has to do with the personality. The tracking and baiting. And, of course, the killing. I noticed that between the two personalities that the fishermen committed crimes that had more finesse, took more thinking. The hunters committed crimes of stalking and disorganized abduction. The fishermen were smarter, were more organized."

"Great, so what are you saying, this guy is too smart for us?"

"No, I'm just saying Denninger's smart. He prepared for the time that he would become the focus of law enforcement. He was ready."

"Smart enough not to leave any evidence, to drop the bodies over the side and sink 'em so we'd never find 'em."

"Look at all these photos of the fish he's caught."

She moved the photos around on the table, turning them so they would face Bosch.

"Yeah, we got them from him. He had them on a bulletin board in his kitchen. He was proud of them. He said we could have them."

"Really?"

"He said he had plenty more."

"He's touching them."

"What?"

"In every picture he is holding up the fish or at least touching it in some way."

Bosch leaned forward over the table. She was right. He hadn't noticed this but wasn't sure what it meant.

"Okay," he said.

"Trophies. He likes trophies. He likes to touch his trophies. To be close."

"That's what we were hoping, that he had kept something from the girls and we'd make the link that way. Driver's license, lock of hair . . . anything. But like I told you, we got nothing. His place is clean. His pickup is clean. His boat is clean. The garage where he works is clean. He's Mr. Clean."

"Sometimes the trophy isn't a lock of hair. It's the real thing."

"You're saying he kept the bodies? Impossible. We would have found them. We've put six hundred hours into this case so far. No bodies. He dumped them in the Pacific and we'll never find them again."

Walling nodded, seemingly in agreement.

"I worked more than one case where the bodies were buried and the killer would return to visit. I had another where the bodies were found and buried by their families. Each night of the week the killer would go to a different cemetery to visit his victims. That's where we caught him. It's a strong attraction to be with his conquests, his trophies. Maybe it's the same with water. Maybe he weighted them and they are exactly where he put them in. He visits them on the water."

"Yeah, but how would he mark the locations? He'd have to-"

Bosch stopped as he realized the answer to his own question. Walling handed him the photo of Denninger smiling at the camera and holding up the fish with two hands.

"The console," she said.

Bosch studied the photograph. The photo had been taken from the stern by an unknown photographer. The boat was a twenty-eight-foot open fisher, with a center console and a T-top that offered partial shade from the sun. Denninger was standing by the starboard gunwale, holding up his shining trophy fish. Next to him was the console. Scattered across the top in the shelter behind the windshield was a variety of fishing equipment. Bosch saw pliers, thick rubber gloves, a knife, and a plastic tray filled with lures and leaders and hooks. There was also a small electronic device with an LED screen that Bosch had previously dismissed as Denninger's cell phone.

But now, as he looked at the photograph, Bosch saw that Denninger had his phone clipped to his belt. The device on the console was something else.

"GPS?" he said.

"Looks like it," Walling said. "Small, handheld, perfect for marking fishing spots."

"And the locations of bodies if you planned to come back to visit."

Walling nodded. Adrenaline started to pour into Bosch's bloodstream. Walling had led him right to a solid break.

"There was no GPS in the possessions we searched," he said.

"He hid it somewhere," she said. "He doesn't need trophies. He just needs his spots. So he can visit the girls."

Bosch stood up and started pacing in the small room.

"Where could it be?" he said, more to himself than Walling.

"Who took these photos?"

"We don't know."

"Well, he's got at least one fishing partner. I'd start there."

Bosch nodded.

"Rachel, this is a big help. Thank you."

"The FBI is always glad to help."

Bosch pulled his phone and made a call. Jackson picked up immediately.

"Where is he?"

"He's home. He's gotta know that we're watching him. Did your agent pal come up with anything?"

"Yeah, we're looking for a handheld GPS device. It's in one of the pictures. He marked his fishing spots and he might have marked the spots where he put the girls. I didn't see it on any of the search inventories and I know it wasn't on the boat. You or Tim have any ideas?"

There was a long silence. Bosch thought he heard muffled voices.

"Rick, you there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. I was just telling Tim. I think we know where it is."

Bosch's eyes darted to Rachel and he held back his first response, which was to ask why the hell the GPS device hadn't come up before if they had known about it.

"Tell me," he said instead.

"I don't know specifically about a GPS because I don't know anything about fishing. I play golf, man. I--"

"Okay, it doesn't matter. Just tell me what you know."

"When we interviewed the guys Denninger plays poker with, a couple of them said they hadn't seen him since he lost a big pot a couple weeks ago and stormed off."

"Okay."

"Well, you know, we asked how much he lost and they told us he lost like six hundred dollars and all his numbers. I said what do you mean, numbers? And they said his fishing spots. They didn't say anything about a GPS device and it didn't occur to me that--"

"Who won the pot?"

"I don't know but we can find out. I'll start calling those guys back."

"Do it. We need those numbers. Call me as soon as you have a name."

Bosch closed the phone and looked at Walling.

"Time to go fishing."

Bosch felt queasy. The police dive boat was rocking on three-foot rollers. They had been out almost two hours on Santa Monica Bay and were on the seventh location. Denninger's GPS had twenty-two waypoints stored on it. And it was shaping up as a long day on rough seas.

Harry studied the blue-black water and waited. The captain had said they were in thirty-two feet of water. After a while he looked back toward the coast and saw the bloom of smog that hovered above the city. He thought about having spent his whole life underneath it, and it only made him feel more ill.

He quickly crossed to the other side of the boat and leaned over the side. The captain had given him specific instructions. If he were to get sick, he had to lean over the port side. That way the current would take his vomit away from the dive zone. He heaved twice, two deep exorcisms from the gut. He watched the current take away what was left of his breakfast.

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He wiped his mouth with one hand and pulled the phone with the other.

"Bosch."

"Harry, are you all right?"

It was Walling.

"Yeah. Just a little seasick."

"Yes. I wanted to check in. You're still out there?"

"Unfortunately. We're on the seventh location. Nothing so far."

"You sound terrible. Maybe you should go in."

"No, I'm here till we find them. Or till we don't."

"They can look without you. You're not diving."

"If they find the girls, I need to be here." He said it in a tone that ended the debate.

"Okay, Harry. Let me know, all right?"

"I'll call you."

By the time they got to the eleventh location, the sun was high, the wind had died away, and both the seas and Bosch's stomach had calmed. The water had changed color too. It was a lighter blue in the sunlight. More inviting, less severe. Bosch sat on the stern and watched the air bubbles boil to the surface. There were four divers thirty-nine feet down in low-visibility water. The boat captain, the forensics guy, and two deck hands were inside the cabin. Ever since Bosch had gotten sick, they had left him by himself.

Bosch heard splashing and turned to look behind him, off the stern. Two of the divers had surfaced. Between them they were holding up a body wrapped in a plastic tarp and weighted with chains.

Bosch quickly turned back toward the cabin and waved to get the attention of the others. "Hey!"

He then moved to the gunwale door. Before he could open it, one of the deck hands did. Bosch stepped back and watched as the two divers made their grim delivery. The man from forensics followed their progress with a video camera.

The deck hands grabbed the package by the chains and pulled it aboard, sliding it across the deck. It was grim duty, and water slopped over their shoes.

Olivia or Allison? Bosch thought.

Just as the question ran through his mind, the other two divers surfaced off the stern. They too carried a package of plastic and chains and moved with it toward the gunwale door.

The first two divers backed away from the boat rather than attempt to climb aboard. That was when Bosch knew that Denninger had put more than two bodies into the water here. He went to the corner of the stern and called out to them.

"How many?"

One diver removed his respirator and called back, holding up an open hand.

"Five more coming up."

Bosch just nodded and pulled his phone to start making calls.

Jackson answered right away.

"Where's Denninger?"

"In the house. You find the girls?"

"Looks like it. We've got seven bodies. We're going to be here awhile."

"Holy Christ!"

"We'll probably have to check all the other spots too."

"Should we take him down?"

Bosch thought for a moment. The location had come from the GPS device that Denninger had lost in a poker game. There were gaps in the evidence line but it still strongly pointed the finger of guilt at Denninger. Even if the recovered bodies did not include those of Olivia Martz and Allison Beaumont, they would make a case against Denninger.

Another detective or a prosecutor might move more cautiously. Keep the surveillance on the suspect, recover all the bodies, and work the evidence until it tightly wrapped around their man. But Bosch couldn't see giving Denninger another minute of freedom.

"Yeah," he said. "Take the bastard down."

"You got it."

"Call me when you're five by five."

Bosch closed the phone and then reopened it. He needed to alert the medical examiner's office that he had a multiple-homicide case and that investigators would need to meet the police boat at the dock. But first he called Rachel Walling back. He needed to tell her that her read on the file and photos had led to the break that blew the case wide open. He needed to thank her again.

As he waited for her to answer, the sun went behind a cloud and the water turned dark again. It was a cold blue on black, and it would always remind Bosch of death.

BLOOD WASHES OFF

LAPD Interview Transcript

March 4, 2010

Subject: Elyse Conover (EC)

Interviewer: Detective Harry Bosch #2997 (HB)

Location: PAB Seventh Floor, Robbery-Homicide Division

Case No. 10-0067

(begin tape)

(4:45 a.m.)

HB: Okay, we're going to begin the interview now. It will be recorded and transcribed, and you will be asked to sign the transcript after verifying its authenticity.

EC: I understand.

HB: Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water? I realize that you have been up all night.

EC: I'm fine, thank you.

HB: I also know that you've been through a traumatic event. Can I ask if you are on any sort of medication at this time?

EC: No, nothing.

HB: Okay, then let's start. My name is Harry Bosch. I am a detective three with the Robbery-Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. I am sitting with Elyse Conover in interview room three on the seventh floor of the Police Administration Building. The date is March fourth, 2010, and the time is 4:47 a.m. Mrs. Conover resides at 8771 Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. This is Mrs. Conover's formal witness statement. She has agreed to discuss the events surrounding the fatal shooting that took place in her home earlier this morning. She is here voluntarily and has not requested the presence of an attorney. Do you agree with what I have just said, Mrs. Conover?

EC: Yes, I do. But please call me Elyse.

HB: Elyse then. It is standard procedure for me to ask if you wish to have an attorney present during this interview. Would you like me to arrange that, Elyse?

EC: No, I said that won't be necessary.

HB: If at any time you change your mind about that, you tell me and we'll get you representation. If you don't have an attorney, we can get you one.

EC: Thank you. It won't be necessary.

HB: Can you give me your birth date, Elyse?

EC: I'm sixty-three, born January third, 1947.

HB: And how long have you resided at the house on Mulholland?

EC: Since 1987.

HB: Just you and your husband? Are there any children?

EC: We decided not to have children. Mark didn't want them.

HB: Why don't you describe in your own words the events of last night? Start with your arrival at the house.

EC: Yes, well, my husband and I had just returned from Lake Tahoe, where we have a second home on the lake. We've been spending a lot of time there lately. But on Monday, there is a court hearing, and so we came back for that. We had not been home in almost a month.

HB: The hearing on Monday is in regards to the charges your husband is facing?

EC: Yes, involving the fraud allegations and IGE.

HB: That's the International Gold Exchange bankruptcy case, correct? Your husband Mark was the founder of that company?

EC: Yes, and they charged him with defrauding the public.

HB: Are you familiar with the details of the charges?

EC: Taking in one hundred ninety million in gold futures contracts when the company had less than thirty million in secured gold. What the prosecutor called a classic Ponzi scheme.

HB: And you are not charged with any crime in that case?

EC: No, I had nothing to do with the business. I didn't know what he was doing. I had to read about it in the newspaper.

HB: And do you know what the hearing on Monday is about?

EC: It is a status conference, but my husband believed the district attorney's office was going to drop the criminal charges and proceed civilly.

HB: Do you know what made him think that?

EC: His attorney and other things that were printed about the case in the paper. The evidence to convict my husband is not there.

HB: So going back to last night, you said that both of you returned from Lake Tahoe. Was that to LAX?

EC: No, Van Nuys. We flew in on a private charter because we had our dogs.

HB: Your dogs?

EC: We have two Labs, and if we took a commercial flight, they would have to be placed in cargo. I couldn't do that to them. They don't do well in that situation. So we have an account with Elite Air, and we flew down on a charter jet.

HB: So it was just you two and your two dogs on the plane?

EC: Yes, plus the pilot and copilot.

HB: Do you know what time it was when you landed?

EC: We landed about nine thirty.

HB: And you drove to your house on Mulholland?

EC: We had a limo take us. Our cars were at home.

HB: You arrived at the home at about ten fifteen?

EC: Yes, and we knew something was wrong as soon as we opened the front door.

HB: Why is that?

EC: Because we could smell food. Like someone had been cooking. And we hadn't been there in almost a month. We had a caretaker checking on the place, but she only came by once a week and she certainly wouldn't be cooking in the house. We put the bags down by the door, and Mark told me to stay there with the dogs while he looked around.

HB: Why didn't he take the dogs to look around?

EC: They're both old dogs. They're our companions. They're not guard dogs. We always said that if we had an intruder, Mickey and Minnie would lick them to death. They're no threat to anyone.

HB: What about an alarm? You didn't have an alarm on the house?

EC: We did, but we never used it. It seemed to go off all the time for no reason. The slightest earthquake or tremor. We stopped using it long ago.

HB: Okay, I'm sorry to deviate from the story. Go on. What happened when your husband started to look around the house?

EC: Well, I heard a commotion and then voices. I could tell Mark was startled by something. I called out to him, but he didn't answer at first. I wasn't sure what to do, and then he called out. He said, "Elyse, you better come here." So I went into the kitchen, and there was a man there. He was holding a gun pointed at my husband.

HB: Where in the kitchen was he?

EC: He was sitting at the table, and he had made himself something to eat. He had defrosted one of the steaks Mark flies in from Montana.

HB: Did you know this man?

EC: I had never seen him before in my life. Neither had Mark. After being initially startled by the intruder, Mark recovered his usual bluster and yelled, "What is this?" and "Who the hell are you?" And the man said, "I'm one of your victims." He pointed the gun and told Mark to sit down in front of him. He told me to sit down, too, but at the end of the table. He said, "You're going to watch this, too."

HB: Okay.

EC: Detective, do you have any tissue?

HB: Yes, I can get that. I'll be right back.

(pause tape)

(resume 5:06 a.m.)

HB: Can you continue with the story now, Elyse? You said the man told both of you to sit down and that he threatened your husband with the gun.

EC: Yes, and so we did. My husband asked him his name, and he said it was Eric Anderson. I could tell Mark didn't recognize the name. All the victims, there were more than five hundred of them. He didn't really know them because they were voices on the phone or website customers. Most of his investors he never met. He asked Eric where he was from, and he said he drove over from Phoenix. He said he had been living in our house for a week. Eating our food. He had been waiting for Mark to come home.

HB: Did he specifically say why he had come to the house?

EC: He said he lost everything. He had a home and a wife, and they were planning to have a family. He put everything he had into IGE. He had a friend at the office who was also an investor, and he had gotten an twenty-four percent return. So Eric put everything he had in, and he lost it all. Then he lost his house, and his wife left him. He blamed Mark, and he was outraged by how it looked like we hadn't lost anything and that we were protected because it was the business that went bankrupt. He had gone through all our things while he had been waiting. For a week. He knew what we had. The steaks, the cars in the garage, the clothes. He was wearing my husband's watch. The Breitling. He found it in a drawer in the bedroom. He wanted to know how it could be that he lost everything, and we didn't lose anything. He pointed the gun and told Mark to tell him how this could be.

HB: Did your husband respond to this?

EC: My husband is an arrogant man, Detective Bosch. The money made him that way. I saw it long before this. It changed him. He thought he was bulletproof. That he could say and do whatever he wanted because the money protected him. I think that is why he stole. At some point, millions were not enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted tens of millions, and he believed he could just take it and there wouldn't be any consequences. He was an honest man when I first met him. But that was a long time ago.

(phone ring)

HB: Sorry, let me take care of this.

HB: Bosch?

HB: I'm in the interview with her. I told you not to---

HB: Okay, I understand. Thank you.

HB: Sorry about that, Mrs. Conover. Let's continue. What did your husband say to Eric Anderson?

EC: He tried to turn things around so that he was the one who was wrong. He told him he was a victim of his own greed. That he should have known that the IGE investment was too good to be true. He said he got what he deserved. He told Eric that if he wanted to shoot anybody he should go ahead and shoot himself. He said it was his own fault that he lost his home and his wife left him. Because he was a fool.

HB: What did Eric do or say?

EC: He started to cry a little bit, and he called my husband a monster. He said that he preyed on people who were just trying to make a better life for themselves. My husband laughed at him then and said that it was people like him that made the world go around. Eric called him a liar. He said they spoke once. He said that when he heard the rumors about the company folding he called and said he wanted to talk to somebody about his gold. He talked to my husband, and my husband went into the vault and told him his gold was safe, that we was looking right at it on the shelf and Eric had nothing to worry about. But Eric now knew that that was a lie.

HB: And what did your husband say to that?

EC: He laughed. He said that Eric wasn't the only one who called. He said dozens of people called, and he told them all the same thing, that he was going into the vault to check on their gold reserve. But there wasn't any gold - he had already cashed it out - and there wasn't even a vault. That was just a picture on the website. What he would do is get down and crawl under his desk, and it sort of echoed like he was in a vault. And he laughed because the people always believed him because they thought he was in a real vault. He told Eric that he was a sucker and that suckers were born every minute to feed the rich. He taunted the poor man, Detective. He told him that on Monday the charges were going to be dismissed because there was no evidence against him. He had guaranteed nothing to his customers. The small print on the futures contracts didn't even guarantee that they were secured with actual gold. He told Eric that greed had made him blind and that he deserved every bit of his misery. By then, I could see the tears on Eric's cheeks. He was defeated. He was a beaten man.

HB: What happened next?

EC: That was when Eric fired the gun.

HB: Mrs. Conover, I need to know as much detail about the shooting as you can remember. The paramedics---

EC: Elyse.

HB: Right, Elyse. The paramedics who treated and transported your husband to the hospital said your husband appeared to have been hit by at least three bullets in the upper chest area. Do you recall exactly how many times Eric Anderson discharged the weapon and whether he was sitting when he did this?

EC: He only fired the gun once.

HB: Are you sure?

EC: Yes, I'm sure. He looked at my husband and said, "My blood is on your hands." He then held the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

HB: You mean after he shot your husband?

(no response)

HB: Elyse? You mean after he shot your husband?

EC: No, he didn't shoot my husband. He shot himself. And my husband laughed. He was relieved and . . . proud. Yes, I think he was proud that he talked this poor man into killing himself. Then he looked over at me, and he said, "Don't worry, blood washes off. With enough money, anything washes off."

HB: So what happened next?

EC: It was strange. When Eric shot himself, the gun popped out of his hand and skittered across the table. Right to me. So I picked it up. It was heavy. I pointed it at my husband. Then I shot him. Three times I shot him.

HB: Mrs. Conover, I think I'm going to stop you here and inform you of your constitutional rights.

EC: I don't think you have to.

HB: You have the right to remain silent and to refuse to answer any further questions. Do you understand?

EC: Yes, of course.

HB: Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand that?

EC: Yes. But is this really necessary?

HB: You have the right to consult an attorney and to have an attorney present during any questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?

EC: Yes.

HB: Okay, knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to continue this interview and answer my questions without an attorney present?

EC: Might as well.

HB: I need a yes or no answer to my question, Mrs. Conover.

EC: Yes, I will continue to answer. Please call me Elyse.

HB: Elyse, I also need to tell you that the phone call I took a few minutes ago was from my partner at the hospital. I'm afraid your husband has succumbed to his wounds. They couldn't save him. He is dead and I am now placing you under arrest on suspicion of his murder.

EC: I understand.

HB: Do you want to call an attorney now?

EC: I don't think so. I want to explain what happened. So the victims will know.

HB: I understand. Why did you do it, Elyse? Why did you shoot your husband?

EC: Because Eric was right. He was a monster and I saw it right then. I killed the monster and I'll wash off his blood. You watch. I have the money now. I'll wash the blood off.

HB: Okay, Mrs. Conover. We're going to go over to central booking now. We can continue this afterward. They'll have a doctor there who will want to talk to you to determine your mental facility.

EC: I'm fine, Detective. I feel good about myself for the first time in a long time.

HB: Okay, Mrs. Conover.

EC: Call me Elyse.

HB: Let's go, Elyse.

(5:29 a.m.)

(end tape)

HOMICIDE SPECIAL

He started the drive north in darkness, to take the heat out of the journey. He wanted to get past the desert before sun up because he knew the car's air-conditioner produced little in the way of a cooling air current.

He got to Richmond and was in the front lobby of the state DOJ lab by 9 A.M. He asked the security guard if he could speak with Sarah Lowell from the DNA unit.

"Tell her it's Detective Bosch from the LAPD's Homicide Special Squad."

Bosch was pointed to a plastic chair in a row of plastic chairs. It was ten minutes before Sarah Lowell came out from the lab. Bosch was the only one waiting.

"Detective Bosch?"

Bosch stood up. They had never met, though they had solved several murders together. Harry smiled and put out his hand. Barely past thirty, she was far younger than he had expected. But what was more surprising was that she was black. Seeing her name on DNA cold hit forms over the years, Bosch had expected the name Sarah Lowell to be attached to a white person. Now he wasn't sure why.

"Very nice to finally meet you in person, Sarah," he said.

"Yes, nice to meet you," she said. "Are you on vacation? Why are you -"

"I'm working on a case."

"Then what are you doing here? Did you drive up last night?"

"No, actually I drove through the night. I brought a swab. I was hoping you could get the profile and run it through the computer."

Lowell was momentarily confused.

"You brought a swab? Detective Bosch, you know the protocol is to -"

"First of all, call me Harry. We've worked too many cases together to be so formal. And yes, I know about the protocol, but this is . . . this case . . . tell you what, can you sit down over here for a minute?"

He pointed to the row of plastic chairs and Lowell reluctantly nodded. They sat and Bosch moved his chair so that he could face her and hold her attention. He wasn't going to let her look off and away. He leaned forward and spoke in a low, urgent tone.

"Yesterday morning we get the call out. A sixteen-year-old found dead in her bed in Westwood. Her name was Brittany Gaston. She was beaten and strangled. Nice neighborhood, nice house, nice family. The air-conditioner went on the blink the day before so she had slept with the window open a crack. It's been hot as hell in L.A. this summer. The bedroom was in the back of the house. The killer removed the screen, leaned it against the outside of the house and then raised the window up and climbed in."

"Was there sexual assault?"

"No, it looks like she woke up and fought him. He straddled her and choked her out, killing her while trying to subdue her. Crushed trachea, a lot of bruising on the face and neck. We think that once he realized he'd killed her, he fled. Her sister slept through it in her room right across the hall."

"Then what do you have, blood?"

"No, saliva. He bit her."

From his pocket he took the two white medical evidence envelopes. One contained the swab from the bite wound, the other containing the swab from the victim's mouth. Lowell would use the exemplar from the mouth to isolate the killer's DNA from the wound. The envelopes were sealed with yellow and white tape from the coroner's office.

He handed the envelopes to Lowell but she didn't take them.

"Detective, you know this isn't how we do this. You have to follow the protocol."

"If I follow protocol it could take six months. Sarah, this isn't a killer who's going to wait six months. He -"

"Every detective who sends us DNA has an important case. They're all murders and rapes. They're all terrible crimes but we can only do what we can do. If I take yours and put it at the front of the line, who's to say the perpetrator of the case that gets bumped back won't strike again?"

"This girl's sister was sleeping right across the hall. Ten feet away. When I left the family last night, she still couldn't even speak to me. She was in shock because she knows it could've been her. She had her window open, too. These girls were very close and now one's dead."

He paused and then moved in for the kill.

"I made the family a promise, Sarah. I told them I would find this guy before he could do it again. I promised them."

"You're supposed to work the case, Detective. Not let the case work you."

"Well, sometimes it doesn't come out that way."

Bosch proffered the envelopes again and this time Lowell reluctantly took them.

"You have to understand something," she said. "I can't go back into the lab and shove everything aside. I will have to ask per -"

"Sometimes you just need to do what you know is right, Sarah. This girl died looking at her killer, probably wondering if he was going to do the same to her sister and the rest of her family."

Lowell held up her hand in a back-off gesture.

"Detective, you don't need to keep hitting me with this."

He held up his hands in surrender and leaned back and away from her. He felt the phone in his pocket start to buzz but he ignored it. He had driven seven hours to convince this woman to move his case to the front of the line. He wouldn't deviate from the effort to take a call.

"It's just that home intrusions like this are rare and all the evidence, all the indications, are that we are dealing with what we would call an apex predator. Like a shark moving through the water. This guy's going to keep on hunting and killing until we can stop him. I'm betting that the DNA you're holding there is going to link this one to other cases. You don't go through a window into a sixteen-year-old girl's room as a threshold offense. He's done this before. Get me the match, Sarah, and I'll get him."

Lowell looked down at the two envelopes. Bosch believed he had convinced her.

"Where was the bite wound?" she asked.

"On the left forearm. There is a photo in the envelope. We think it might have been a defensive wound, she tried to push the assailant away and he bit her."

She nodded.

"Detective, I'll -"

"Harry."

"Harry. I'll do my best."

"Thank you, Sarah. How long will it take?"

"I won't have anything until at least tomorrow. It will take the rest of the day just to do the sequencing. The profile will go into the computer after that. Probably tomorrow morning. I'll call you as soon as I know something."

Bosch reached into his pocket for a business card and handed it to her.

"My cell's on there. Try it first. And thank you again, Sarah."

Bosch stood up and pushed his chair back into the line. They shook hands and he left.

Once he was back in the car he checked his phone. The call he had ignored had come from Lieutenant Gandle. He waited until he was back on the freeway before returning the call.

"So?" Gandle said.

"We should know something by tomorrow."

"Good. You coming back now?"

"On my way. What's going on down there?"

"For one thing, we had a tech take a look at the AC unit. Your hunch was right on. The AC is fine, but somebody had gone into the garage and thrown the circuit breaker. That's why it wasn't working."

"Did anyone ask Mr. Gaston if -"

"Yes, we did. The side door to the garage was often left unlocked. The guy had access."

Bosch thought about this. The fact that the AC had been tampered with meant the perpetrator had not picked the Gaston house randomly in the night. The intrusion had been planned. He had probably seen Brittany or her sister somewhere, followed her home and then formulated a plan. Shut down the AC and then sit back and see if a window would be left open that night. It showed a certain amount of cunning and organization, but it also gave them a lead. Any public place where the victim and her sister could have crossed paths with a predator. There might be witnesses who saw the guy watching. There might be cameras.

"Any prints on the circuit switch?" he asked.

"Wiped clean. Just like the screen and the window. This guy's too smart to make that kind of mistake."

"If we get a match on the DNA we won't need prints."

They talked over a few other details of the investigation and then Bosch signed off. For the next five hours he worked the case in his head as he drove. The car's air-conditioner lost the battle against the heat of the day and Bosch stripped off his tie and his jacket. When his phone buzzed he almost missed the call trying to pull it out of the jacket on the seat next to him.

"Detective, it's Sarah Lowell at the DOJ lab."

"I didn't think I'd be hearing from you till tomorrow."

"Yes, well, I'm afraid I have bad news. I thought you should know right away."

"Go ahead."

"I did the preliminary screening and sequencing of the swabs you gave me. Histamine levels allowed me to isolate the saliva in the wound. I ran the sequence and it turned out to be her own DNA. It has all the same markers from the swab from her mouth. Is there any chance that you brought me the wrong swab?"

"No, I watched them collect it, seal it and mark it. It's right."

"Then the only thing I can think of is that she bit herself."

"Did you look at the photo of the wound, Sarah?"

"Yes, I did."

"Look at it again. The bite was deep. It was along the outside of her forearm, cresting the top and bottom. I guess it's possible to bite yourself there but hardly likely while fighting for your life."

"Then I don't know what to tell you, Detective. But those are my findings. I stopped the sequence."

Bosch's mind raced through the possibilities and hit something new head on.

"They were twins," he said. "Did I tell you that? The victim and her sister were twins. Does that mean they share the same DNA?"

There was a long pause before Lowell answered.

"No, they would not have the same DNA," she said. "That's urban myth."

Bosch shook his head in defeat. He couldn't explain this.

"But they would appear to in our profiling," Lowell said.

"What do you mean?"

"Twins do not share the exact same DNA. But it is very close. In terms of the DNA profiling we do in accordance with the FBI's CODIS database, we look for thirteen specific markers plus the Amel marker that shows us gender. These fourteen markers would not differentiate between twins. It would take a deeper profile. You'd have to go to several other markers."

"Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"Then do it, Sarah, and call me when you have the results."

Bosch ended the call and immediately called Lt. Gandle back.

"It was the sister," he said.

"What?"

"One twin killed the other. The DNA is going to prove it."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No, the sister did it and then the mother and father helped cover it. They made up the whole thing about the air-conditioner. They made it look like an intruder."

"Why would the sister do this? Why would the parents cover it up?"

"I don't know yet, Lieutenant. The parents said something about them sharing everything, even boyfriends sometimes. Maybe one of them got tired of sharing. And the parents? They were protecting the one kid they have left."

"And the DNA proves this?"

"Not yet, but it will. Get the interview rooms ready. We bring in mother, father and daughter and separate them. One of them will spill. I'll be there in an hour. I want the daughter. I'll talk to her."

"Okay, you got it. We'll set it up and bring them in."

Bosch closed the phone. He put his foot down on the pedal and picked up his speed. The barren land that fronted the freeway went by him in a blur. He was thinking about the reasons people kill each other.

A FINE MIST OF BLOOD

The DNA hits came in the mail, in yellow envelopes from the regional crime lab’s genetics unit. Fingerprint matches were less formal; notification usually came by e-mail. Case-to-case data hits were rare birds and were handled in yet a different manner — direct contact between the synthesizer and the submitting investigator.

Harry Bosch had a day off and was in the waiting area outside the school principal’s office when he got the call. More like a half a day off. His plan was to head downtown to the PAB after dealing with the summons from the school’s high command.

The buzzing of his phone brought an immediate response from the woman behind the gateway desk.

“There’s no cell phones in here,” she said.

“I’m not a student,” Bosch said, stating the obvious as he pulled the offending instrument from his pocket.

“Doesn’t matter. There’s no cell phones in here.”

“I’ll take it outside.”

“I won’t come out to find you. If you miss your appointment then you’ll have to reschedule, and your daughter’s situation won’t be resolved.”

“I’ll risk it. I’ll just be in the hallway, okay?”

He pushed through the door into the hallway as he connected to the call. The hallway was quiet, as it was the middle of the fourth period. The ID on the screen had said simply LAPD data but that had been enough to give Bosch a stirring of excitement.

The call was from a tech named Malek Pran. Bosch had never dealt with him and had to ask him to repeat his name twice. Pran was from Data Evaluation and Theory — known internally as the DEATH squad — which was part of a new effort by the Open-Unsolved Unit to clear cases through what was called data synthesizing.

For the past three years the DEATH squad had been digitizing archived murder books — the hard-copy investigative records — of unsolved cases, creating a massive database of easily accessible and comparable information on unsolved crimes. Suspects, witnesses, weapons, locations, word constructions — anything that an investigator thought important enough to note in an investigative record was now digitized and could be compared with other cases.

The project had actually been initiated simply to create space. The city’s records archives were bursting at the seams with acres of files and file boxes. Shifting it all to digital would make room in the cramped department.

Pran said he had a case-to-case hit. A witness listed in a cold case Bosch had submitted for synthesizing had come up in another case, also a homicide, as a witness once again. Her name was Diane Gables. Bosch’s case was from 1999 and the second case was from 2007, which was too recent to fall under the purview of the Open-Unsolved Unit.

“Who submitted the 2007 case?”

“Uh, it was out of Hollywood Division. Detective Jerry Edgar made the submission.”

Bosch almost smiled in the hallway. He went a distance back with Jerry Edgar.

“Have you talked to Edgar yet about the hit?” Bosch asked.

“No. I started with you. Do you want his contact info?”

“I already have it. What’s the vic’s name on that case?”

“Raymond Randolph, DOB six, six, sixty-one — that’s a lot of sixes. DOD July second, 2007.”

“Okay, I’ll get the rest from Edgar. You did good, Pran. This gives me something I can work with.”

Bosch disconnected and went back into the principal’s office. He had not missed his appointment. He checked his watch. He’d give it fifteen minutes, and then he’d have to start moving on the case. His daughter would have to go without her confiscated cell phone until he could get another appointment with the principal.

BEFORE CONTACTING JERRY Edgar at Hollywood Division, Bosch pulled up the files — both hard and digital — on his own case. It involved the murder of a precious-metals swindler named Roy Alan McIntyre. He had sold gold futures by phone and internet. It was the oldest story in the book: There was no gold, or not enough of it. It was a Ponzi scheme through and through and like all of them, it finally collapsed upon itself. The victims lost tens of millions. McIntyre was arrested as the mastermind, but the evidence was tenuous. A good lawyer came to his defense and was able to convince the media that McIntyre was a victim himself, a dupe for organized-crime elements that had pulled the strings on the scheme. The DA started floating a deal that would put McIntyre on probation — provided he cooperated and returned all the money he still had access to. But word leaked about the impending deal, and hundreds of the scam’s victims organized to oppose it. Before the whole thing went to court, McIntyre was murdered in the garage under the Westwood condominium tower where he lived. Shot once between the eyes, his body found on the concrete next to the open door of his car.

The crime scene was clean; not even a shell casing from the nine-millimeter bullet that had killed him was recovered. The investigators had no physical evidence and a list of possible suspects that numbered in the hundreds. The killing looked like a hit. It could have been McIntyre’s unsavory backers in the gold scam or it could have been any of the investors who’d gotten ripped off. The only bright spot was that there was a witness. She was Diane Gables, a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker who happened to be driving by McIntyre’s condo on her way home from work. She’d reported seeing a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun at his side run from the garage and jump into the passenger seat of a black SUV waiting in front. Panicked by the sight of the gun, she didn’t get an exact make or model of the SUV or its license-plate number. She’d pulled to the side of the road rather than following the vehicle as it sped off.

Bosch had not interviewed Gables when he had reevaluated the case in the Open-Unsolved Unit. He had simply reviewed the file and submitted it to the DEATH squad. Now, of course, he would be talking to her.

He picked the phone up and dialed a number from memory. Jerry Edgar was at his desk.

“It’s me — Bosch. Looks like we’re going to be working together again.”

“Sounds good to me, Harry. What’ve you got?”

DIANE GABLES’S CURRENT address, obtained through the DMV, was in Studio City. Edgar drove while Bosch looked through the file on the 2007 case. It involved the murder of a man who had been awaiting trial for raping a seventeen-year-old girl who had knocked on his door to sell him candy bars as part of a fundraiser for a school trip to Washington, DC.

As Bosch read through the murder book, he remembered the case. It had been in the news because the circumstances suggested it had been a crime of vigilante justice by someone who was not willing to wait for Raymond Randolph to go on trial. Randolph was intending to mount a defense that would acknowledge that he’d had sexual intercourse with the girl but state that it was consensual. He planned to claim that the victim offered him sex in exchange for his buying her whole carton of candy bars.

The forty-six-year-old Randolph was found in the single-car garage behind his bungalow on Orange Grove, south of Sunset. He had been on his knees when he was shot twice in the back of the head.

The crime scene was clean, but it was a hot day in July and a neighbor who had her windows open because of a broken air conditioner heard the two shots, followed by the high-revving and rapid departure of a vehicle in the street. She called 911, which brought a near-immediate response from the police at Hollywood Station three blocks away and also served to peg the time of the murder almost to the minute.

Jerry Edgar was the lead investigator on the case. While obvious suspicion focused on the family and friends of the rape victim, Edgar cast a wide net — Bosch took some pride in seeing that — and in doing so came across Diane Gables. Two blocks from the Randolph home was an intersection controlled by a traffic signal and equipped with a camera that photographed vehicles that ran the red light. The camera took a double photo — one shot of the vehicle’s license plate, and one shot of the person behind the wheel. This was done so that when the traffic citation was sent to the vehicle’s owner, he or she could determine who’d been behind the wheel when the infraction occurred.

Diane Gables was photographed in her Lexus driving through the red light in the same minute as the 911 call reporting the gunshots was made. The photograph and registration was obtained from the DMV the day after the murder and Gables, now thirty-seven, was interviewed by Edgar and his partner, Detective Manuel Soto. She was then dismissed as both a possible suspect and a witness.

“So, how well do you remember this interview?” Bosch asked.

“I remember it because she was a real looker,” Edgar said. “You always remember the lookers.”

“According to the book, you interviewed her and dropped her. How come? Why so fast?”

“She and her story checked out. Keep going. It’s in there.”

Bosch found the interview summary and scanned it. Gables had told Edgar and Soto that she had been cruising through the neighborhood after filling out a crime report at the nearby Hollywood Station on Wilcox. Her Lexus had been damaged by a hit-and-run driver the night before while parked on the street outside a restaurant on Franklin. In order to apply for insurance coverage on the repairs, she had to file a police report. After stopping at the station, she was running late for work and went through the light on what she was thought was a yellow signal. The camera said otherwise.

“So she had filed the report?” Bosch asked.

“She had indeed. She checked out. And that’s what makes me think we’re dealing with just a coincidence here, Harry.”

Bosch nodded but continued to grind it down inside. He didn’t like coincidences. He didn’t believe in them.

“You checked her work too?”

“Soto did. Confirmed her position and that she was indeed late to work on the day of the killing. She had called ahead and said she was running late because she had been at the police station. She called her boss.”

“What about the restaurant? I don’t see it in here.”

“Then I probably didn’t have that information.”

“So you never checked it.”

“You mean did I check to see if she ate there the night before the murder? No, Harry, I didn’t and that’s a bullshit question. She was —”

“It’s just that if she was setting up a cover story, she could’ve crunched her own car and —”

“Come on, Harry. You’re kidding me, right?”

“I don’t know. We’re still going to talk to her.”

“I know that, Harry. I’ve known that since you called. You’re going to have to see for yourself. Just like always. So just tell me how you want to go in, rattlesnake or cobra?”

Bosch considered for a moment, remembering the code they’d used back when they were partners. A rattlesnake interview was when you shook your tail and hissed. It was confrontational and useful for getting immediate reactions. Going cobra was the quiet approach. You’d slowly move in, get close, and then strike.

“Let’s go cobra.”

“You got it.”

DIANE GABLES WASN’T home. They had timed their arrival for 5:30 p.m., figuring that with the stock market closing at 1:00 p.m., Gables would easily have finished work for the day.

“What do you want to do?” Edgar said as they stood at the door.

“Go back to the car. Wait awhile.”

Back in the car, they talked about old cases and detective bureau pranks. Edgar revealed that it had been he who had cut ads for penile-enhancement surgery out of the sports pages and slipped them into an officious lieutenant’s jacket pocket while it had been hanging on a rack in his office. The lieutenant had subsequently mounted an investigation focused squarely on Bosch.

“Now you tell me,” Bosch said. “Pounds tried to bust me to burglary for that one.”

Edgar was a clapper. He backed his laughter with his own applause but cut the display short when Bosch pointed through the windshield.

“There she is.”

A late-model Range Rover pulled into the driveway.

Bosch and Edgar got out and crossed the front lawn to meet Gables as she took the stone path from the driveway to her front door. Bosch saw her recognize Edgar, even after five years, and saw her eyes immediately start scanning, going from the front door of her house to the street and the houses of her neighbors. Her head didn’t move, only her eyes, and Bosch recognized it as a tell. Fight or flight. It might have been a natural reaction for a woman with two strange men approaching her, but Bosch didn’t think that was the situation. He had seen the recognition in her eyes when she looked at Edgar. A pulse of electricity began moving in his blood.

“Ms. Gables,” Edgar said. “Jerry Edgar. You remember me?”

As planned, Edgar was taking the lead before passing it off to Bosch.

Gables paused on the path. She was carrying a stylish red leather briefcase. She acted as though she were trying to place Edgar’s face, and then she smiled.

“Of course, Detective. How are you?”

“I’m fine. You must have a very good memory.”

“Well, it’s not every day that you meet a real live detective. Is this coincidence or …”

“Not a coincidence. I’m with Detective Bosch here and we would like to ask you a few questions about the Randolph case, if you don’t mind.”

“It was so long ago.”

“Five years,” Bosch said, asserting himself now. “But it’s still an open case.”

She registered the information and then nodded.

“Well, it’s been a long day. I start at six in the morning, when the market opens. Could we —”

Bosch cut her off. “I start at six too, but not because of the stock market.”

He wasn’t backing down.

“Then fine, you’re welcome to come in,” she said. “But I don’t know what help I can be after so long. I didn’t really think I was much help five years ago. I didn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anything. I just happened to be in the neighborhood after I was at the police station.”

“We’re investigating the case again,” Bosch said. “And we need to talk to everybody we talked to five years ago.”

“Well, like I said, come on in.”

She unlocked the front door and entered first, greeted by the beeping of an alarm warning. She quickly punched a four-digit combination into an alarm-control box on the wall. Bosch and Edgar stepped in behind her and she ushered them into the living room.

“Why don’t you gentlemen have a seat? I’m going to put my things down and be right back out. Would either of you like something to drink?”

“I’ll take a bottle of water if you got it,” Edgar said.

“I’m fine,” Bosch said.

“You know what?” Edgar said quickly. “I’m fine too.”

Gables glanced at Bosch and seemed to register that he was the power in the room. She said she’d be right back.

After she was gone Bosch looked around the room. It was a basic living room setup with a couch and two chairs surrounding a glass-topped coffee table. One wall was made up entirely of built-in bookshelves, all filled with what looked by their titles to be crime novels. He noticed there were no personal displays. No framed photographs anywhere.

They remained standing until Gables came back and pointed them to the couch. She took a chair directly across the table from them.

“Now, what can I tell you? Frankly, I forgot the whole incident.”

“But you remembered Detective Edgar. I could tell.”

“Yes, but seeing him out of context, I knew I recognized him but I could not remember from where.”

According to the DMV, Gables was now forty-one years old. And Edgar had been right: She was a looker, attractive in a professional sort of way. A short, no-nonsense cut to her brown hair. Slim, athletic build. She sat straight and looked straight at one or the other of them, no longer scanning because she was inside her comfort zone. Still, there were tells: Bosch knew through his training in interview techniques that normal eye contact between individuals lasted an average of three seconds, yet each time Gables looked at Bosch, she held his eyes a good ten seconds. That was a sign of stress.

“I was rereading the reports,” Bosch said. “They included your explanation for being in the area — you were at the police station filling out a report.”

“That’s right.”

“It didn’t say, though, where your car was when it got damaged the night before.”

“I had been at a restaurant on Franklin. I told them that. And when I came out after, the back taillight was smashed and the paint scraped.”

“You didn’t call the police then?”

“No, I didn’t. No one was there. It was a hit-and-run; they didn’t even leave a note on the car. They just took off and I thought I was out of luck.”

“What was the name of the restaurant?”

“I can’t remember — oh, it was Birds. I love the roasted chicken.”

Bosch nodded. He knew the place and the roasted chicken.

“So what made you come back to Hollywood the next day and file the report on the hit-and-run?”

“I called my insurance company first thing in the morning and they said I needed it if I wanted to file a claim to cover the damages.”

Bosch was covering ground that was already in the reports. He was looking for variations, changes. Stories told five years apart often had inconsistencies and contradictions. But Gables wasn’t changing the narrative at all.

“When you drove by Orange Grove, you heard no shots or anything like that?”

“No, nothing. I had my windows up.”

“And you were driving fast.”

“Yes, I was going to be late for work.”

“Now, when Detective Edgar came to see you, was that unsettling?”

“Unsettling? Well, yes, I guess so, until I realized what he was there for, and of course I knew I had nothing to do with it.”

“Was it the first time you’d ever encountered a detective or the police like that? You know, on a murder case.”

“Yes, it was very unusual. To say the least. Not a normal part of my life.”

She shook her shoulders as if to intimate a shiver, imply that police and murder investigations were foreign to her. Bosch stared at her for a long moment. She had either forgotten about seeing the armed man with a ski mask coming out of the garage where Roy Alan McIntyre was murdered, or she was lying.

Bosch thought the latter. He thought that Diane Gables was a killer.

“How do you pick them?” he asked.

She turned directly toward him, her eyes locking on his.

“Pick what?”

Bosch paused, squeezing the most out of her stare and the moment.

“The stocks you recommend to people,” he said.

She broke her eyes away and looked at Edgar.

“Due diligence,” she said. “Careful analysis and prognostication. Then, I have to say, I throw in my hunches. You gentlemen use hunches, don’t you?”

“Every day,” Bosch said.

THEY WERE SILENT for a while as they drove away. Bosch thought about the carefully worded answers Gables had given. He was feeling stronger about his hunch every minute.

“What do you think?” Edgar finally asked.

“I think it’s her.”

“How can you say that? She didn’t make a single false move in there.”

“Yes, she did. Her eyes gave her away.”

“Oh, come on, Harry. You’re saying you know she’s a stone-cold killer because you can read it in her eyes?”

“Pretty much. She also lied. She didn’t mention the case in 1999 because she thought we didn’t know about it. She didn’t want us going down that path, so she lied and said you were the only detective she’d ever met.”

“At best, that’s a lie by omission. Weak, Harry.”

“A lie is a lie. Nothing weak about it. She was hiding it from us and there’s only one reason to do that. I want to get inside her house. She’s gotta have a place where she studies and plans these things.”

“So you think she’s a pro? A gun for hire?”

“Maybe; I don’t know. Maybe she reads the paper and picks her targets, people she thinks need killing. Maybe she’s on some kind of vigilante trip. Dark justice and all of that.”

“A regular angel of vengeance. Sounds like a comic book, man.”

“If we get inside that place, we’ll know.”

Edgar drove silently while he composed a response. Bosch knew what was coming before he said it.

“Harry, I’m just not seeing it. I respect your hunch, man, I have seen that come through more than once. But there ain’t enough here. And if I don’t see it, then there’s no judge that’s going to give you a warrant to go back in there.”

Bosch took his time answering. He was grinding things down, coming up with a plan.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he finally said.

TWO DAYS LATER at 9:00 a.m., Bosch pulled up to Diane Gables’s house. The Range Rover was not in the driveway. He got out and went to the front door. After two loud knocks went unanswered he walked around the house to the back door.

He knocked again. When there was no reply, he removed a set of lock picks that he kept behind his badge in his leather wallet and went to work on the dead bolt. It took him six minutes to open the door. He was greeted by the beeping of the burglar alarm. He located the box on the wall to the left of the back door and punched in the four numbers he had seen Gables enter at the front door two evenings before. The beeping stopped. Bosch was in. He left the door open and started looking around the house.

It was a post–World War II ranch house. Bosch had been in a thousand of them over the years and all the investigations. After a quick survey of the entire house he started his search in a bedroom that had been converted to a home office. There was a desk and a row of file cabinets along the wall where a bed would have been. There was a line of windows over the cabinets.

There was also a metal locker with a padlock on it. Bosch opened the venetian blinds over the file cabinets, and light came into the room. He moved to the metal locker and started there, pulling his picks out once again.

He knelt on the floor so he could see the lock closely. It turned out to be a three-pin breeze, taking less than a minute for him to open. A moment after the hasp snapped free he heard a voice come from behind him.

“Detective, don’t move.”

Bosch froze for a moment. He recognized the voice. Diane Gables. She had known he would come back. He slowly started to raise his hands, holding his fingers close together so he could hide the picks between them.

“Easy,” Gables commanded. “If you attempt to reach for your weapon I will put two bullets into your skull. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Can I stand up? My knees aren’t what they once were.”

“Slowly. Your hands always in my sight line.”

“Absolutely.”

Bosch started to get up slowly, turning toward her at the same time. She was pointing a handgun with a suppressor attached to the barrel.

“Easy,” he said. “Just take it easy here.”

“No, you take it easy. I could shoot you where you stand and be within my rights.”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, that’s not true. You know I’m a cop.”

“Yeah, a rogue cop. What did you think you were going to find here?”

“Evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Randolph and McIntyre. Maybe others. You killed them.”

“And, what, you thought I’d just keep the evidence around? Hide it in a locker in my home?”

“Something like that. Can I sit down?”

“The chair behind the desk. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Bosch slowly sat down. She was still standing in the doorway. He now had 60 percent of his body shielded by the desk. He had his back to the file cabinets. The light was coming in from behind and above him. He noticed she had now lowered the muzzle to point at his chest. This was good, though from this range he doubted the Kevlar would completely stop a bullet from a nine-millimeter, even with the suppressor slowing it down. He kept his hands up and close to his face.

“So now what?” he asked.

“So now you tell me what you think you’ve got on me.”

Bosch shook his head as if to say Not much. “You lied. The other day. You didn’t mention the McIntyre case. You didn’t want us linking the cases through you. The trouble is we already had.”

“And that’s it? Are you kidding me?”

“That’s it. Till now.”

He nodded at her weapon. It seemed to confirm all hunches.

“So, without a real case and the search warrant to go with it, of course you decided to break in here to see what you could find.”

“Not exactly.”

“We have a problem, Detective Bosch.”

“No, you have the problem. You’re a killer and I’m onto you. Put the weapon down. You’re under arrest.”

She laughed and waggled the gun in her hand.

“You forget one thing. I have the gun.”

“But you won’t use it. You don’t kill people like me. You kill the abusers, the predators.”

“I could make an exception. You’ve broken the law by breaking in here. There are no gray areas. Who knows, maybe you came to plant evidence here, not find it. Maybe you are like them.”

Bosch started lowering his hands to the desktop.

“Be careful, Detective.”

“I’m tired of holding them up. And I know you’re not going to shoot me. It’s not part of your program.”

“I told you, programs change.”

“How do you pick them?”

She stared at him a long time, then finally answered.

“They pick themselves. They deserve what they get.”

“No judge, no jury. Just you.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t wished you could do the same thing.”

“Sure, on occasion. But there are rules. We don’t live by them, then where does it all go?”

“Right here, I guess. What am I going to do about you?”

“Nothing. You kill me and you know it’s over. You’ll be like one of them — the abusers and the predators. Put the gun down.”

She took two steps into the room. The muzzle came up toward his face. Bosch saw that deadly black eye rising in slow motion.

“You’re wearing a vest, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“I could see it in your eyes. The fear comes up when the gun comes up.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I’m not afraid. You won’t shoot me.”

“I still see fear.”

“Not for me. It’s for you. How many have there been?”

She paused, maybe to decide what to tell him, or maybe just to decide what to do. Or maybe she was stuck on his answer about the fear.

“More than you’ll ever know. More than anybody will ever know. Look, I’m sorry, you know?”

“About what?”

“About there being only one real way out of this. For me.”

The muzzle steadied, its aim at his eyes.

“Before you pull that trigger, can I show you something?”

“It won’t matter.”

“I think it will. It’s in my inside jacket pocket.”

She frowned, then made a signal with the gun.

“Show me your wrists. Where’s your watch?”

Bosch raised his hands and his jacket sleeves came down, showing his watch on his right wrist. He was left-handed.

“Okay, take out whatever it is you need to show me with your right hand. Slowly, Detective, slowly.”

“You got it.”

Bosch reached in and with great deliberation pulled out the folded document. He handed it across the desk to her.

“Just put it down and then lean away.”

He followed her instructions. She waited for him to move back and then picked up the document. With one hand she unfolded it and took a glance, taking her eyes off Bosch for no more than a millisecond.

“I’m not going to be able to read it. What is it?”

“It’s a no-knock search warrant. I have broken no law by being here. I’m not one of them.”

She stared at him for a silent thirty seconds and then finally smirked.

“You have to be kidding me. What judge would sign such a search warrant? You had zero probable cause.”

“I had your lies and your proximity to two murders. And I had Judge Oscar Ortiz — you remember him?”

“Who is he?”

“Back in 1999 he had the McIntyre case. But you took it away from him when you executed McIntyre. Getting him to sign this search warrant wasn’t hard once I reminded him about the case.”

Anger worked into her face. The muzzle started to come up again.

“All I have to say is one word,” Bosch said. “A one-syllable word.”

“And what?”

“And you’re dead.”

She froze, and slowly her eyes rose from Bosch’s face to the windows over the file cabinets.

“You opened the blinds,” she said.

“Yes.”

Bosch studied the two red laser dots that had played on her face since she had entered the room, one high on her forehead, the other on her chin. Bosch knew that the lasers did not account for bullet drop, but the SWAT sharpshooters on the roof of the house across the street did. The chin dot was the heart shot.

Gables seemed frozen, unable to choose whether to live or die.

“There’s a lot you could tell us,” he said. “We could learn from you. Why don’t you just put the gun down and we can get started.”

He slowly started to lean forward, raising his left hand to take the gun.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

She brought the muzzle up but he didn’t say the word. He didn’t think she’d shoot.

There were three sounds in immediate succession: The breaking of glass as the bullet passed through the window. A sound like an ice cream cone dropping on the sidewalk as the bullet passed through her chest. And then the thock of the slug hitting the door frame behind her.

A fine mist of blood started to fill the room.

Gables took a step backward and looked down at her chest as her arms dropped to her sides. The gun made a dull sound when it hit the carpet.

She glanced up at Bosch with a confused look. In a strained voice she asked her last question.

“What was the word?”

She then dropped to the floor.

Staying below the level of the file cabinets, Bosch left the desk and came around to her on the floor. He slid the gun out of reach and looked down at her eyes. He knew there was nothing he could do. The bullet had exploded her heart.

“You bastards!” he yelled. “I didn’t say it! I didn’t say the word!”

Gables closed her eyes and Bosch thought she was gone.

“We’re clear!” he said. “Suspect is ten-seven. Repeat, suspect is ten-seven. Weapons, stand down.”

He started to get up but saw that Gables had opened her eyes.

“Nine,” she whispered, blood coming up on her lips.

Bosch leaned down to her.

“What?”

“I killed nine.”

She nodded and then closed her eyes again. He knew that this time she was gone, but he nodded anyway.

THE PERFECT TRIANGLE

IT WAS THE first time I had ever had a client conference in which the client was naked - and not only that, but trying to sit on my lap.

However, it had been Linda Sandoval who had insisted on the time and place to meet. She was the one who got naked, not me. We were in a privacy booth at the Snake Pit North in Van Nuys. Deep down I knew it might come to something like this - her getting naked. It was probably why I agreed to meet her in the first place.

"Linda, please," I said, gently pushing her away. "Sit over there and I'll sit here and we'll keep talking. And please put your clothes back on."

She sat down on the changing stool in the booth's corner and crossed her legs. I was maybe three feet away from her but could still pick up her scent of sweat and orange-blossom perfume.

"I can't," she said.

"You can't? What are you talking about? Sure you can."

"No, if my clothes are on I'm not making money. Tommy will see me and he'll fine me."

"Who's Tommy?"

"The manager. He watches us."

"In here? I thought this was a privacy booth."

I looked around. I didn't see any cameras, but one wall of the booth was a mirror.

"Behind the mirror?"

"Probably. I know he knows what goes on in here."

"Jeez, you can't even trust the privacy booths in a strip club. But look, it doesn't matter. If the California Bar heard this was how I conduct client conferences, I'd get suspended again in two seconds. You should remember that yourself when you start practicing. The Bar is like Tommy, always watching."

"Don't worry, I'll never be in a place like this again - if I get to practice."

She frowned at the reminder of her situation.

"Don't worry. I'll get it handled. One way or another, it'll work out. The information you've given me should help a lot. I'll crack the statutes and check it out tonight."

"Good. I hope so, Mick. By the way, what were you suspended for before? I didn't know about that when I hired you."

"It's a long story and it was a long time ago. Just put your clothes on, and if Tommy gets upset I'll talk to him. You must have guys that come in here and just want to talk, don't you?"

"Yeah, but they still have to pay."

"Well, I'm not paying. You're paying me. This was a bad idea, meeting here."

I picked up her G-string and silk camisole off the floor and tossed them to her. She put a false pout on her face and started getting dressed. I took one last look at her surgically enhanced breasts before they disappeared under the leopard-skin camisole. I imagined her standing before a jury someday and thought she was going to do very well once she got out of law school.

"How much will this cost me?" she asked.

"Twenty-five hundred for starters payable right now. I can take a check or credit card. Then I go see Seiver tomorrow, and if it ends there, that will be it. If it goes further, then you pay as you go. Just like it works in here."

She stood up to pull on the G-string. Her pubic hair was shaved and cropped into a dark triangle no bigger than a matchbook .There was glitter dust in it so the stage lights would make that perfect triangle glow.

"You sure you don't want to take it in trade?" she asked.

"Sorry, darling. A man's gotta eat."

Once she snapped the G-string into place in the back, she stepped toward me and leaned down in an oft-practiced move that made her brown curls tumble over my shoulders.

"A man's gotta eat pussy, too," she whispered in my ear.

"Well, that, too. But I still think I'll take the money this time."

"You don't know what you're missing."

She stood up and raised her right foot, removing her spike. She wobbled for a moment but then steadied herself on one foot. From the toe of her shoe she pulled out a fold of cash. It was all hundred-dollar bills. She counted out twenty-five and gave them to me.

"I'll write you out a receipt. Did you make all of that tonight?"

"And then some."

I shook my head.

"You're going in the wrong direction if you're going to give this up to practice law."

"Doesn't matter. I need something to fall back on. I'm about to hit the big three-oh. And when you lose it, it goes fast."

I appraised her flat stomach and thin hips, and the agility with which she raised her leg and put her spike back on.

"I don't think you're losing anything."

"You're sweet. But it's a young girl's game."

She bent over and kissed me on the cheek.

"You know what?" she said. "I bet it's the first time in the history of this place that a girl paid a guy off in a privacy booth."

I smiled and took two of my hundreds and slid them under the garter on her thigh.

"There. A professional discount. You being in law school and all."

She quickly slid back onto my lap and bounced a few times.

"Thank you, Sweetie. That'll make Tommy happy. But are you sure I can't do something for you? I think you're feeling the urge."

She bounced up and down a couple more times centered on me. She was feeling my urge all right.

"I'm glad Tommy'll be happy. But I better go now."

Late the next morning, I walked into Dean Seiver's office in the district attorney's office in the Santa Monica Courthouse annex. I carried my briefcase in one hand and a bag from Jerry's Deli in the other. More important than the files I had in my case were the sandwiches I had in the bag. Brisket on toasted poppy-seed bagels. This was what we always ate. When I came to Seiver about a case, I always came late in the morning and I always brought lunch.

Seiver was a lifer who had always called them like he saw them, regardless of the whims of politics and public morals. This explained why after twenty-two years in the DA's office he was still filing misdemeanors off cases spawned in the unincorporated areas in the west county.

This is also why we were friends. Dean Seiver still called them like he saw them.

I had not been here in a while but his office had not changed a bit. He had so many cases and so many files stacked on and in front of his desk that they created a solid wall that he sat behind. He looked up and peered over the top at me.

"Well, well, well. Mickey Haller."

I reached over the wall and put the bag down on the small workspace he kept clear.

"The usual," I said.

He didn't touch the bag. He leaned back and looked at it as if it was a suspicious package.

"The usual?" he said. "That implies routine, Haller. But this is no routine. I haven't seen you in at least a year. Where you been?"

"Busy - and trying to keep away from misdemeanors. They don't pay."

I sat down on the chair on the visitor's side of his desk. The wall of files cut off most of his face. I could only see his eyes. Finally he relented and leaned forward and I heard him open the bag. Soon a wrapped sandwich was handed over the wall to me. Then a napkin. Then a can of soda. Seiver's head then dropped down out of sight when he leaned into the first bite of his sandwich.

"So your office called," he said after taking some time to chew and swallow. "You're representing one Linda Sandoval on an indecent exposure and you want to talk about a dispo before I even file it. Remember, Haller, I have sixty days to file and I haven't used half of them. But I'm always open to a dispo."

"Actually, no dispo. I want to talk about making the case go away. Completely. Before it's filed."

Seiver's head came up sharply and he looked at me.

"This chick was caught completely naked on Broad Beach. She's an exhibitionist, Haller. It's a slam-bang conviction. Why would I make it go away? Oh, wait, don't tell me. I get it. The sandwich was really a bribe. You're working with the FBI in the latest investigation into corruption of the Justice system. I didn't know it was called Operation Brisket."

I smiled but also shook my head.

"Open your shirt," Seiver said. "Let me see the wire."

"Settle down, Seiver. Let me ask you, did you pull the case after my office called?"

"I did indeed."

"Did you read the deputy's arrest report and did you compare the information to the statute?"

His eyebrows came together in curiosity.

"I read the arrest report. The statute is up here."

He tapped a finger on his temple.

"Then you know that under the statute the deputy must visually observe the trespass of the law in order to make an arrest for indecent exposure."

"I know that, Haller. He did. Says right in the report that she came out of the water completely naked. Completely, Mick. That means she didn't have any clothes on. I think it's safe to say that this academy-trained deputy had the skill to notice this distinction. And by the way, do you know how cold the Pacific is right now? Do you have any idea what that would do to a woman's nipples?"

"Irrelevant, but I get the picture. But you miss the point. Read the report again. No, wait. I have it right here. I'll read it to you."

I took the first bite of my own sandwich, and while chewing it pulled the file from my case. Once I swallowed I read aloud the arrest summary, which I had highlighted when I had reviewed the case file the day before.

"Suspect Linda Sandoval, twenty-nine years of age, was in the water when responding deputy responded to call. Multiple witnesses pointed her out. R/D told suspect to come out of the water and suspect refused several times. R/D finally enlisted help of lifeguards Kennedy and Valdez and suspect was physically removed from the ocean where she was confirmed as completely naked. Suspect willingly dressed at this time and was arrested and transported. Suspect was verbally abusive toward R/D at the time of her arrest and during transport."

That was all I had highlighted but it was enough.

"I've got the same thing right here, Haller. Looks like slam-dunk material to me. By the way, did you see that under occupation on the arrest sheet she put down 'exotic dancer?' She's a stripper and she was out there getting rid of her tan lines and she broke the law."

"Her occupation isn't germane to the filing and you might want to look again at the report there, Einstein. The crime of indecent exposure was created by your own deputy sheriff."

"What are you talking about?"

"It doesn't matter if multiple witnesses pointed her out to him or that they saw her frolicking naked in the surf. Under the statute, the deputy can't make the arrest based on witness testimony. The arresting officer must observe the actual infraction to make the arrest. Pull down the book and check it out."

"I don't need the book. The deputy clearly met the threshold."

"Uh-uh. He clearly didn't observe the infraction until he had those two brave lifeguards pull her out of the water. He clearly created the crime and then arrested her."

"What are you talking about, an entrapment defense? Is this a joke?"

"It's not entrapment but it's not a valid arrest. The deputy created the crime and that makes it an illegal arrest. He also humiliated her by having her dragged out of the water and put on public display. I think she's probably got cause for civil action against the county."

"Is that a negotiating ploy? Public display? She's a stripper, for God's sake. This is ridic-"

He stopped midsentence as he realized I was right about the deputy creating the trespass upon the law. His head dropped down out of sight, but I don't think it was to take another bite of his sandwich. He was reading the arrest report for himself and seeing what I was explaining to him. I waited him out and finally he spoke.

"She's a stripper, what's she care? Maybe if you take the conviction and then run an appeal on it you would get some media and it would be good for business. Have her plead nolo pending the appeal, and meantime I'll make sure she only gets a slap on the wrist. But no civil action. That's the deal."

I shook my head but he couldn't see it.

"Can't do it, Deano. She's a stripper but she's also second year law at USC. So she can't take the hit on her record and gamble on an appeal. Every law firm runs background checks. She can't go in with a ding on her record. In some states she'd never be allowed to take the bar or practice. In some states she'd even have to register as a sex offender because of this."

"Then what's she doing stripping? She should be clerking somewhere."

"USC's goddamn expensive and she's paying her own way. Works the pole four nights a week. You'd have to see her to believe this, but she makes about ten times more stripping than she would clerking."

I momentarily thought about Linda Sandoval and the perfect triangle moving in rhythm on the stage. I had regretted not taking her up on her offer. I was sure I always would.

"Then she's going to make more stripping than she will practicing law," Seiver said, snapping me back to reality.

"You're stalling, Dean. What are you going to do?"

"You just want the whole thing to go away, huh?"

I nodded.

"It's a bad arrest," I said. "You refuse to file it and everybody wins. My client's record is clean and the integrity of the justice system is intact."

"Don't make me laugh. I could still go ahead with it and tie her up in appeals until she graduates."

"But you're a fair and decent guy and you know it's a bad arrest. That's why I came to you."

"Where's she work and what name does she dance under?"

"One of the Road Saints' places up in the Valley. Her professional name is Harmony."

"Of course it is. Look, Haller, things have changed since the last time you deigned to visit me. I'm restricted in what I can do here."

"Bullshit. You're the supervisor. You can do what you want. You always have."

"Actually, no. It's all about the budget now. Under some formula some genius put together at county, our budget now rises and falls with the number of cases we prosecute. So that edict resulted in an internal edict from on high which takes away my discretion. I cannot kick a case without approval from downtown. Because a nol-pros case doesn't get counted in the budget."

This sort of logic and practice did not surprise me, yet it surprised me to be confronted with it by Seiver. He had never been a company man.

"You're saying you cannot drop this case without approval because it would cost your department money from the county."

"Exactly."

"And what that means is that the interest of justice takes a backseat to budgetary considerations. My client must be illegally charged first, in order to satisfy some bureaucrat in the budget office, before you are then allowed to step in and drop the charge. Meantime, she's got an arrest on her record that may prevent or impede her eventual practice of law."

"No, I didn't say that."

"I'm paraphrasing."

"I still didn't say that last part."

"Sounded like it to me."

"No, I told you what the procedure is now. Technically, I don't have prefiling discretion in a case like this. Yes, I would have to file the case and then drop it. And, yes, we both know that the charge, no matter what the outcome of the case, will stay on her record forever."

I realized he was trying to tell me something.

"But you have an alternate plan," I prompted.

"Of course I do, Haller."

He stood up and moved what was left of his sandwich from the clear spot on his desk.

"Hold this, Haller."

I stood up and he handed me a file with the name Linda Sandoval on the tab. He then stepped up onto his desk chair and used it as a ladder to step up onto the clear spot of his desk.

"What are you doing, Seiver? Looking for a spot to tie the noose? That's not an alternative."

He laughed but didn't answer. He reached up and used both hands to push one of the tiles in the drop ceiling up and over. He reached a hand down to me and I gave him the file. He put it up into the space above the ceiling, then pulled the lightweight tile back into place.

Seiver got down and slapped the dust off his hands.

"There," he said.

"What did you just do?"

"The file is lost. The case won't be filed. Time will run out and then it will be too late for it to be filed. You come back in after the sixty days are up and get the arrest expunged. Harmony's record is clean by the time she takes the bar exam. If something comes up or the deputy asks questions, I say I never saw the file. Lost in transit from Malibu."

I nodded. It would work. The rules had changed but not Dean Seiver. I had to laugh.

"So that's what passes for discretion now."

"I call it Seiver's pretrial intervention."

"How many files you have up there, man?"

"A lot. In fact, tell Harmony to put some clothes on, get down on her knees, and pray to the stripper gods that the ceiling doesn't fall before her sixty days are run. 'Cause when the sky falls in here, then Chicken Little will have some 'splaining to do. I'll probably need a job when that happens."

We both looked up at the ceiling with a sense of apprehension. I wondered how many files the ceiling could hold before Seiver's pretrial intervention program came crashing down.

"Let's finish our sandwiches and not worry about it," Seiver finally said.

"Okay."

We resumed our positions on either side of the wall of files.

It was early evening and still bright outside. When I walked into the Snake Pit North I had to pause for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. When they did, I saw my client Harmony was on the main stage, her perfect triangle glittering in the spotlights. She moved with a natural rhythm that was as entrancing as her naked body. No tattoos as distraction. Just her, pure and beautiful.

That's why I had come. I could have delivered the good news by phone and been done with it. Said, See you around the courthouse in a year. But I had to see her one more time. Her body had left a memory imprint on me in the privacy booth. And I had started dreaming about being with her now that the case was closed and it could be argued - before the Bar if necessary - that she was no longer a client. Bar or no Bar, I wanted her. There was something intoxicating about having the smartest girl in the room moving up and down on you.

The song was an old one, "Sweet Child o' Mine," and had just started. I stood in the crowd and just watched and after a while she saw me and gave me the nod without breaking her rhythm. It might be a young girl's game but I thought she could give lessons for the next twenty years if need be. She moved with a rhythm that seemed to push the music, not the other way around.

I looked around and found an open bar table along the back wall. I sat down and watched Harmony dance until the song ended. While another dancer took the next song, she stood by the stairs at the back of the stage and put her orange G-string and zebra-striped camisole back on. The garter around her thigh was flowered with money - ones, fives, tens, and twenties. She walked down the steps, stopped at a few tables to kiss heavy donors on the cheek, and then came to me.

"Hello, Counselor. Do you have news for me?"

She took the other stool at the table.

"I sure do," I said. "The news is that your research was superb and your strategy excellent. The prosecutor bought it. He bought the whole thing."

She held still for a moment, as if basking in some unseen glow.

"What exactly is the disposition of the case?"

"It goes away. Completely."

"What about the record of my arrest?"

"I go back in a couple months from now and expunge it. There will be no record."

"Wow. I'm good."

"You sure are. And don't forget I had a little part to play in it, too."

"Thanks, Mickey. You just made my night."

"Yeah, well, I was hoping you could make mine."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I was thinking about what you said last night."

"About what?"

"About a man needing to eat pussy."

She smiled in that way that all women have, that way that says it isn't going to happen.

"That was last night, Mickey. Tonight it's a whole new world."

She slid off the stool and came around the table to me. She kissed me on the cheek the way I had just seen her kiss the big donors, the schmucks who had put twenty-dollar bills in her garter.

"Take care, baby," she said.

She started to glide away from the table.

"Wait a minute. What about the privacy booth? I thought maybe we could go back there . . . "

She looked back at me.

"It takes money to go back there, sugar."

"I still have the money you gave me last night "

She paused for a moment, her face hard in the red light bouncing off the mirrors in the club.

"Okay. Then let's go make Tommy happy."

She came back and took hold of my tie. She led me toward the back rooms and the whole way there I thought that there was no doubt that she was going to be a better lawyer than she was a stripper. One day she was going to be a killer in court.

AFTER MIDNIGHT

He hated the job but loved the drive home at night. The streets were always empty and a lot of the time shiny from rain. Steam would rise like intrigue off the asphalt. Just like in the movies, the old black and whites his father liked to watch on the tube. It seemed as though the city did not even begin to cool off until this time, until after midnight. Cruising along the beach with the windows down he would always encounter stragglers. Girls older than he but still just girls, making their way home or to last call at the fast bar on the circuit. Some would flag him down, ask for a ride. Sometimes he would stop and oblige, the thrift of being with a stranger smelling of beer and suntan oil in the dark overcoming the potential of danger - and embarrassment. They were always surprised at how young he was. How young he looked. Some of them even laughed, thought he was thirteen years old and out joyriding in a stolen car.

At the end of the beach cruise he would turn inland and head over the drawbridge and toward home. Toward a shower and bed, maybe a talk with the old man if he was still awake and sober.

It was coming over the drawbridge and heading home one night when he encountered the running man. The boy had worked a double shift that day and was tired. It was a night for no riders. He had cruised the beach quickly and was heading west on Sunrise Boulevard. Close to home. He had just cleared the bridge but caught the traffic light by the closed gas station. He stopped at the deserted intersection and waited for the green. He knew no one would know the difference if he ran it but he waited for the green anyway. His father had taught him that the rules were in place whether anybody else was there to watch or not.

And that was when he saw him. A man running. A big man with a big beard and long hair. He cut across the dark parking lot behind the gas station. He came right out of the darkness and headed for the bridge. He was no jogger. He wasn't running for sport or fitness. The boy could tell that. The man was fully clothed - open lumberjack shirt over a T-shirt, jeans, work boots. No, he wasn't just running. He was running to something or away from something.

The boy studied the darkness from which the man had come. His eyes peered into the parking lot behind the gas station. Nothing moved there. Nothing was recognisable. Farther down the street he could see the dim glow of the Kwik Mart, but nothing else.

The traffic light turned green. Ready to dismiss what he had seen - maybe the guy was just trying to make last call at one of the beach bars - the boy turned to take a final glance at the running man. He immediately noticed that the man no longer wore the outer shirt. He had removed it while running. And at the moment the boy glanced back he also saw the running man slow his pace just long enough to shove the red lumberjack shirt into the hedge that lined the sidewalk before the bridge. He then kept going.

The light was still green. But the boy sat there in his beat-up Volkswagen and thought about what he had just seen. He had a decision to make. Pop the clutch, press the gas pedal and move on toward home. Or turn the car around and check it out. Why had the running man stuffed his shirt into that hedge?

The boy was on the edge of manhood. Not in physical size or development - he had always been small and was stopped regularly by police who thought him to be too young to be driving. But inside, in thinking about his life and his options and in the way he studied the girls that walked the beach road at night. Inside, where it counted. His father kept the chorus going, all the time chiding him for his mistakes. It's time to be a man.

The light turned yellow. As if he was out of time and desperate, the boy hit the gas and dragged the bug into a squealing U-turn. He drove back toward the bridge. The running man was gone now, having gone up and over the bridge, dropping down past the span toward the beach. The boy stopped at the curb near the hedge. He left the car running and got out. He went to the hedge and saw the spot where the branches had been freshly disturbed. He reached in for the shirt, the interior branches scratching at his arm.

As he pulled his arm back he felt something hard and heavy buried in the shirt. Slowly he unwrapped it and looked down at its contents. A blue steel revolver as shiny as the wet streets was in his hand. He felt a little thrill go through him, coming all the way up from his testicles.

A gun. The boy had never held one before, had never even seen one this close. His father had a rule, no guns. He picked it up with his hand and hefted its weight. It felt warm to him. He put his nose to the barrel and sniffed. A sharp, bitter odor invaded his nostrils. Was that gunpowder? Was the gun warm because it had been fired?

He quickly wrapped the gun in the shirt again and took it back to the car. He stuffed the shirt and gun into the glove box and closed it. He then pulled away from the curb and drove back over the bridge. It only took him a minute to catch up to the running man. He watched as the man stopped before he got to the beach and turned right into the street behind the big white hotel. The boy drove by, turned right on the beach road and then took the next right. He came to the same street the running man was on but a block further down. The boy dropped the clutch and slowed. He saw the running man was now walking. He finally came to a stop and then calmly stepped through the front door of a bar called The Pirate. It was a place the boy knew about from the outside. A rough place. Motorcycles always parked out front in a line. He knew that the men that came out of that bar had a habit of coming out mean.

The boy picked up speed and kept his car moving. He made his way back to Sunrise and once again headed west to the bridge and home.

But as he crested the bridge his eyes were greeted by all of the lights. Blue and red and yellow. Police lights, seemingly everywhere. A spotlight from a helicopter cutting through the parking lot behind the gas station. The traffic signal was red again. He slowed to a stop and looked back at the spot in the hedge. He could still make out the place where the manicured wall of leaves had been disturbed. He knew he had another choice to make.

A car pulled up next to him. A police car. Just as the boy turned to look the bright beam of a flashlight hit him full in the face. He could see nothing. A voice sounded from behind the light. 'Hey, kid, are you old enough to drive?'

'I'm sixteen,' he responded. 'I have a license.'

'Where are you going?'

'Home from work.'

'Pull into the gas station when the light changes.'

'Okay.'

He turned away but was still blind. He tried to focus on the traffic signal. When he finally could see it, it was green. He pulled forward and then turned left into the closed station. The patrol car followed him.

There were two of them. They got out simultaneously. One of them put his flashlight on the boys face again.

'You've gotta be kidding me,' he heard one say.

He knew they were talking about his size. Barely five-four and a skinny frame. Barely a hundred pounds. He felt his face burning red in the bright beam of their scrutiny. 'I have a license,' he said again.

'Then let's see it,' said the one behind the beam.

The boy unsnapped a pocket and brought out his thin wallet. He took out the license and held it out. He noticed that his hand was shaking. The one with the light took the license and thankfully lowered his beam to look at it. He turned it over and studied the edge as if to check for counter-feiting. Other cops who had stopped him had done the same thing.

'Where are you coming from?' asked the other cop.

'Work. I'm a dishwasher at Bahia Mar. The banquet center.'

'Working late.'

Yes. We had two banquets.'

'Busy night. You own this car?'

'Yes.'

He suddenly realised the registration was in the glove compartment. Along with the gun. 'What is everybody looking for?' he asked.

'Not what, who,' he said. 'We're looking for a scumbag. An armed robber.'

The boy thought about the gun in his glove box again. A tremor of fear went through his chest. He had touched the gun. He'd held it. Fingerprints. He knew about fingerprints from movies and TV. He and his father watched Kojak together every Sunday night.

'Does anybody know what he looks like?' the boy asked.

'Why, you seen somebody?'

The beam suddenly came back up to his face, blinding him again.

'Did you, kid? What did you see?'

The boy almost said not what, who. But he didn't think that would be received so well. The two policemen had tensed. They were keyed up about something. He thought about the gun again - remembered that it had been warm to his touch - and realised he could be in trouble. He chided himself for taking the gun. How stupid!

'Hey, kid, you still there?'

'Yes. I was just thinking. I saw a man running. Down near the beach.'

'Running? What did he look like?'

'I noticed because he was fully dressed but he was, you know, running.'

'Give us a description.'

'He was big. He --'

'You mean compared to you?'

'No, compared to anybody. He was tall. He had a beard and his hair was long.'

'White, black, brown?'

'White.'

'Okay, what else? What about the clothes?'

The clothes. He wasn't sure how to answer. Describe the man before or after he'd taken off the red shirt? He decided if there had been a robbery, the victim would have seen the red shirt.

'He had on blue jeans and a white T-shirt. And he had on a red lumberjack shirt - you know, like with a pattern.'

'If he had that on how do you know about the T-shirt?'

'The red shirt was open. Unbuttoned. I could see the T-shirt.'

The one without the flashlight peeled away and started talking into a radio mike attached to the shoulder of his uniform. He could hear him putting out the description and he wondered why they didn't already have it.

'That's a pretty good description, kid,' said the one with the flashlight. 'What were you doing that you saw this guy so well?'

The boy shrugged. 'I don't know. I saw him running. I thought it was strange because he was fully dressed. I saw where he went, too. He went into a bar. The Pirate.'

'Mendez, you hear this?'

'Let's go,' his partner answered.

'Okay, kid, let's get in the car.'

The boy was put in the back seat and then they took off for the bridge. The cop in the passenger seat announced their destination on the radio and asked for back-up. A minute later they were in front of The Pirate. Half a minute later the back-up car was there. And a third car was not long behind. By radio it was directed to the back of the bar.

The driver of the first car, the one called Mendez, turned round to look at the boy. 'You are going to stay here. We're going in. We're going to look for the guy. What we'll do is bring anybody we want to talk to outside. You watch through the window. If you see the guy, you give the nod. Okay?'

'I nod if I see him?'

'Right. Now sit tight.'

The cops got out and made their way around the line of motorcycles. They met the two uniformed men from the back-up car. The boy watched them talk for a few moments and then one opened the bar's door and they went in. The boy saw that the last cop to go in was holding his baton down at the side of his leg.

He waited for what seemed like an hour but was only a few minutes. When the bars door opened next, it wasn't a cop who came out. It was a customer. A man with a white T-shirt and a black leather vest. He quickly moved to one of the motorcycles and carefully pushed it out into the street between the two patrol cars. He saddled it, kick-started the engine and took off. He never saw the boy watching and the boy wondered if he had snuck out of` the bar or had been allowed to leave.

As he considered this the door to the bar opened again and the two officers from the back-up car escorted two men out. Both had beards and long hair, but neither was the running man the boy had seen. Then the other two cops came out with two more men. The boy now recognised the running man. They had him.

The cops instructed the four bearded men to face the front wall of the bar and put their hands against it. The men complied slowly, with the worn acquiescence of men who faced this sort of intrusion on a daily basis.

Mendez stood back while the other officers checked the men leaning against the wall for weapons. He turned and looked at the boy in the patrol car. The boy nodded and Mendez nodded back. He then surreptitiously pointed a finger at the first man in line and the boy shook his head. They repeated this until Mendez pointed at the third man in line and the boy nodded.

But just as he nodded, the third man turned his face from the wall and looked directly at the boy. Whether he understood or not that an identification was being made didn't matter. The boy was frozen to the bone. The man said something - just a couple of words - but the boy couldn't hear it because the windows of the car were up. Their eyes locked and held until Mendez barked a command at the man and he turned back to the wall. Mendez then came up behind the man and pulled his arms off the wall and cuffed them behind the man's back. The man did not struggle as he did this. Again there was a casual acquiescence, as if what was being done to him had been done before. As if it was expected.

The officers told the other three men they could return to the bar. Mendez then pushed the running man toward the two officers from the back-up car and they walked him to their car. As they were pushing him into the back seat the man began to struggle for the first time. Not to get away but just to keep his head up. He looked over at the boy again and said the words again, this time exaggerating the movements of his mouth because he probably understood that the boy could not hear. He then relented and let them push his head down and then into the back of the car. The car took off quickly and the boy watched its blue light go on as it sped away.

Mendez stood on the street and spoke at length over his radio mike before he and his partner returned to the car in which the boy sat. Mendez got behind the wheel but turned to look back at the boy before turning the ignition. 'We got him, kid. Good job.'

'What did he say?'

'He didn't say anything but we don't need him to say anything. With your ID we've got him. The detectives are heading over here to search the joint for the gun. They find that and it's bye-bye dirtbag. You did good.'

'What about the robbery? The victim. You need him to say he did it.'

'Actually, there are two victims. But we're not very likely to get that from either one.'

'They're afraid?'

'No, both got shot. During the robbery. One's dead and last we heard, the other wasn't going to make it either.'

The boy felt the air go out of his lungs. Not because of what Mendez said, though that certainly put a different inflection on things. But because he had suddenly realised what the running man had said before being put into the patrol car.

'He said, "You're dead." When he saw me. He said, "You're dead," didn't he?'

'Don't worry, it's bullshit. He was trying to intimidate you but he was too late. He's going to be in lock-up until you're an old man. He can't get to you.'

'What about his friends? Is he in a motorcycle gang or something?'

'Not hardly. He doesn't even have a bike. Why do you think he was running when you saw him?'

Mendez turned round and started the car.

'Let's go downtown now and see the detectives.'

He put it in drive and the car lurched forward. He reached over and punched his partner on the shoulder. 'We got it, McHugh. We got the arrest.'

McHugh didn't answer.

'What about my car?' the boy asked.

'What about it?' Mendez replied. 'It's in a safe place. Someone will take you back to it when you're finished with the detectives.'

' I need to call my dad.'

'We can do that at the station. First thing.'

Fifteen minutes later the boy was sitting at a desk in the detective bureau. Mendez handed him the phone and told him to dial nine first to get an outside line. Mendez said the boy could tell his father to come to the station if he wanted.

The boy dialed his home number but after ten rings the old man didn't pick up. He hung up. He thought it was strange that there was no answer. His father had not said anything about going out. If he had gone out for cigarettes or beer it seemed as though he would have done so earlier. The boy dialed the number a second time but once again got no answer. He hung up the phone.

'Pop's not there, huh?' Mendez said.

'No answer.'

'Okay, well, the lead detective on this case wants to talk to you so we're going to move you into one of the interview rooms and then he'll be in to see you as soon as he's free. We've got to get our paperwork done and then get back out on the street.'

He followed Mendez and McHugh to a small room with a table and two chairs. There was also a mirrored window that the boy figured led to a viewing room. He'd seen it on Kojak before.

They left him there and an hour drifted slowly by while the boy thought about what the running man had said before they shoved him into the patrol car. Then the door opened and a man wearing a suit stepped in. He had fiery red hair and a grim smile. He said his name was Sonntag and offered his hand. The boy said his own name as they shook and the detective, for just a moment, stopped shaking then started again. He then pulled out the chair and sat across from the boy.

'Where do you live, kid?'

He gave his address and watched the detectives face turn grimmer.

'What? What's wrong?'

'I need to ask some questions first. Who lives there with you? Your mom and dad?'

'Just my dad.'

'Where's your mom?'

'I don't know. She's been gone a long time. What does this have to do with anything? I saw a guy running. What does it matter where my mother is?'

'It doesn't. I'm just asking questions. Tell me about the man you saw running.'

The boy repeated the story he had told the first two cops. He added no new details, believing the less said with Sonntag the better. The detective asked no questions until the story was finished.

'And you are sure the man they took into custody was the man you saw running?'

'I don't know. I guess so.'

'You guess so?'

'Well, so far, I haven't gotten to look at him, except from the car.'

'We'll take care of that in a minute. Now you said you saw this running man coming from the direction of the drawbridge, right?'

'Yes.'

'Did you see him on the bridge?'

The boy didn't know what to do. The one lie he had told had cascaded. Now he had to keep lying to stay clear. He wished he could talk to his father.

'You either saw him on the bridge or you didn't,' Sonntag said.

'I didn't. Can I use the phone again? I want to call my father.'

Sonntag stared at him a moment before speaking. 'Not yet. Let's get the story down first. So you didn't see him on the bridge but you're pretty sure he was coming from that direction.'

'Yes.'

'We're having trouble locating the weapon, Is it possible that he threw it into the river when he was coming over the bridge?'

'Yeah, I guess so. It's possible.'

'Did you see him do that?'

'No, I told you, I didn't see him on the bridge.'

The boy knew that Sonntag was trying to trick him, or get him to agree to seeing something he didn't see. The boy sat frozen. He knew that now was the time to tell. Tell about the gun and try to explain it. But he couldn't.

'I want to talk to my father.'

Sonntag nodded like he understood and would arrange for the request right away. But that's not what he said when he opened his mouth. 'Your father's name is Edison Chambers, correct?'

'Yes, that's right,' the boy answered, his voice rising with suspicion. 'Is he here?'

'No, I'm afraid not. I feel awful about this, kid, but I have to tell you. It looks like your father was one of the people this dirtbag shot.'

The boy's mouth shot open. He felt the room and the bright lights crashing in on him. He heard Sonntag still talking.

'Edison Chambers. We got the ID from his wallet. He was in the store, getting a six-pack from one of the coolers in the back. He bent down to get it from the bottom and we guess the shooter didn't see him in there. He came in and went to the register. The woman there, he probably shot her first. That was when your father stood up. The shooter saw him then . . .'

Sonntag didn't have to finish. The boy leaned forward and put his face into his hands. In the blackness he heard the detective ask him if he had any other family living in the area.

'My aunt and uncle,' he said.

'We need to call them when we're finished here.'

'I want to go to my house.'

'We'll release you to your aunt and uncle and the three of you can decide.'

The boy didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say or to think. He suddenly flashed on the gun in the glove box. He wanted to get back to his car.

'We're setting up a line-up,' Sonntag said.

The boy straightened up. Tear trails marked both sides of his face. 'What do you mean?'

'We're putting the suspect in a line-up of men and we'll see if you can pick him out. Don't worry, he won't see you. You'll be behind a mirror.'

But he already did see me, the boy thought but didn't say. He just nodded his head. A plan was formulating. He concentrated on it instead of thinking about his father.

'You ready, then?' Sonntag asked.

'I guess so.'

'Okay, then. Let's do it and then we'll get your aunt and uncle on the phone. Let's go do this thing for your dad.'

The boy stood up and followed Sonntag through the door. He was taken to a dark room where a window looked into a well-lighted room. The far wall was white and spotless, except for the hash marks that marked feet and inches so an observer could gauge height. After a few minutes six men were led into the well-lit room in a cue and they stood facing the boy against the wall.

'They can't see me?' he asked.

'No,' said Sonntag. 'It's one-way glass.'

The boy looked at the men in the line-up. Only two had beards. And one was the running man. He could tell. He was looking at the man who had killed his father. Thoughts blasted through him with sounds like waves crashing on the beach. He felt weak in the knees but strong in the heart. He felt a tear slide down his soft, whiskerless cheek. He wiped it away and heard the waves replaced by his father's voice. Time to be a man.

'Well,' Sonntag said, bending down close to the boy's ear to whisper. 'Which one?'

The boy didn't answer. He was working a plan out in his head.

'Pick him out, son,' said the detective.

The boy shook his head. 'No,' he said slowly. 'You don't have him. He's not there.'

The boy could literally feel the detective tense.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean the guy I saw isn't there.'

'Kid, come on. We're talking about your father.'

'I know. I want to get the right man and he's not there.'

Sonntag bent closer to him again to whisper, 'Don't be afraid. He can't hurt you. Just pick him out.'

'I'm not afraid. He just isn't there.'

'But one of those men over there is the one you picked out at the bar.'

'It was dark and I was sitting in a patrol car. I saw the beard and thought . . .'

'Thought what?'

'I thought it was him but it's not. You have the wrong guy.'

Sonntag exhaled loudly angrily. His voice returned to normal volume. 'Let me tell you something, besides you we've got nothing. No weapon, no witness, no camera in the store. The guy you say you picked by mistake does have one thing, though. Gunshot residue on his hands. We know he fired a gun in the last few hours. But if we don't get an ID or recover that weapon and connect him to it, then guess what, he walks out of here like nothing ever happened. He'll have his beer waiting on the bar for him at The Pirate. So do me a favor and look again and pick him out.'

The boy shook his head. 'I can't. He's not there.'

'Well, kid, then I hope you can face your father's ghost. Let's go.'

Sonntag roughly clapped the boy on the shoulder and pushed him toward the door.

Twenty minutes later the boy sat on a bench in the front lobby. His uncle was on the way. Sonntag had told him he had twenty-four hours to change his mind about the identification. That was how long they could hold the running man. After that they had to charge him or let him go. That was fine with the boy. Twenty-four hours was plenty of time to do what he needed to do.

His uncle wasn't happy to see him. He had been told by Sonntag about the failure to make an identification of the running man. 'He was your father but he was my brother,' the uncle said. 'If he was the guy you should've said it was the guy.'

'I would've, but they don't have him. They just wanted to arrest somebody, doesn't matter who.'

'That detective told me on the phone that they had the right guy. That it was you who messed it up.'

'He's wrong. Can you take me to my car?'

'You are supposed to come home with me. The police said you --'

'I am coming to your place but I can't leave my car in the middle of a gas station all night. I also need to go by the house to get some clothes. So drop me off at my car and I'll come by later.'

'Don't make it late.'

'It already is late.'

They said very little the rest of the way. They drove by the Kwik Mart where the shooting had taken place. There were still police cars and a white van in the parking lot. There was yellow tape all around.

'Is that where . . .?' the uncle asked.

'Yeah.'

The boy looked away. In a few minutes they pulled into the closed gas station and the lights of his uncle's car washed across the boy's Volkswagen.

'Still there,' the uncle said.

'Yeah. Thanks for the ride.'

'We'll see you in a little while?'

'Yes.'

'Look, Bobby, I'm sorry. About your dad. My brother. You know. He wasn't the nicest guy to you, I know. But something like this . . . It shouldn't have happened, you know?'

'Yes, I know.'

He said goodbye and dosed the door. After his uncle pulled away the boy looked around. The streets were dark and empty. The police were gone. He looked up toward the bridge and the hedge that ran alongside the sidewalk. No police, only darkness.

He thought about the plan and decided it was a good plan, a plan that would work. He went to his car and opened the passenger door. He punched the button on the glove box and the lid dropped open to reveal the red plaid shirt containing the gun was still in place. He pulled it out and held the bundle close to his chest. With his other hand the boy reached into the glove box for the Swiss Army knife he kept in there, mostly for emergencies, or if he needed to turn the fuel feed screw on the car's carburetor.

The boy closed the car door and headed on foot toward the bridge. He chose to stay off the sidewalk, walking instead in the dark shadows along the hedge line.

Three days later the boy found the story on the second page of the metro section. It wasn't a long story but he didn't care about its placement or importance in the newspaper. He cared about its contents.

DOUBLE-MURDER SUSPECT FATALLY WOUNDS SELF

A man the police said was the primary suspect in a convenience store robbery that left two dead was killed himself yesterday when he attempted to retrieve the hidden gun used in the crime.

Police said that Edward Togue, thirty-nine, was shot once in the upper body when he reached into a hedge lining the ramp of the Sunrise Boulevard drawbridge and attempted to withdraw a gun he had apparently hid there three days earlier. The gun's trigger apparently was snagged on a branch inside the hedge and was engaged when Togue pulled on the gun.

The weapon discharged once and the bullet struck Togue. He was fatally wounded and died at the scene.

Police termed the shooting accidental and said it also will serve to conclude the investigation into the Saturday night shooting at the Kwik Mart just three blocks from where Togue killed himself.

Police said the gun Togue was retrieving has been matched by ballistics analysis to the shooting in which a cashier and customer were killed during a robbery. Togue had been arrested shortly after that shooting and questioned by police but later released when no evidence could be found linking him to the shooting.

The boy stopped reading. The rest he knew. He folded the paper closed and put it aside. He went back to packing his clothing and other belongings into boxes. He didn't know if he would be able to fit everything into the bug but he was going to try. He was then going to get in the car and start driving. Not to his aunt's and uncle's home. He was just going to drive.

As he put some photos into a box he thought about what Sonntag had said about his father's ghost. The boy smiled. He knew the only spirit he needed to worry about now was the ghost of Edward Togue.

SHORTCUT

The shortcut took me down into the wooded valley on the other side of the railroad tracks. It was dark down here, because the tall trees created a canopy the sun could not penetrate. It had not been raining, but now water dripped down on me from above. The air was damp, and the plants at ground level seemed huge, some of them with leaves as big as elephant ears.

No one ever cut through here. It was off-limits. But I was late. Very late. The rumor was that there was a tunnel that went directly under the railroad embankment and that it would knock fifteen minutes off my time getting home.

The path grew narrow as it led me farther down. Soon the leaves and branches of the bushes scraped at my arms. And then I finally saw the tunnel. Its opening was dark and lined with whitewashed bricks. As I got closer, I saw tangles of roots hanging down from inside.

I saw no light and thought the rumor couldn’t be true. The tunnel didn’t go through. But then I felt warm air come out of the darkness and wash over me. If there was air coming through, then there had to be an opening on the other side.

I checked my watch. I was out of time. I stepped into the tunnel and ducked under the hanging roots. My second step landed on something soft. It moved and jerked my foot out from under me. I fell, and my hands felt the slime. That was when I realized that the tunnel entrance wasn’t lined with white bricks.

They were teeth.