Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (102)

Bosch turned away from the view and looked at her.

“You were in my house?”

“You were missing in action. I was worried. So was Maddie. She found the pills and the note you left for her.”

“Shit, that’s been in there for a long time. Months.”

“Well, she read it and is understandably upset. Add in the pills, and it’s a goodbye note. What’s going on with you, Harry?”

“I’ll talk to Maddie. She wasn’t supposed to find that note for at least a few months.”

“What does that mean?”

Bosch moved over and sat down on the end of the bed.

“Your empath, Colleen? She was right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About the dark aura she thought at first was coming from me.”

“Tell me what that means.”

“I told you about that case I had, where I found the missing cesium.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, it’s come back around. The pills they were giving me only delayed things. It’s in the marrow now.”

There was a long pause before Ballard reacted.

“I’m sorry, Harry. Are they still treating you?”

“I’ve had some radiation, yeah.”

“What is the prognosis? How long before—”

“I haven’t asked, because I don’t want to know. I keep those pills in the drawer for when it’s time for the end of watch.”

“Harry, you can’t do that. Maddie doesn’t know any of this?”

“No, and I didn’t want her to.”

Bosch looked up and over his shoulder at her.

“Okay,” Ballard said. “But you need to tell her. In fact, we need to call her right now to tell her I found you and you’re okay.”

“We can call her but she doesn’t need to know about this other stuff,” Bosch said. “She’s starting her life and she shouldn’t have to worry about me.”

“This really fucking sucks.”

“It is what it is. I take those pills out of the drawer every morning. Then I put them back at the end of the day. When it’s the right time, I won’t.”

“You can’t do that, Harry.”

“If I don’t, it’s going to get messy. I don’t want that. I want Maddie to have the house and a life without any ghosts.”

“But that’s exactly what you’ll be leaving her. A ghost.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this anymore, Renée. I’ll talk to Maddie when I get back to L.A. Right now, I need to make a call.”

“A call to who?”

“Stephen Gallagher’s sister in Ireland.”

“What will you tell her?”

“Not much. Just that justice is done, and I’ll leave it at that. I think they’re five hours ahead of us over there. I don’t want to wait too long. It should be daylight for her when I call.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to drive back to Miami and try to catch a plane home.”

“Will you at least text your daughter and tell her you’re okay?”

“I don’t have a phone. Why don’t you text her and say I’ll talk to her tomorrow. I have to think of what to say.”

“All right, Harry. I’ll do that.”

“Thank you. What about you? You just got here. You want to go back with me?”

Ballard looked past him and out at the water.

“I was thinking of sticking around for sunset,” she said. “They’re supposed to be awesome here.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s what I hear,” he said.

“Tell me one thing,” Ballard said. “Off the record or whatever way you want to.”

“I’ll try.”

“Did you come here to kill him?”

Bosch was silent for a long time before he answered.

“No,” he finally said. “That wasn’t the plan at all.”





EPILOGUE


BY PRIOR AGREEMENT, Ballard drove because Bosch didn’t want to put the miles on his rental. She picked him up at six and they were at the spot off the Old Spanish Trail before eight, thanks to her use of the car’s code 3 lights and a steady ninety-mile-per-hour pace.

Bosch got out with the wooden box that carried the ashes of the Gallagher family. Years before, Siobhan Gallagher had asked Bosch to scatter the ashes of her brother and his family because it didn’t seem right to send them back to her in Ireland, the place Stephen had left so long ago. Bosch said he would do it, but he had waited, deciding not to carry out the final task until he had closed the case and brought justice for the family.

Now was the time.

They walked through the brush to the place where the four rock sculptures stood near the mesquite tree. None of the towers had crumbled since Bosch’s last visit. They stood solidly balanced at four different heights: father, mother, son, and daughter.

Ballard and Bosch had not spoken much during the drive. It had been that way since Key West. But when he had told her of his plan to go to the desert to scatter the ashes, she had immediately asked if she could join him. And now they were there, at the hallowed ground where she knew Bosch had drawn the fire and the drive to take the case to its end—to a place where he had done the wrong thing for the right reason.