The Wrong Side of Goodbye(82)

Bosch ignored him. He leaned further down to Dockweiler’s ear.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“Fuck…you,” Dockweiler said between gulps of air. “I tell you, nothing changes for me. Better you know…that you failed her.”

He managed to curl his lip back, in what Bosch assumed was a smile. Bosch started to reach a gloved hand toward the bullet wound on his back.

“Bosch!” Valdez yelled. “Outside now! That’s an order!”

The chief climbed to his feet and moved in to yank Bosch away from Dockweiler if necessary. Harry looked up at him and then stood. They stared at each other until finally Bosch spoke.

“I know she’s here,” he said.





33

Bosch knew he had little time to stay on the case before the Sheriff’s Department Officer-Involved Shooting team arrived on scene and sequestered him and the other San Fernando officers. While paramedics worked to stabilize Dockweiler and then lift him onto an ambulance gurney, Bosch took a high-powered flashlight out of one of the boxes in the garage and headed down the sloping backyard toward the Haskell Canyon Wash.

He was forty yards from the house when he heard his name called from behind. He turned to find Sisto running to catch up.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Going to search the wash,” Bosch said.

“For Bella? Then I’ll help.”

“What about Dockweiler? Who’s going to the hospital with him?”

“I think the captain. But it doesn’t matter. Dockweiler’s not going anywhere. I heard the EMTs talking. They said a bullet mighta cut his spinal cord.”

Bosch thought about that for a moment. The idea that Dockweiler might survive and finish his life in a wheelchair invoked no sympathy in him. What Dockweiler had done to his victims—including Bella, though Bosch didn’t yet know exactly what Bella had suffered at Dockweiler’s hands—disqualified him from ever earning anything like compassion.

“Okay, but we’ve gotta move quickly,” Bosch said. “Once the shooting team gets here, I’m out. We all are.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Bosch reached into his pocket. He still had the flashlight he had grabbed off the front lawn as backup. He turned it on and tossed it to Sisto.

“You go one way and I’ll go the other.”

“You think she’s tied up to a tree or something?”

“Maybe. Who knows? I just hope she’s alive. When we get down there, we split up and look.”

“Roger that.”

The men continued down the slope. The wash was little more than an overgrown ravine that was left undeveloped because of the potential for flooding. Bosch guessed that most days it was a creek but during storms it could become a river. They passed signs warning of flash flooding during rainstorms, signs meant to keep kids from playing in the wash.

As the slope started to level off, the ground was softer and Bosch noticed what looked like a track worn into the pathway. It was no more than six inches wide and three inches deep and he followed it all the way to the water’s edge. Before splitting from Sisto he crouched down and put his light into the mini-trench. He saw what looked like a tire tread.

Bosch raised the beam of his light and followed the track to the shallow waters of the wash. The water was clear and he could see to the bottom. He saw what looked like gray sand in places, large chunks of gray rock in others. Some of the flat polished edges were the giveaway. It was concrete that had been formed and hardened and then broken. It was construction debris.

“Harry, come on, are we going to look for her?” Sisto asked.

“Just hold on a second,” Bosch said. “Be still.”

Bosch turned off his light and stayed at the water’s edge. He thought about what he had seen and what he knew. The concrete rubble. The guns and supplies. The wheelbarrow and the hand truck stolen from Public Works. The hot food on the front seat of the truck. He realized what Dockweiler had been up to and what he was doing at the tailgate of his truck earlier that night when the chief’s phone interrupted him.

“Dockweiler’s been building something,” he said. “He was taking wheelbarrows of concrete and dirt down here and dumping it in the wash.”

“Okay,” Sisto said. “What does that mean?”

“It means we’re looking in the wrong place,” Bosch said.

He abruptly stood up and turned his light back on. He turned and looked back up the slope toward the kitchen lights of Dockweiler’s house.

“I had it wrong,” he said. “We have to go back.”

“What?” Sisto asked. “I thought we were going to—”

Bosch was already running back up the slope. Sisto stopped talking and started following him.

The climb back up winded Bosch and he was moving at a modest trot by the time he was passing by the house. Through the windows of the sunroom he could see men in suits and knew that Sheriff’s investigators were now on the scene. He didn’t know if they were members of the Officer-Involved Shooting team and didn’t stop to find out. He saw Chief Valdez with them. He was gesturing and pointing, most likely giving them the initial rundown of what had happened.

Bosch continued down the side of the house and into the front yard.