The Wrong Side of Goodbye(87)

“Holy shit! Abducted? Did you get him back?”

“It was a she, and yes, we got her back. But it was a long night and I’m just catching up. I think I’m going to be kind of busy for a few days. Can we do lunch or dinner this weekend or early next week?”

“Yeah, no worries. But how was she abducted?”

“Uh, it’s kind of a long story but he was a wanted guy and he sort of grabbed her before she grabbed him. But we got her back, he’s under arrest, and everything’s okay.”

He left the explanation short because he didn’t want her to know the details of what had happened to Bella Lourdes or that he had shot her abductor. That would make for a long conversation.

“Well, good. I guess, then, I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

“Did you have classes this morning?”

“Psychology and Spanish. I’m finished for the day.”

“That’s nice.”

“Uh, Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“I kind of also wanted to say I was sorry about what I said yesterday about the restaurant and everything. I didn’t know your reasons and it kind of sucked that I jumped on you. I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, baby. You didn’t know and it’s all right.”

“So we’re cool?”

“We’re cool.”

“Love you, Dad. Now go to sleep.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“That’s what you used to say to me when I was little. ‘Love you, now go to sleep.’”

“I remember that.”

After disconnecting, Bosch pulled the bandanna back over his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

And failed.

Twenty minutes into the effort, with the Death Cab guitar hook an earworm playing in his head, he gave up on finding the sleep trench again and got out of bed. He took another quick shower to refresh himself and headed back north to San Fernando.

The number of media trucks outside the police station had doubled since the week before when the Screen Cutter was just a wanted man. Now that he had been identified, had abducted one cop, and had been shot by another, the case was big news. Bosch went in the side door as usual and was able to escape notice from the reporters gathered in the front lobby. The department’s media officer was usually the captain, as part of his catchall duties, but Bosch assumed Trevino would not be the point man on a story he had played a significant part in. He suspected the media management on this story would fall to Sergeant Rosenberg, who was affable and telegenic in a cop sort of way. He looked like a cop and talked like a cop and that’s what the media wanted.

The detective bureau was deserted and that was the way Bosch needed it. After an event like that of the night before, people tended to want to talk. They’d gather around the desk and tell it from their point of view, listen to it from somebody else’s point of view. It was therapeutic. But Bosch didn’t want to talk. He wanted to work. He had to write what he knew would be a lengthy and detailed charging document that would be first scrutinized by his superiors in the department, then by multiple prosecutors with the District Attorney’s Office and then a defense lawyer and, eventually, even the media. He wanted focus, and the quiet detective bureau would be perfect.

Sisto wasn’t in the bureau but his presence was immediately felt. When Bosch got to his desk and dropped his car keys, he found four neat stacks of code inspection reports waiting for him. The young detective had come through.

Bosch sat down to work and almost immediately felt the weight of exhaustion settle onto him. He had not gotten enough rest after the events of the night before. His shoulder was aching from the impact of the curtain frame in Dockweiler’s fallout shelter, but where he was feeling it most was in his legs. That run back up the slope of the wash was the first time he had fired the pistons in a long time and he was sore and fatigued. He signed in to the computer, opened a blank document, and left it ready while he went down the hallway to the station’s kitchen.

On the way he passed the open door of the chief’s office and saw Valdez seated at his desk, the telephone to his ear. The snippet of conversation he heard was enough for Bosch to know the chief was talking to a reporter, saying that the department was not going to identify the officer who had been abducted, because she was the victim of a sexual assault. Bosch thought that in a department as small as San Fernando’s it would not take a good reporter more than a few calls to figure out who was being protected. That would result in reporters camped on the front lawn of Bella Lourdes’s house, unless her address was protected by being deeded in Taryn’s name.

There was a fresh pot of coffee already brewed and Bosch poured two cups, leaving both black. On the way back to the bureau he stopped by the open door of the chief’s office and held one up as an offer. Valdez nodded and covered the phone to respond.

“Harry, you’re the man.”

Bosch stepped into the office and put the cup down on the desk.

“Knock ’em dead, Chief.”

Five minutes later Bosch was back in his cubicle and going through the inspection reports. It only took him an hour because once he became familiar with the form, he was able to quickly go through it and identify the street where each inspection took place. He was looking for the five streets where the known victims, including Beatriz Sahagun, lived. At the end of the hour he had placed Dockweiler on each victim’s street in the months before her assault or attempted assault. In two of the cases he had actually inspected the victim’s home as long as nine months earlier.