Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(42)

“I’ll call her in the morning,” he said.

He waited for her to say something but she didn’t.

“I saw the suitcase,” he said.

“Yes, I packed,” she said. “I’m going to leave. But I didn’t want to leave without telling you face-to-face. That just seemed wrong after all you’ve done.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Elizabeth…”

“I’ll find a place.”

“You have one right here.”

“Your daughter won’t visit because I’m here. That’s not fair to either of you.”

“She’ll change. Besides, I go down to see her.”

“And she barely says a word to you. You told me. She doesn’t even text you.”

“We texted last night.”

“You text good night and then she says the same back. That isn’t a conversation. That isn’t what you had before I came.”

Bosch knew he could not win this angle of the argument, because she was right.

“We’re getting close on the case,” he tried. “This detective I told you about…I think she’s all in. It’s active. Just give us some time. We checked out a possible suspect last night.”

“What does it matter?” Elizabeth asked. “It doesn’t change anything. Daisy’s been dead nine years.”

“All I can tell you is that it matters,” Bosch said. “It counts. You’ll see when we get the guy.”

He waited but she didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he said. “Did you eat something?”

“Yes, I made something,” she said. “I put a plate in the refrigerator for you.”

“I think I’m just going to go to sleep. I’m tired, my knee hurts. I’m going to get up early and go down to Hollywood Division to check in with Ballard before she goes home.”

“Okay.”

“Will you at least stay tonight? It’s too late to go out there without a plan. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ll put the suitcase back in your room,” he said.

Bosch turned momentarily to the view just as a single rocket trailing green light arced into the sky over Universal. It exploded with a flat bang, nothing like the real mortars he had heard in his life.

He headed toward the open slider.

“Daisy sent me a postcard from Universal once,” Elizabeth said. “It was before they had Harry Potter. They still had the Jaws ride. The card showed the shark, I remember that. It was how I knew she was in L.A.”

Bosch nodded.

“When I was sitting out here, I remembered a joke she told me when she was little. She heard it at school. You want to hear it, Harry?”

“Sure.”

“What happens when you eat too much alphabet soup?”

“What?”

“You have a vowel movement.”

She smiled at the punch line. Bosch smiled too, though he was sure his own daughter had told him the joke once, and it made Elizabeth’s grief hit him deeper.

This had been the way he had learned more about Daisy. Elizabeth grieved and reminisced and then shared the stories, all from before the girl had run away. She told him about how the stuffed turtle she had won at Skee-Ball at a fair became her most prized possession until the seams wore out. She told him about Daisy splashing in rubber boots through the flooded pecan orchards near their home.

There were the sad stories, too. She told Bosch about the best friend who moved away, leaving her alone. She told him about Daisy growing up without a father. About the schoolyard bullying and the drugs. Good and bad, it all brought Bosch closer to both mother and daughter, made Daisy mean more to him than just her death and stoked the fire he warmed himself by as he pursued the case.

Bosch held at the door for a moment and then just nodded.

“Good night, Elizabeth. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Harry.”

He went in, noting that she did not say she would see him in the morning. He stopped in the kitchen but only to put ice into a Ziploc bag for his knee. He put her suitcase in the room she used, then went to his own room and closed the door. He stripped off his clothes and took a long shower until the hot water was gone. Afterward, he put on a pair of blue-plaid boxer shorts and a white T-shirt and used an ACE bandage from the medicine cabinet to wrap his knee and hold the ice bag to it.

He plugged his phone into its charger and set the alarm for four a.m. so he could get down the hill to Hollywood Station and work a few hours with Ballard on the shake cards before the end of her shift. He then turned out the light and gingerly climbed onto the bed, positioning himself on his back with one pillow under his head and the other propped under his knee as the slight bend this created in the joint helped ease the low hum of pain.

Still, the ice was uncomfortable and it kept him awake until he thought the knee pain was numbed to the point he could fall asleep. He unraveled the ACE bandage and put the ice bag into an empty champagne bucket he kept next to the bed in case the bag leaked.

Bosch was asleep soon and snoring lightly when the sound of his bedroom door opening woke him. He tensed for a moment but then saw the female silhouette in the doorway, outlined by oblique light from down the hall. It was Elizabeth. She was naked. She moved to the bed and climbed under the sheet that covered Bosch, straddling her legs over his hips. She leaned down and kissed him hard on the mouth before he could say anything, before he could remind her that he was old and might not be able to perform, let alone discuss the propriety of having a relationship with the mother of the girl whose death he was investigating.