Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(54)

“Roger that,” Lourdes said.

Valdez stood there and was awkwardly silent as he waited for Lourdes to leave.

“See you guys back there,” she said.

Valdez watched her go down the hall toward the elevator alcove. When he judged she was far enough away, he spoke.

“Harry, we need to talk.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to ask the Sheriff’s Department to come in and take a look at this and how it was handled. I think an outside review would be a good thing.”

“I can save you the trouble, Chief. I fucked up. I know it.”

“You know as a reserve you don’t have the same protections the full-timers do.”

“I know. Are you firing me?”

“I think you should go home and let the Sheriff’s Department take a look at this.”

“I’m suspended, then.”

“Whatever. Just go home, Harry, and take a break. When and if the time is right, you’ll be back.”

“When and if…Okay, Chief. I’ll do that. I’ll send Lourdes the audio from the cell.”

“That would be good, yeah.”

Bosch turned and walked away, heading down the hallway in the direction Lourdes had gone.

He knew there was a very low chance that he would be back working for San Fernando after this. He thought about going by the city complex and gathering a few files and personal things from his office in the old jail but then decided against it. He just drove home.

He returned to a quiet house. He checked the porch first but there was no sign of Elizabeth. He then went down the hallway to her room and found the door open. The bed had been made and there were clean, folded towels on the bureau. He checked the closet. There were no clothes on the hangers and no sign of the suitcase she had used.

She was gone.

Bosch pulled his phone and called the number of the cell phone he had given her.

After a few seconds he heard its ring inside the house and found the phone left with a note on the dining room table. The note was brief.





Harry, you are a good man.


Thank you for everything.


I’m glad I got to know you.


Elizabeth




A wave of emotion immediately went through him. He had to admit there was at first relief. Elizabeth had been right that her staying with him was damaging his relationship with his daughter. There was also the relief from the pressures of living with an addict, of not knowing when she might stumble or what would cause it.

But then that feeling was crowded out by concern. What did Elizabeth’s leaving mean? Was she going home to Modesto? Or was she going back to the addiction she had worked for months to leave behind? She had not had a single relapse in that time and Bosch had thought she was getting stronger every day.

Bosch had to consider that she had found clarity of mind and the access it gave her to guilt over her daughter’s death too difficult to continue to live with.

Bosch opened the sliding door and walked out onto the back deck of the house. He looked down on the freeway and the wide expanse of the city beyond it to the mountains that rimmed the Valley. Elizabeth could be out there somewhere.

He pulled his phone and ducked back in and away from the freeway hiss to make a call to Cisco Wojciechowski. They had not spoken in at least two months, since the last time Cisco had checked in on Elizabeth’s progress. He was a private investigator who worked for Mickey Haller, a defense attorney who was also Bosch’s half-brother. That had put him into Bosch’s orbit and he had been instrumental in getting Elizabeth Clayton straight.

Even more than Bosch, Wojciechowski was responsible for Elizabeth’s recovery. He had seen her through the immediate withdrawal from the grip of oxycodone. Formerly addicted himself, he had walked and talked her through it, monitored her every minute at first, then by hour and then by day. She had followed that detox with a one-month stint in a more traditional rehab center. After she moved into the room offered by Bosch, Cisco was her weekly monitor. The check-ins didn’t start to drop off until Elizabeth hit the three-month mark without a relapse.

Now Bosch told him that she was gone without much notice or any indication of where she was going.

“She answering her phone?” Cisco asked.

“She left it here,” Bosch said.

“That’s not good. She doesn’t want to be tracked.”

“What I was thinking.”

They were both silent for a while.

“If we take the worst-case scenario, she’s decided to go back to the life,” Bosch said. “The question is, where would she go?”

“Does she have money?” Cisco asked.

Bosch had to think about that. In the last two months, Elizabeth had gotten bored when Bosch went to work at the SFPD. Bosch let her use his credit card to install an Uber account on her phone. She had asked to take over the duties of shopping for food and household products. He had given her cash for that. Between the credit-card number and the possibility that she could have put aside small amounts from the grocery money, he had to assume she had the wherewithal to get back to Modesto or to buy her way back into addiction.

“Let’s say she does,” Bosch said. “Where would she go?”

“Addicts are creatures of habit,” Cisco said. “She’d go back to where she scored before.”