Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(65)

“So…the woman you were looking for all night,” she said. “That wasn’t part of that case?”

“No,” Bosch said. “That was Daisy’s mother. I came home and she’d split. Sorry you never got the chance to talk to her.”

“It’s okay,” Ballard said. “You think she went back to the life?”

Bosch shrugged.

“I hit all her familiars last night,” he said. “Nobody had seen her. But those were only the places I knew of. She could have had others. Places to score and crash. People who would take her in. She might’ve just hopped on a Greyhound and split, too. That’s what I’m hoping. But I’ll keep looking when I can.”

Ballard nodded. That seemed to be the end of the conversation but she wanted to tell him something. Just as he started to get out, she spoke.

“My father went to Vietnam,” she said. “You remind me of him.”

“That right?” Bosch said. “He live here in L.A.?”

“No, I lost him when I was fourteen. But during the war, he came to Hawaii on…what was it called, furlough?”

“Yeah, or liberty. I went to Hawaii a few times. They didn’t let you go back to CONUS, so you could go to Hong Kong, Sydney, a few other places. But Hawaii was the best.”

“What was CONUS?”

“Continental United States. They didn’t want you going back to the mainland because of all the protests. But if you worked things right in Honolulu, you could sneak onto a flight in civvies and get back to L.A.”

“I don’t think my dad did that. He met my mother in Hawaii and then after the war he came back and stayed.”

“A lot of guys did that.”

“He was from Ventura originally, and after I was born, we would visit my grandmother there—once a year—but he didn’t like coming back. He saw it like you do. A fucked-up world. He just wanted to camp on the beach and surf.”

Bosch nodded.

“I get that. He was smart and I was the fool. I came back and thought I could do something about things.”

Before Ballard could respond, Bosch got out of the car and closed the door. Ballard watched him walk toward the building where they kept the space shuttle. She noticed a slight limp in his walk.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Harry,” she said out loud.





30



By the time Ballard switched vehicles, drove out to Venice, picked up Lola, and got to the beach it was midmorning and the wind had kicked up a two-foot chop on the surface that would make paddling a challenge instead of the therapy she usually drew from it. As much as she needed the exercise, she knew she needed sleep more. She pitched her tent, posted Lola at the front, and crawled in to rest. She thought about her father as she trailed off, remembering him straddling his favorite board and telling her about Vietnam and about killing people, putting it the way Bosch had put it, saying he’d had to do it and then had to live with it. He wrapped all of his Vietnam experiences into one phrase, “Sin loi.” Tough shit.

Four hours later her watch vibrated her awake. She had been in deep, and waking was slow and disorienting. Finally, she sat up, split the tent flaps with her hand and checked on Lola. The dog was there, sunning herself. She looked back at Ballard with expectant eyes.

“You hungry, girl?”

Ballard climbed out of the tent and stretched. She checked the Rose Avenue tower and saw Aaron Hayes in the nest, gazing out at sea. There were no swimmers out there.

“Come on, Lola.”

She walked down the sand toward the lifeguard tower. The dog followed behind her.

“Aaron,” she called up to the tower.

Hayes turned and looked down at her from his perch.

“Renée. I saw your tent but didn’t want to wake you up. You doing all right?”

“Yeah. What about you?”

“You know, back on the bench. But pretty quiet today.”

Ballard glanced out toward the water as if to confirm the paucity of swimmers.

“You want to grab dinner tonight?” he asked.

“I think I have to work,” Ballard said. “Let me make a call and see what’s what, then I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll be here.”

“You have your phone?”

“Got my phone.”

He was breaking a rule, having a personal phone with him while in the tower. A scandal had rocked a rescue crew up the coast a year before when a texting lifeguard missed seeing a drowning woman waving for help. Ballard knew Aaron would not text or take calls, but he could play back messages without taking his eyes off the water.

She walked back to the tent, pulled her phone out of the pocket of her beach sweats, and called the number given to her by Travis Lee, one of the homicide detectives who took over the Jacob Cady case that morning. He answered and she asked what the status of the case was. Lee had remarked to her early that morning that it was an unusual set of circumstances for him and his partner Rahim Rogers. They came into the case with the admitted killer in custody, thanks to Ballard, and the detective work would be in finding the remains of the victim.

“We traced the truck that made the pickup on the dumpster,” Lee said. “It first went to a sorting center in Sunland, then what was not picked out for recycling was dumped at the landfill in Sylmar. Believe it or not, it’s called Sunshine Canyon. We’re putting on moon suits now and about to start picking.”