Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(75)
“That’s easy. Me.”
“What?”
“I’m working an OT shift and have the Valley today. We’re about to go up. Where in the Valley?”
“Sylmar area. How long until—”
“Thirty minutes. What exactly are you looking for?”
“We’re looking for a missing police officer. I’m going to text you a screenshot of the location we have on a map. The area’s called the Saddletree Open Space. I need to know what’s there. Any houses, structures, whatever. And if there’s nothing there…look for a body.”
“You got it. Get that screenshot to me.”
“As soon as I have it, I’ll send. Keep this off the radio if you can. Use my cell to make contact.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard disconnected just as the screenshot from Maddie Bosch came through. She forwarded it to Heather Rourke and started moving through the house, realizing that it might become a crime scene. She left the back slider open and went out the front door and locked it behind her.
She didn’t get a clear signal on her phone until she took Woodrow Wilson back down into the pass and started north on the 101 freeway. Then she called Lourdes at San Fernando PD.
“Do you know anything about the Saddletree Open Space?”
“Uh, I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s just north of Sylmar off a road called Coyote Street. We traced Bosch’s phone to a spot there last night about midnight. Then it went dead. I have an airship about to fly over and tell us what’s there. I’m on my way.”
“I’m closer. I can get up there now.”
“Wait for the flyover. We don’t know what’s up there. It could be a body but it could be a trap.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“If you people knew there was a hit out on him, why wasn’t he protected?”
“He turned it down. I don’t think he took it seriously. We still don’t know if it has anything to do with this. He might be up there camping and there’s no cell service.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I want to keep my phone free. I’ll call when I hear something on the flyover.”
“I’m here and, look, Harry saved my life once and…”
She didn’t finish.
“I get it,” Ballard said.
She disconnected.
The late-morning northbound traffic was light and Ballard made good time. She took the 101 to the 170 and then the 5 before dropping onto surface streets at Roxford. She checked her phone screen repeatedly, but there was nothing from Rourke on the flyover. Ballard even leaned over to look up through the windshield to see if she could spot the helicopter moving against the backdrop of the mountains that rimmed the Valley. There was nothing.
As she was crossing San Fernando Road, she got a call from Rourke instead of a text. There was no sound of the chopper’s engine in background and she grew livid.
“You’re still at Piper Tech?”
“No, we have a pad we can use at the Davis.”
Ballard knew the department had a training facility near Sylmar named after former chief Edward Davis.
“You did the flyover? Was there anything up there?”
Ballard could hear her own voice drawn tight by the tension of the moment.
“No body,” Rourke said. “But about a hundred yards further north into the scrub from the spot on that screenshot you sent me, it looks like there’s some kind of an abandoned kennel or animal-training facility. There are a couple of sheds and training rings. But no vehicles, no sign of life.”
Ballard exhaled. At least Bosch’s body wasn’t lying out there in the sun.
“Can it be accessed?” she asked.
“Might be tough on the suspension,” Rourke said. “Looks like there was a washout on the dirt road up there.”
“Did you take any photos?”
“Yes. I’m about to send but I thought I should talk to you first.”
“No problem.”
“Do you want us to stay close?”
“I think I’m about fifteen out on a ground search. If you can fly backup, I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“Okay, we’re here till we get a call.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard disconnected and called Lourdes back. She told the San Fernando detective what the results of the flyover were and invited her to meet at the terminus of Coyote Street and then conduct a ground search of the last known location of Harry Bosch’s phone.
“I’m on my way,” Lourdes said.
Bosch
35
The sound of the helicopter overhead gave Bosch hope. But it made the man watching him panic. Bosch had tried to break through to him all night, asking him his name, asking him to loosen the bindings and if he could allow him out of the cage to stretch his cramped legs. Asking if he really wanted the killing of a cop hanging over him.
But the man had said nothing. He just stared at Bosch and on occasion pointed his gun at him through the cage. Bosch knew that was a hollow threat. He was being kept alive for something else. Or someone else. Bosch guessed it would be Tranquillo Cortez.
The man had the hardened stare of a convict and the prison tattoos to go with it. Faded blue ink. Bosch saw none of the symbols associated with the SanFers—no VSF, no 13—such as he had seen on every SanFer he had encountered during his time with the SFPD. That included Tranquillo Cortez.