My response to that was a smile. My words came readily.
“You can save that speech for the politicians who change the rules for you until there are no rules anymore. Until something like justice for a murdered and violated woman adds up to nothing in the equation. That’s what’s going on out there.”
Peoples leaned forward. He was about to spill and he wanted to make damn sure I got it.
“Do you know where Aziz was going with that money? We don’t know but I can tell you where I think he was going with it. To a training camp. A terrorist training camp. And I’m not talking about in Afghanistan. I’m talking about within a hundred miles of our border. A place where they train people to kill us. In our buildings, in our planes. In our sleep. To come across that line and kill us with blind disregard for who we are and what we believe. Are you going to tell me that I’m wrong, that we should not do everything we can to find such a place if it exists? That we should not take whatever measures are necessary with that man to get the information we need from him?”
I leaned back across the mattress until my back was against the wall. If I’d had a cup of coffee I wouldn’t have ignored it the way he was ignoring his.
“I’m not telling you anything,” I said. “Everybody’s got to do what they’ve got to do.”
“Wonderful,” he said sarcastically. “Words of wisdom. I’m going to get a wall plaque for my office and put that right on it.”
“You know, I was in a trial once and the lawyer on the other side said something I always try to remember. She quoted a philosopher whose name I don’t recall offhand—I’ve got it written down at the house. But this guy said that whoever is out there fighting the monsters of our society should make damn sure that they don’t become monsters themselves. See, because then all is lost. Then we don’t have a society. I always thought that was a good line.”
“Nietzsche. And you almost got the quote right.”
“Getting the quote right isn’t what matters. It’s remembering what it means.”
Peoples reached into the pocket of his coat. He pulled out my watch. He threw it to me and I started putting it on. I looked at the face. The hands of the clock were set against a gold detective’s badge with the city hall on it. I noted the time and saw that I had been in the cube longer than I had thought. It was almost dawn.
“Get out of here, Bosch,” he said. “If you cross our field of vision on this again you will find yourself back here faster than you’d think was possible. And no one will know you are here.”
The threat was obvious.
“I’ll be among the disappeared then, huh?”
“Whatever you want to call it.”
Peoples raised his hand over his head so the camera would see it. He twirled a finger in the air and the electronic lock on the door clacked and the door opened a few inches. I stood up.
“Go,” Peoples said. “Somebody will see you out. I’m cutting you a break here, Bosch. Remember that.”
I headed toward the door but hesitated when I was passing him. I looked down at him and the file he still clutched.
“I assume you cleaned me out, took my files. Lawton Cross’s too.”
“You won’t be getting it back.”
“Right, I understand. National security. What I was going to say is look through the photos. Find one of the photos of Angella on the tile. Look at her hands, man.”
I headed toward the open door.
“What about her hands?” he called after me.
“Just look at her hands. The way we found them. You’ll know what I’m talking about then.”
In the hallway Parenting Today was waiting for me.
“This way,” he said curtly and I could tell he was disappointed that I was being cut loose.
On the way up the hallway I looked for Mousouwa Aziz in one of the square windows but didn’t see him. I wondered if by chance I had looked into the face of the killer I was looking for and that it would be my only glimpse, that I would get no closer. I knew that as long as he was in here I would never get to him, literally or legally. He was gone from me. He was among the disappeared. The ultimate dead end.
We went out through two electronic doors and then I was delivered to an elevator alcove. There was no button for me to push. Parenting Today looked up at a camera in the corner of the ceiling and rolled an extended finger in the air. I heard the elevator start coming.
When the doors opened he escorted me on. We went down to the basement but not to a car. He walked me up the ramp after yelling to a garage man to open the roll-up door. As the door went up I was hit with sunlight and had to squint.
“I take it you aren’t giving me a ride back to my car.”
“You can take it any way you want to. Have a good day.”
He left me there at the top of the ramp and turned around to get under the door before it reclosed on him. I watched him disappear as the steel curtain dropped. I tried to think of a clever line to throw at him but I was too damn tired and let it go.
T
he bureau had been in my house. That was expected. But the agents had been subtle about it. The place hadn’t been torn apart and left for me to put back together. It had been methodically searched and most things had been left exactly in place. The dining room table, where I had left the spread of files relating to Angella Benton’s murder, had been cleared. It looked like they might have even polished the empty surface with Pledge when they were through. I had been left nothing. My notes, my files, my reports were all gone and so it seemed was the case. I didn’t dwell on it. I looked at my murky reflection in the polished surface of the table for a few moments and decided I needed to sleep before making my next move.
I grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and went out through the slider to the back deck to watch the sun come up over the hills. The cushion on the lounge chair had morning dew on it so I flipped it over and sat down. I put my legs up and leaned back into the soft comfort. There was a slight chill in the air but I still had my jacket on. I put the water bottle on the arm of the chair and tucked my hands into the pockets of the jacket. It felt good to be home after the night in the cube.
The sun was just cresting the hills on the other side of the Cahuenga Pass. The sky was filled with diffused light as its rays refracted off the billions of microscopic particles that hung in the air. Soon I would need sunglasses but I was too dug in to get up to get them. I closed my eyes instead and soon fell asleep. I dreamt of Angella Benton, of her hands, of a woman I never knew in life but who came alive in my dreams and reached out to me.
I woke up a couple hours later with the sun burning through my eyelids. Soon I realized that the pounding I had thought was in my head was actually coming from the front door. I got up, knocking the unopened water bottle off the arm of the lounge chair. I made a grab for it but missed. It rolled off the deck and down into the brush below. I walked to the rail and looked down. Steel pylons held my house cantilevered over the canyon. I could not see the bottle down there.
Whoever it was out front knocked again and then I heard a muffled version of my name. I went in off the deck and crossed the living room to the front hallway. He was pounding on the door again when I finally opened it. It was Roy Lindell and he wasn’t smiling.
“Rise and shine, Bosch.”
He started to push by me into the house but I put my hand on his chest and pushed him backwards. I shook my head and he picked up the vibe. He pointed in the house and put a question mark in his eyes. I nodded and stepped out through the door, pulling it closed behind me.
“Let’s take my car,” he said in a low voice.
“Good. ’Cause mine’s in Woodland Hills.”
His bureau car was parked illegally at the front curb. We got in and headed up Woodrow Wilson to the curve that took it around toward Mulholland. I didn’t think he was taking me anywhere. We were just driving.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “I heard through the grapevine you got picked up last night.”
“That’s right. By your BAM squad. They put the bam on me, you could say.”
Lindell looked over at me and then back at the road.
“You don’t look the worse for wear. You even got some color in your cheeks.”
“Thanks for noticing, Roy. Now what do you want?”
“You think they’ve got your house bugged?”
“Prob’ly. I haven’t had time to check. What do you want? Where are we going?”
Though I guessed I knew. Mulholland wound around the hill to an overlook with views, depending on the smog ratio, from the Santa Monica Bay to the spires of downtown.
As expected, Lindell pulled into the small parking lot and stopped next to a Volkswagen van three decades out of place. The smog was heavy. For the most part the view dropped off just past the Capital Records building.
“Get to the point, huh?” Lindell said, turning in his seat toward me. “Okay, I’ll get to it. What’s going on with the investigation?”
I looked at him for a long moment, trying to gauge whether he had turned up because of Marty Gessler or as a follow-up from Special Agent Peoples. As a test to determine if I was out of it. Sure Lindell and Peoples were different animals from different floors of the federal building. But they both carried the same badge. And there was no telling what kind of pressure had been brought to bear on Lindell.
“What’s going on is that there is no investigation.”
“What? Are you fucking me?”
“No, I’m not fucking you. You could say I see the light. I was made to see it.”
“Then what are you going to do, just drop it?”
“That’s right. I’m going to get my car and go on vacation. Vegas, I think. I got a start on the sunburn this morning. I might as well go lose my money, too.”
Lindell smiled like he was clever.
“Fuck you,” he said. “I know what you’re doing. You think I’ve been sent out to test you, huh? Well, fuck you.”
“That’s nice, Roy. Can you take me back now? I need to pack a bag.”
“Not until you tell me what is really going on.”
I cracked the door.
“Okay, I can walk. I need the exercise.”
I got out and started walking toward Mulholland. Lindell threw open his door, hitting the side of the old van. He came hurrying after me.
“Listen, Bosch, listen to me.”
He caught up to me and stood in front of me, very close, forcing me to stop. He put his hands into fists and held them up in front of his chest as if he was trying to break apart a chain that was binding him.
“Harry, I’m here for me. Nobody sent me, okay? Do not drop this. Those guys down there, they were probably just throwing you a scare, that’s all.”
“Tell that to the people they’ve been holding in there. I don’t feel like disappearing, Roy. You know what I mean?”
“Bullshit. You’ve never been the kind of guy who would —”
“Hey! Asshole!”
I turned around at the sound of the voice and saw two men piling out of the sliding door of the Volkswagen van. They were bearded longhairs who looked like they belonged on Harleys, not in a hippie van.
“You dented the shit out of the door,” the second one yelled.
“How the fuck can you tell?” Lindell shot back.
Here we go, I thought. I looked past the approaching behemoths and could see a four-inch crease in the front passenger door of the Volkswagen. Lindell’s door was still open and in contact with it, the obvious culprit.
“You think it’s a joke?” said the first heavy. “How about if we put a dent in your face?”
Lindell reached behind his back and in one swift move his hand came out from under his jacket with a pistol. With his free hand he reached forward and grabbed the first heavy by the front of his shirt and pulled him forward, taking a handful of beard in the process. The gun came up and the barrel was pressed into the taller man’s throat.
“How ’bout you and David Crosby get back in that piece of shit and flower power your way the fuck out of here?”
“Roy,” I said. “Easy.”
The smell of marijuana was just now reaching us from the van. There was a long moment of silence while Lindell held eyes with the first heavy. The second stood nearby watching but unable to make a move because of the gun.
“Okay, man,” the first one finally said. “Everything’s cool. We’ll just back on out of here.”
Lindell shoved him away and dropped the gun down to his side.
“Yeah, you do that, Tiny. Back on out. Go smoke the peace pipe somewhere else.”
We watched silently while they went back to the van, the second man angrily slamming Lindell’s door so he could get into the front passenger seat of the van. The engine started and the van backed out and pulled out onto Mulholland. The requisite hand gestures were offered from both driver and passenger and then they were gone. I thought about myself just a few hours earlier giving the same salute to the camera in the cube. I knew how helpless the two men in the van felt.
Lindell turned his attention back to me.
“That was good, Roy,” I said to him. “With skills like that I’m surprised they didn’t tap you for a ninth-floor gig.”
“Fuck those guys.”
“Yeah, that’s the way I was feeling a few hours ago.”
“So then what’s it going to be, Bosch?”
He had just pulled a gun on two strangers in a near-violent collision of high-testosterone levels and already the tide had subsided. The surface was calm. The incident was off his radar screen after only one sweep. It was a trait that in the past I had most often seen in psychopaths. I wanted to give Lindell the benefit of the doubt so I chalked it up to the sort of federal arrogance I had also seen before as a genetic trait in bureau men.
“You staying or running?” he asked.
That made me angry but I tried not to show it. I cracked a smile.