The Narrows (28 page)

“There, you see now? Write it or I’ll end it right now!”

“All right! All right!”

“Exactly as I say it. Once upon a midnight dreary . . .”

She knew what it was. She recognized the words of Edgar Allan Poe. And she knew it was Backus, though the voice was different. He was using the poetry again, re-creating the crime taken from him so long ago. Bosch had been right.

She moved into the room to the right and found it empty. A billiard table stood in the middle of the room, every inch of its surface taken up by stacks of more books. She understood what Backus had done. He had lured Ed Thomas here because the man who lived here—Charles Turrentine—was a collector. He knew Thomas would come for this collection.

She started to turn in order to retreat, to check the next room off the foyer. But before she had moved more than a few inches she felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed against her neck.

“Hello, Rachel,” Robert Backus said with his surgically changed voice. “What a surprise to see you here.”

She froze and in that moment knew that he could not be played in any way, that he knew all the plays and all the angles. She knew she only had one chance. That was Bosch.

“Hello, Bob. It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, it has. Would you like to leave your weapon here and join me in the library?”

Rachel put her Sig down on one of the stacks on the billiard table.

“I sort of thought the whole place was a library, Bob.”

Backus didn’t respond. She felt him grab the back of her collar, press his gun against her spine and then push her in the direction he wanted her to go. They left the room and went into the next, which was a small room with two high-backed wooden chairs arranged to face a large stone fireplace. There was no fire and Rachel could hear rain dripping down the chimney into the hearth. She saw that it was creating a puddle there. Windows on either side of the fireplace had rain washing down them, turning them translucent.

“We happen to have just enough chairs,” Backus said. “Have a seat, won’t you?”

He roughly brought her around one of the chairs and pushed her down into it. He made a quick check of her body for other weapons and then stepped back and dropped something onto her lap. Rachel looked into the other chair and saw Ed Thomas. He was still alive. His wrists were held to the arms of the chair by plastic snap-cuffs. Two more cuffs had been joined and then used to hold him by his neck to the back of the chair. He had been gagged with a cloth napkin and his face was overly red with exertion and lack of oxygen.

“Bob, you can stop this,” Rachel said. “You’ve made your point. You don’t —”

“Put the cuff around your right wrist and lock it to the chair’s arm.”

“Bob, please. Let —”

“Do it!”

She wrapped the plastic cuff around the arm of the chair and her wrist. She then pulled the tab through the slide lock.

“Tight, but not too tight. I don’t want to leave a mark.”

When she was done he told her to put her free arm on the other arm of the chair. He then moved in and grabbed the arm to keep it in place while he looped another snap-cuff around it and locked it. He stepped back to admire his work.

“There.”

“Bob, we did a lot of good work together. Why are you doing this?”

He looked down at her and smiled.

“I don’t know. But let’s talk about it later. I have to finish with Detective Thomas. It’s been a long time coming for him and me. And just think, Rachel, you get to watch. What a rare opportunity for you.”

Backus turned to Thomas. He stepped over and yanked the gag out of his mouth. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He opened it and in one swift movement sliced through the cuff holding Thomas’s right arm to the chair.

“Now, where were we, Detective Thomas? Line three, I believe.”

“More like the end of the line.”

Rachel recognized Bosch’s voice from behind her. But when she turned to look for him the chair back was too high.

I HELD THE GUN STEADY, trying to figure out the best way to handle him.

“Harry,” Rachel called out calmly. “He’s got a gun in his left and a knife in his right. He’s right-handed.”

I steadied my aim and told him to put the weapons down. He complied without hesitation. This gave me pause, as if he was moving too quickly to plan B. Was there another weapon? Another killer in the house?

“Rachel, Ed, you all right?”

“We’re fine,” Rachel said. “Put him on the ground, Harry. He’s got snap-cuffs in his pocket.”

“Rachel, where’s your gun?”

“In the other room. Put him down on the ground, Harry.”

I took a step further into the room but then paused to study Backus. He had changed again. He no longer looked like the man who had called himself Shandy. No beard, no hat over gray hair. His face and head were shaved. He looked completely different.

I took another step but stopped again. I suddenly thought about Terry McCaleb and his wife and his daughter and his stepson. I thought about the shared mission and what had been lost. How many bad men would roam the world free because Terry was taken away? A rage as strong as the river built inside me. I didn’t want to put Backus on the ground, cuff him and watch him driven away in a patrol car to a life behind bars of celebrity attention and fascination. I wanted to take from him everything he had taken from my friend and all of the others.

“You killed my friend,” I said. “For that you —”

“Harry, don’t,” Rachel said.

“I’m sorry,” Backus said. “But I’ve been kind of busy. Who might your friend be?”

“Terry McCaleb. He was your friend, too, and you —”

“Actually, I wanted to take care of Terry. Yes, he had the potential of becoming a stone in my shoe. But I —”

“Shut up, Bob!” Rachel yelled. “You couldn’t carry Terry’s lunch. Harry, this is too dangerous. Put him down! Do it now!”

I broke off my rage and focused on the moment at hand. Terry McCaleb retreated in the gloom. I stepped toward Backus, wondering what Rachel was telling me. Put him down? Did she want me to shoot him?

I took two more steps.

“Get on the ground,” I ordered. “Away from the weapons.”

“Whatever you say.”

He turned as if to move away from where he had dropped his weapons and to choose a spot to get down.

“Do you mind, there’s a puddle here. Leaky fireplace.”

Without waiting for an answer from me he took a step toward the window. And I suddenly saw it. I knew what he was going to do.

“Backus, no!”

But my words did not stop him. He planted his foot and dove headfirst into the window. Its framework softened by years of sunlight and rains like this day’s, the window gave way as easily as a Hollywood prop. Wood splintered and glass shattered as his body went through. I quickly ran to the opening and saw the immediate muzzle flash from Backus’s second gun. Plan B.

Two quick pops and I heard the bullets zing by and hit the ceiling above and behind me. I ducked back behind the wall and fired off two quick returns without looking. I then dropped to the floor, crawled beneath the window and came up on the other side. I looked out and Backus was gone. On the ground I saw a little two-shot derringer. His second had been a little vest gun and he was now unarmed, unless there was a plan C.

“Harry, the knife,” Rachel called from behind me. “Cut me loose!”

I grabbed the knife from the floor and quickly sliced through her bonds. The plastic cut easily. I then turned to Thomas and put the knife in his right hand so he could free himself.

“I’m sorry, Ed,” I said.

I could give him the rest of the apology later. I turned back to Rachel, who was at the window, looking through the gloom. She had picked up Backus’s gun.

“See him?”

I joined her there. Thirty yards to the left was the river wash. Just as I looked I saw the overflowing torrent carrying a whole oak tree on its surface. Then there was movement. We saw Backus jump from the cover of a bougainvillea and start to scale the fence that kept people away from the river. Just as he was going over the top Rachel raised a gun and fired two quick shots. Backus dropped down onto the gravel shoulder next to the channel. But he then jumped up and started running. Rachel had missed.

“He can’t get across the river,” I said. “He’s hemmed in. He’s heading up to the bridge at Saticoy.”

I knew if Backus made it to the bridge we would lose him. He could cross and disappear in the neighborhood on the west side of the channel or the business district near DeSoto.

“I’ll go from here,” Rachel said. “You get the car and get there faster. We’ll trap him at the bridge.”

“Got it.”

I headed for the door, getting ready to run through the rain. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and threw it to Thomas as I went.

“Ed,” I called over my shoulder. “Call the cops. Get us some backup.”

42

R
ACHEL EJECTED THE MAGAZINE from Backus’s gun and found it had been fully loaded until she took the two shots at him. She slapped it back into place and went to the window.

“You want me to go with you?” Ed Thomas asked from behind.

She turned. He had cut himself free. He was standing, holding the knife up and ready.

“Do what Harry said. Get us backup.”

She stepped onto the sill and jumped out into the rain. She quickly moved along the bougainvillea until she found an opening and pushed through to the river fence. She put Backus’s gun in her holster and climbed up and over, snagging her jacket sleeve on the top and tearing it. She dropped onto the gravel shoulder two feet from the edge. She looked over the side and saw the water was only three feet from the overflow. It was cascading against the concrete, creating the roaring sound of death. She looked away and then further down the track. She saw Backus running. He was halfway to the bridge at Saticoy. Rachel got up and started running. She fired a shot into the air so he would think about what was coming behind him, not what might be waiting for him at the bridge.

THE MERCEDES SKIDDED INTO THE CURB on the top of the bridge. I jumped out, not bothering to kill the engine, and ran to the railing. I saw Rachel running toward me, gun up, on the shoulder of the canal. But I didn’t see Backus.

I stepped back and looked in all directions but still didn’t see him. I thought that it would have been impossible for him to have reached the bridge ahead of me. I ran down to the gate that sided the bridge and offered entrance to the channel’s shoulder. It was locked but I could see that the shoulder continued under the bridge. It was the only alternative. I knew Backus had to be hiding under there.

Quickly I climbed over the gate and dropped down to the gravel. I came up, gun pointed in both hands at the dark opening beneath the bridge. I ducked and moved into the darkness.

The noise of the rushing water echoed loudly beneath the bridge. The underside of the bridge was segmented by four large concrete supports. Backus could easily be hidden behind any one of them.

“Backus!” I called out. “You want to live, come out! Now!”

Nothing. Only the sound of the water. Then I heard the far-off sound of a voice and I turned back to see Rachel. She was still a hundred yards away. She was yelling but her words were lost in the water noise.

BACKUS HUDDLED IN THE DARKNESS. He tried to stave off all the emotions and concentrate on the moment. He had been here before. Cornered in the dark. He had survived before and he would survive now. What was important now was to concentrate on the moment, draw his strength from the darkness.

He heard his pursuer call out to him. He was close now. He had the weapon but Backus had the darkness. Darkness had always been on his side. He pressed back against the concrete and willed himself to disappear in the shadows. He would be patient and make his move when the time was right.

I TURNED AWAY from the distant figure of Rachel and focused back on clearing the bridge. I moved forward, staying as far back from the concrete shelters as I could without falling into the channel. I cleared the first two and glanced back at Rachel again. She was fifty yards away now. She started signaling with her left arm but I didn’t understand the hooked movement she was repeating.

I suddenly realized my mistake. I had left the keys in the car. Backus could come up on the other side of the bridge and get to the car.

I started to run, hoping to get there in time to take a shot at the tires. But I was wrong about the car. As I passed the third concrete support Backus suddenly leaped out at me, hitting me solidly with his shoulder. I went sprawling backward with him on top of me, sliding on the gravel to the edge of the concrete channel.

He was going for my gun, using both hands to tear it from my grip. I knew in an instant that if he got the gun everything was over, that he’d kill me and then Rachel. He couldn’t get the gun.

He slammed his left elbow into my jaw and I felt my grip weaken. I fired the gun twice, hoping I might catch a finger or a palm. He yelped in pain but then I felt the pressure even more as he redoubled his effort, now fueled by pain and red anger.

His blood worked its way into my grip and helped loosen it. I was going to lose the gun. I could tell. He had position on me and an animal strength. My grip was slipping. I could try to hang on a few more seconds until Rachel got there but by then she could also be running into a death trap.

Instead I took the only alternative I had left. I dug my heels into the gravel and flexed my whole body upward. My shoulders slid over the concrete edge. I replanted my heels and did it again. This time it was enough. Backus seemed to suddenly realize his situation. He let go of the gun and reached back to the edge. But it was too late for him, too.

Together we went over the edge and into the black water.

RACHEL SAW THEM FALL from just a few yards away. She yelled “
No
!” as if that might stop them. She got to the spot and looked down and saw nothing. She then ran along the edge and out from beneath the bridge. She saw nothing. She looked downriver for any sign of them in the cascading current.

Then she saw Bosch come up and whip his head around as if to check his position. He was struggling with something under the water and then she realized it was his raincoat. He was trying to take it off.

She scanned the river but didn’t see the bald head of Backus anywhere. She looked back at Bosch as he was carried away from her. She saw him looking back at her. He raised an arm out of the water and pointed. She followed and saw the Mercedes parked on top of the bridge. She saw its windshield wipers moving back and forth and she knew the keys were still there.

She started running.

THE WATER WAS COLD, more so than I would have imagined. And I was already weak from the struggle with Backus. I felt heavy in the water and found it difficult to keep my face up and clear. The water seemed to be alive, as if it was gripping me and pulling me down.

My gun was gone and there was no sign of Backus. I spread my arms and tried to maneuver my body so that I could simply ride the rapids until I had some strength back and could make a move or Rachel got help.

I remembered the boy who had gone into the river so many years before. Firemen, cops, even passersby tried to save him, hanging down hoses and ladders and ropes. But they all missed and he went down. Eventually, they all go down in the narrows.

I tried not to think about that. I tried not to panic. I turned my palms down and I seemed to be able to keep my face up out of the water better. It increased my speed in the current but it kept my head up out of the water. It gave me confidence. I started to think that I could make it. For a while. It all depended on when help got to me. I looked up into the sky. No helicopters. No fire department. No help yet. Just the gray void of emptiness up there and rain coming down.

THE 911 OPERATOR TOLD RACHEL to stay on the line but she couldn’t drive fast and well and safely with the phone to her ear. She dropped it on the passenger seat without disconnecting. When she came to the next stop sign she stopped so short that the phone was hurled into the foot well and out of her reach. She didn’t care. She was speeding down the street checking to her left at every intersection for the next bridge crossing the channel. When she finally saw one she sped to it and stopped the Mercedes right on top of it in a traffic lane. She jumped out and went to the railing.

Neither Bosch nor Backus was in sight. She thought she might have gotten ahead of them. She ran across the street, drawing a horn blast from a motorist but not caring, and went to the opposite rail.

She studied the roiling surface for a long moment and then saw Bosch. His head was above the surface and canted back, his face to the sky. She panicked. Was he still alive? Or was he drowned and his body just moving in the current? Then almost as quickly as the fear had grabbed her she saw movement as Bosch whipped his head, as swimmers often do to get hair and water out of their eyes. He was alive and maybe a hundred yards from the bridge. She could see him struggling to move his position in the stream. She leaned forward and looked down. She knew what he was doing. He was going to try to catch one of the bridge’s support beams. If he could grab it and hold on, he could be extracted and saved right here.

Rachel ran back to the car and threw open the rear hatch. She looked in the back for anything that might help. Her bag was there and almost nothing else. She yanked it out to the ground without caring and lifted the carpeted floor panel. Someone stuck behind the Mercedes on the street started honking. She didn’t even turn to look.

I HIT THE MIDDLE PIER of the bridge so hard that I lost all of my breath and thought I’d broken four or five ribs. But I held on. I knew this was my shot. I held on with everything I had left.

The water had claws. I could feel them as it rushed by me. Thousands of claws pulling at me, grabbing me, trying to take me back into the dark torrent. The water backed up on me and rose into my face. Arms on either side of the pier, I tried to shimmy up the slippery concrete but every time I gained a few inches, the claws would grab me and pull me back down. I quickly learned that the best I could do was hold on. And wait.

As I hugged the concrete I thought of my daughter. I thought of her urging me to hold on, telling me I had to make it for her. She told me no matter where I was or what I did, she still needed me. Even in the moment, I knew it was illusion but I found comfort in it. I found the strength to hold on.

THERE WERE TOOLS and a spare tire in the compartment, nothing that would work. Then, beneath the tire, through the design holes in the wheel, she saw black and red cables. Jumper cables.

She put her fingers through the holes in the wheel and yanked it upward. It was large, heavy and awkward but she was not deterred. She pulled the wheel up and out and just dropped it on the road. She grabbed the cables and ran back across the road, causing a car to slide sideways as its driver hit the brakes.

At the railing she looked into the river but didn’t see Bosch at first. Then she looked down and saw him clinging to the support beam, the water backing up against him as it grabbed and pulled at him. His hands and fingers were scratched and bloody. He was looking up at her and had what she thought might have been a small smile on his face, almost like he was telling her that he was going to be all right.

Not sure how she was going to complete the rescue, she dropped one end of the cables over the side. They were far too short.

“Shit!”

She knew she had to go over. There was a utility pipe running along the side of the bridge. She knew if she could get down to that she could lower the cables another five feet down. It might be enough.

“Lady, are you all right?”

She turned. There was a man standing there. He was under an umbrella. He had been crossing the bridge.

“There’s a man down there in the river. Call nine-one-one. Do you have a cell? Call nine-one-one.”

The man began pulling a cell phone from his jacket pocket. Rachel turned back to the railing and started to climb up on it.

That was the easy part. Going over the railing and climbing down to the pipe was the risky maneuver. She put the cables around her neck and slowly reached one foot down to the pipe, then the other. She slid down with one leg on either side of the pipe like she was riding a horse.

This time she knew the cable would reach Bosch. She started lowering it to him and he reached for it. But just as his hand grabbed it, there was a blur of color in the water and Bosch was struck by something and knocked loose from the support beam. In that moment Rachel realized it was Backus, either alive or dead, that had knocked him loose.

She hadn’t been ready. When Bosch was knocked loose he kept his grip on the cable line. But his weight and Backus’s weight and the current were too much for Rachel. The other end of the cable was jerked out of her grasp and it went down into the water and under the bridge.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!”

She looked up at the man under the umbrella at the top of the railing.

“It’s too late,” she said. “He’s gone.”

I WAS WEAK but Backus was weaker. I could tell he didn’t have the same strength he’d brought to the confrontation on the river’s edge. He had pulled me loose from the bridge because I hadn’t seen him coming and he’d hit me with all his weight. But now he was grabbing at me like a drowning man, just trying to hold on.

We tumbled through the water, drawing down to the bottom. I tried to open my eyes but the water was too dark to see through. I drove him down hard into the concrete floor and then shifted behind him. I wrapped the cable I still gripped around his neck. I did it again and again until his hands let go of me and went to his own neck. My lungs were burning. I needed air. I pushed off him to move toward the surface. As we separated he made a last grab for my ankles but I was able to kick away and break his grasp.

IN THE LAST MOMENTS Backus saw his father. Long dead and burned, he appeared alive. He had the stern set of eyes that Backus always remembered. He had one hand behind his back, as if he was hiding something. His other hand beckoned his son to come forward. To come home.

Backus smiled and then he laughed. Water rushed into his mouth and lungs. He didn’t panic. He welcomed it. He knew he would be reborn. He would return. He knew evil could never be vanquished. It just moved from one place to another and waited.

I SURFACED AND GULPED down air. I spun in the water to look for Backus but he was gone. I was safe from him but not from the water. I was exhausted. My arms felt so heavy in the water that I could barely bring them to the surface. I thought about the boy again, about how scared he must have been, all alone and the claws grabbing at him.

Up ahead I could see where the wash emptied into the main river channel. I was fifty yards away and I knew the river would be wider and shallower and more violent there. But the concrete walls were sloped in the main channel and I knew I might have a shot at pulling myself out if I could somehow slow my speed and find purchase.