The Narrows

by Michael Connelly

  She was afraid that if she looked away from the red glow of the taillights on Thomas's car, they would lose him in the sea of blurred red. Bosch seemed to know what she was thinking.

  "Relax," he said. "I'm not going to lose him. And even if I do, we know where he is going now."

  "No, we don't. We only know where Turrentine lives. That doesn't mean his books are there. Six thousand books? Who keeps six thousand books in their house? He probably has them in a warehouse somewhere."

  Rachel watched Bosch adjust his grip on the steering wheel and add a few more miles to his speed, drawing them closer to Thomas.

  "Didn't think about that, did you?"

  "No, not really,"

  "So don't lose him."

  "I told you, I won't."

  "I know. It just helps me to say it."

  She gestured toward the windshield.

  "How often does it get like this?"

  "Almost never," Bosch said. "They said on the news that it's a hundred-year storm. It's like something's wrong, something's broken. The canyons are probably washing out in Malibu. Landslides in the Palisades. And the river's probably over its sides. Last year we had the fires. This year maybe it's going to be rain. One way or another it's always something. It's like you always have to pass a test or something."

  He turned on the radio to pick up a weather report. But Rachel immediately reached over and turned it off and pointed ahead through the windshield.

  "Concentrate on this," she ordered. "I don't care about the weather report,"

  "Right."

  "Get closer. I don't care if you're right behind him. He won't be able to see you in this mess."

  "I get behind him I might hit him, then what do we say?"

  "Just don't-"

  "Lose him. Yeah, I know." They drove for the next half hour without a word. The freeway rose and crossed over the mountains. Rachel saw a large stone structure on the top of the mountain. It looked like some sort of postmodern castle in the gray and gloom and Bosch told her it was the Getty Museum.

  As they descended into the Valley she saw the turn signal flare from the back of Thomas's car. Bosch moved into the turning lane three cars back.

  "He's taking the one-oh-one. We're almost there."

  "You mean to Canoga Park?"

  "That's right. He'll take this out west and men go north again on surface streets."

  Bosch grew quiet again as he concentrated on the driving and following. In another fifteen minutes the turn signal on the Explorer flared again and Thomas exited on DeSoto Avenue

  and headed north. Bosch and Walling trailed behind on the exit ramp, but this time without the cover of other traffic.

  On DeSoto, Thomas almost immediately pulled to the curb in a no parking area and Bosch had to drive by him or the surveillance would have been obvious.

  "I think he's looking at a map or directions," Rachel said. "He had the light on and his head was down."

  "Okay."

  Bosch pulled into a service station, circled around the pumps and then drove back out to the street. He paused before pulling out, looking left down the street at Thomas's Explorer. He waited and after a half minute Thomas pulled his Explorer back into traffic. Bosch waited for him to go by, holding his cell phone up to his left ear to block any view of his face in case Thomas was looking and could see in the rain. He let another car go by and then pulled out.

  "He must be close," Rachel said.

  "Yeah."

  But Thomas drove several more blocks before turning right. Bosch slowed before doing the same.

  "Valerio," Rachel said, seeing the street sign in the murk. "This is if"

  When Bosch made the turn she saw the brake lights on Thomas's car. He was stopped in the middle of the road three blocks ahead. He was at a dead end.

  Bosch quickly pulled to the curb behind a parked car,

  "The dome light's on," Rachel said. "I think he's looking at his map again."

  "The river," Bosch said.

  "What?"

  "I told you, Valerio cuts across the whole Valley. But so does the river. So he's probably figuring out a way to get around it. The river cuts off all these streets in here. He probably has to get to Valerio on the other side."

  "I don't see any river up there. I see a fence and concrete."

  "It's not what you would consider a river. In fact, technically that isn't the river. It's probably either the Aliso or Brown's Canyon wash. It goes to the river."

  They waited. Thomas didn't move.

  "The river used to flood in storms like this. It would wipe out a third of the city. So they tried to control it Contain it. Somebody had the idea to capture it in stone, put it in concrete. So that's what they did and everybody's house and home was supposedly safe after that"

  "I guess that's called progress." Bosch nodded and then re-gripped his hands on the wheel.

  "He's moving."

  Thomas turned left and once his car was out of sight Bosch pulled away from the curb and followed. Thomas drove north to Saticoy and then took a right. He went over a bridge crossing the wash below. As they followed, Rachel looked down and saw the torrent of water in the concrete channel.

  "Wow. I thought I lived in Rapid City."

  Boseh didn't answer. Thomas turned south on Mason and came back down to Valerio. But now he was on the other side of the concrete channel. He turned right again on Valerio.

  "That'll be another dead end," Bosch said.

  He stayed on Mason and drove on by Valerio. Rachel looked through the rain and saw that Thomas had pulled into a driveway in front of a large two-story home that was one of five homes on the dead-end street.

  "He pulled into a driveway," she said. "He's there. Jesus, it's the house!"

  "What house?"

  "The one from the photo in the trailer. Backus was so sure of himself he left us a goddamn picture."

  Bosch pulled to the curb. They were out of sight of the homes on Valerio. Rachel turned and looked out all of the windows. Every home around them was dark.

  "There must be a power outage around here."

  "Under your seat there's a flashlight. Take it."

  Rachel reached down and got it. .

  "What about you?"

  "I'll be all right. Let's go." Rachel started to open her door but then looked back at Bosch. She wanted to say something but hesitated.

  "What?" he asked. "Be careful? Don't worry, I will."

  "Actually, yes, be careful. But what I was going to say is that I have my second gun in my bag. Do you-"

  "Thanks, Rachel, but this time I brought my own."

  She nodded.

  "I should have figured that. And what are your views on backup now?"

  "Call it in if you want. But I'm not waiting. I'm going down there."

  The rain felt cold on my face and neck as I got out of the Mercedes. I pulled the collar on my jacket up and started heading back toward Valerio. Rachel came over and walked next to me without saying a word. When we got to the corner we used the wall surrounding the corner property as cover and looked down into the cul-de-sac and the dark house where Ed Thomas had parked his car. There was no sign of Thomas or anyone else. Every window at the front of the house was dark. But even in the grayness I could tell that Rachel was right. It was the house from the photo Backus had left for us.

  I could hear the river but not see it. It was hidden behind the homes. But its furious power was almost palpable, even from this distance. In storms like this the whole city washed itself out over its smoothed concrete surfaces. It snaked through the Valley and around the mountains to downtown. And from there west to the ocean.

  It was a mere trickle most of the year. A municipal joke even. But a rainstorm would awaken the snake and give it power. It became the city's gutter, millions and millions of gallons banging against its thick stone walls, tons of water raging to get out, moving with a terrible force and momentum. I remembered a boy who was taken when I was a kid. I didn't know him. I knew of
him. Four decades later I even remembered his name. Billy Kinsey was playing on the river's shoulder. He slipped in and in a moment he was gone. They found his body hung up in a viaduct 12 miles away.

  My mother had taught me early and often, when it rains...

  "Stay out of the narrows."

  "What?" Rachel whispered.

  "I was thinking about the river. Trapped between those walls. When I was a kid we called it 'the narrows/ When it rains like this the water moves fast. It's deadly. When it rains you stay away from the narrows."

  "But we're going to the house."

  "Same thing, Rachel. Be careful. Stay out of the narrows."

  She looked at me. She seemed to understand what I meant,

  "Okay, Bosch,"

  "How about you take the front and I take the back?"

  "Fine."

  "Be ready for anything."

  "You, too."

  The target house was three properties away. We walked quickly along the wall surrounding the first property and then cut up the driveway of the next. We skirted the fronts of two houses until we came to the home where Thomas's car was parked. Rachel gave me a last nod and we separated then, both of us pulling our weapons in unison. Rachel moved to the front while I started down the driveway toward the rear. The gloom and the sound of the rain and the river channel gave me visual and sound cover. The driveway was also lined with squat bougainvillea trees that had been let go for some time without training or trimming. But the house behind the windows was dark. Someone could be behind any glass watching me and I wouldn't know it.

  The rear yard was flooded. In the middle of the big puddle stood the rusted twin A-frames of a swing set with no swings left on it. Behind it was a six-foot fence that separated the property from the river channel. I could see the water was near the top of its concrete siding and was rushing by in a mad torrent. It would flood by day's end. Further upstream, where the channels were shallower, it probably already had stemmed its sides.

  I turned my attention back to the house. There was a full porch off the rear. There were no gutters on the roof here and the rain was coming off in sheets, so heavy that it obscured everything within. Backus could' ve been sitting in a rocker on the porch and I wouldn't have seen him. The line of bougainvilleas carried along the porch railing. I ducked below the sight line and moved quickly to the steps. I took the three steps up in one stride and was in out of the rain. My eyes and ears took a moment to adjust and that was when I saw it. There was a white rattan couch on the right side of the porch. On it a blanket covered the unmistakable shape of a human form sitting upright but slumped against the left arm. Dropping to a crouch I moved closer and reached for a corner of the blanket on the floor. I slowly pulled it off the form.

  It was an old man. He looked like he had been dead at least a day. The odor was just starting. His eyes were open and bugged, his skin was the color of white paint in a smoker's bedroom. A snap-cuff had been pulled tight-too tight-around his neck. Charles Turrentine, I presumed. I also presumed he was the old man in the photo Backus had taken. He had been killed and then left there on the porch like a stack of old newspapers. He'd had no business with the Poet. He'd just been a means to an end.

  I raised my Glock and went to the house's back door. I wanted to get a warning to Rachel but there was no way to do it without revealing my own position and possibly compromising hers. I just had to keep moving, going further into the darkness of this place until I came across her or Backus.

  The door was locked. I decided I would go around, catch up to Rachel from the front. But as I turned, my eyes fell back on the body and I was struck with a possibility. I moved to the couch and patted down the old man's pants. And I was rewarded. I heard the jingle of keys.

  Rachel was surrounded. Stacks and stacks of books lined every wall in the front hallway. She stood there, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, and looked into the living room to her right. More books-Shelves lined every wall and every shelf was rilled to capacity. Books stacked on the coffee table and the end tables and every horizontal surface. Somehow it made the place seem haunted. It was not a place of life but a place of doom and gloom where bookworms ate through the words of all the authors.

  She tried to keep moving without dwelling on her rising fears. She wavered and thought about turning back to the door and leaving before she was discovered. But then she heard the voices and knew she must press on.

  "Where is Charles?"

  "I said sit down.'"

  The words came to her from an unknown direction. The pounding of the rain outside, the rage of the nearby river, and the books stacked everywhere combined to obliquely camouflage the origin of sounds. She heard the voices but could not tell where they came from.

  More sounds and voices came to her. Murmurs mostly and every few moments a recognizable word, sculpted in anger or fear.

  "You thought..."

  She bent down and left the flashlight on the floor. She had not used it yet and couldn't risk it now. She moved into the deeper gloom of the hallway. She had already checked the front rooms and knew the voices were coming from somewhere further into the house.

  The hallway led to a foyer from which doors opened in three different directions. As she got there she heard the voices of two men and thought for sure that they came from somewhere to the right.

  "Write it!"

  "I can't see!"

  Then a popping sound. A ripping sound. Curtains being pulled off a window. "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-"

  "Doit!"

  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."