The Last Coyote (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  He came into the detective bureau through the rear door. The first thing he did was confirm that Pounds’s glass office was empty. He was at the command meeting. Then he checked the coatrack up at the front and saw he was in business. As he walked down the aisle formed by the separation of the investigation tables, he exchanged nods with a few of the other detectives.

  Edgar was at the homicide table sitting across from his new partner, who was in Bosch’s old chair. Edgar heard one of the “Hi, Harry” greetings and turned around.

  “Harry, wassup?”

  “Hey, man, just came in to get a couple things. Hang on a sec, it’s hot outside.”

  Bosch walked to the front of the bureau, where old Henry of the Nod Squad sat at the desk behind the counter. He was working on a crossword puzzle and Bosch could see several erasure marks had turned the grid gray.

  “Henry, howzit hanging? You getting anywhere with that?”

  “Detective Bosch.”

  Bosch slipped his sport coat off and hung it on a hook on the rack next to a jacket with a gray cross-hatch pattern. It was on a hanger and Bosch knew it belonged to Pounds. As he put his coat on the hook with his back to Henry and the rest of the bureau, he snaked his left hand inside the other coat, felt for the interior pocket and then pulled out Pounds’s badge wallet. He knew it would be there. Pounds was a creature of habit and Bosch had seen the badge wallet in the suit coat once before. He put the wallet into his pants pocket and turned around as Henry continued talking. Bosch had only a momentary tinge of hesitation at the seriousness of what he was doing. Taking another cop’s badge was a crime, but Bosch looked at Pounds as being the reason he did not have his own badge. In the inventory of his morality, what Pounds had done to him was equally wrong.

  “If you want to see the lieutenant, he’s down the hall at a meeting,” Henry said.

  “No, I don’t want to see the lieutenant, Henry. In fact, don’t even tell him I was here. I don’t want his blood pressure to go up, you know. I’m just going to get a few things and get out of here, okay?”

  “That’s a deal. I don’t want him cranky, either.”

  Bosch didn’t have to worry about anyone else in the bureau telling Pounds he had been in. He gave Henry a friendly clasp on the shoulder as he walked behind him, sealing the agreement. He went back to the homicide table and as he approached, Burns began to rise from Bosch’s old spot.

  “You need to get in here, Harry?” he asked.

  Bosch thought he could detect nervous energy in the other man’s voice. He understood his predicament and wasn’t going to make it a difficult time for him.

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I figured I’d get my personal stuff out of there so you can move in the right way.”

  Bosch came around and opened the drawer at the table. There were two boxes of Junior Mints on top of old paperwork that had been shoved in long ago.

  “Oh, those are mine, sorry,” Burns said.

  He reached in for the two boxes of candy and stood next to the table, holding them like a big kid in a suit while Bosch went through the paperwork.

  It was all a show. Bosch took some of the paperwork and dumped it in a manila file and then pointed with his hand, signaling to Burns he could put his candy back.

  “Be careful, Bob.”

  “It’s Bill. Careful of what?”

  “Ants.”

  Bosch went to the bank of file cabinets that ran along the wall to the side of the table and opened one of the drawers with his business card taped to it. It was three up from the bottom, waist-high, and it was one he knew was almost empty. With his back to the table again, he pulled the badge wallet out of his pocket and put it in the drawer.

  Then, with his hands in the drawer and out of sight, he opened the wallet and took out the gold badge. He then put it in one pocket and the wallet back in the other. For good measure, he pulled a file out of the drawer and closed it.

  He turned around and looked at Jerry Edgar.

  “Okay, that’s it. Just some personal stuff I might need. Anything going on?”

  “Nah, quiet.”

  Back at the coatrack, Bosch turned his back on the bureau again and used one hand to reach for his coat while using the other to take the badge wallet from his pocket and slip it back into Pounds’s coat. He then put his coat on, said good-bye to Henry and went back to the homicide table.

  “I’m outta here,” he said to Edgar and Burns while picking up the two files he had pulled. “I don’t want Ninety-eight to see me and throw a fit. Good luck, boys.”

  On the way out, Bosch stopped and gave the hype another cigarette. The lockdown who had complained before was no longer on the bench or Bosch would have given him one, too.

  Back in the Mustang, he dumped the files on the backseat and took his empty badge wallet out of his briefcase. He slipped Pounds’s badge into place next to his own ID card. It would work, he decided, as long as no one looked too closely at it. The badge said LIEUTENANT across it. Bosch’s ID card identified him as a detective. It was a minor discrepancy and Bosch was happy with it. Best of all, he thought, there was a good chance Pounds would not notice that the badge was missing for some time. He rarely left the station to go to crime scenes and so rarely had to open the wallet or show his badge. There was a good chance its disappearance would go unnoticed. All he had to do was get it back into place when he was done with it.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  BOSCH ENDED UP outside the door of Carmen Hinojos’s office early for his afternoon session. He waited until exactly three-thirty and knocked. She smiled as he entered her office and he noticed that the late-afternoon sun came through the window and splashed light directly across her desk. He moved toward the chair he usually took but then stopped himself and sat on the chair to the left of the desk. She noticed this and frowned at him as if he were a schoolboy.

  “If you think I care which chair you sit in, you are wrong.”

  “Am I? Okay.”

  He got up and moved to the other chair. He liked being near the window.

  “I might not be here for Monday’s session,” he said after settling in.

  She frowned again, this time more seriously.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m going away. I’ll try to be back.”

  “Away? What happened to your investigation?”

  “It’s part of it. I’m going to Florida to track down one of the original investigators. One’s dead, the other one’s in Florida. So I’ve got to go to him.”

  “Couldn’t you just call?”

  “I don’t want to call. I don’t want to give him the chance to put me off.”

  She nodded.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tonight. I’m taking a red-eye to Tampa.”

  “Harry, look at you. You practically look like the walking dead. Can’t you get some sleep and take a plane in the morning?”

  “No, I’ve gotta get out there before the mail arrives.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s a long story. Anyway, I wanted to ask you something. I need your help.”

  She contemplated this for several seconds, apparently weighing how far she wanted to go into the pool without knowing how deep it was.

  “What is it you want?”

  “Do you ever do any forensic work for the department?”

  She narrowed her eyes, not seeing where this was going.

  “A little. From time to time somebody will bring me something, or maybe ask me to do a little profiling of a suspect. But mostly the department uses outside contractors. Forensic psychiatrists who have experience with this.”

  “But you’ve been to crime scenes?”

  “Actually, no. I’ve only looked at photos brought to me and worked from them.”

  “Perfect.”

  Bosch pulled his briefcase onto his lap and opened it. He took out the envelope of crime scene and autopsy photos that had been in the murder book and gently pla
ced them on her desk.

  “Those are from this case. I don’t want to look at them. I can’t look at them. But I need someone to do it and tell me what’s there. There’s probably nothing but I’d like another opinion. The investigation these two guys did on this case was…well, it was almost like there was no investigation.”

  “Oh, Harry.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure this is wise. Why me?”

  “Because you know what I’m doing. And because I trust you. I don’t think I can trust anybody else.”

  “Would you trust me if there was no ethical constraint on me telling others about what we’ve talked about here?”

  Bosch studied her face.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  “I thought so.”

  She slid the envelope to the side of the desk.

  “Let’s put these aside for now and go on with the session. I really have to think about this.”

  “Okay, you can take them. But let me know, okay? I just want your feel for them. As a psychiatrist and as a woman.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “What is happening with the investigation?”

  “Is that a professional question, Dr. Hinojos? Or are you just curious about the case?”

  “No, I’m curious about you. And I’m worried about you. I’m still not convinced that what you are doing is safe—either psychologically or physically. You’re mucking around in the lives of powerful people. And I’m caught in the middle. I know what you’re doing but am almost powerless to make you stop. I’m afraid you tricked me.”

  “Tricked you?”

  “You pulled me into this. I bet you’ve wanted to show me these pictures since you told me what you’re doing.”

  “You’re right, I have. But there was no trick. I thought this was a place where I could talk about anything. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Okay, I wasn’t tricked, just led down the path. I should’ve seen it coming. Let’s move on. I want to talk more about the emotional aspect of what you are doing. I want to know more about why finding this killer is so important to you after so many years?”

  “It should be obvious.”

  “Make it more obvious for me.”

  “I can’t. I can’t put it into words. All I know is that everything changed for me after she was gone. I don’t know how things would have been if she hadn’t been taken away but…everything changed.”

  “Do you understand what you’re saying and what it means? You’re looking at your life in two parts. The first part is with her, which you seem to have imbued with a happiness I’m sure was not always there. The second part is your life after, which you acknowledge has not met expectations or is in some way unsatisfactory. I think you’ve been unhappy for a long time, possibly all of that time. This recent relationship you had may have been a highlight but you were still and, I think, have always been, an unhappy man.”

  She rested a moment but Bosch didn’t speak. He knew she wasn’t done.

  “Now, maybe the traumas of the last few years—both personally for you and for your community at large—have made you take stock of yourself. And I fear that you believe, whether subconsciously or not, that by going back and bringing some form of justice to what happened to your mother, you will be righting your life. And there’s the problem. Whatever happens with this private investigation of yours, it’s not going to change things. It just can’t be done.”

  “You’re saying that I can’t blame what happened then for what I am now?”

  “No, listen to me, Harry. All I’m saying is you are the sum of many parts, not the sum of one. It’s like dominoes. Several different blocks must click together for you to arrive at the end, at the point you are at now. You don’t jump from the first domino to the last.”

  “So I should just give it up? Just let it go?”

  “I’m not saying that. But I am finding it hard to see the emotional benefit or healing you will get from this. In fact, I think there is the possibility that you may do yourself more damage than repair. Does that make any sense?”

  Bosch stood up and went to the window. He stared out but didn’t compute what he saw. He felt the warmth of the sun on him. He didn’t look at her as he spoke.

  “I don’t know what makes sense. All I know is that on every level it seems to make sense that I do this. In fact, I feel…I don’t know what the word is, maybe ashamed. I feel ashamed that I haven’t done this long before now. A lot of years have gone by and I just let them go. I feel like I let her down somehow…that I let myself down.”

  “That’s understa—”

  “Remember what I told you the first day? Everybody counts or nobody counts. Well, for a long time she didn’t count. Not with this department, this society, not even with me. I have to admit that, not even with me. Then I opened that file this week and I could see that her death was just put away. It was buried, just like I had buried it. Somebody put the fix in because she didn’t count. They did it because they could. And then when I think about how long I’ve let it go…it makes me want to…I don’t know, just hide my face or something.”

  He stopped, unable to put into words what he wanted to say. He looked down and noticed there were no ducks in the butcher shop window.

  “You know,” he said, “she might’ve been what she was but sometimes I feel like I didn’t even deserve that…I guess I got what I deserved in life.”

  He stayed at the window, not looking at her. It was several moments before Hinojos spoke.

  “I guess this is the point where I should tell you that you’re being too hard on yourself, but I don’t think that would help much.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “Could you come back here and sit down? Please?”

  Bosch did as he was asked. Finally, after he was seated, his eyes met hers. She spoke first.

  “What I want to say is that you are mixing things up. Putting the cart before the horse. You can’t take the blame because this case may have been covered up. First of all, you had nothing to do with that, and secondly, you didn’t even realize that until you read through the file this week.”

  “But don’t you see? Why didn’t I look at it before? I’m not new here. I’ve been a cop twenty years. I should’ve been there before this. I mean, so what that I didn’t know the details. I knew she was killed and nothing was ever done about it. That was enough.”

  “Look, Harry, think about this, okay? On the plane over tonight, just give it some thought. You’ve engaged yourself in a noble pursuit but you have to safeguard against damaging yourself further. The bottom line is that it is not worth that. It’s not worth the toll you may have to pay.”

  “Not worth it? There’s a killer out there. He thinks he made it away free. For years, he has thought that. Decades. And I’m going to change that.”

  “You’re not understanding what I’m saying. I don’t want any guilty person to get away, especially with murder. But what I am talking about here is you. You are my only concern here. There is a basic rule of nature. No living thing sacrifices itself or hurts itself needlessly. It’s the will of survival and I fear the circumstances of your life may have blunted your own survival skills. You may be throwing it to the wind, not caring what happens to you emotionally, physically, in every way, in this pursuit. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  She took a breather. He said nothing.

  “I have to say,” she continued quietly, “I’m very nervous about this. I’ve never had this situation come up before and I’ve counseled a lot of cops in nine years here.”

  “Well, I got bad news for you.” He smiled. “I went and crashed a party last night at Mittel’s. I think I may have spooked him. At least, I spooked myself.”

  “Shit!”

  “Is that some new psychiatric term? I’m not familiar with it.”

  “This isn’t funny. Why’d you do that?”

  Bosch thought a moment.


  “I don’t know. It was kind of a whim type of thing. I was just driving by his house and there was a party. It kind of…it just made me angry for some reason. Him having a party and my mother…”

  “Did you speak to him about the case?”

  “No. I didn’t even tell him my name. We just kind’ve sparred around for a few minutes but then I left him something. Remember that newspaper clip I showed you Wednesday? I left that for him. I saw him read it. I think it struck a nerve.”

  She exhaled loudly.