He took the bag back to the kitchen and began taking the pills two and three at a time with gulps of juice. As he followed this routine he looked through the kitchen window and down to the harbor below. The fog had moved out. It was still misty but clear enough for him to see The Following Sea and a skiff tied at its fantail.
He went to one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out the set of binoculars Graciela liked to use when she was watching him on the boat heading in or out of the harbor with a charter party. He went out onto the deck and to the railing. He focused the binoculars. There was no one in the cockpit or up on the bridge of the boat. His view could not penetrate the reflective film on the sliding door of the salon. He moved his focus to the skiff. It was weathered green with a one-and-a-half-horse outboard. He recognized it as being one of the rentals from the concession on the pier.
McCaleb went back inside and left the binoculars on the counter while he swiped the remaining pills into his hand. He took them and the orange juice back to the bedroom. He quickly ingested the pills while he got dressed. He knew Buddy Lockridge would not have rented a boat to get to The Following Sea. Buddy knew which Zodiac was McCaleb’s and would simply have borrowed that.
Somebody else was on his boat.
It took him twenty minutes to walk down to the pier because Graciela had the golf cart. He went to the boat rental booth first to ask who had rented the boat but the window was closed and there was a sign with a clock face that said the operator would not be back until 12:30. McCaleb checked his watch. It was ten after twelve. He couldn’t wait. He went down the ramp to the skiff dock and stepped onto his Zodiac and started the engine.
As McCaleb moved down the fairway toward The Following Sea he studied the side windows of the salon but still could not see any movement or indication that someone was on the boat. He cut the engine on the Zodiac when he was twenty-five yards away and the inflatable skiff glided the rest of the way silently. He unzipped the pocket of his windbreaker and removed the Glock 17, his service weapon from his time with the bureau.
The Zodiac bumped lightly into the fantail next to the rental skiff. McCaleb first looked into the skiff but saw nothing other than a life vest and a flotation cushion, nothing that indicated who had rented the boat. He stepped onto the fantail and while crouched behind the stern wrapped the Zodiac’s line around one of the rear cleats. He looked over the transom and saw only himself in the sliding door. He knew he would have to approach the door not knowing if there would be someone on the other side watching him come in.
He crouched down again and looked around. He wondered if he should retreat and come back with the harbor patrol boat. After a moment he decided against it. He glanced up the hill at his house and then raised himself and swung his body over the transom. With the gun carried low and hidden behind his hip he walked to the door and looked down at the lock. There was no damage or indication it had been tampered with. He pulled the handle and the door slid open. McCaleb was sure he had locked it the day before when leaving with Raymond.
He stepped inside. The salon was empty, no sign of intruder or burglary. He slid the door closed behind him and listened. The boat was silent. There was the sound of water lapping against the outside surfaces and that was it. His eyes moved toward the steps leading to the lower-deck staterooms and the head. He moved that way, raising the gun in front of him now.
On the second of the four steps down McCaleb hit a cracked board that sighed with his weight. He froze and listened for a response. There was only silence and the relentless sound of water against the sides of the boat. At the bottom of the stairs was a short hallway with three doors. Directly ahead was the forward stateroom, which had been converted into an office and file storage room. To the right was the master stateroom. To the left was the head.
The door to the master stateroom was closed and McCaleb could not remember if it had been that way when he had left the boat twenty-four hours earlier. The door to the head was wide open and hooked on the inside wall so it wouldn’t swing and slam when the boat was moving. The office door was partially open and swaying slightly with the movement of the boat. There was a light on inside the room and McCaleb could tell it was the light over the desk, which was built into the lower berth of a set of bunk beds to the left of the door. McCaleb decided he would check the head first, followed by the office and then the master last. As he approached the head he realized that he smelled cigarette smoke.
The head was empty and too small to be used as a hiding place anyway. As he turned toward the office door and raised his weapon, a voice called out from within.
“Come on in, Terry.”
He recognized the voice. He cautiously stepped forward and used his free hand to push open the door. He kept the gun raised.
The door swung open and there was Harry Bosch sitting at the desk, his body in a relaxed posture, leaning back and looking toward the door. Both his hands were in sight. Both were empty except for the unlit cigarette between two fingers of his right hand. McCaleb slowly moved into the small room, still holding the gun up and aimed at Bosch.
“You going to shoot me? You want to be my accuser and my executioner?”
“This is breaking and entering.”
“Then I guess that makes us even.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That little dance at my place the other night, what do you call that? ‘Harry, I gotta couple more questions about the case.’ Only you never asked any real questions, did you? Instead, you take a look at my wife’s picture and ask about that, and you ask about the picture in the hallway and you drink my beer and, oh, yeah, you tell me all about finding God in your baby daughter’s blue eyes. So what do you call all of that, Terry?”
Bosch casually turned the chair and glanced over his shoulder at the desk. McCaleb looked past him and saw his own laptop computer was open and turned on. On the screen he could see that Bosch had called up the file containing the notes for the profile he was going to compose until everything changed the day before. He wished he had protected it with a password.
“It feels like breaking and entering to me,” Bosch said, his eyes on the screen. “Maybe worse.”
In Bosch’s new posture the leather bomber jacket he was wearing fell open and McCaleb could see the pistol holstered on his hip. He continued to hold his own weapon up and ready.
Bosch looked back at him.
“I didn’t get a chance to look at all of this yet. Looks like a lot of notes and analysis. Probably all first-rate stuff, knowing you. But somehow, someway, you got it wrong, McCaleb. I’m not the guy.”
McCaleb slowly slid back into the lower berth of the opposite set of bunks. He held the gun with a little less precision now. He sensed there was no immediate danger from Bosch. If he had wanted to, he could have ambushed him as he’d come in.
“You shouldn’t be here, Harry. You shouldn’t be talking to me.”
“I know, anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law. But who am I going to talk to? You put the bead on me. I want it off.”
“Well, you’re too late. I’m off the case. And you don’t want to know who’s on it.”
Bosch just stared at him and waited.
“The bureau’s civil rights division. You think Internal Affairs has been a pain in your ass? These people live and breathe for one thing, taking scalps. And an LAPD scalp is worth more than Boardwalk and Park Place put together.”