“I’m closer. I can get up there now.”
“Wait for the flyover. We don’t know what’s up there. It could be a body but it could be a trap.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“If you people knew there was a hit out on him, why wasn’t he protected?”
“He turned it down. I don’t think he took it seriously. We still don’t know if it has anything to do with this. He might be up there camping and there’s no cell service.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I want to keep my phone free. I’ll call when I hear something on the flyover.”
“I’m here and, look, Harry saved my life once and...”
She didn’t finish.
“I get it,” Ballard said.
She disconnected.
The late-morning northbound traffic was light and Ballard made good time. She took the 101 to the 170 and then the 5 before dropping onto surface streets at Roxford. She checked her phone screen repeatedly, but there was nothing from Rourke on the flyover. Ballard even leaned over to look up through the windshield to see if she could spot the helicopter moving against the backdrop of the mountains that rimmed the Valley. There was nothing.
As she was crossing San Fernando Road, she got a call from Rourke instead of a text. There was no sound of the chopper’s engine in background and she grew livid.
“You’re still at Piper Tech?”
“No, we have a pad we can use at the Davis.”
Ballard knew the department had a training facility near Sylmar named after former chief Edward Davis.
“You did the flyover? Was there anything up there?”
Ballard could hear her own voice drawn tight by the tension of the moment.
“No body,” Rourke said. “But about a hundred yards further north into the scrub from the spot on that screenshot you sent me, it looks like there’s some kind of an abandoned kennel or animal-training facility. There are a couple of sheds and training rings. But no vehicles, no sign of life.”
Ballard exhaled. At least Bosch’s body wasn’t lying out there in the sun.
“Can it be accessed?” she asked.
“Might be tough on the suspension,” Rourke said. “Looks like there was a washout on the dirt road up there.”
“Did you take any photos?”
“Yes. I’m about to send but I thought I should talk to you first.”
“No problem.”
“Do you want us to stay close?”
“I think I’m about fifteen out on a ground search. If you can fly backup, I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“Okay, we’re here till we get a call.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard disconnected and called Lourdes back. She told the San Fernando detective what the results of the flyover were and invited her to meet at the terminus of Coyote Street and then conduct a ground search of the last known location of Harry Bosch’s phone.
“I’m on my way,” Lourdes said.
Bosch
35
The sound of the helicopter overhead gave Bosch hope. But it made the man watching him panic. Bosch had tried to break through to him all night, asking him his name, asking him to loosen the bindings and if he could allow him out of the cage to stretch his cramped legs. Asking if he really wanted the killing of a cop hanging over him.
But the man had said nothing. He just stared at Bosch and on occasion pointed his gun at him through the cage. Bosch knew that was a hollow threat. He was being kept alive for something else. Or someone else. Bosch guessed it would be Tranquillo Cortez.
The man had the hardened stare of a convict and the prison tattoos to go with it. Faded blue ink. Bosch saw none of the symbols associated with the SanFers — no VSF, no 13 — such as he had seen on every SanFer he had encountered during his time with the SFPD. That included Tranquillo Cortez.
Bosch had all night to put things together and had come out of it sure that this man was Mexican Mafia, la eMe, and that Cortez might have gone outside the SanFers to conduct what could be a rogue operation. Abducting a cop was a big move that would put massive pressure on the VSF. Killing a cop was even bigger pressure. Cortez wanted deniability.
It had taken three men to abduct him from his home, four counting the driver of the Jeep that took him up the rugged hillside to this grim destination, and now, for the past four hours, just one silent man to guard him. Every minute that passed felt like an hour, every hour like a day. Bound and crammed into a dog cage, Bosch contemplated his pending death. In the Jeep he had picked up enough of the conversation in Spanish to understand that he was ultimately going to be fed to the dogs. But it was not clear whether that was a figure of speech. And if not, it was not clear whether that would happen while he was still alive or not.
Through it all he was haunted by only one thing. His daughter. Not having had final words with her. Not being able to watch her prosper as an adult. It tore him up to think that he would never see or speak to her again. Guilt overtook him as he acknowledged that he had squandered the past several months as Maddie’s father trying to save a woman who didn’t want to be saved. In the darkest hours before dawn, hot tears of regret had rolled down his cheeks.
But then came the sound of the helicopter directly overhead. In a moment, it changed things for both Bosch and the man guarding him. Bosch had been at enough crime scenes and officer-needs-help calls over the years to recognize the high-pitched engine whine of the powerful Bell 206 JetRanger. He knew that the craft circling above the shed was an LAPD chopper and that they might already be looking for him. It gave him hope that he might see his daughter again and have the chance to make things right.
For the silent guard, the same sound bred terror and the fight-or-flight instincts that come with it. He went to the door, slivered it open, and looked up into the sky. Sighting the craft, he confirmed what Bosch already knew. He turned from the door and came to the cage, raising the barrel of his gun.
Bosch put his hands up as well as he could in the cramped space and spoke in rudimentary Spanish.
“You kill a cop, they’ll never stop hunting you.”
The man hesitated. Bosch kept speaking. He had no formal training in the language, just what he had picked up over a lifetime of working the streets, and from partners like Lucia Soto and Bella Lourdes.
“What will Tranquillo say? He wants me alive. You’re going to take that from him?”
The man stood frozen, the gun still pointed at Bosch.
In his early life Bosch had spent fifteen months in Vietnam. Not a day went by in that time that he didn’t hear helicopters. It was the background music of the war. Hiding in the elephant grass, waiting for a dustoff, he had learned early how to read their sound for distance and location. He could now tell that the airship flying above them was spiraling in increasingly larger circles.
His guard moved back to the door and looked out. He sensed what Bosch had, that the helicopter was making a wider turn. Then the sound changed again. It became muffled and Bosch knew the craft had flown behind the crest of the mountain. The shed was out of its sight.
The man with the gun turned and looked at him for a long moment, deciding what to do. Bosch knew he was deciding his life. He kept their eyes locked.
The man suddenly turned and pushed the door open further. He looked out and up toward the sky. The sound of the chopper was still distant.
“Sali!” Bosch yelled. “Ahora!”
He hoped it was “Go now!” or something close.
The man shoved the door all the way open, filling the shed with blinding light. He slid the gun into the waistband of his pants and moved back into the corner where a green motorbike was leaning against the rusting steel wall. He jumped on it, kick-started it, and then shot through the open door.