HE DREAMED OF the coyote again. The animal was on a mountain path where there were no homes, no cars, no people. It was moving very quickly through the dark as if it was trying to get away. But the path and place were his. He knew the land and knew he would escape. What it was he fled from was never clear, never seen. But it was there, behind him in the dark. And the coyote knew by instinct it must get away.
The phone woke Bosch, breaking into the dream like a knife stabbed through paper. Bosch pulled the pillow off his head, rolled to his right and his eyes were immediately assaulted by the light of dawn. He had forgotten to close the blinds. He reached for the phone on the floor.
“Hold on,” he said.
He put the phone down on the bed, sat up and rubbed a hand across his face. He squinted at the clock. It was ten minutes after seven. He coughed and cleared his throat, then picked the phone back up.
“Yeah.”
“Detective Bosch?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Brad Hirsch. I’m sorry to call so early.”
Bosch had to think a moment. Brad Hirsch? He had no idea who it was.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said while he continued to search his mind for the name.
A silence followed.
“I’m the one…In Latents? Remember, you-”
“Hirsch? Yeah, Hirsch. I remember. What’s up?”
“I wanted to tell you I made the AFIS run you wanted. I came in early and ran it with another search I’m doing for Devonshire Homicide. I don’t think anybody will know.”
Bosch kicked his legs over the side of the bed, opened a drawer in the bed table and took out a pad and a pencil. He noticed that he had taken the pad from the Surf and Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach. He remembered he had spent a few days with Sylvia there the year before.
“Yeah, you made the run? What’d you get?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I’m sorry but I got nothing.”
Bosch threw the pad back into the open drawer and threw himself backward on the bed.
“No hits?”
“Well, the computer came up with two candidates. I then did a visual comparison and it was no good. No matches. I’m sorry. I know this case means…”
He didn’t finish.
“You took it through all the data bases?”
“Every one on our network.”
“Let me ask you something. All those data bases, do they include DA’s employees and LAPD personnel?”
There was silence as Hirsch must have been mulling over what the question might mean.
“You there, Hirsch?”
“Yes. The answer is yes.”
“How far back? You know what I mean? These bases have prints going how far back?”
“Well, each data base is different. The LAPD’s is extensive. I’d say we have prints on everybody who’s worked here since World War II.”
Well, that clears Irving and the rest of the cops, Bosch thought. But that didn’t bother him much. His sights were definitely somewhere else.
“What about people working for the DA?”
“The DA’s office would be different,” Hirsch said. “I don’t think they started printing employees until the middle sixties.”
Conklin had been there during that time, Bosch knew, but he would already have been elected DA. It would seem that he would not have submitted his own prints, especially if he knew there was a print card in a murder book somewhere that could possibly be matched to him.
He thought of Mittel. He would have been out of the DA’s office by the time employees’ prints were taken as a matter of course.
“What about the federal base?” he asked. “What if some guy worked for a president and got the kind of clearance you need to go visit the White House, would those prints be in that base?”
“Yes, they’d be in twice. In the federal employees base and in the FBI’s. They keep prints on record of everyone they do background investigations on, if that’s what you mean. But remember, just because somebody visits the president, it doesn’t mean they get printed.”
Well, Mittel isn’t a scratch but it’s close, Bosch thought.
“So what you’re saying,” Bosch said, “is that whether or not we have complete data files going back to 1961, whoever belongs to those prints I gave you hasn’t been printed since then?”
“That’s not one hundred percent but it’s close. The person who left these prints probably hasn’t been printed-at least by any contributor to the data banks. We can only reach so far with this. One way or another we can pull prints on one out of about every fifty or so people in the country. But I just didn’t get anything this time. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Hirsch, you tried.”
“Well, I guess I’ll be getting back to work now. What do you want me to do with the print card?”
Bosch thought a moment. He wondered if there was any other avenue to chase down.
“Tell you what, can you just hold on to it? I’ll come by the lab and pick it up when I can. Probably be by later today.”
“Okay, I’ll put it in an envelope for you in case I’m not here. Good-bye.”
“Hey, Hirsch?”
“Yeah?”
“It feels good, don’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“You did the right thing. You didn’t get a match but you did the right thing.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He was acting like he didn’t understand because he was embarrassed, but he understood.
“Yeah, I’ll see you Hirsch.”
After hanging up, Bosch sat on the side of the bed, lit a cigarette and thought about what he was going to do with the day. The news from Hirsch was not good but it wasn’t daunting. It certainly didn’t clear Arno Conklin. It might not even have cleared Gordon Mittel. Bosch wasn’t sure whether Mittel’s work for presidents and senators would have required a fingerprint check. He decided his investigation was still intact. He wasn’t changing any plans.
He thought about the night before and the wild-ass chance he had taken confronting Mittel the way he had. He smiled at his own recklessness and thought about what Hinojos might make of it. He knew she’d say it was a symptom of his problem. She wouldn’t see it as a tactful way of flushing the bird from the bush.
He got up and started the coffee and then showered, shaved and got ready for the day. He took his coffee and the box of cereal from the refrigerator out to the deck, leaving the sliding door open so he could hear the stereo. He had KFWB news on.
It was cool and crisp outside but he could tell it would get warmer later. Blue jays were swooping in and out of the arroyo below the deck and he could see black bees the size of quarters working in the yellow flowers of the primrose jasmine.
There was a story on the radio about a building contractor making a fourteen-million-dollar bonus for completing the rebuilding of the 10 freeway three months ahead of schedule. The officials who gathered to announce the engineering feat likened the fallen freeway to the city itself. Now that it was back upright, so, too, was the city. The city was on the move again. They had a lot to learn, Bosch thought.
Afterward, he went in and got out the yellow pages and started working the phone in the kitchen. He called the major airlines, shopped around and made arrangements to fly to Florida. But flying on one day’s notice, the best deal he could get was still seven hundred dollars, a shocking amount to him. He put it on a credit card so that he could pay it off over time. He also reserved a rental car at Tampa International Airport.
When he had that finished he went back out to the deck and thought about the next project he had to tackle:
He needed a badge.
For a long time he sat on the deck chair and contemplated whether he needed it for his own sense of security or because it was a bona fide necessity to his mission. He knew how naked and vulnerable he had felt this week without the gun and the badge, extremities he had carried on his body for more than twenty years. But he had avoided the temptation to carry the back-up gun that he knew was in the closet next to the front door. That he could do, he knew. But the badge was different. More so than the gun, the badge was the symbol of what he was. It opened doors better than any key, it gave him more authority than any words, than any weapon. He decided the badge was a necessity. If he was going to Florida and was going to scam McKittrick, he had to look legit. He had to have a badge.
He knew his badge was probably in a desk drawer in Assistant Chief Irving S. Irving’s office. There was no way he could get to it and not be discovered. But he knew where there was another one that would work just as well.
Bosch looked at his watch. Nine-fifteen. It was forty-five minutes until the daily command meeting at Hollywood Station. He had plenty of time.