Lost Light (41 page)

Graciela frowned but it did not detract from his view of her as beautiful. She had copper skin and dark brown hair that framed a face with eyes so darkly brown that there was almost no demarcation between iris and pupil. Her beauty was another reason he sought her approval of all things. There was something purifying about the light of her smile when it was cast on him.

“Terry, I listened to you two on the porch. After the baby got quiet. I heard what she said about what makes you tick and how a day doesn’t go by that you don’t think about it, what you used to do. Just tell me this, was she right?”

McCaleb was silent a moment. He looked down at his empty plate and then off across the harbor to the lights in the houses going up the opposite hillside to the inn at the top of Mount Ada. He slowly nodded and then looked back at her.

“Yes, she was right.”

“Then all of this, what we are doing here, the baby, it’s all a lie?”

“No. Of course not. This is everything to me and I would protect it with everything I’ve got. But the answer is yes, I think about what I was and what I did. When I was with the bureau I saved lives, Graciela, plain and simple. And I took evil out of this world. Made it a little less dark out there.”

He raised his hand and gestured toward the harbor.

“Now I have a wonderful life with you and Cielo and Raymond. And I . . . I catch fish for rich people with nothing better to do with their money.”

“So you want both.”

“I don’t know what I want. But I know that when she was here I was saying things to her because I knew you were listening. I was saying what I knew you wanted to hear but I knew in my heart it wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted to do was open that book right then and go to work. She was right about me, Gracie. She hadn’t seen me in three years but she had me pegged.”

Graciela stood up and came around the table to him. She sat on his lap.

“I’m just scared for you, that’s all,” she said.

She pulled him close.

McCaleb took two tall glasses from the cabinet and put them on the counter. He filled the first with bottled water and the second with orange juice. He then began ingesting the twenty-seven pills he had lined up on the counter, intermittently taking swallows of water and orange juice to help them go down. Eating the pills—twice a day—was his ritual and he hated it. Not because of the taste—he was long past that after three years. But because the ritual was a reminder of how dependent he was on exterior concerns for his life. The pills were a leash. He could not live long without them. Much of his world now was built around ensuring that he would always have them. He planned around them. He hoarded them. Sometimes he even dreamed about taking pills.

When he was done, McCaleb went into the living room, where Graciela was reading a magazine. She didn’t look up at him when he stepped into the room, another sign that she was unhappy with what was suddenly happening in her home. He stood there waiting for a moment and when things didn’t change he went down the hallway into the baby’s room.

Cielo was still asleep in her crib. The overhead light was on a dimmer switch and he raised the illumination just enough so that he could see her clearly. McCaleb went to the crib and leaned down so he could listen to her breathe and see her and smell her baby scent. Cielo had her mother’s coloring—dark skin and hair—except for her eyes, which were ocean blue. Her tiny hands were balled in fists as if she were showing her readiness to fight for life. McCaleb fell most in love with her when he watched her sleep. He thought about all the preparation they had gone through, the books and classes and advice from Graciela’s friends at the hospital who were pediatric nurses. All of it so that they would be ready to care for a fragile life so dependent on them. Nothing had been said or read to prepare him for the opposite: the knowledge that came the first moment he held her, that his own life was now dependent on her.

He reached down to her, the spread of his hand covering her back. She didn’t stir. He could feel her tiny heart beating. It seemed quick and desperate, like a whispered prayer. Sometimes he pulled the rocking chair over next to the crib and watched over her until late into the night. This night was different. He had to go. He had work to do. Blood work. He wasn’t sure if he was there to simply say good-bye for the night or to somehow gain inspiration or approval from her as well. In his mind it didn’t quite make sense. He just knew that he had to watch her and touch her before he went to his work.

McCaleb walked out on the pier and then down the steps to the skiff dock. He found his Zodiac among the other small boats and climbed aboard, careful to put the videotape and the murder book in the shelter of the inflatable’s bow so they wouldn’t get wet. He pulled the engine cord twice before it started and then headed off down the middle lane of the harbor. There were no docks in Avalon Harbor. The boats were tied to mooring buoys set in lines that followed the concave shape of the natural harbor. Because it was winter there were few boats in the harbor, but McCaleb didn’t cut between the buoys. He followed the fairways, as if driving a car on the streets of a neighborhood. You didn’t cut across lawns, you stayed on the roadway.

It was cold on the water and McCaleb zipped up his windbreaker. As he approached
The Following Sea
he could see the glow of the television behind the curtains of the salon. This meant Buddy Lockridge had not finished up in time to catch the last ferry and was staying over.

McCaleb and Lockridge worked the charter business together. While the boat’s ownership was in Graciela’s name, the marine charter license and all other documentation relating to the business were in Lockridge’s name. The two had met more than three years earlier when McCaleb had docked
The Following Sea
at Cabrillo Marina in the Los Angeles Harbor and was living aboard it while restoring it. Buddy was a neighbor, living on a sailboat nearby. They had struck up a friendship that ultimately became a partnership.

During the busy spring and summer season Lockridge stayed most nights on
The Following Sea.
But during the slow times he usually caught a ferry back overtown to his own boat at Cabrillo. He seemed to have greater success finding female companions in the overtown bars than in the handful of places on the island. McCaleb assumed he would be heading back in the morning since they did not have a charter for another five days.

McCaleb bumped the Zodiac into the fantail of
The Following Sea.
He cut the engine and got out with the tape and the binder. He tied the Zodiac off on a stern cleat and headed for the salon door. Buddy was there waiting, having heard the Zodiac or felt its bump on the fantail. He slid the door open, holding a paperback novel down at his side. McCaleb glanced at the television but couldn’t tell what it was he had on.

“What’s up, Terror?” Lockridge asked.

“Nothing. I just need to do a little work. I’m going to be using the forward bunk, okay?”

He stepped into the salon. It was warm. Lockridge had the space heater fired up.

“Sure, fine. Anything I can do to help?”

“Nah, this isn’t about the business.”

“It about that lady who came by? The sheriff’s lady?”

McCaleb had forgotten that Winston had come to the boat first and gotten directions from Buddy.

“Yeah.”

“You working a case for her?”

“No,” McCaleb said quickly, hoping to limit Lockridge’s interest and involvement. “I just need to look at some stuff and give her a call back.”

“Very cool, dude.”

“Not really. It’s just a favor. What are you watching?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a show about this task force that goes after computer hackers. Why, you seen it?”

“No, but I was wondering if I could borrow the TV for a little while.”

McCaleb held up the videotape. Lockridge’s eyes lit up.

“Be my guest. Pop that baby in there.”

“Um, not up here, Buddy. This is—Detective Winston asked me to do this in confidence. I’ll bring the TV back up as soon as I’m done.”

Lockridge’s face registered his disappointment but McCaleb wasn’t worried about it. He went over to the counter that separated the galley from the salon and put down the binder and tape. He unplugged the television and removed it from the locking frame that held it in place so it wouldn’t fall when the boat encountered high seas. The television had a built-in videocassette player and was heavy. McCaleb lugged it down the narrow stairway and took it to the forward stateroom, which had been partially converted into an office. Two sides of the room had been lined with twin bunk beds. The bottom berth on the left had been changed into a desk and the two top bunks were used by McCaleb to store his old bureau case files—Graciela didn’t want them in the house where Raymond might stumble upon them. The only problem was that McCaleb was sure that on occasion Buddy had gone through the boxes and looked at the files. And it bothered him. It was an invasion of some kind. McCaleb had thought about keeping the forward stateroom locked but knew that could be a deadly mistake. The only ceiling hatch on the lower deck was in the forward room and access to it ought not be blocked in case there was ever a need for an emergency evacuation through the bow.

He put the television down on the desk and plugged it in. He turned to go back up to the salon to retrieve the binder and tape when he saw Buddy coming down the stairs, holding the tape and leafing through the binder.

“Hey, Buddy . . .

“Looks like a weird one, man.”

McCaleb reached out and closed the binder, then took it and the tape from his fishing partner’s hands.

“Just taking a peek.”

“I told you, it’s confidential.”

“Yeah, but we work good together. Just like before.”

It was true that by happenstance Lockridge had been a great help when McCaleb had investigated the death of Graciela’s sister. But that had been an active street investigation. This was just going to be a review. He didn’t need anybody looking over his shoulder.

“This is different, Buddy. This is a one-night stand. I’m just going to take a look at this stuff and then that will be it. Now let me get to work so I’m not here all night.”

Lockridge didn’t say anything and McCaleb didn’t wait. He closed the door to the forward bunk and then turned to the desk. As he looked down at the murder book in his hands he felt a sharp thrill as well as the familiar rising of dread and guilt.

McCaleb knew it was time to go back to the darkness. To explore it and know it. To find his way through it. He nodded, though he was alone now. It was in acknowledgment that he had waited a long time for this moment.

TWBookmark:
City of Bones
features everyone’s favorite detective, Harry Bosch. George P. Pelecanos once said in a discussion of recurring characters, “Knowing what I know now, I would not give too much away about a leading character’s past early in the series.” Is there any fact about Harry Bosch that you wish you had not revealed? Do you keep a chart or a list of all the things that you have revealed about Harry? Do fans ever point something out to you that you’ve missed or mistaken?

Michael Connelly:
I keep no character charts or anything like that. I wish I had thought about that at the beginning but at the beginning it would have been presumptuous to assume that Harry Bosch would be around for seven or eight more books. So now I have to rely on my memory and good editing. I will from time to time reread one of the old books to refresh my memory about something in particular. I recently reread
Trunk Music
because part of it deals with something I am writing about Harry Bosch now. The one regret I have is that in the second book,
The Black Ice
, I revealed who Harry’s long lost father was. I covered it in a matter of two pages. I look back at that now and think it was a big mistake because I could have waited and turned those two pages into a whole and interesting book.

TWB:
You often discuss the issue of foster care in your books, Harry Bosch was a foster child and it is an interesting part of the plot of
City of Bones
as well. Why are you interested in the foster system?

MC:
I am not really sure why I am interested. I have no personal connection to it. But I guess like most people I believe that how children are treated and raised implicitly impacts how they will behave as adults. So I first of all appreciate how lucky I was to grow up in a full family atmosphere. I also feel some sort of empathy for the people who didn’t have that but survived and perservered and made lives for themselves. Harry Bosch is a good man trying to do a good job. But he has problems and quirks and I think a lot of them could be traced back to his upbringing.

TWB:
You also often mention Raymond Chandler as one of your influences. If one of your fans wanted to start reading Chandler, which book should they start with and why? And, which of his books is your favorite?

MC:
I guess I would recommend my favorite which is
The Little Sister
. It wasn’t his most popular book or the one he is best remembered for but having lived in Los Angeles I found it to be the one that most captured the place. Chandler was known for his descriptions of L.A. and some of the best ones are in
The Little Sister
. There is a whole chapter that has the protagonist, Marlow, on a drive around the city. It has nothing to do with plot. In fact, you could skip the whole chapter and miss nothing. But it is full of wonderful description and mood. It has nothing to do with the plot but is probably the best part of the book for me.

TWB:
Are you inspired by events in the news for your stories? The story in
City of Bones
is particularly chilling. Where did the story for
City of Bones
come from?