“So all that talk at my place about finding God’s hand, was that bullshit? Interview technique or something? A statement designed to get a response that could fit into a profile?”

McCaleb shook his head.

“No, no bullshit.”

“Good. I was hoping it wasn’t.”

Bosch climbed over the transom to the fantail. He untied his rental boat and got in and sat down on the rear bench. Before starting the engine he looked once more at McCaleb and pointed to the back of the boat.

“The Following Sea. What’s that mean?”

“My father named the boat. It was his originally. The following sea is the wave that comes up behind you, that hits you before you see it coming. I guess he named the boat as sort of a warning. You know, always watch your back.”

Bosch nodded.

“Overseas we used to tell each other, ‘Watch six.’”

Now McCaleb nodded.

“Same thing.”

They were silent a moment. Bosch put his hand on the boat motor’s pull handle but didn’t start the engine.

“You know the history of this place, Terry? I’m talking about back before the missionaries came.”

“No, do you?”

“A little. I used to read a lot of history books. When I was a kid. Whatever they had in the library. I liked local history. L.A. mostly, and California. I just liked reading it. We took a field trip here from the youth hall once. So I read up on it.”

McCaleb nodded.

“The Indians that lived out here – the Gabrielinos – were sun worshippers,” Bosch said. “The missionaries came and changed all of that – in fact, they were the ones who called them Gabrielinos. They called themselves something else but I don’t remember what it was. But before all that happened they’d been here and they worshipped the sun. It was so important to life on the island I guess they figured it had to be a god.”

McCaleb watched Bosch’s dark eyes scan across the harbor.

“And the mainland Indians thought of the ones out here as these fierce wizards who could control weather and waves through worship and sacrifices to their God. I mean, they had to be fierce and strong to be able to cross the bay so they could trade their pottery and sealskins on the mainland.”

McCaleb studied Bosch, trying to get a bead on the message he was sure the detective was trying to convey.

“What are you saying, Harry?”

Bosch shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m saying that people find God where they need Him to be. In the sun, in a new baby’s eyes… in a new heart.”

He looked at McCaleb, his eyes as dark and as unreadable as the painted owl’s.

“And some people,” McCaleb began, “find their salvation in truth, in justice, in that which is righteous.”

Now Bosch nodded and offered his crooked smile again.

“That sounds good.”

He turned and started the engine with one pull. He then mock saluted McCaleb and pulled away, angling the rental boat back toward the pier. Not knowing the etiquette of the harbor, he cut across the fairway and between unused mooring buoys. He didn’t look back. McCaleb watched him all the way. A man all alone on the water in an old wooden boat. And in that thought came a question. Was he thinking about Bosch or himself?

On the ferry ride back Bosch bought a Coke at the concession stand and hoped it would settle his stomach and prevent seasickness. He asked one of the stewards where the steadiest ride on the boat was and he was directed to one of the middle seats on the inside. He sat down and drank some of the Coke, then pulled the folded pages he had printed in McCaleb’s office out of his jacket pocket.

He had printed two files before he had seen McCaleb approaching in the Zodiac. One was titled SCENE PROFILE and the other was called SUBJECT PROFILE. He had folded them into his jacket and disconnected the portable printer from the laptop before McCaleb entered the boat. He’d only had time to glance at them on the computer and now began a thorough reading.

He took the scene profile first. It was only one page. It was incomplete and appeared to be simply a listing of McCaleb’s rough notes and impressions from the crime scene video.

Still, it gave an insight into how McCaleb worked. It showed how his observations of a scene turned into observations about a suspect.

SCENE

Ligature Nude Head wound Tape/gag – “Cave”?

Bucket?

Owl – watching over? highly organized detail oriented statement – the scene is his statement he was there – he watched (the owl?) exposure = victim humiliation = victim hatred, contempt bucket – remorse? killer – prior knowledge of victim personal knowledge – previous interaction personal hatred killer inside the wire what is the statement?

Bosch reread the page and then thought about it. Though he did not have full knowledge of the crime scene from which McCaleb’s notes were drawn, he was impressed by the leaps in logic McCaleb had made. He had carefully gone down the ladder to the point where he concluded that Gunn’s killer was someone he knew, that it was someone who would be found inside the perimeter wire that circled Gunn’s existence. It was an important distinction to make in any case. Investigative priorities were usually set upon the determination of whether the suspect being sought had intersected with the victim only at the point of the killing or before. McCaleb’s read on the nuances of the scene were that the killer was someone known to Gunn, that there was a prelude to this final and fatal crossing of killer and victim.

The second page continued the listing of shorthand notes that Bosch assumed McCaleb planned to turn into a fleshed-out profile. As he read he realized that some of the word groupings were phrases McCaleb had taken from him.

SUSPECT

Bosch: institutional – youth hall, Vietnam, LAPD outsider – alienation obsessive-compulsive eyes – lost, loss mission man – avenging angel the big wheel always turning – nobody walks away what goes around comes around alcohol divorce – wife? why? alienation/obsession mother cases justice system – “bullshit” carriers of the plague guilt?

Harry = Hieronymus owl = evil evil = Gunn death of evil = release stressors paintings – demons – devils – evil darkness and light – the edge punishment mother – justice – Gunn God’s hand – police – Bosch punishment = God’s work A darkness more than night – Bosch Bosch wasn’t sure how to interpret the notes. His eyes were drawn to the last line and he repeatedly read it, unsure what it was that McCaleb was saying about him.

After a while he carefully folded the page closed and sat still for a long moment. It felt somehow surrealistic to be sitting there on the boat, having just tried to interpret someone else’s notes and reasons as to why he should be considered a murder suspect. He felt himself getting queasy and realized he might be getting seasick. He gulped down the rest of the Coke and got up, putting the pages back into his jacket pocket.

Bosch headed toward the front of the boat and pushed through the heavy door to the bow. The cool air blasted him immediately. He could see the dim outline of the mainland in the distance. He kept his eyes on the horizon and breathed in deeply. In a few minutes he started feeling better.