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Not so the man she had apparently been sleeping next to. His body, shirtless and wearing white pants, was on the floor, his back against the wall next to the closet. It appeared that he had slid down the wall, possibly after jumping up from the bed in an attempt to escape or defend himself against the armed intruder. His hands were bloodied with defensive wounds and he had suffered two skull-crushing blows, including what was likely the coup de grâce; given the wound’s location on the crown of the head, it must have come after he had slid to the floor. Bosch noted a heroin kit and an empty bindle on a table next to the bed. His position on the wall showed that he had chosen a poor angle if he was going for the exit. Bosch stepped over to the partly open closet door and used an elbow to push it all the way open. Below the hanging clothes were three rifles. The dead man had been going for a weapon.

Bosch heard his name called from the lower level of the house and knew it was time to go. He backed toward the bedroom door, careful not to step on blood, then took a final look at the tableau of murder. Bosch was a fairly new detective with much to learn, but he instinctively knew that what he was seeing was the work of someone who was known to these victims. Someone seeking to avenge some insult or slight. Bosch had seen much blood and death while serving a decade earlier in Vietnam, but it rarely had this kind of personal savagery.

As he went carefully down the steps, he knew that he would never forget this house.

PART TWO

Threads

18

THE ADDRESS LISTED on Nikolai Novak’s driver’s license was on Mulholland Drive, which might have seemed like another coincidence Bosch would have to accept or reject. Bosch owned a home on Woodrow Wilson Drive just a few curves from Mulholland and had been living there for almost forty years. But Mulholland ran for twenty-one miles along the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains, from the Hollywood Hills west toward Topanga Canyon and Malibu beyond that. Novak’s address placed him in the Encino Hills, far from Woodrow Wilson and the realm of coincidence.

Bosch drove there, taking the scenic route on Mulholland but not distracted by the airplane views it afforded. He was thinking of the house of horrors that he had entered on Wonderland Avenue forty-five years before. He was thinking of the two women he had found beaten until they were unrecognizable, their only crime being that they slept in the house with the men who were the intended targets.

Bosch intended to see the Novak place and get the lay of the land. He wanted to know how Nick Stokely, aka Nikolai Novak, lived. In cop-speak, he planned to skee the house — skee as in schematic — so he’d know what he was up against. But he should have anticipated disappointment. It was Mulholland, after all — there wasn’t an ungated house or community anywhere on its twenty-one-mile stretch. Novak’s home was surrounded by the obligatory six-foot-high block wall backed by a hedge of cypress trees that stretched another twenty-five feet into the sky. It was clear that Novak wanted no visual intrusion into the sanctity of his home.

Three hundred feet past the Novak estate, there was a public overlook with a pullover spot for four cars, max. It was on the north side of the road with a view of the sprawling San Fernando Valley and the Santa Susana Mountains beyond. Bosch pulled in. He had an old dog leash in an equipment box in the back of his Jeep, but the trick of skeeing the Novak house while acting like he was walking a dog off leash wouldn’t work on Mulholland. Between the traffic and the coyotes, no one let their dogs run free.

He decided that he would just be an old man out for a walk on his brand-new knee. He grabbed his cane, got out of the car, put in a set of earbuds, and headed toward the Novak property. There were no sidewalks on Mulholland. Bosch kept to the road’s shoulder, which consisted of loose gravel and dirt softened by winter rains. It presented Bosch with many tripping hazards, not to mention the constant danger from vehicles coming around the Mulholland curves whose drivers were paying attention to the views instead of the road.

The Novak property was on just such a curve. Bosch walked its breadth but saw no break in the line of cypress trees that allowed even a casual glimpse over the wall to the property within. As he crossed the cobblestone driveway leading to a solid wooden gate, he saw only the crest of a roof made of Spanish barrel tile. On it was a camera that would capture a visual of any person or vehicle that entered through the gate.

He kept walking, deciding to continue the charade of an old man getting in his steps. He traversed two more sweeping curves of the road, then crossed the street and headed back toward his car. It was then that he noticed that on the top of the mountain that rose behind the Novak property stood several radio and cell towers, placed there to help carry signals over the mountain chain cutting through the middle of the city.

He got back in his car and drove until he found the gravel service road that led up to the towers. It had a single-bar gate that was locked, which prevented him from driving up the hill. He stopped the car, retrieved the set of mini-binoculars he kept in the glove compartment, got out, and walked up the hill, moving slowly and carefully, using measured breaths as he went. He carried his cane — he had taken it only to fend off snakes. The hills were filled with rattlers.

At the top, he found a small, paved clearing and a tall fence topped with razor wire surrounding the concrete base of the communication towers. Bosch walked to the edge of the clearing and looked down through the binoculars to the Novak property about a hundred yards away. There was a massive two-story Spanish-style house shaped like a horseshoe. In the center between the two arms was a courtyard with a large and ornate fountain, the kind with jets that shot water into the air from different spots at different intervals, creating what looked like a water chase. Outside the structure was a pool on one side and a tennis court on the other. The cobblestone drive led to a turnaround circle and a standalone four-car garage with a second floor that was likely a guest suite. A black SUV was parked in the circle, but Bosch saw no activity on the premises beyond the jumping water.

He watched for a few minutes and was about to leave, having decided he would come back at night to see if there was anything happening. But then he saw two men step out of the house and go directly to the SUV. They got in the vehicle and drove toward the Mulholland gate. The SUV pulled through and disappeared around a bend heading west. Bosch heard an electronic buzzing sound and turned back to the radio towers. The buzzing faded out and then reemerged behind him. He turned around and saw a white plastic drone hovering twenty feet off the side of the hill, its four upturned props spinning almost invisibly. A camera mounted below was focused directly on him.

Bosch immediately turned and headed for the trail back to his car. He walked as quickly and as carefully as he could on his artificial knee. But it didn’t matter. When he came through the trees and saw his car, he also saw the black SUV parked behind it. The two men were getting out. For a fight-or-flight moment, he considered ducking into the trees that lined the gravel drive, but he knew it was useless. He wrapped his hand around the binoculars so his fist would carry more weight if it came to that point and approached the two men, feigning ignorance and using the cane in an exaggerated way that he hoped would convince them he was no threat.

“Hey, guys, I’m going to need to get out,” he said. “Do you mind moving the truck?”

The driver, who had shaved sidewalls and was wearing a black suit with a black open-collar shirt, grinned and looked at his partner. The partner had gone the opposite way in personal style — he wore his long hair tied into a topknot and had on a tracksuit.

“What do you think you were doing up there, old man?” Sidewalls said.

Bosch offered the binoculars as he approached.

“I was just driving along Mulholland and I saw a GHO circling the radio tower,” he said.

“What the fuck is a GHO?” Sidewalls asked.

“A great horned owl. I couldn’t pass up the chance to see that, so I walked here to get a better — ”

Sidewalls suddenly drove a fist into Bosch’s stomach. It felt like he’d been hit with a police battering ram. He crumpled and went down to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Fuck your great horny owl,” Sidewalls said.

Expecting another impact, Bosch pulled himself into a ball on the ground as he struggled to get air into his lungs. Sidewalls leaned down and rifled through Bosch’s pockets until he found and retrieved his wallet.

“Okay, get him up and put him in the back,” Sidewalls said. “And you better not shit your pants, old man.”

Bosch felt more hands on him as Topknot pulled him to his feet. He watched Sidewalls pick up his cane and snap it in half over his knee. He threw the two pieces into the woods.

“Let’s go,” Topknot said.