Page 80

“I know who you are now, Bosch,” Novak said.

“Really?” Bosch said. “You think so?”

Novak put the binoculars down on the rail and turned to Bosch. He was old, like Bosch, but still an imposing presence, with thick shoulders and hands scarred by a thousand fights. But it was the stare-down that Bosch remembered from MacLaren. They had locked eyes back then, and it was Novak — Stokely — who blinked. Bosch wasn’t sure that would be the case now.

“You’re the no-count kid from MacLaren who had the radio,” Novak said. “And you’ve got a bug up your ass about solving the killing of another no-count kid at that hellhole.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” Bosch said.

“And you’re a cop too. You fooled us on that one.”

“Used to be.”

“Right, used to be. So why are you doing this, Bosch? After so many fucking years, why do you even care?”

“Maybe because no one cared back then. Maybe the ghost of Charlie Lamb came to me one night and woke up my memories of that time. And that’s what I remembered — that nobody cared.”

“And you think I did it. That I killed him.”

“Did you?”

Novak snorted and walked toward Bosch.

“That would make life easy for you, wouldn’t it?” he said. “If I just confessed. Tell me something, Bosch — who’d you write that report for? Who are you working for?”

“Same answer to both questions,” Bosch said. “Nobody.”

“I have ways of making you… elaborate on that answer if I need to.”

Bosch thought of the dental chair set up in the warehouse.

“I’m working for myself,” he said. “I wrote it for myself. Like you, I’m getting old. I forget things, so I write them down. I also keep records of all my investigations.”

Novak nodded, but Bosch doubted that he believed him. He had no idea whether Novak had connected his Lamb investigation with the federal investigation and the disaster at the port. It seemed odd that Novak would be bothering with Bosch about a sixty-year-old murder on the same day that he’d lost a cargo of missiles and four people had lost their lives because of him.

“Why do you think it was me?” Novak asked. “What evidence do you have?”

“Evidence?” Bosch said. “I don’t have any. But I was at MacLaren and I know about you. And I’ve known a hundred killers like you since then. Your need for power and control in a place where you had none. I know they put you both in the hollow that night and I know what happened in there. It was about power and a bully’s need to control. Charlie Lamb wouldn’t submit to you and you killed him for it. You bashed his head against that tile floor because he knew what you were and stood up to you.”

Bosch could see it in the bigger man’s expression: He had nailed it. Novak would undoubtably deny it, but Bosch had spoken the truth.

“Bosch, you don’t have proof of any of it,” Novak said.

“I don’t need it anymore,” Bosch said. “I see the proof in your eyes.”

Novak reached out and shoved him backward. Bosch tried to stand his ground but stumbled right into the hands of Novak’s men. They had slipped onto the deck behind him.

“Tell you what,” Novak said. “How about we go on a little ride now.”

“A ride where?” Bosch asked.

Novak didn’t answer. A black hood came down over Bosch’s head and a drawstring was pulled tight around his neck. He struggled to free himself but couldn’t get air into his lungs. After a few seconds, everything went dark.

33

WHEN BOSCH CAME to, he was lying face down on the vibrating floor of a moving vehicle. He was still hooded, and now his hands were tied behind his back. He moved an ankle slightly to determine whether his legs were bound and learned that he had free movement there. And because his legs were fully extended, he believed he was in a large vehicle, like a van or a truck. He thought about the van he had seen in the garage at Novak’s estate. When he’d arrived home earlier, he didn’t see a van or a work truck or anything that might have tipped him off to the men waiting for him inside his house.

The steady thrum of the engine and the nonstop straight travel of the vehicle told Bosch that he was moving on a freeway. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious or how far they had driven, but the freeway travel lasted what he thought was fifteen minutes before he heard Nikolai Novak say, “We switch here and head south.”