Dangerous Women

But she was alive. She turned and pushed herself into the soundproofing padding that lined the coffinlike box. It was as if she were trying to get away. I realized then that she thought the opening of the door had been him coming back to her. Seguin.

“It’s okay,” McCaleb said. “We’re here to help.”

McCaleb reached down into the box and gently touched her shoulder. She startled like an animal but then calmed.

McCaleb then lay down flat on the floor and reached into the box to start removing the blindfold and gag.

“Harry, get an ambulance.”

I stood up and stepped back from the scene. I felt my chest growing tight, a clarity of thought coming over me. In all my years I had spoken for the dead many times. I had avenged the dead. I was at home with the dead. But I had never so clearly had a part of pulling someone away from the outstretched hands of death. And in that moment I knew we had just done that. And I knew that whatever happened afterward and wherever my life took me, I would always have this moment, that it would be a light that could lead me out of the darkest of tu

“Harry, what are you doing? Get an ambulance.”

I looked at him.

“Yeah, right away.”

The woodworker’s cell was all concrete and steel. It had been a decade since he had run his fingers over the grain of wood. I stepped closer to the bars and looked in at him.

“You’re ru

I waited for a reaction but there was nothing. He just looked at me and waited for what he knew I would ask.

“Time to come clean. Tell me who she was. Tell me where you took her from.”

He moved closer to the bars, close enough for me to smell the decay in his breath. I didn’t back away.

“All these years, Bosch. All these years and you still need to know. Why is that?”

“I just need to.”

“You and McCaleb.”

“What about him?”

“Oh, he came to see me, too.”

I knew McCaleb was out of the life. The job had taken his heart. He got a transplant and moved to Catalina. He was ru

“When did he come?”

“Oh, let me see. Time is so hard to track here. A few months ago. Dropped by for a chat with his new heart, Terry did. Said he was in the neighborhood. He didn’t like my review of the film. What did you think of it?”

He was talking about the film in which Clint Eastwood portrayed McCaleb.

“I didn’t see it. What did he want when he came here?”

“He wanted to know the same thing. Who was the girl, where did she come from? He told me you gave her a name back then, during the trial. Cielo Azul. That’s really very pretty, Detective Bosch. Blue Sky. Why did you choose that?”

“He told you that?”

“Yes, standing right where you are standing. That’s unprofessional, isn’t it, Detective Bosch? To get close like that. That could be dangerous to let a woman in like that. Dead or alive.”

I wanted to go, to get away from him.

“Look, Seguin, are you going to tell me or not? Or are you just going to take it with you?”

He smiled and stepped back from the bars. He walked over to the chessboard and seemed to look down at it to consider a move.

“You know, they used to let me keep a cat in here. I miss that cat.”

He picked up one of the plastic game pieces but then hesitated and returned it to the same spot. He turned and looked at me.

“You know what I think? I think that you two can’t stand the thought of that girl not having a name, not coming from a home with a mommy and a daddy and a little baby brother. The idea of no one caring and no one missing her, it leaves you hollow, doesn’t it?”

“I just want to close the case.”

“Oh, but it is closed. You’re not here because of any case. You are here on your own. Admit it, Detective. Just as McCaleb came on his own. The idea of that pretty little thing-and by the way, if you thought she was beautiful in death then you should have seen her before-the idea of her lying unclaimed in an unmarked grave all this time undercuts everything you do, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a loose end. I don’t like loose ends.”

“It’s more than that, Detective. I know.”

I said nothing, hoping that if he kept on talking he would make a mistake.

“Her face was like an angel’s,” he said. “And that long brown hair… I was always a sucker for that kind of hair. I can still remember its smell. She told me she used a strawberry and cream shampoo. I didn’t even know they put that stuff in shampoo, man.”

He was taunting me. The whole idea I had of getting him to tell me her name seemed absurd now.

“She was one of those women, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Well, she had that thing, that power. That was why I chose her.”

“What power?”

“You know, she could wound you with just a look. Face like an angel but a body like… Have you ever noticed how red cars look like they’re going fast even if they’re just sitting still? She was like that. She was dangerous. She had to go. If I didn’t do it, she would’ve done it to us. A lot of us.”

He smiled at me and I knew he was still pulling the strings. He was giving me nothing, just trying to get a rise out of me.

“Hey, Bosch?”

“What?”

“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?”

His smile opened even broader.

“If a woman is murdered in the city and nobody cares, does it matter?”

“I care.”

“Exactly.”

He came back to the bars.

“And you need me to relieve you of that burden by giving you a name, a mommy and daddy who care.”

He was a foot away from me. I could reach through the bars and grab his throat if I wanted to. But that would be what he’d want me to do.

“Well, I won’t release you, Detective. You put me in this cage. I put you in that one.”

He stepped back and pointed at me. I looked down and realized both my hands were tightly gripped on the steel bars of the cage. My cage.

I looked back up at him and his smile was back, as guiltless as a baby’s.

“Fu

I lowered my head to the bars.

“ Seguin, you’re going to burn. You are going to hell.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I hear it’s a dry heat.”

He laughed loudly and I looked at him.

“Don’t you know, Detective? You have to believe in heaven to believe in hell.”

I abruptly turned from the bars and headed back toward the steel door. Above it I saw the mounted camera. I made an open up gesture with my hand and picked up my speed as I got closer. I needed to get out of there.

I heard Seguin ’s voice echoing off the walls behind me.

“I’ll keep her close, Bosch! I’ll keep her right here with me! Eternally together! Eternally mine!”

When I got to the steel door I hit it with both fists until I heard the electronic lock snap and the guard began to slide it open.

“All right, man, all right. What’s the hurry?”

“Just get me out of here,” I said as I pushed past him.

I could still hear Seguin ’s voice echoing from the death house as I crossed back across the open field.