On his way through the police station he had stopped by the communications room and picked up the stack of messages that had come in since the news about the serial rapist hit the media the evening before. He also dropped by the evidence control unit and checked out the knife recovered at the crime scene.
Now at his desk he sipped the iced latte he had picked up at Starbucks and started wading through the messages. As he did an initial run-through he created a second pile for messages in which it was noted that the caller spoke Spanish only. These he would give to Lourdes to review and follow up on. She was expected to work the Screen Cutter case through the weekend. Sisto was on call for all other cases needing a detective, and Captain Trevino was due in because it was his rotation weekend to be in charge of the department.
Among the Spanish-only messages was an anonymous call from a woman who reported that she had also been attacked by a rapist who wore a mask like those worn by Mexican wrestlers. She refused to reveal her name because she admitted she was illegally in the country and the police operator could not convince her that no action would be taken against her on her immigration status if she fully reported the crime.
Bosch had always expected that there were other cases he didn’t know about but it was still a heartbreaking message to read because the woman told the operator that the attack had occurred almost three years earlier. Bosch realized that the victim had lived with the psychological and perhaps even physical consequences of the horrible assault for all that time without even being able to hold on to the hope that justice would someday prevail and her attacker would be held to answer for his crime. She had given all of that up when she chose not to report the crime for fear it would lead to her deportation.
There were people who would have no sympathy for her, Bosch knew. People who would argue that her remaining silent about the attack allowed the rapist to move on to the next victim without concern about police attention. Bosch could find some validity in that but he was more sympathetic to the plight of the silent victim. Without even knowing the details of how she had gotten to this country, Bosch knew her path here had not been easy and her desire to stay no matter what the consequences—even to be silent about a rape—was what touched him. Politicians could talk about building walls and changing laws to keep people out, but in the end they were just symbols. Neither would stop the tide any more than the rock jetties at the mouth of the port did. Nothing could stop the tide of hope and desire.
Bosch walked around the cubicle and put the stack of Spanish-only messages down on Lourdes’s desk. It was the first time he had ever come around and seen her work space from this angle. There was the usual array of police bulletins and Wanted flyers. There was a flyer depicting a missing woman that had haunted the department for ten years because she had never been found and foul play was feared. Pinned at center to the half wall separating their desks were several photos of a child, a boy. Some of the photos showed him being held by Lourdes or another woman, and some depicted all three in group hugs. He paused for a moment to lean down and look at the happiness in the photos and just then the door to the bureau opened and Lourdes entered.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she picked up a marker and wrote her start time on the squad attendance board.
“Uh, I was just putting these phone messages down for you,” he said as he backed up to give her room to enter her space. “The Spanish-language calls from last night.”
Lourdes swung around him and into her cubicle.
“Oh, okay. Thank you.”
“Hey, is that your kid?”
“Yes. Rodrigo.”
“I didn’t know you had a kid.”
“It happens.”
There was an awkward silence while she waited for Bosch to ask if the other woman was part of the relationship and which one actually bore the child or if he was adopted. Bosch chose not to pursue it.
“That top message there is from another victim,” he said, as he started moving back around the cubicles to his own desk. “Wouldn’t give a name but said she was an illegal. The com center said she called on a pay phone by the courthouse.”
“Well, we knew there were probably more out there,” Lourdes said.
“I’ve got a stack over here to go through as well. And I pulled the knife from evidence control.”
“The knife? Why?”
“These high-end military knives are collectors’ items. It might be traceable.”
He returned to his desk and dropped out of Lourdes’s sight.
Bosch looked first at the stack of messages that he knew would probably exhaust a good part of his day with little or no return, and then at the knife.
He chose the knife. He first put on a pair of latex gloves and then removed the weapon from the plastic evidence bag. The noise made during the removal from the bag drew Lourdes up on her feet and looking over the partition.
“I never saw it last night,” she said.
Bosch held it up so she could see it close.
“That looks completely fucking savage,” she said.
“Definitely for use on a silent kill squad,” he said.
He drew the knife back and held it horizontally with the edge of the blade out. He pantomimed attacking someone from behind, covering the mouth with his right hand and then sticking the point of the blade into a target’s neck with his left. He then sliced outward with the knife.
“You go in the side and slice out through all of the bleeders and the throat,” he said. “No sound, the target bleeds out in under twenty seconds. Done.”
“The target?” Lourdes said. “Were you one of those guys, Harry? In a war, I mean.”
“I was in a war long before you were born. But we didn’t have anything like this. We used to put boot polish on our blades.”
She looked confused.
“So they wouldn’t catch a reflection in the dark,” he said.
“Of course,” she said.
He put the knife down on his desk, embarrassed by his demonstration.
“You think our guy is ex-military?” Lourdes asked.
“No, I don’t,” Bosch said.
“Why?”
“Because he ran yesterday. I think if he had any training, he would have regrouped, recovered, and advanced. He would have gone right back at Beatriz. Maybe killed her.”
Lourdes stared at him for a moment and then nodded toward the iced latte putting a water mark on the blotter.
“Was she there today when you went in?”
“No, not there. Not surprising. But she might just be off on Saturdays.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to start calling some of these people back. Hope it doesn’t bother you.”
“No, no bother.”
She disappeared from sight again and Bosch put on his reading glasses to examine the knife, but as he looked down at the weapon on his blotter he saw something else. He saw the face of a man he had killed in a tunnel more than forty years before. Bosch had pushed himself back into a crevasse in the tunnel and the man had come right past him in the darkness. Hadn’t seen him, hadn’t smelled him. Bosch grabbed him from behind, put one hand over his face and mouth and tore through the man’s throat with his knife. It was over so quickly and efficiently that not a drop of the arterial spray got on Bosch. He always remembered the man’s last breath exhaling against the palm of the hand he had clamped over his mouth. He remembered closing the man’s eyes with his hand as he laid him down in his blood.
“Harry?”
Bosch came out of the memory. Captain Trevino was standing behind him in the cubicle.
“Sorry, I was just thinking,” Bosch sputtered. “What’s up, Cap?”
“Sign the board,” Trevino said. “I don’t want to have to keep telling you.”
Bosch swiveled in his chair to see Trevino pointing toward the door where the board was located.
“Right, right. I’ll do it now.”
He stood up and Trevino stepped back so he could leave the cubicle. The captain spoke to his back.
“That’s the knife?” Trevino asked.
“That’s the knife,” Bosch said.