A Darkness More Than Night

or indication it had been tampered with. He pulled the handle and the door slid open. McCaleb was sure he had locked it the day before when leaving with Raymond.
    He stepped inside. The salon was empty, no sign of intruder or burglary. He slid the door closed behind him and listened. The boat was silent. There was the sound of water lapping against the outside surfaces and that was it. His eyes moved toward the steps leading to the lower-deck staterooms and the head. He moved that way, raising the gun in front of him now.
    On the second of the four steps down McCaleb hit a cracked board that sighed with his weight. He froze and listened for a response. There was only silence and the relentless sound of water against the sides of the boat. At the bottom of the stairs was a short hallway with three doors. Directly ahead was the forward stateroom, which had been converted into an office and file storage room. To the right was the master stateroom. To the left was the head.
    The door to the master stateroom was closed and McCaleb could not remember if it had been that way when he had left the boat twenty-four hours earlier. The door to the head was wide open and hooked on the inside wall so it wouldn’t swing and slam when the boat was moving. The office door was partially open and swaying slightly with the movement of the boat. There was a light on inside the room and McCaleb could tell it was the light over the desk, which was built into the lower berth of a set of bunk beds to the left of the door. McCaleb decided he would check the head first, followed by the office and then the master last. As he approached the head he realized that he smelled cigarette smoke.
    The head was empty and too small to be used as a hiding place anyway. As he turned toward the office door and raised his weapon, a voice called out from within.
    “Come on in, Terry.”
    He recognized the voice. He cautiously stepped forward and used his free hand to push open the door. He kept the gun raised.
    The door swung open and there was Harry Bosch sitting at the desk, his body in a relaxed posture, leaning back and looking toward the door. Both his hands were in sight. Both were empty except for the unlit cigarette between two fingers of his right hand. McCaleb slowly moved into the small room, still holding the gun up and aimed at Bosch.
    “You going to shoot me? You want to be my accuser and my executioner?”
    “This is breaking and entering.”
    “Then I guess that makes us even.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “That little dance at my place the other night, what do you call that? ‘Harry, I gotta couple more questions about the case.’ Only you never asked any real questions, did you? Instead, you take a look at my wife’s picture and ask about that, and you ask about the picture in the hallway and you drink my beer and, oh, yeah, you tell me all about finding God in your baby daughter’s blue eyes. So what do you call all of that, Terry?”
    Bosch casually turned the chair and glanced over his shoulder at the desk. McCaleb looked past him and saw his own laptop computer was open and turned on. On the screen he could see that Bosch had called up the file containing the notes for the profile he was going to compose until everything changed the day before. He wished he had protected it with a password.
    “It feels like breaking and entering to me,” Bosch said, his eyes on the screen. “Maybe worse.”
    In Bosch’s new posture the leather bomber jacket he was wearing fell open and McCaleb could see the pistol holstered on his hip. He continued to hold his own weapon up and ready.
    Bosch looked back at him.
    “I didn’t get a chance to look at all of this yet. Looks like a lot of notes and analysis. Probably all first-rate stuff, knowing you. But somehow, someway, you got it wrong, McCaleb. I’m not the guy.”
    McCaleb slowly slid back into the lower berth of the opposite set of bunks. He held the gun with a little less precision now. He sensed there was no immediate danger from Bosch. If he had wanted to, he could have ambushed him as he’d come in.
    “You shouldn’t be here, Harry. You shouldn’t be talking to me.”
    “I know, anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law. But who am I going to talk to? You put the bead on me. I want it off.”
    “Well, you’re too late. I’m off the case. And you don’t want to know who’s on it.”
    Bosch just stared at him and waited.
    “The bureau’s