A Darkness More Than Night

climbed back down and went to the fantail. He untied the stern line and then the Zodiac and led it around to the bow. He tied the Zodiac to the line from the mooring buoy after releasing it from the forward cleat. The boat was free now. He turned in the bow pulpit and looked up at the bridge just as Buddy, his hair a wiry nest from sleep, slid into the pilot seat. McCaleb signaled that the boat was loose. Buddy pushed the throttles forward and The Following Sea began to move. McCaleb picked the eight-foot gaff pole up off the deck and used it to keep the buoy off the bow as the boat made the turn into the fairway and slowly headed toward the mouth of the harbor.
    McCaleb stayed in the pulpit, leaning back against the railing and watching the island slip away behind the boat. He looked up once again toward his house and saw only the one light still on. It was too early for his family to be awake. He thought about the mistake he had knowingly just made. He should have gone up to the house and told Graciela what he was doing, tried to explain it. But he knew it would lose him a lot of time and that he would never be able to explain it to her satisfaction. He decided to just go. He would call his wife after the crossing and he would deal with the consequences of his decision later.
    The cool air of the shark-gray dawn had tightened the skin on his arms and neck. He turned in the bow pulpit and looked forward and across the bay to where he knew overtown lay hidden beneath the marine layer. Not being able to see what he knew to be there gave him an ominous feeling and he looked down. The water the bow cut through was flat and as blue-black as a marlin’s skin. McCaleb knew he needed to get up into the bridge to help Buddy. One of them would drive while the other kept an eye on the radar screen to chart a safe course to Los Angeles Harbor. Too bad, he thought, that there would be no radar for him to use once he was on land again and trying to chart his way through the case that now gripped him. A mist of a different kind awaited him there. And these thoughts of trying to see his way through turned his mind to the thing about the case that had hooked him so deeply.
    Beware Beware God Sees The words turned in his head like a newfound mantra. There was someone in the cloaking mist ahead who had written those words. Someone who had acted on them in an extreme capacity at least once and who would likely act on them again. McCaleb was going to find that person. And in doing so, he wondered, whose words would he be acting on? Was there a true God sending him on this journey?
    He felt a touch on his shoulder and startled and turned, nearly dropping the gaff pole overboard. It was Buddy.
    “Jesus, man, don’t do that!”
    “You all right?”
    “I was till you scared the hell out of me. What are you doing? You should be driving.”
    McCaleb glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were clear of the harbor markers and into the open bay.
    “I don’t know,” Buddy said. “You looked like Ahab standing out here with that gaff. I thought something was wrong. What are you doing?”
    “I was thinking. Do you mind? Don’t sneak up on me like that, man.”
    “Well, I guess that makes us even then.”
    “Just go drive the boat, Buddy. I’ll be up in a minute. And check the generator – might as well juice the batteries.”
    As Buddy moved away McCaleb felt his heart even out again. He stepped off the pulpit and snapped the gaff back into its clamps on the deck. As he was bent over he felt the boat rise and fall as it went over a three- or four-foot roller. He straightened up and looked around for the origin of the wake. But he saw nothing. It had been a phantom moving across the flat surface of the bay.

Chapter 6
    Harry Bosch raised his briefcase like a shield and used it to push his way through the crowd of reporters and cameras gathered outside the doors of the courtroom.
    “Let me through, please, let me through.”
    Most of them didn’t move until he used the briefcase to lever them out of the way. They were desperately crowding in and reaching tape recorders and cameras toward the center of the human knot where the defense lawyer was holding court.
    Bosch finally made it to the door, where a sheriff’s deputy was pressed against the handle. He recognized Bosch and stepped sideways so he could open the door.
    “You know,” Bosch said to the deputy, “this is going to happen every day. This guy has more to say