A Darkness More Than Night

the plan?”
    “Neither. Bosch just knew. On this little table next to the couch was one of those baby monitor things, you know? Bosch saw that and he just knew. It was the wrong end. It was the transmitter part. It meant the receiver was somewhere else. If you have a kid it’s the other way around. You listen in the living room for noise from the baby room. But this was backwards. The profile from Griffin said this guy was a controller, that he likely used verbal coercion on his victim. Bosch saw that transmitter and something just clicked; this guy had her somewhere and got off on talking to her.”
    “He was right?”
    “Dead on. We found her in the garage in an unplugged freezer with three air holes drilled in it. It was like a coffin. The receiver part of the monitor was in there with her. She later told us that Hagen talked to her incessantly whenever he was in the house. He sang to her, too. Top forties. He’d change the words and sing about raping and killing her.”
    McCaleb nodded. He wished he had been there on the case, for he knew what Bosch had felt, that sudden moment of coalescing, when the atoms smash together. When you just knew. A moment as thrilling as it was dreadful. The moment every homicide detective privately lives for.
    “The reason I tell this story is because of what Bosch did and said after. Once we had Hagen in the back seat of one of the cars and started searching the house, Bosch stayed in the living room with that baby monitor. He turned it on and he spoke to her. He never stopped until we found her. He said, ‘Jennifer, we’re here. It’s all right, Jennifer, we’re coming. You’re safe and we’re coming for you. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’ He never stopped talking to her, soothing her like that.”
    She stopped for a long moment and McCaleb saw her eyes were on the memory.
    “After we found her we all felt so good. It was the best high I’ve ever had on this job. I went to Bosch and said, ‘You must have kids. You spoke to her like she was one of your own.’ And he just shook his head and said no. He said, ‘I just know what it’s like to be alone and in the dark.’ Then he sort of walked away.”
    She looked from the door back at McCaleb.
    “Your talking about darkness reminded me of that.”
    He nodded.
    “What do we do if we come to a point that we know flat out that it was him?” she asked, her face turned back to the glass.
    McCaleb answered quickly so that he wouldn’t have to think about the question.
    “I don’t know,” he said.

    ***

    After Winston had put the plastic owl back in the evidence box, gathered all of the pages he had shown her and left, McCaleb stood at the sliding door and watched her make her way up the ramp to the gate. He checked his watch and saw there was a lot of time before he needed to get ready for the night. He decided he would watch some of the trial on Court TV.
    He looked back out the door and saw Winston putting the evidence box into the trunk of her car. Behind him somebody cleared his throat. McCaleb abruptly turned and there was Buddy Lockridge in the stairwell looking up at him from the lower deck. He had a pile of clothes clasped in his arms.
    “Buddy, what the hell are you doing?”
    “Man, that’s one weird case you’re working on.”
    “I said what the hell are you doing?”
    “I was going to do laundry and I came over here ’cause half my stuff was down in the cabin. Then you two showed up and when you started talking I knew I couldn’t come up.”
    He held the pile of clothes in his arms up as proof of his story.
    “So I just sat down there on the bed and waited.”
    “And listened to everything we said.”
    “It’s a crazy case, man. What are you going to do? I’ve seen that Bosch guy on Court TV. He kind of looks like he’s wound a little too tight.”
    “I know what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
    He pointed to the glass door.
    “Leave, Buddy, and don’t tell a word of this to anybody. You understand me?”
    “Sure, I understand. I was just -”
    “Leaving.”
    “Sorry, man.”
    “So am I.”
    McCaleb opened the slider and Lockridge walked out like a dog with his tail between his legs. McCaleb had to hold himself back from kicking him in the rear. Instead he angrily slid the door closed and it banged loudly in its frame. He stood there looking out through the glass until he saw Lockridge make it all the way up the ramp and over to the