City Of Bones

quickly moved out of the light beam and disappeared. Bosch swept the light back and forth but couldn’t find it. He got up and started dragging the dummy toward the slope.
    The law of gravity made going down easier but just as treacherous. As he carefully and slowly chose his steps, Bosch wondered about the coyote. He wondered how long coyotes lived and if the one he had seen tonight could have watched another man twenty years before as he buried a body in the same spot.
    Bosch made it down the hill without falling. When he carried the dummy out to the curb he saw Dr. Guyot and his dog standing next to the slickback. The dog was on a leash. Bosch quickly went to the trunk, dumped in the dummy and then slammed it closed. Guyot came around to the back of his car.
    “Detective Bosch.”
    He seemed to know better than to ask what Bosch was doing.
    “Dr. Guyot. How are you?”
    “Better than you, I’m afraid. You’ve hurt yourself again. That looks like a nasty laceration.”
    Bosch touched his cheek. It still stung.
    “It’s all right. Just a scratch. You better keep Calamity on the leash. I just saw a coyote up there.”
    “Yes, I never take her off the leash at night. The hills are full of roaming coyotes. We hear them at night. You better come with me to the house. I can butterfly that. If you don’t do it right it will scar.”
    A memory of Julia Brasher asking about his scars suddenly came into Bosch’s mind. He looked at Guyot.
    “Okay.”
    They left the car on the circle and walked down to Guyot’s house. In the back office Bosch sat on the desk while the doctor cleaned the cut on his cheek and then used two butterfly bandages to close it.
    “I think you’ll recover,” Guyot said as he closed his first-aid kit. “I don’t know if your shirt will, though.”
    Bosch looked down at his T-shirt. It was stained with his blood at the bottom.
    “Thanks for fixing me up, Doc. How long do I have to leave these things on?”
    “Few days. If you can stand it.”
    Bosch gently touched his cheek. It was swelling slightly but the wound was no longer stinging. Guyot turned from his first-aid kit and looked at him and Bosch knew he wanted to say something. He guessed he was going to ask about the dummy.
    “What is it, Doctor?”
    “The officer that was here that first night. The woman. She was the one who got killed?”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Yes, that was her.”
    Guyot shook his head in genuine sadness. He slowly stepped around the desk and sank into the chair.
    “It’s funny sometimes how things go,” he said. “Chain reaction. Mr. Trent across the street. That officer. All because a dog fetched a bone. A most natural thing to do.”
    All Bosch could do was nod. He started tucking in his shirt to see if it would hide the part with blood stains.
    Guyot looked down at his dog, who was lying in the spot next to the desk chair.
    “I wish that I’d never taken her off that leash,” he said. “I really do.”
    Bosch slid off the desk and stood up. He looked down at his midsection. The blood stain could not be seen but it didn’t matter because the shirt was stained with his sweat.
    “I don’t know about that, Dr. Guyot,” he said. “I think if you start thinking that way, then you’ll never be able to come out your door again.”
    They looked at each other and exchanged nods. Bosch pointed to his cheek.
    “Thanks for this,” he said. “I can find my way out.”
    He turned toward the door. Guyot stopped him.
    “On television there was a commercial for the news. They said the police announced an arrest in the case. I was going to watch it at eleven.”
    Bosch looked back at him from the doorway.
    “Don’t believe everything you see on TV.”

Chapter 41
    THE phone rang just as Bosch had finished watching the first session of Samuel Delacroix’s confession. He picked up the remote and muted the sound on his television and then answered the call. It was Lieutenant Billets.
    “I thought you were going to call me.”
    Bosch took a pull from the bottle of beer he was holding and put it down on the table next to his television chair.
    “Sorry, I forgot.”
    “Still feeling the same way about things?”
    “More so.”
    “Well, what is it, Harry? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a detective more upset about a confession before.”
    “It’s a lot of things. Something’s going on.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I’m beginning to think that maybe he didn’t do it. That maybe he’s setting