Echo Park

sounded depressed and Bosch didn’t know what to say. Fourteen years earlier, when he had been about her age, Bosch had woken up in the hospital after taking a bullet in his left shoulder. He still remembered the screaming pain that had set in every time the morphine started to wear off.
    “I brought the papers,” he said. “You want me to read ’em to you?”
    “Yeah. Nothing good, I suppose.”
    “No, nothing good.”
    He held the
Times
front page up so she could see the mug shot of Waits. He then read the lead story and then the sidebar. When he was finished he looked over at her. She looked distressed.
    “You okay?”
    “You should’ve left me, Harry, and gone after him.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “In the woods. You could’ve gotten him. Instead you saved me. Now look at the shit you’re in.”
    “It comes with the territory, Kiz. The only thing I could think about out there was getting you to the hospital. I feel really guilty about everything.”
    “What exactly do you have to feel guilty about?”
    “A lot. When I came out of retirement last year I made you leave the chief’s office and partner with me again. You wouldn’t have been there yesterday if I—”
    “Oh, please! Would you shut your fucking mouth!”
    He didn’t remember ever hearing her use such language. He did what she told him.
    “Just shut up,” she said. “No more of that. What else did you bring me?”
    Bosch held up the copy of the Gesto murder book.
    “Oh, nothing. I brought this for me. To read if you were asleep or something. It’s the copy of the Gesto file I made back when I retired the first time.”
    “So what are you going to do with that?”
    “Like I said, I was just going to read it. I keep thinking there’s something we missed.”
    “‘We’?”
    “Me. Something I missed. I’ve been listening a lot lately to a recording of Coltrane and Monk playing together at Carnegie Hall. It was right there in the Carnegie archives for like fifty years until somebody found it. The thing is, the guy who found it had to know their sound to know what they had in that box in the archives.”
    “And that relates to the file how?”
    Bosch smiled. She was in a hospital bed with two bullet wounds and she was still giving him shit.
    “I don’t know. I keep thinking there’s something in here and I’m the only one who can find it.”
    “Good luck. Why don’t you sit on that chair and read your file. I think I’m going to go to sleep for a while.”
    “Okay, Kiz. I’ll be quiet.”
    He pulled the chair away from the wall and brought it closer to the bed. As he sat down she spoke again.
    “I’m not coming back, Harry.”
    He looked at her. It was not what he wanted to hear but he wouldn’t object. Not now, at least.
    “Whatever you want, Kiz.”
    “Sheila, my old girl, was just visiting. She saw the news and came in. She says she’ll take care of me until I get better. But she doesn’t want me going back to the cops.”
    Which explained why she hadn’t wanted to talk to Bosch out in the hallway.
    “That was always a point of contention with us, you know?”
    “I remember you told me. Look, you don’t have to tell me any of this stuff now.”
    “It’s not just Sheila, though. It’s me. I shouldn’t be a cop. I proved that yesterday.”
    “What are you talking about? You are one of the best cops I know.”
    He saw a tear roll down her cheek.
    “I froze out there, Harry. I fucking froze and I let him . . . just shoot me.”
    “Don’t do this to yourself, Kiz.”
    “Those men are dead because of me. When he grabbed Olivas, I couldn’t move. I just watched. I should have put him down, but I just stood there. I just stood there and I let him shoot me next. Instead of raising my gun I raised my hand.”
    “No, Kiz. You didn’t have an angle on him. If you had fired you might have hit Olivas. After that it was too late.”
    He hoped she understood that he was telling her what to say when the OIS came around.
    “No, I have to own up to it. I—”
    “Kiz, you want to quit, that’s fine. I’ll back you one hundred percent. But I won’t back you on this other shit. You understand?”
    She tried to turn her face away from him but the bandages on her neck prevented her from turning.
    “Okay,” she said.
    More tears came down and Bosch knew that she had wounds that were far deeper than those in her neck and hand.
    “You know, you should have gone up top,” she said.
    “What are you