Lost Light

finger. I closed my eyes and an image came to me. Angella Benton’s hands. The image from memory and dreams. I channeled all my strength into my left arm and pushed. The angle of the gun shifted. I closed my eyes and depressed the trigger with my thumb. The loudest sound I have ever heard in my life roared through my head as the shotgun discharged. My face felt like it had caught on fire. I opened my eyes and looked up at Simonson and saw that he no longer had a face.
    He rolled off of me and an inhuman sound gurgled from the pulp that had been his face. His legs kicked like he was riding an invisible bicycle. He rolled back and forth as his hands balled into fists as tight as stones, and then he stopped and went still.
    Slowly, I sat up, registering what had happened. I touched my own face and found it intact. I was burned from the discharge gases but otherwise I was okay. My ears were ringing and for once I couldn’t hear the ever present sound of the freeway below.
    I saw a glint in the brush and reached for the object. It was a water bottle. It was full, unopened. I realized that Simonson had slipped on the water bottle I had knocked off the deck a few days before. And it had saved my life. I twisted the cap off the bottle and poured water over my face, washing away the blood and the sting of the burn.
    “Don’t move!”
    I looked up from my position and saw a man leaning over the deck railing, pointing another gun at me. The moon reflected off the badge on his uniform. The cops had finally arrived. I dropped the bottle and spread my hands wide.
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not moving.”
    I leaned back, my arms still spread. My head rested on the ground and I pulled great gulps of air into my lungs. The ringing in my ears was still there but I could now also hear my heart as it slowed its cadence to the normal beat of life. I looked up into the dark, sacred night, to the place where those not saved on earth wait for the rest of us above. Not yet, I thought. No, not yet.

40
    While the cop on the deck above kept his gun on me his partner dropped through the trapdoor and made his way down the slope to me. He had a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other and the wild eyes of a man who has no idea what he has stepped into.
    “Roll over and put your hands behind your back,” he ordered, adrenaline drawing his voice high and tight.
    I did as I was instructed and he put his flashlight down on the ground as he cuffed my wrists, thankfully not in the style of the FBI. I tried to calmly talk to him.
    “Just so you know, I -”
    “I don’t want to know anything from you.”
    “- I’m LAPD retired. Out of Hollywood. Pulled the pin last year after twenty-five-plus.”
    “Good for you. Why don’t you save it for the suits?”
    My house was in North Hollywood Division. I knew there was no reason why they should know me or care.
    “Hey,” said the one from above. “What’s his name? Put the light on him.”
    The man on the ground put the light in my face from a foot away. It was blinding.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Harry Bosch. I worked homicide.”
    “Har-”
    “I know who he is, Swanny. He’s all right. Get the light out of his face.”
    Swanny took the light away.
    “Yeah, fine. But the cuffs stay on. The suits can sort it all-ah, Jesus!”
    He had put his light on the faceless body in the brush to my left. Linus Simonson, or what was left of him.
    “Don’t puke, Swanny,” came the voice from above. “It’s a crime scene.”
    “Fuck you, Hurwitz, I’m not gonna puke.”
    I heard him moving around. I tried to lift my head to watch him but the brush was too tall. I could only listen. It sounded like he was moving from body to body. I was right.
    “Hey, we got a live one down here! Call it in.”
    That would be Banks, I assumed. I was glad to hear it. I had the feeling I was going to need a survivor to back up my account. I figured that with Banks facing the fall by himself for the whole thing, he would cut a deal to save his ass and tell the story.
    I rolled over and sat up. The cop was kneeling next to Banks on the dirt below the deck. He looked over at me.
    “I didn’t tell you to move.”
    “I couldn’t breathe with my face in the dirt.”
    “Don’t fucking move again.”
    “Hey, Swanny,” Hurwitz called down. “The stiff in the house? He’s got a badge. FBI.”
    “Holy shit!”
    “Yeah, holy shit.”
    And they were right. It was a holy shit case. Within the hour