The Black Box

as eating at Birds but pretty damn close. Though they sat facing each other while eating, they didn’t talk much. Bosch was consumed by thoughts regarding the case and how he would move forward with the weapon he had recovered earlier. His daughter, meantime, was reading a book as she ate. Bosch did not complain, because he considered reading while eating a far better thing than texting and Facebooking, which she usually did.
    Bosch was an impatient detective. To him, case momentum was everything. How to get it, how to keep it, how to guard against being distracted from it. He knew he could turn the gun in to the Firearms Unit for analysis and possible restoration of the serial number. But most likely he would hear nothing back for weeks, if not months. He had to find a way to avoid that, to move around the bureaucratic and caseload roadblocks. After a while he thought he had a working plan.
    Before long, Bosch had finished his food. He looked across the table and saw that he might get a little bit of mac and cheese if he was lucky.
    “You want anymore frickles?” he asked.
    “No, you can have the rest,” she said.
    He ate the remaining pickles with one bite. He eyed the book she was reading. It was assigned in English lit. She was near the end. Bosch guessed she had no more than a couple chapters left.
    “I’ve never seen you jump on a book like that before,” he said. “You going to finish it tonight?”
    “We’re not supposed to read the last chapter tonight but there’s no way I can stop. It’s sad.”
    “You mean the guy dies?”
    “No—I mean, I don’t know yet. I don’t think so. But I’m sad because it will be over.”
    Bosch nodded. He wasn’t much of a reader but he knew what she meant. He remembered feeling that way when he got to the end of Straight Life , which might have been the last book he actually read cover to cover.
    She put the book down so she could work on finishing hermeal. Harry could now see that there would be no leftover mac and cheese for him.
    “You know, you sort of remind me of him,” she said.
    “Really? The kid in the book?”
    “Mr. Moll said it’s about innocence. He wants to catch little children before they fall off the cliff. That’s the metaphor for the loss of innocence. He knows the realities of the real world and wants to stop the innocent children from having to face it.”
    Mr. Moll was her teacher. Maddie had told Bosch that when they took tests in class, he climbed up and stood on his desk so he could watch the students from above and guard against cheating. The kids called him the “Catcher on the Desk.”
    Bosch didn’t know how to respond to her, because he had never read the book. He had grown up in youth halls and occasional foster homes. Somehow, the assignment had never come to him. Even if it had, he probably wouldn’t have read it. He was not a good student.
    “Well,” he said, “I think I sort of come in after they’ve gone over the cliff, don’t you think? I investigate murders.”
    “No, but it’s what makes you want to do that,” she said. “You were robbed of things early. I think that made you want to be a policeman.”
    Bosch fell silent. His daughter was very perceptive, and whenever she hit the target with him, he was half embarrassed and half in awe. He also knew that in terms of being robbed early, she was in the same boat. And she had said she, too, wanted to do what her father did. Bosch was both honored and scared by it. He secretly hoped that something else would come along—horses, boys, music, anything—and grab her intensity and interest and change her course.
    So far nothing had. So he did all he could to help prepare her for the mission ahead.
    Maddie cleared her tri-sectioned container and only chicken bones were left. She was a high-energy kid, and gone were the days when Bosch could expect to finish her plate. He gathered up all the trash and took it to the kitchen to dispose of. He then opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Fat Tire left over from his birthday.
    When he came back out, Maddie was on the couch with her book.
    “Hey, I have to leave super-early tomorrow,” he said. “Can you get up in the morning and make your lunch and everything?”
    “Of course.”
    “What will you have?”
    “The usual. Ramen. And I’ll get a yogurt out of the machines.”
    Noodles and bacteria-fermented milk. It wasn’t what Bosch would ever be able to consider lunch.
    “How are you doing for