The Black Echo

side door but he could not describe it. Perhaps this was so it would look like a DWP vehicle, Bosch thought. Maybe it was a DWP vehicle. Now he definitely wanted to hypnotize the boy, but he decided not to bring it up again. He’d wait for Wish to come around, to see that it had to be done.
    Sharkey said the one who stayed behind in the Jeep as the body was dragged into the pipe didn’t say a word the whole time the boy watched. This person was smaller than the driver. Sharkey described seeing only a slightly built form, a whisper of a silhouette against what little light there was from the moon above the reservoir perimeter’s thick stand of pine.
    “What did this other guy do?” Wish asked.
    “Just watched, I guess. Like a lookout. He didn’t even do the driving. I guess he was in charge or something.”
    The boy got a better look at the driver but not enough to describe a face, or to make a drawing with the facial templates in the Identikit that Bosch had brought into the interview room. The driver had dark hair and was white. Sharkey couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be any more exact in his description. He had worn matching dark shirt and pants, maybe overalls. Sharkey said that he also wore some kind of equipment belt or carpenter’s apron. Its dark tool pockets hung empty at the hips and flapped like an apron at his waist. This was curious to Bosch, and he asked Sharkey several questions, coming at it from different angles but getting no better description.
    After an hour they were finished. They left Sharkey in the smoky room while they conferred outside again. Wish said, “All we have to do now is find a Jeep with a blanket in the back. Do a microanalysis and match hairs. Only must be a couple million white or beige Jeeps in the state. You want me to put out a BOLO, or you want to handle it?”
    “Look. Two hours ago we had nothing. Now we’ve got a lot. If you want, let me hypnotize the kid. Who knows, we might get a license plate, a better description of the driver, maybe he’ll remember a name spoken or be able to describe the seal on the door.”
    Bosch held his hands out palms up. His offer was out, but she had already turned it down. And she did again.
    “Not yet, Bosch. Let me talk to Rourke. Maybe tomorrow. I don’t want to rush into that and possibly have it come back on us as a mistake. Okay?”
    He nodded and dropped his hands.
    “So what now?” she said.
    “Well, the kid’s eaten. Why don’t we get him squared away and then you and I get something to eat? There’s a place-”
    “I can’t,” she said.
    “-on Overland I know.”
    “I already have plans for tonight. I’m sorry. Maybe we can make it another night.”
    “Sure.” He walked over to the interview room door and looked through the glass. Anything to avoid showing his face to her. He felt foolish for trying to move so quickly with her. He said, “If you have to get going, go ahead. I’ll get him in a shelter or something for the night. We don’t both have to waste our time with it.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah. I’ll take care of him. I’ll get a patrol unit to take us. We’ll get his bike on the way. I’ll have ’em drop me by my car.”
    “That’s nice. I mean about you getting his bike and taking care of him.”
    “Well, we made a deal with him, remember?”
    “I remember. But you care about him. I watched how you handled him. You see some of yourself there?”
    He turned away from the glass to look at her.
    “No, not especially,” he said. “He’s just another wit that has to be interviewed. You think he’s a little bastard now, wait another year, wait till he’s nineteen or twenty, if he makes it. He’ll be a monster then. Preying on people. This isn’t the last time he’ll be sitting in that room. He’ll be in and out of there his whole life till he kills somebody or they kill him. It’s Darwin’s rules; survival of the fittest, and he’s fit to survive. So no, I don’t care about him. I’m putting him in a shelter because I want to know where he is in case we need him again. That’s all.”
    “Nice speech, but I don’t think so. I know a little bit about you, Bosch. You care, all right. The way you got him dinner and asked him-”
    “Look, I don’t care how many times you read my file. You think that means you know about me? I told you, that’s bullshit.”
    He had come up close to her, until his face was only a foot from hers. But she looked away from him, down at her notebook,