The Black Ice (hb-2)

have to do the dirty work? That’s what my husband used to call it. Telling families. He called it the dirty work and he said the detectives always tried to get out of it.”
    Bosch felt his face grow warm. There was a clock on the fireplace mantel that now seemed to be ticking very loudly in the silence. He managed to say, “I was told only a short time ago to come here. I had a little trouble finding it. I-”
    He stopped. She knew.
    “I’m sorry. I guess you’re right. I took my time.”
    “It’s okay. I shouldn’t put you on the spot. It must be a terrible job.”
    Bosch wished he had a fedora like the ones the detectives in the old movies always had; that way he could hold it in his hands and fiddle with it and let his fingers trace its brim, give him something to do. He looked at her closely now and saw the quality of damaged beauty about her. Mid-thirties, he guessed, with brown hair and blonde highlights, she seemed agile, like a runner. Clearly defined jawline above the taut muscles of her neck. She had not used makeup to try to hide the lightly etched lines that curved under her eyes. She wore blue jeans and a baggy white sweatshirt that he thought might have been her husband’s once. Bosch wondered how much of Calexico Moore she still carried in her heart.
    Harry actually admired her for taking the shot at him about the dirty work. He knew he deserved it. In the three minutes he had known her he thought she reminded him of someone but he wasn’t sure who. Someone from his past maybe. There was a quiet tenderness there beside her strength. He kept bringing his eyes back to hers. They were magnets.
    “Anyway, I’m Detective Harry Bosch,” he began again, hoping she might introduce herself.
    “Yes, I’ve heard of you. I remember the newspaper articles. And I’m sure my husband spoke of you-I think it was when they sent you out to Hollywood Division. Couple years ago. He said before that one of the studios had paid you a lot of money to use your name and do a TV movie about a case. He said you bought one of those houses on stilts up in the hills.”
    Bosch nodded reluctantly and changed the subject.
    “I don’t know what the reporters told you, Mrs. Moore, but I have been sent out to tell you that it appears your husband has been found and he is dead. I am sorry to have had to tell you this. I-”
    “I knew and you knew and every cop in town knew it would come to this. I didn’t talk to the reporters. I didn’t need to. I told them no comment. When that many of them come to your house on Christmas night, you know it’s because of bad news.”
    He nodded and looked down at the imaginary hat in his hands.
    “So, are you going to tell me? Was it an official suicide? Did he use a gun?”
    Bosch nodded and said, “It looks like it but nothing is definite un-”
    “Until the autopsy. I know, I know. I’m a cop’s wife. Was, I mean. I know what you can say and can’t say. You people can’t even be straight with me. Until then there are always secrets to keep to yourselves.”
    He saw the hard edge enter her eyes, the anger.
    “That’s not true, Mrs. Moore. I’m just trying to soften the im-”
    “Detective Bosch, if you want to tell me something, just tell me.”
    “Yes, Mrs. Moore, it was with a gun. If you want the details, I can give you the details. Your husband, if it was your husband, took his face off with a shotgun. Gone completely. So, we have to make sure it was him and we have to make sure he did it himself, before we can say anything for sure. We are not trying to keep secrets. We just don’t have all the answers yet.”
    She leaned back in her chair, away from light. In the veil of shadows Bosch saw the look on her face. The hardness and anger in her eyes had softened. Her shoulders seemed to untighten. He felt ashamed.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I told you that. I should have just-”
    “That’s okay. I guess I deserved it… I apologize, too.”
    She looked at him then without anger in her eyes. He had broken through the shell. He could see that she needed to be with someone. The house was too big and too dark to be alone in right now. All the Christmas trees and book reports in the world couldn’t change that. But there was more than that making Bosch want to stay. He found that he was instinctively attracted to her. For Bosch it had never been an attraction of an opposite but the reverse of that myth. He had always seen something of