The Last Coyote

and wait for your political fortunes to change.
    “What’re you doing over here?”
    There it was. If Washington knew Bosch was on leave, then admitting he was pulling an old case file would be admitting he was violating the leave order. Still, as his position in the aerosquad attested, Washington was not a straight-line company man. Bosch decided to run the risk.
    “I’m just pulling an old case. I got some free time and thought I’d check a few things.”
    Washington narrowed his eyes and Bosch knew that he knew.
    “Yeah…well, listen, I gotta run, but hang in there, man. Don’t let the book men get you down.”
    He winked at Bosch and moved on.
    “I won’t, Captain. You either.”
    Bosch felt reasonably sure Washington wouldn’t mention their meeting to anybody. He stepped on his cigarette and went back inside to the counter, privately chastising himself anyway for having gone outside and advertised that he was there. Five minutes later he started hearing a squeaking sound coming from one of the aisles between the stacks. In a moment Geneva Beaupre appeared pushing a cart with a blue three-ring binder on it.
    It was a murder book. It was at least two inches thick, dusty, and with a rubber band around it. The band held an old green checkout card to the binder.
    “Found it.”
    There was a note of triumph in her voice. It would be the major accomplishment of her day, Bosch guessed.
    “Great.”
    She dropped the heavy binder on the counter.
    “Marjorie Lowe. Homicide, 1961. Now…” She took the card off the binder and looked at it. “Yes, you were the last to take this out. Let’s see, that was five years ago. You were with Robbery-Homicide then…”
    “Yes. And now I’m in Hollywood. You want me to sign for it again?”
    She put the card down in front of him.
    “Yes. Put your ID number there, too, please.”
    He quickly did as he was told and he could tell she was studying him as he wrote.
    “A lefty.”
    “Yeah.”
    He slid the card back across the counter to her.
    “Thanks, Geneva.”
    He looked at her, wanting to say something else, but decided it might be a mistake. She looked back at him and a grandmotherly smile formed on her face.
    “I don’t know what you’re doing, Detective Bosch, but I wish you good luck. I can tell it’s important, you coming back to this after five years.”
    “It’s been longer than that, Geneva. A lot longer.”

Chapter Five
    BOSCH CLEARED ALL the old mail and carpentry books off the dining room table and placed the binder and his own notebook on top of it. He went to the stereo and loaded a compact disc, “Clifford Brown with Strings.” He went to the kitchen and got an ashtray, then he sat down in front of the blue murder book and looked at it for a long time without moving. The last time he’d had the file, he had barely looked at it as he skimmed through its many pages. He hadn’t been ready then and had returned it to the archives.
    This time, he wanted to be sure he was ready before he opened it, so he sat there a long time just studying the cracked plastic cover as if it held some clue to his preparedness. A memory crowded into his mind. A boy of eleven in a swimming pool clinging to the steel ladder at the side, out of breath and crying, the tears disguised by the water that dripped out of his wet hair. The boy felt scared. Alone. He felt as if the pool were an ocean that he must cross.
    Brownie was working through “Willow Weep for Me,” his trumpet as gentle as a portrait painter’s brush. Bosch reached for the rubber band he had put around the binder five years earlier and it broke at his touch. He hesitated only another moment before opening the binder and blowing off the dust.
    The binder contained the case file on the October 28, 1961, homicide of Marjorie Phillips Lowe. His mother.
    The pages of the binder were brownish yellow and stiff with age. As he looked at them and read them, Bosch was initially surprised at how little things had changed in nearly thirty-five years. Many of the investigative forms in the binder were still currently in use. The Preliminary Report and the Investigating Officer’s Chronological Record were the same as those presently used, save for word changes made to accommodate court rulings and political correctness. Description Boxes marked NEGRO had sometime along the line been changed to BLACK and then AFRICAN-AMERICAN. The list of motivations on the Preliminary Case Screening chart did not include