The Last Coyote

Nixon White House.”
    Bosch ground his cigarette out on the side of a trash can next to the table and dropped the butt in. He started to feel very cold and put his jacket back on. It was smudged with dirt and dried blood.
    “You look like a mess in that, Harry,” Irving said. “Why don’t you-”
    “I’m cold.”
    “Okay.”
    “You know, he didn’t even scream.”
    “What?”
    “Mittel. He didn’t even scream when he went down that hill. I can’t figure that out.”
    “You don’t have to. It’s just one of those-”
    “And I didn’t push him. He jumped me in the brush and when we rolled, he went over. He didn’t even scream.”
    “I understand. No one is saying-”
    “All I did was start to ask questions about her and people started dying.”
    Bosch was staring at an eye chart on the far wall of the room. He could not figure out why they would have such a thing in an emergency room examination suite.
    “Christ…Pounds…I-”
    “Yes, I know what happened,” Irving interrupted.
    Bosch looked over at him.
    “You do?”
    “We interviewed everyone in the squad. Edgar told me that he made a computer run for you on Fox. My only conclusion is that Pounds either overheard or somehow got wind of it. I think he was monitoring what your close associates were doing after you went on ISL. Then he must’ve taken it a step further and stumbled into Mittel and Vaughn. He ran DMV traces on the parties involved. I think it got back to Mittel. He had the connections that would have warned him.”
    Bosch was silent. He wondered if Irving really believed that scenario or if he was signaling to Bosch that he knew what had really happened and was letting it go by. It didn’t matter. Whether or not Irving blamed him or took departmental action against him, Bosch’s own conscience would be the hardest thing to live with.
    “Christ,” he said again. “He got killed instead of me.”
    His body started shuddering then. As if saying the words out loud had started some kind of exorcism. He threw the ice pack into the trash can and wrapped his arms around himself. But the shuddering wouldn’t stop. It seemed to him that he would never be warm again, that his shaking was not a temporary affliction but a permanent part of him now. He had the warm salty taste of tears in his mouth and he realized then that he was crying. He turned his face away from Irving and tried to tell him to leave but he couldn’t say anything. His jaw was locked as tight as a fist.
    “Harry?” he heard Irving say. “Harry, you okay?”
    Bosch managed to nod, not understanding how Irving could not see his body shaking. He moved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and pulled it closed around him. He felt something in his left pocket and started absentmindedly pulling it out.
    “Look,” Irving was saying, “the doctor said you could get emotional. This knock on the head…they do weird things to you. Don’t wor-Harry, are you sure you’re okay? You’re turning blue, son. I’m gonna-I’ll go get the doctor. I’ll-”
    He stopped as Bosch managed to remove the object from his jacket. He held his palm upright. Clasped in his shaking hand was a black eight ball. Much of it was smeared with blood. Irving took it from him, having to practically pry his fingers off it.
    “I’ll go get somebody,” was all he said.
    Then Bosch was alone in the room, waiting for someone to come and the demon to leave.

Chapter Forty-four
    BECAUSE OF THE concussion, Bosch’s pupils were dilated unevenly and purple hemorrhages bulged below them. He had a hell of a headache and a one-hundred-degree temperature. As a precaution, the emergency room physician ordered that he be admitted and monitored, not allowed to sleep until four in the morning. He tried to pass the time by reading the newspaper and watching the talk shows but they only seemed to worsen the pain. Finally, he just stared at the walls until a nurse came in, checked on him and told him he could sleep. After that, nurses kept coming into his room and waking him at two-hour intervals. They checked his eyes and temperature and asked if he was okay. They never gave him anything for the headache. They told him to go back to sleep. If he dreamed of the coyote during the short sleep cycles, or anything else, he didn’t remember it.
    Finally, at noon, he got up for good. He was unsteady on his feet at first but equilibrium quickly came back to him. He made his way into the bathroom and studied