The Last Coyote

his image in the mirror. He burst out laughing at what he saw, though it was not that funny. It was just that he seemed to be about to laugh or cry or do both at any given moment.
    He had a small shaved spot on his skull where there was an L-shaped seam of stitches. It hurt when he touched the wound but he laughed about that, too. He managed to comb hair over it with his hand, fairly well camouflaging the injury.
    The eyes were another matter. Still dilated unevenly and now cracked with red veins, they looked like the bad end of a two-week bender. Below them, deep purple triangles pointed to the corners of the eyes. A double shiner. Bosch didn’t think he’d ever had one before.
    Stepping back into the room he saw that his briefcase had been left by Irving next to the bed table. He bent to pick it up and almost lost his balance, grabbing on to the table at the last moment. He got back into bed with the briefcase and began examining its contents. He had no purpose in mind, he just wanted to be doing something.
    He leafed through his notebook, finding it hard to concentrate on the words. He then re-read the five-year-old Christmas card from Meredith Roman, now Katherine Register. He realized he needed to call her, that he wanted to tell her what happened before she read about it in the paper or heard it on the news. He found her number in his notebook and dialed on the room’s phone. He got her answering machine and left a message.
    “Meredith, uh, Katherine…this is Harry Bosch. I need to talk to you today when you get a minute. Some things have happened and I think you’ll, uh, feel better about things when you hear from me. So, give me a call.”
    Bosch left a variety of numbers on the tape, including his mobile, the Mark Twain and the hospital room and then hung up.
    He opened the accordion pocket in the lid of the briefcase and slipped out the photo Monte Kim had given him. He studied his mother’s face for a long time. The thought that eventually poked through was a question. Bosch had no doubt from what Conklin had said that he had loved her. But he wondered if she really loved Conklin back. Bosch remembered a time when she had visited him at McClaren. She had promised to get him out. At the time, the legal effort was going slowly and he knew that she had no faith in courts. When she made the promise, he knew she wasn’t thinking about the law, only ways to get around it, to manipulate it. And he believed she would have found a way to do it if her time hadn’t been taken away.
    He realized, looking at the photo, that Conklin might simply have been part of the promise, part of the manipulation. Their marriage plan was her way of getting Harry out. From unwed mother with an arrest record to wife of an important man. Conklin would be able to get Harry out, to win back Marjorie Lowe’s custody of her son. Bosch considered that love may have had nothing to do with it on her part, that it was only opportunity. In all the visits to McClaren, she had never spoken of Conklin or any man in particular. If she had truly been in love, wouldn’t she have told him?
    And in considering that question, Bosch realized that his mother’s effort to save him was what might ultimately have led to her death.
    “Mr. Bosch, are you okay?”
    The nurse moved quickly into the room and put the food tray down on the table with a rattle. Bosch didn’t answer her. He barely noticed her. She took the napkin off the tray and used it to wipe the tears off his cheeks.
    “It’s okay,” she soothed. “It’s okay.”
    “Is it?”
    “It’s the injury. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Head injuries jumble the emotions. One minute you’re crying, the next you’re laughing. Let me open these curtains. Maybe that will cheer you up.”
    “I think I just want to be left alone.”
    She ignored him and opened the curtains and Bosch had a view of another building twenty yards away. It did cheer him up, though. The view was so bad it made him laugh. It also reminded him he was in Cedars. He recognized the other medical tower.
    The nurse then closed his briefcase so she could roll the table over the bed. On the tray was a plate containing Salisbury steak, carrots and potatoes. There was a roll that looked as hard as the eight ball he had found in his pocket the night before and some kind of red dessert wrapped in plastic. The tray and its smell made him feel the onset of nausea.
    “I’m not going to eat this. Is there any Frosted