The Last Coyote

nothing about his call. He opened the refrigerator and looked inside while he thought about the case, then closed it and went back out to the table.
    The last pages in the murder book were a due diligence report dated November 3, 1962. The department’s homicide procedures called for all unsolved cases to be reviewed after a year by a new set of detectives with an eye toward looking for something that the first set of investigators might have missed. But, in practice, it was a rubber stamp process. Detectives didn’t relish the idea of finding the mistakes of their colleagues. Additionally, they had their own case loads to worry about. When assigned DDs, as they were called, they usually did little more than read through the file, make a few calls to witnesses and then send the binder to archives.
    In this case, the DD report by the new detectives, named Roberts and Jordan, drew the same conclusions as the reports by Eno and McKittrick. After two pages detailing the same evidence and interviews already conducted by the original investigators, the DD report concluded that there were no workable leads and the prognosis for “successful conclusion” of the case was hopeless. So much for due diligence.
    Bosch closed the murder book. He knew that after Roberts and Jordan had filed their report, the binder had been shipped to archives as a dead case. It had gathered dust there until, according to the checkout card, McKittrick pulled it out for unknown reasons in 1972. Bosch wrote McKittrick’s name under Conklin’s on the page in the notebook. Then he wrote the names of others he thought it would be useful to interview. If they were still alive and could be found.
    Bosch leaned back in his chair, realizing that the music had stopped and he hadn’t even noticed. He checked his watch. It was two-thirty. He still had most of the afternoon but he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
    He went to the bedroom closet and took the shoebox off the shelf. It was his correspondence box, filled with letters and cards and photos he had wished to keep over the course of his life. It contained objects dated as far back as his time in Vietnam. He rarely looked in the box but his mind kept an almost perfect inventory of what was in it. Each piece had a reason for being saved.
    On top was the latest addition to the box. A postcard from Venice. From Sylvia. It depicted a painting she had seen in the Palace of the Doges. Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Blessed and the Damned.” It showed an angel escorting one of the blessed through a tunnel to the light of heaven. They both floated skyward. The card was the last he had heard from her. He read the back.
    Harry, thought you’d be interested in this piece of your namesake’s work. I saw it in the Palace. It’s beautiful. By the way, I love Venice! I think I could stay forever! S.
    But you don’t love me, Bosch thought as he put the card aside and began to dig through the other pieces in the box. He wasn’t distracted again. About halfway through the box he found what he was looking for.

Chapter Six
    THE MIDDAY DRIVE out to Santa Monica was long. Bosch had to take the long way, the 101 to the 405 and then down, because the 10 was still a week away from being reopened. By the time he got into Sunset Park it was after three. The house he was looking for was on Pier Street. It was a small Craftsman bungalow set on the crest of a hill. It had a full porch with red bougainvillea running along the railing. He checked the address painted on the mailbox against the envelope that contained the old Christmas card on the seat next to him. He parked at the curb and looked at the card once more. It had been addressed to him five years earlier, care of the LAPD. He had never responded to it. Not until now.
    As he got out he could smell the sea and guessed that there might be a limited ocean view from the house’s western windows. It was about ten degrees cooler than it had been at his home and so he reached back into his car for the sport coat. He walked to the front porch while putting it on.
    The woman who answered the white door after one knock was in her mid-sixties and looked it. She was thin, with dark hair, but the gray roots were beginning to show and she was ready for another dye job. She wore thick red lipstick, a white silk blouse with blue seahorses on it over navy blue slacks. She readily smiled a greeting and Bosch recognized her, but he could see that his own image was completely alien