The Last Coyote

Mulholland and turned east toward home. He could feel adrenaline surging through him. Not only had he gotten away, but it was clear he had struck a nerve with a hammer. Let Mittel think about that for a while, he thought. Let him sweat. Then he yelled out loud in the car, though no one could hear except himself.
    “Spooked ya, didn’t I, you fuck!”
    He banged his palm triumphantly on the steering wheel.

Chapter Nineteen
    HE DREAMED OF the coyote again. The animal was on a mountain path where there were no homes, no cars, no people. It was moving very quickly through the dark as if it was trying to get away. But the path and place were his. He knew the land and knew he would escape. What it was he fled from was never clear, never seen. But it was there, behind him in the dark. And the coyote knew by instinct it must get away.
    The phone woke Bosch, breaking into the dream like a knife stabbed through paper. Bosch pulled the pillow off his head, rolled to his right and his eyes were immediately assaulted by the light of dawn. He had forgotten to close the blinds. He reached for the phone on the floor.
    “Hold on,” he said.
    He put the phone down on the bed, sat up and rubbed a hand across his face. He squinted at the clock. It was ten minutes after seven. He coughed and cleared his throat, then picked the phone back up.
    “Yeah.”
    “Detective Bosch?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s Brad Hirsch. I’m sorry to call so early.”
    Bosch had to think a moment. Brad Hirsch? He had no idea who it was.
    “Yeah, it’s okay,” he said while he continued to search his mind for the name.
    A silence followed.
    “I’m the one…In Latents? Remember, you-”
    “Hirsch? Yeah, Hirsch. I remember. What’s up?”
    “I wanted to tell you I made the AFIS run you wanted. I came in early and ran it with another search I’m doing for Devonshire Homicide. I don’t think anybody will know.”
    Bosch kicked his legs over the side of the bed, opened a drawer in the bed table and took out a pad and a pencil. He noticed that he had taken the pad from the Surf and Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach. He remembered he had spent a few days with Sylvia there the year before.
    “Yeah, you made the run? What’d you get?”
    “Well, that’s the thing. I’m sorry but I got nothing.”
    Bosch threw the pad back into the open drawer and threw himself backward on the bed.
    “No hits?”
    “Well, the computer came up with two candidates. I then did a visual comparison and it was no good. No matches. I’m sorry. I know this case means…”
    He didn’t finish.
    “You took it through all the data bases?”
    “Every one on our network.”
    “Let me ask you something. All those data bases, do they include DA’s employees and LAPD personnel?”
    There was silence as Hirsch must have been mulling over what the question might mean.
    “You there, Hirsch?”
    “Yes. The answer is yes.”
    “How far back? You know what I mean? These bases have prints going how far back?”
    “Well, each data base is different. The LAPD’s is extensive. I’d say we have prints on everybody who’s worked here since World War II.”
    Well, that clears Irving and the rest of the cops, Bosch thought. But that didn’t bother him much. His sights were definitely somewhere else.
    “What about people working for the DA?”
    “The DA’s office would be different,” Hirsch said. “I don’t think they started printing employees until the middle sixties.”
    Conklin had been there during that time, Bosch knew, but he would already have been elected DA. It would seem that he would not have submitted his own prints, especially if he knew there was a print card in a murder book somewhere that could possibly be matched to him.
    He thought of Mittel. He would have been out of the DA’s office by the time employees’ prints were taken as a matter of course.
    “What about the federal base?” he asked. “What if some guy worked for a president and got the kind of clearance you need to go visit the White House, would those prints be in that base?”
    “Yes, they’d be in twice. In the federal employees base and in the FBI’s. They keep prints on record of everyone they do background investigations on, if that’s what you mean. But remember, just because somebody visits the president, it doesn’t mean they get printed.”
    Well, Mittel isn’t a scratch but it’s close, Bosch thought.
    “So what you’re saying,” Bosch said, “is that whether or not we have