The Narrows

dominant position, focusing down on his victims as they hoped and pleaded for their lives.
    When she could look no more at them she put the photos down and took up the second stack. There were fewer photos here and these were mostly focused on a woman and two children as they moved through a shopping mall. She put them down and was about to move the camera weighing down the third stack of photos when Bosch stepped into the trailer.
    "Rachel, what are we doing?"
    "Don't worry. We have five, maybe ten minutes. We'll back out as soon as we hear the choppers and let the evidence recovery team take over. I just want to see if-"
    "I'm not talking about beating other agents to the punch. I don't like this-the door being left open. Something's not-"
    He stopped when he caught his first glimpse of the photos.
    She turned back to the table and lifted the camera that rested on the last stack of photos. She looked down at a photo of herself. It took her a moment to place it but then realized where she had been photographed.
    "He was with me all the way," she said.
    "What are you talking about?" Bosch asked.
    "This is O'Hare. My layover. Backus was there watching me."
    She quickly shuffled through the photos. There were six of them, all shots of her on the day she traveled. The last shot was of Rachel and Cherie Dei greeting each other in baggage claim, Cherie holding a sign down at her side that said bob backus on it. "He's been watching me."
    "Like he watched Terry."
    Bosch reached to the printer's tray and used a finger from each hand to lift a photo by its edges and without leaving a print. It apparently was the last image Backus had printed here. It showed the front of a two-story house of no particular design. In the driveway was a station wagon. An old man stood next to the driver's door and was looking at a keychain as if searching for the key to unlock the car.
    Bosch proffered the photo to Rachel.
    "Who is this?"
    She looked at it for a long moment.
    "I don't know."
    "The house?"
    "Never seen it before."
    Bosch carefully put the photo back in the tray so that it would be found in its original position by the evidence team.
    Rachel moved behind him and walked down the hallway toward a closed doorway. Before she reached it she stepped through the open door of a bathroom. It was neat except for the dead flies covering all surfaces. In the bathtub she saw two pillows and a blanket arranged as if for sleeping. She remembered the intelligence gathered on Backus and felt a physical repulsion building in her chest.
    She stepped out of the bathroom and went to the closed door at the end of the hallway.
    "Is this where you saw it?" she asked.
    Bosch turned and watched her approach the door.
    "Rachel…" Rachel didn't stop. She turned the knob and pulled the door open. I heard a distinct metallic ching sound that my mind did not associate with any door lock. Rachel stopped her movement and her posture stiffened.
    "Harry?"
    I started moving toward her.
    "What is it?"
    "Harry!"
    She turned toward me in the close confines of the wood-paneled hallway. I looked past her face and saw the body on the bed. A man on his back, a black cowboy hat canted down on his head to obscure his face. A pistol in his right hand. A bullet wound to the upper left chest.
    Flies were buzzing all around us. I heard a louder, hissing sound and pushed further by her and saw the fuse on the floor. I recognized it as a chemical fuse, a braiding of wires treated with chemicals that would burn anywhere under any condition, even underwater.
    The fuse was burning fast. We could not stop it. There were maybe four feet of it coiled on the floor and then it disappeared under the bed. Rachel bent down and reached for it to pull it.
    "No, don't! That could set it off. There's nothing- we have to get out of here."
    "No! We can't lose this scene! We need-"
    "Rachel, no time! Go! Run! Now!"
    I pushed her back up the hallway and turned my body to block any attempt by her to return. I started moving backward, my eyes fixed on the figure on the bed. When I thought Rachel had given up I turned and she was waiting. She shoved by me. "We need DNA!" she yelled.
    I watched her move into the room and leap onto the bed. Her hand came up and grabbed the hat off the dead man's head, revealing a face that was distorted and gray with decomposition. She then backed off the bed and headed toward the doorway.
    Even in the moment I admired her thinking and what she had just done. The hat