The Reversal

silence. Bosch at one end of the dining room table, his daughter at the other. He with the first batch of SIS surveillance logs, she with her homework, her school books and laptop computer spread out in front of her. They were close in proximity but not in much else. The Jessup case had become all-encompassing with Bosch tracing old witnesses and trying to find new ones. He had spent little time with her in recent days. Like her parents, Maddie was good at holding grudges and had not let go of the perceived slight of having been left for a night in the care of an assistant school principal. She was giving Harry the silent treatment and already at fourteen she was an expert at it.
    The SIS logs were another frustration to Bosch. Not because of what they contained but because of their delay in reaching him. They had been sent through bureaucratic channels, from the SIS office to the RHD office and then to Bosch’s supervisor, where they had sat in an in basket for three days before finally being dropped on Bosch’s desk. The result was he had logs from the first three days of the surveillance of Jason Jessup and he was looking at them three to six days after the fact. That process was too slow and Bosch was going to have to do something about it.
    The logs were terse accounts of the surveillance subject’s movements by date, time and location. Most entries carried only a single line of description. The logs came with an accompanying set of photos as well, but most of the shots were taken at a significant distance so the followers could avoid detection. These were grainy images of Jessup as he moved about the city as a free man.
    Bosch read through the reports and quickly surmised that Jessup was already leading separate public and private lives. By day his movements were in concert with the media as he very publicly reacquainted himself with life outside a prison cell. It was about learning to drive again, to choose off a menu, to go for a three-mile run without having to make a turn. But by night a different Jessup emerged. Unaware that he was still being watched by eyes and cameras, he went out cruising alone in his borrowed car. He went to all corners of the city. He went to bars, strip clubs, a prostitute’s trick pad.
    Of all his activities, one was most curious to Bosch. On his fourth night of freedom, Jessup had driven up to Mulholland Drive, the winding road atop the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, which cut the city in half. Day or night, Mulholland offered some of the best views of the city. It was no surprise that Jessup would go up there. There were overlooks that offered north and south views of the shimmering lights of the city. They could be invigorating and even majestic. Bosch had gone to these spots himself in the past.
    But Jessup didn’t go to any of the overlooks. He pulled his car off the road near the entrance to Franklin Canyon Park. He got out and then entered the closed park, sneaking around a gate.
    This caused a surveillance issue for the SIS team because the park was empty and the watchers were at risk of being seen if they got too close. The report here was briefer than most entries in the log:
02/20/10—01:12. Subject entered Franklin Canyon Park. Observed at picnic table area, northeast corner, blind man trailhead.
02/20/10—02:34. Subject leaves park, proceeds west on Mulholland to 405 freeway and then south.
    After that, Jessup returned to the apartment where he was living in Venice and stayed in for the rest of the night.
    There was a printout of an infrared photograph taken of Jessup in the park. It showed him sitting at a picnic table in the dark. Just sitting there.
    Bosch put the photo print down on the table and looked at his daughter. She was left-handed like he was. It looked like she was writing out a math problem on a work sheet.
    “What?”
    She had her mother’s radar.
    “Uh, are you online there?”
    “Yes, what do you need?”
    “Can you pull up a map of Franklin Canyon Park? It’s off of Mulholland Drive.”
    “Let me finish this.”
    He waited patiently for her to complete her computations on a mathematical problem he knew would be light-years beyond his understanding. For the past four months he had lived in fear that his daughter would ask him for help with her homework. She had passed by his skills and knowledge long ago. He was useless in this area and had tried to concentrate on mentoring her in other areas, observation and self-protection chief