The Reversal

planks of the siding and tried to look in. He saw what appeared to be the edge of a blanket but that was all.
    Bosch moved back to the door and knelt down in front of the lock. He held the light with his mouth and extracted two lock picks from his wallet. He went to work on the padlock and quickly determined that it had only four tumblers. He got it open in less than five minutes.
    He entered the storage corral and found it largely empty. There was a folded blanket on the ground with a pillow on top of it. Nothing else. The SIS surveillance report had said that the night before, Jessup had walked down the beach carrying a blanket. It did not say that he had left it behind under the pier, and there had been nothing in the report about a pillow.
    Harry wasn’t even sure he was in the same spot that Jessup had come to. He moved the light over the wall and then up to the underside of the pier, where he held it. He could clearly see the outline of a door. A trapdoor. It was locked from underneath with another new padlock.
    Bosch was pretty sure that he was standing beneath the pier’s parking lot. He had occasionally heard the sound of vehicles up above as the pier crowd went home. He guessed that the trapdoor had been used as some sort of loading door for materials to be stored. He knew he could grab one of the scaffolds and climb up to examine the second lock but decided not to bother. He retreated from the corral.
    As he was relocking the door with the padlock he felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket. He quickly pulled it out, expecting to learn from SIS dispatch that Jessup was on the move. But the caller ID told him the call was from his daughter. He opened the phone.
    “Hey, Maddie.”
    “Dad? Are you there?”
    Her voice was low and the sound of crashing waves was loud. Bosch yelled.
    “I’m here. What’s wrong?”
    “Well, when are you coming home?”
    “Soon, baby. I’ve got a little bit more work to do.”
    She dropped her voice even lower and Bosch had to clamp a hand over his other ear to hear her. In the background he could hear the freeway on her end. He knew she was on the rear deck.
    “Dad, she’s making me do homework that isn’t even due until next week.”
    Bosch had once again left her with Sue Bambrough, the assistant principal.
    “So next week you’ll be thanking her when everybody else is doing it and you’ll be all done.”
    “Dad, I’ve been doing homework all night!”
    “You want me to tell her to let you take a break?”
    His daughter didn’t respond and Bosch understood. She had called because she wanted him to know the misery she was suffering. But she didn’t want him to do anything about it.
    “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “When I get back I will remind Mrs. Bambrough that you are not in school when you are at home and you don’t need to be working the whole time. Okay?”
    “I guess. Why can’t I just stay at Rory’s? This isn’t fair.”
    “Maybe next time. I need to get back to work, Mads. Can we talk about it tomorrow? I want you in bed by the time I get home.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Good night, Madeline. Make sure all the doors are locked, including on the deck, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “Good night.”
    The disapproval in her voice was hard to miss. She disconnected the call ahead of Bosch. He closed his phone and just as he slid it into his pocket he heard a noise, like a banging of metal parts, coming from the direction of the hole he had slid through into the storage area. He immediately killed his flashlight and moved toward the tarp that covered the boat.
    Crouching behind the boat, he saw a human figure stand up by the wall and start moving in the darkness without a flashlight. The figure moved without hesitation toward the storage corral with the new lock on it.
    There were streetlights over the parking lot above. They sent slivers of illumination down through the cracks formed by retreating planks in the boardwalk. As the figure moved through these, Bosch saw that it was Jessup.
    Harry dropped lower and instinctively reached his hand to his belt just to make sure his gun was there. With his other hand he pulled his phone and hit the mute button. He didn’t want the SIS dispatcher to suddenly remember to call him to alert him that Jessup was moving.
    Bosch noticed that Jessup was carrying a bag that appeared to be heavily weighted. He went directly to the locked storage room and soon swung the door open. He obviously had a