Trunk Music

for a third time. Bosch listened intently as he heard the familiar engine, and this time there was the added sound of tires turning on gravel. The car was pulling off the road. In a few moments the engine stopped and the following silence was punctuated only by the sound of a car door being opened and then closed. Bosch slowly got up on his haunches, as painful as it was on his knees, and got ready. He looked into the darkness to his right, toward Edgar’s position, and saw nothing. He then looked up the incline, toward the edge, and waited.
    In a few moments he could see the beam of a flashlight cut through the brush. The light was pointed downward and was moving in a back-and-forth sweeping pattern as its holder slowly descended the hill toward the tarp. Under his poncho Bosch held his gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, his thumb paused on the switch and ready to turn it on.
    The movement of the light stopped. Bosch guessed that its holder had found the spot where the suit bag should have been. After a moment of seeming hesitation the beam was lifted and it swept through the woods, flicking across Bosch for a fraction of a second. But it didn’t come back to him. Instead, it held on the blue tarp as Bosch guessed it probably would. The light began advancing, its holder stumbling once as he or she went toward George’s home. A few moments later, Bosch saw the beam moving behind the blue plastic. He felt another charge of adrenaline begin to course through his body. Again, his mind flashed on Vietnam. This time it was the tunnels that he thought of. Coming upon an enemy in the darkness. The fear and thrill of it. It was only after he had left that place safely that he acknowledged to himself there had been a thrill to it. And in looking to replace that thrill, he had joined the cops.
    Bosch slowly raised himself, hoping his knees wouldn’t crack, as he watched the light. They had placed the suit bag in underneath the shelter after stuffing it first with crumpled newspaper. Bosch began to move as quietly as he could in behind the tarp. He was coming from the left. According to the plan, Edgar would be coming from the right, but it was still too dark for Bosch to see him.
    Bosch was ten feet away now and could hear the excited breathing of the person under the tarp. Then there was the sound of a zipper being pulled open followed by the sharp cut-off of breath.
    “Shit!”
    Bosch moved in after hearing the curse. He realized he recognized the man’s voice just as he came around the open side of the tarp and raised both his weapon and his flashlight from beneath his poncho.
    “Freeze! Police!” Bosch yelled at the same moment he put on his light. “All right, come out of there, Powers.”
    Almost immediately Edgar’s light came on from Bosch’s right.
    “What the…?” Edgar started to say.
    Crouched there in the crossing beams of light was Officer Ray Powers. In full uniform, the big patrol cop held a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. A look of utter surprise played across his face. His mouth dropped open.
    “Bosch,” he said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
    “That’s our line, Powers,” Edgar said angrily. “Don’t you know what the fuck you just did? You walked right into a-what are you doing here, man?”
    Powers lowered his gun and slid it back into its holster.
    “I was-there was a report. Somebody must’ve seen you guys sneaking in here. They said they saw two men sneaking around.”
    Bosch stepped back from the tarp, keeping his gun raised.
    “Come out of there, Powers,” he said.
    Powers did as he was commanded. Bosch put the beam from his light right in the man’s face.
    “What about this report? Who called it in?”
    “Just some guy driving by up on the road. Must’ve seen you going in here. Can you get the light out of my face?”
    Bosch didn’t move the focus of the light an inch.
    “Then what?” he asked. “Who’d he call?”
    Bosch knew that after Rider had dropped them off, her job was to park on a nearby street and keep her scanner on. If there had been such a radio call, she would have heard it and called off the patrol response, telling the dispatcher it was a surveillance operation.
    “He didn’t call it in. I was cruising by and he waved me down.”
    “You mean he claimed he just saw two guys going into the woods?”
    “Uh, no. No, he waved me down earlier. I just didn’t get a chance to check it out until now.”
    Bosch and