Chapters (62)
“You know what I think? I think you went there to trade yourself for that confession. You left your bread crumbs and were willing to sacrifice yourself if it meant someone would be able to follow and take him to ground. That we’d get him for you, if not for everything before. But then something happened … and you changed your mind.”
Bosch maintained a silent vigil for almost a minute. Then he nodded toward the two shortest towers of rock.
“They were awake and … aware … when he killed them. Those two kids. It was the question I always carried, and that haunted me more than him getting away with it.”
He stopped there, but Ballard said nothing.
“It’s an angry world,” Bosch said. “People do things you’d never expect. That they’d never expect themselves.”
Ballard nodded.
“I get it.”
“No. I hope you never get it.”
Silence followed. Ballard looked around, checking the distant ridgeline and the salt flats and then bringing her eyes back to the flowers at her feet.
“It’s so easy to forget that there’s great beauty in the desert,” she said.
Bosch nodded.
“And these flowers, they’re amazing,” Ballard said.
“Desert star,” Bosch said. “I know a guy, says they’re a sign of god in this fucked-up world. That they’re relentless and resilient against the heat and the cold, against everything that wants to stop them.”
Ballard nodded.
“Like you,” Bosch added.
Ballard looked at him. He said nothing else. It took her a moment to find her voice.
“Thank you, Harry,” she said. “For telling me the truth.”
They stood silently for a long moment before he spoke again.
“You know I’m not coming back to the unit, right?”
“Yes, I know.”
He opened the top of the wooden box and stepped closer to the rock sculptures. He reached in and took a handful of the gray dust. He held his hand out and let it fall through his fingers. He did it three more times and then he turned the box over and let the rest pour out, a gust of wind taking much of it away and across the land.
“Ashes to ashes,” he said. “Isn’t that what they say?”
He then closed the box, turned, and started walking back to the car.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Ballard followed.
They got in the car and drove off, back to the city.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank many for their help and contributions to this novel. They include Asya Muchnick, Emad Akhtar, Bill Massey, Pamela Marshall, Mitzi Roberts, Rick Jackson, Tim Marcia, David Lambkin, Dennis Wojciechowski, Jane Davis, Heather Rizzo, Henrik Bastin, Linda Connelly, Paul Connelly, Terrill Lee Lankford, Shannon Byrne, and William Ahmanson. Any factual shortcuts or mistakes in the politics, procedures, forensics, nephrology, geography, botany, and investigative genetic genealogy are strictly the fault of the author.