When Bosch entered his house, he was met with Elizabeth’s suitcase sitting on the floor just inside the front door. It was actually his suitcase but he had brought it to her on the last day of rehab so she could pack her meager belongings. There had still been room in it for items they would shop for.
Through the back sliders he saw her on the deck on one of the lounges. He watched her for a moment, thinking she had not heard him come in. She was not reading or listening to music. She was not looking at her phone. She was simply staring into the pass, the never-ending movement of vehicles down on the freeway, like blood through the veins of the city. It was an aspect of the view that was always changing but always the same. In recent years, the only addition was the fireworks shot on special occasions from the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios.
He crossed the living room, slid open one of the doors, and stepped out.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hello,” she said.
She smiled. He crossed the deck to the railing and leaned his back to it so he could look at her.
“You’re limping,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess I gotta go see Dr. Zhang.”
The previous year Bosch had met Elizabeth while he briefly worked undercover on a case. He’d adopted a cane and a limp as a part of a pose as an opioid addict scamming shady pharmacies for prescriptions. The irony was that during a struggle with a murder suspect on a plane, he had strained a ligament in his already arthritic knee, and now he made monthly visits to Dr. Zhang, an acupuncturist he had met many years earlier on a case.
“I’ll call her in the morning,” he said.
He waited for her to say something but she didn’t.
“I saw the suitcase,” he said.
“Yes, I packed,” she said. “I’m going to leave. But I didn’t want to leave without telling you face-to-face. That just seemed wrong after all you’ve done.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Elizabeth…”
“I’ll find a place.”
“You have one right here.”
“Your daughter won’t visit because I’m here. That’s not fair to either of you.”
“She’ll change. Besides, I go down to see her.”
“And she barely says a word to you. You told me. She doesn’t even text you.”
“We texted last night.”
“You text good night and then she says the same back. That isn’t a conversation. That isn’t what you had before I came.”
Bosch knew he could not win this angle of the argument, because she was right.
“We’re getting close on the case,” he tried. “This detective I told you about…I think she’s all in. It’s active. Just give us some time. We checked out a possible suspect last night.”
“What does it matter?” Elizabeth asked. “It doesn’t change anything. Daisy’s been dead nine years.”
“All I can tell you is that it matters,” Bosch said. “It counts. You’ll see when we get the guy.”
He waited but she didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he said. “Did you eat something?”
“Yes, I made something,” she said. “I put a plate in the refrigerator for you.”
“I think I’m just going to go to sleep. I’m tired, my knee hurts. I’m going to get up early and go down to Hollywood Division to check in with Ballard before she goes home.”
“Okay.”
“Will you at least stay tonight? It’s too late to go out there without a plan. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
She didn’t answer.
“I’ll put the suitcase back in your room,” he said.
Bosch turned momentarily to the view just as a single rocket trailing green light arced into the sky over Universal. It exploded with a flat bang, nothing like the real mortars he had heard in his life.
He headed toward the open slider.
“Daisy sent me a postcard from Universal once,” Elizabeth said. “It was before they had Harry Potter. They still had the Jaws ride. The card showed the shark, I remember that. It was how I knew she was in L.A.”
Bosch nodded.
“When I was sitting out here, I remembered a joke she told me when she was little. She heard it at school. You want to hear it, Harry?”
“Sure.”
“What happens when you eat too much alphabet soup?”
“What?”
“You have a vowel movement.”
She smiled at the punch line. Bosch smiled too, though he was sure his own daughter had told him the joke once, and it made Elizabeth’s grief hit him deeper.
This had been the way he had learned more about Daisy. Elizabeth grieved and reminisced and then shared the stories, all from before the girl had run away. She told him about how the stuffed turtle she had won at Skee-Ball at a fair became her most prized possession until the seams wore out. She told him about Daisy splashing in rubber boots through the flooded pecan orchards near their home.
There were the sad stories, too. She told Bosch about the best friend who moved away, leaving her alone. She told him about Daisy growing up without a father. About the schoolyard bullying and the drugs. Good and bad, it all brought Bosch closer to both mother and daughter, made Daisy mean more to him than just her death and stoked the fire he warmed himself by as he pursued the case.
Bosch held at the door for a moment and then just nodded.
“Good night, Elizabeth. See you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Harry.”
He went in, noting that she did not say she would see him in the morning. He stopped in the kitchen but only to put ice into a Ziploc bag for his knee. He put her suitcase in the room she used, then went to his own room and closed the door. He stripped off his clothes and took a long shower until the hot water was gone. Afterward, he put on a pair of blue-plaid boxer shorts and a white T-shirt and used an ACE bandage from the medicine cabinet to wrap his knee and hold the ice bag to it.
He plugged his phone into its charger and set the alarm for four a.m. so he could get down the hill to Hollywood Station and work a few hours with Ballard on the shake cards before the end of her shift. He then turned out the light and gingerly climbed onto the bed, positioning himself on his back with one pillow under his head and the other propped under his knee as the slight bend this created in the joint helped ease the low hum of pain.
Still, the ice was uncomfortable and it kept him awake until he thought the knee pain was numbed to the point he could fall asleep. He unraveled the ACE bandage and put the ice bag into an empty champagne bucket he kept next to the bed in case the bag leaked.
Bosch was asleep soon and snoring lightly when the sound of his bedroom door opening woke him. He tensed for a moment but then saw the female silhouette in the doorway, outlined by oblique light from down the hall. It was Elizabeth. She was naked. She moved to the bed and climbed under the sheet that covered Bosch, straddling her legs over his hips. She leaned down and kissed him hard on the mouth before he could say anything, before he could remind her that he was old and might not be able to perform, let alone discuss the propriety of having a relationship with the mother of the girl whose death he was investigating.
Elizabeth kept her mouth on his and gently began to rock her hips. Bosch felt her warmth against him and reacted. Soon she was reaching to push down his shorts. Bosch’s knee was no longer numb, but if there was pain, he wasn’t feeling it. Elizabeth made all the moves and guided him inside her. Her hips worked in a steady rhythm and she put her hands on his shoulders and arched her back. The sheet fell aside. Bosch looked up at her in the dim light. Her head was thrown back like she was looking up at the ceiling. She was silent. Her breasts swayed above him. He put his hands on her hips to help lend his rhythm to hers.
Neither spoke, neither made a sound except for the deep exhalation of breath. First he felt her hips shudder, and soon after he desperately reached up and pulled her down into an embrace as his own body created that one moment that takes all other moments away—all fear, all sadness—and leaves just joy. Just hope. Sometimes love.
Neither moved, as though each one thought the fragile reverie might break with even the blink of an eye. Then she pushed her face further into the crook of his neck and kissed his shoulder. They’d had boundary lines. Bosch had told her that this was not his purpose in inviting her to stay with him, and she had said it would never come to that, because she had lost that part of herself—the capacity to connect.
But now here they were. Bosch wondered if this was her goodbye. If she would be gone tomorrow.
He put his hand on her back and moved his thumb and forefinger like an inchworm down her spine. He thought he heard a smothered giggle. If it was, he had never heard it before.
“I don’t want you to go,” he whispered. “Even if this never happens again. Even if it was a mistake. I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”
She raised herself up and looked at him in the darkness. He could see a slight glint in her dark eyes. He could feel her breasts against his chest. She kissed him. It was not a long, impassioned kiss like the one she had started with. It was a quick kiss on the lips and then she climbed off.
“Is that a champagne bucket?” she asked. “You knew I was coming in?”
“No,” Bosch said quickly. “I mean, it is a champagne bucket but I use it for the ice pack for my knee.”
“Oh.”
“Why don’t you stay in here tonight?”
“No, I like my bed. Good night, Harry.”
She moved toward the door.
“Good night,” Bosch whispered.
She closed the door behind her. Bosch stared at it in the darkness for a long time.