City of Bones
By Michael ConnellyWarner Books
Copyright ©2006 Michael Connelly
All right reserved.ISBN: 9780446699532
Chapter One
The old lady had changed her mind about dying but by then it was toolate. She had dug her fingers into the paint and plaster of thenearby wall until most of her fingernails had broken off. Then shehad gone for the neck, scrabbling to push the bloodied fingertips upand under the cord. She broke four toes kicking at the walls. Shehad tried so hard, shown such a desperate will to live, that it madeHarry Bosch wonder what had happened before. Where was thatdetermination and will and why had it deserted her until after shehad put the extension cord noose around her neck and kicked over thechair? Why had it hidden from her?
These were not official questions that would be raised in his deathreport. But they were the things Bosch couldn't avoid thinking aboutas he sat in his car outside the Splendid Age Retirement Home onSunset Boulevard east of the Hollywood Freeway. It was 4:20 p.m. onthe first day of the year. Bosch had drawn holiday call-out duty.
The day more than half over and that duty consisted of two suicideruns-one a gunshot, the other the hanging. Both victims were women.In both cases there was evidence of depression and desperation.Isolation. New Year's Day was always a big day for suicides. Whilemost people greeted the day with a sense of hope and renewal, therewere those who saw it as a good day to die, some-like the old lady-not realizing their mistake until it was too late.
Bosch looked up through the windshield and watched as the latestvictim's body, on a wheeled stretcher and covered in a greenblanket, was loaded into the coroner's blue van. He saw there wasone other occupied stretcher in the van and knew it was from thefirst suicide-a thirty-four-year-old actress who had shot herselfwhile parked at a Hollywood overlook on Mulholland Drive. Bosch andthe body crew had followed one case to the other.
Bosch's cell phone chirped and he welcomed the intrusion into histhoughts on small deaths. It was Mankiewicz, the watch sergeant atthe Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.
"You finished with that yet?"
"I'm about to clear."
"Anything?"
"A changed-my-mind suicide. You got something else?"
"Yeah. And I didn't think I should go out on the radio with it. Mustbe a slow day for the media-getting more what's-happening callsfrom reporters than I am getting service calls from citizens. Theyall want to do something on the first one, the actress onMulholland. You know, a death-of-a-Hollywood-dream story. And they'dprobably jump all over this latest call, too."
"Yeah, what is it?"
"A citizen up in Laurel Canyon. On Wonderland. He just called up andsaid his dog came back from a run in the woods with a bone in itsmouth. The guy says it's human-an arm bone from a kid."
Bosch almost groaned. There were four or five call outs like this ayear. Hysteria always followed by simple explanation: animal bones.Through the windshield he saluted the two body movers from thecoroner's office as they headed to the front doors of the van.
"I know what you're thinking, Harry. Not another bone run. You'vedone it a hundred times and it's always the same thing. Coyote,deer, whatever. But listen, this guy with the dog, he's an MD. Andhe says there's no doubt. It's a humerus. That's the upper arm bone.He says it's a child, Harry. And then, get this. He said ..."
There was silence while Mankiewicz apparently looked for his notes.Bosch watched the coroner's blue van pull off into traffic. WhenMankiewicz came back he was obviously reading.
"The bone's got a fracture clearly visible just above the medialepicondyle, whatever that is."
Bosch's jaw tightened. He felt a slight tickle of electric currentgo down the back of his neck.
"That's off my notes, I don't know if I am saying it right. Thepoint is, this doctor says it was just a kid, Harry. So could youhumor us and go check out this humerus?"
Bosch didn't respond.
"Sorry, had to get that in."
"Yeah, that was funny, Mank. What's the address?"
Mankiewicz gave it to him and told him he had already dispatched apatrol team.
"You were right to keep it off the air. Let's try to keep it thatway."
Mankiewicz said he would. Bosch closed his phone and started thecar. He glanced over at the entrance to the retirement home beforepulling away from the curb. There was nothing about it that lookedsplendid to him. The woman who had hung herself in the closet of hertiny bedroom had no next of kin, according to the operators of thehome. In death, she would be treated the way she had been in life,left alone and forgotten.
Bosch pulled away from the curb and headed toward Laurel Canyon.
Continues...
Excerpted from City of Bonesby Michael Connelly Copyright ©2006 by Michael Connelly. Excerpted by permission.
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