The Crossing

14

Bosch thought he would die soon. There was no physical or health threat that caused him to think this. He was actually in good shape for a man his age. He had worked a case years before in which a murder involved the theft of radioactive material. He had been exposed and treated, the twice-annual chest X-rays had been cut to annual checks in recent years and each time the film came back clear. It wasn’t that or anything else from the job he’d held for more than three decades.

It was his daughter who made him think this way. Bosch had been a step-in father. He didn’t know he had a child until she was almost four, and she didn’t come to live with him until she was thirteen. It had only been five years since then but he had come to believe that parents see their children not only as they are but as they hope they will be in the future. Happy, fulfilled, not afraid. When Maddie first came to live with him Bosch didn’t have this vision right away, but soon enough he earned it. When he closed his eyes at night, he saw her older: beautiful and confident, happy and healed. Not scared of anything.

Time had passed and his daughter had gotten to the age of that young woman in his vision. But the vision went no further. It didn’t grow older, and he believed this was because one of them would not be around to see it. He didn’t want it to be her so he believed it was he who would not be there.

When Bosch got home that evening he decided he had to tell his daughter what he was doing. Her bedroom door was closed. He texted her and asked her to come out for a few minutes to talk.

When she emerged from the room, she was already in her sleeping clothes.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It looks like you’re going to bed.”

“I just got ready. I want to go to bed early to stock up on my sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like hibernating. I doubt I’m going to get any sleep when we go camping.”

“You finish packing yet?”

“I have a few things left. So what’s up?”

“Are you going to eat dinner?”

“No, I’m trying to be healthy.”

Bosch knew this meant she had probably looked at herself in the mirror and, seeing something no one else could see, determined she had to lose weight.

“Skipping meals is not healthy, Maddie,” Bosch said.

“You should talk,” she said. “What about all the times on cases you didn’t eat?”

“That was because I couldn’t get food or didn’t have time. You could eat dinner and be healthy about it.”

She made her end-of-conversation face.

“Dad, let me do this. Is that all you wanted?”

Bosch frowned.

“Well, no,” he said. “I was going to tell you something about what I’m doing but I can tell you later.”

“No, tell me,” she said, eager to move on from discussing her eating habits.

Bosch nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, remember a while ago when we were talking about my work and how I thought what I did — the homicide work — was like a calling and how I could never work for a defense lawyer like your uncle?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Why?”

Bosch hesitated and then decided to just get it over with.

“Well, I wanted to tell you that Mickey came to me with a case,” he said. “A murder case. A case where he felt sure that the client was innocent and that he had been framed.”

He held there but she didn’t say anything.

“He asked me to look into the case,” he continued. “You know, to see if there was evidence that he was framed. And so... I’ve agreed to do that.”

Maddie stared at him for a long moment and then finally spoke.

“Who was murdered?” she asked.

“A woman,” Bosch said. “It was very brutal, awful.”

“You said you could never do this.”

“I know what I said. But with this case, I thought, if there is a possibility that this man didn’t do it, then somebody is still out there who did. And that bothers me — that somebody like this could be still out there in the world with you and everybody else. So I told Mickey today I would look into it. And I just thought you should know.”

She nodded and dropped her eyes from Bosch’s. That hurt him more than what she said next.

“Is he in jail?” she asked.

“Yes,” Bosch said. “Two months now.”

“So the opposite of what you’re saying is that you may be working to put a very bad person back out into the world with me and everybody else.”

“No, Mads, I wouldn’t do that. I’ll stop before that happens.”

“But how can you know for sure?”

“I guess nothing can be known for sure.”

She shook her head at that response.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

She turned from him and rounded the corner into the hallway.

“Come on, Mads. Don’t be like that. Let’s talk about it.”

He heard her bedroom door close and lock. He stood still and considered her response. He expected news of what he was doing to bring a large backlash from those he knew in law enforcement. But he hadn’t expected it from his daughter.

He decided that he, too, had no appetite for dinner.