The Wrong Side of Goodbye

44

After Bosch left Vibiana in Sloan’s capable hands, he headed north toward the Santa Clarita Valley. He had promised Captain Trevino that he would give him an answer on the job offer by the end of the day. As he had told Haller, he intended to take the job. He was excited about the idea of being a full-time cop again. It didn’t matter if his turf was two square miles small or two hundred square miles large. He knew it was about cases and about always being on the right side of things. He’d found both in San Fernando and decided he would be there for as long as they would have him.

But before he could accept the offer, he needed to make things right with Bella Lourdes and assure her he was not taking her job but only holding it until she got back. He got to Holy Cross by 4 p.m. and hoped to catch Lourdes before she was released. He knew that getting out of a hospital was sometimes a daylong process and he believed he was on safe ground.

Once he got to the hospital, he retraced the path he had taken before to the trauma floor. He located Lourdes’s private room but entered to find the bed empty and unmade. There was still a bouquet of flowers on a chest of drawers. He checked a small closet, and on the floor, there was a pale green hospital gown. On theclothes bar, there were two metal hangers that probably once held the going-home outfit brought by Bella’s partner, Taryn.

Bosch wondered if Bella had been taken for a medical test or if she had a last therapy session that had drawn her out of her room. He walked down the hall to the nursing station and inquired.

“She hasn’t left yet,” a nurse told him. “We’re waiting for the doctor to sign the paperwork and then she’ll be ready to go.”

“So where is she?” he asked.

“In her room, waiting.”

“No, she’s not. Is there a cafeteria around?”

“Just the one on the first floor.”

Bosch took the elevator down and looked around the small and uncrowded cafeteria. There was no sign of Lourdes.

He knew he could have missed her. As he was going down in one elevator she could have been going up in another.

But a low-grade feeling of panic started to creep into Bosch’s chest. He remembered Taryn being outraged that Lourdes was suffering the indignity of being treated in the same hospital as her abductor and rapist. Bosch had sought to assure her that Dockweiler would be stabilized and moved downtown to the jail ward at the county hospital. But he knew that no arraignment had been set yet for Dockweiler because of his precarious health status. He realized that if Dockweiler’s medical condition was too critical for even a bedside arraignment in the hospital jail ward, then it could also be too critical for a transfer from Holy Cross to County.

He wondered if Taryn had told Bella that Dockweiler was in the same medical center or if she had figured it out on her own.

He went to the information desk in the hospital’s main lobby outside the cafeteria and asked if there was a specific ward for treatment of spinal injuries. He was told spinal trauma was on the third floor. He jumped on an elevator and went back up.

The elevator opened on a nursing station that was located in the middle of a floor plan resembling an H. Bosch saw a uniformed Sheriff’s deputy leaning over the counter and small-talking with the duty nurse. Harry’s anxiety kicked up another notch.

“This is the spinal trauma center?” he asked.

“It is,” the nurse said. “How can I-”

“Is Kurt Dockweiler still being treated here?”

Her eyes made a furtive move toward the deputy, who straightened up off the counter. Bosch pulled the badge off his belt and displayed it.

“Bosch, SFPD. Dockweiler’s my case. Where’s he at? Show me.”

“This way,” the deputy said.

They headed down one of the hallways. Bosch could see an empty chair outside a room several doors down.

“How long have you been fucking off at the nursing station?” he asked.

“Not long,” the deputy said. “This guy’s not going anywhere.”

“I’m not worried about that. Did you see a woman get off the elevator?”

“I don’t know. People come and go. When?”

“When do you think? Now.”

Before the deputy could answer, they got to the room and Bosch put his hand out to his left to hold him back. He saw Bella Lourdes standing at the foot of the bed in Dockweiler’s room.

“Stay here,” he said to the deputy.

Bosch slowly entered the room. Lourdes gave no indication she had noticed him. She was staring intently down at Dockweiler, who lay in the elevated bed surrounded by all manner of medical apparatus and tubes, including the breather that went down his throat and kept his lungs pumping. His eyes were open and he was staring back at Lourdes. Bosch easily read his eyes. He saw fear.

“Bella?”

She turned at the sound of his voice, saw Bosch, and managed a smile.

“Harry.”

He checked her hands for weapons. There was nothing.

“Bella, what are you doing in here?”

She looked back at Dockweiler.

“I wanted to see him. Face him.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know. But I had to be. I’m leaving here today, going home. I wanted to see him first. Let him know that he didn’t break me like he said he would.”

Bosch nodded.

“Did you think I came to kill him or something?” she asked.

“I don’t know what I thought,” Bosch said.

“I don’t need to. He’s already dead. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?”

“What?”

“Your bullet cut his spine. He’s a rapist and now he’ll never be able to do that to anyone again.”

Bosch nodded.

“Let me take you back to your room now,” he said. “The nurse said the doctor has to see you before they can sign you out.”

In the hallway Bosch cut off the deputy before he could speak.

“This never happened,” he said. “You make a report and I report you for abandoning your post.”

“Not a problem, never happened,” the deputy said.

He remained standing by his chair and Bosch and Lourdes headed down the hall.

On the way back to her own room, Bosch told Lourdes about the offer from Trevino. He said he would only accept it if she approvedand understood that he would drop back down to part-time reserve officer as soon as she was ready to return.

She gave her approval without hesitation.

“You’re perfect for the job,” she said. “And maybe it will be a permanent thing. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I might never come back.”

Bosch knew that she had to be considering that she could easily and deservedly receive a stress-related out from the job. She could pick up her entire salary and do something else with her life and her family, be away from the nastiness of the world. It would be a tough choice but the specter of Dockweiler overshadowed it. If she never came back, would it haunt her? Would it give Dockweiler a final power over her?

“I’m thinking you’re going to be coming back, Bella,” he said. “You’re a good detective and you’re going to miss it. Look at me, scratching and fighting to keep a badge on my belt at my age. It’s in the blood. You’ve got cop DNA.”

She smiled and nodded.

“I kinda hope you’re right.”

At the nursing station on her floor, they embraced and promised to keep in touch. Bosch left her there.

Bosch headed back down the 5 to San Fernando to tell Trevino he was in-at least until Bella came back.

Along the way he thought about what he’d said to Lourdes about cop blood. It was something he truly believed. He knew that in his internal universe, there was a mission etched in a secret language, like drawings on the wall of an ancient cave, that gave him his direction and meaning. It could not be altered and it would always be there to guide him to the right path.

It was a Sunday afternoon in spring. A crowd was gathered in the triangle created by the convergence of Traction Avenue and Rose and Third Streets. What for years had been a parking lot was now taking shape as the first public park in the Arts District. Rows of folding chairs were lined in front of a sculpture twenty feet high, its shape and content only hinted at by the contours of the massive white shroud that draped it. A steel cable extended from the shroud to a crane that had been used in the installation. The veil would be dramatically lifted and the sculpture revealed as the centerpiece of the park.

Most of the chairs were filled and videographers from two of the local news channels were on hand to record the event. Many in attendance knew the artist who had created the sculpture. Some were meeting her for the first time even though they were bound by family ties if not by blood.

Bosch and his daughter sat in the back row. Harry could see Gabriela Lida and Olivia Macdonald seated three rows in front of them. Young Gilberto Veracruz sat between them, his attention drawn to a handheld video game. Olivia’s grown children were in the chairs to her right.

At the appointed start time of the unveiling, a man in a suit walked to the podium in front of the sculpture and adjusted the microphone.

“Hello and thank you all for coming out on this wonderful springday. My name is Michael Haller. I am legal adviser to the Fruit Box Foundation, which I am sure you have all learned about through the media in the past few months. Thanks to a very generous endowment from the estate of the late Whitney P. Vance, the Fruit Box Foundation is dedicating this park today in honor of Mr. Vance. We are also announcing plans to purchase and renovate four historic structures in the Arts District. These will be dedicated live-work complexes offering affordable housing and studio space for this city’s artists. The Fruit Box-”

Haller had to stop because of the applause from those seated in front of him. He smiled, nodded, and then continued.

“The Fruit Box Foundation has additional plans for the area as well. More structures containing affordable housing and studio space, more parks, and more consignment galleries. They call this area the Arts District, and the Fruit Box Foundation-its very name tied to the creative history of this neighborhood-will continue to strive to keep it a vibrant community of artists and public art.”

More applause broke into Haller’s speech and he waited it out before continuing.

“And finally, speaking of artists and public art, we are very proud today to dedicate this park with the unveiling of a sculpture created by Vibiana Veracruz, artistic director of the Fruit Box Foundation. Art speaks for itself. So, without delay, I give you ‘The Wrong Side of Goodbye.’”

In dramatic fashion the crane raised the shroud, revealing a sculpture of shining white acrylic. It was a diorama like Bosch had seen in Vibiana’s loft the previous year. A multitude of figures and angles. The base of the sculpture was the mangled fuselage of a helicopter lying on its side, a piece of a broken rotor blade sticking up like a tombstone. From the open side door of the craft rose hands and faces, soldiers looking and reaching up for rescue. The figure of one soldier rose above the rest, his full body up and through the door, as if pulled from the wreckage by theunseen hand of God. One of the soldier’s hands reached with splayed fingers toward the heavens. From his angle Bosch could not see the face of the soldier but he knew who he was.

And standing next to the torso of the fallen helicopter was the figure of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The child was faceless but Bosch recognized the woman as Gabriela Lida and the mother-daughter pose of the photo from the beach at the del Coronado.

Deep applause greeted the unveiling but at first there was no sign of the sculptress. Then Bosch felt a hand touch his shoulder and he turned to see Vibiana passing behind him on her way to the podium.

As she turned up the middle aisle, she glanced back at him and smiled. Bosch realized in that moment that it was the first time he had ever seen her smile. But it was a lopsided smile he knew he had seen before.