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Bosch suddenly flashed on Dr. Sears at the memory institute using hypnosis to unlock deep memories.
“If I was, I buried it,” Bosch said. “It’s hard for me to remember stuff from that time. They took me away from my mother and put me in that place. Then my mother was killed… I guess it’s all back there in the mist and every now and then something shakes loose. Like remembering Chops. But the short answer is, I don’t know if I was a predator or prey. Novak asked if I was a bedwetter and I don’t know because I don’t remember.”
Hinojos reached out and took Bosch’s hand.
“The mind is a marvelous thing,” she said. “It protects itself as best it can. It lets you know what it wants you to know when you need to know it. I think it wanted you to remember Chops and bring him justice.”
Bosch just nodded and got up from the bed. His throat was so tight, he knew he couldn’t say a thing.
42
BACK OUT ON the deck in the morning sun, Bosch looked through the binoculars again, hoping to find the house that Novak had been looking at. There were at least three streets that terraced the neighborhood across the pass, each of them lined with homes. He remembered Novak saying he liked the house because he could see anyone approaching. But Bosch didn’t see a home or a street that description applied to.
He put the binoculars down on the railing and went back into the house to the hall closet. He reached up to a shelf where he had a stack of old Thomas Guides, took one down, and carried it to the dining table.
There was a time before the advent of cell phone GPS apps when nearly every car in LA County carried a Thomas Guide under the front seat. It was the driver’s bible, a thick spiral-bound atlas in which every page came from a larger gridded map. Its comprehensive index allowed the user to find any address in any city in the county. New editions came out every year with updated maps of the ever-growing metropolis.
The fact that Bosch had kept several editions of the map book revealed his tie to the old ways and his belief that sometimes they could still be useful. Like now. It took him only a few minutes to locate the page containing the map of the area across the pass from Bosch’s home. He looked for a spot that would fit Novak’s description. The paper map that clearly showed the winding streets made the task easy. With a finger he traced one street up the hillside to a dead end. A house somewhere on this cul-de-sac would allow a view of anyone approaching.
“Lakeridge Drive,” he said.
“What’s that?” Hinojos said.
She had come down the hall and was on her way to the coffee.
“A house I’m trying to find,” Bosch said.
He took the guide out to the deck and used the binoculars to locate Lakeridge Drive. Looking back and forth from the lenses to the map page, he finally found the road and moved his focus along the string of houses that ran the length of it, scanning for anything that might narrow down his search.
Nothing stood out to him.
He thought about calling Ballard and seeing if she could put one of the internet sleuths on her team of volunteers on identifying Novak’s ex-wife and getting an address from the DMV. Before doing that, he decided to call Shear, the ATF agent. He was the only one who’d returned Bosch’s calls and texts since his dismissal from the task force. Neither Cutler nor Singer had responded when Bosch inquired about the search for Novak and Marek.
“Harry B., what’s up?” Shear said.
“Just checking in,” Bosch said. “Anything new?”
“Uh, not really.”
The hesitation and ambivalence in Shear’s response told Bosch that something was definitely up.
“What’s the main focus? Finding Novak or the missiles?”
“The weapons, obviously, but finding Novak would be a step toward finding the weapons.”
“You mean you think he has the weapons with him?”
“We think he has access, at least.”
“And they think he’s still in the country?”
“Well, there has been absolutely no indication he got out. But who knows? A guy like him always has a go-bag stuffed with cash and an exit plan.”
“Yeah.”
The conversation was awkward. Bosch felt that Shear had more information than he was sharing but was likely forbidden to talk about it outside the task force.
“How about you?” Shear said. “Back to bird-watching?”
