Page 99
Harry nodded. He should have known that. He would have liked to see her one more time. Her kindness to him was the only thing he liked about this house.
“Well, tell her I said goodbye,” he said.
“I will,” Mr. Pierce said. “She’ll be praying for you.”
41
SOMETHING WOKE BOSCH. He lay still on his back with his eyes open. The bedside clock threw numbers up on the ceiling. It was 4:52 and still predawn dark. Then he heard it again. The owl. He got up quietly and left the bedroom.
Out on the deck it was cold. He grabbed the binoculars off the railing, annoyed with himself for once again having left them in such a precarious place. One geological shake and they would have fallen down into the brush.
He used the cuff of his long-sleeved T-shirt to wipe the lenses and turned on the night-vision option. Then he stood still, binoculars in both hands, and waited with his eyes closed.
When the owl hooted again, Bosch tracked the sound, opened his eyes, and raised the binoculars toward the grouping of pine trees to the right. They were rooted far down in the hillside, which put their upper branches almost level with the deck. The lenses cut through the darkness and he could clearly see the branches of the trees.
But no owl.
He waited, watching through the binoculars, and then heard it again — the deep who-who call — and moved the angle of vision slightly farther left. And then he saw it. He held the glasses steady and studied it. Its eyes glowed yellow and it almost seemed to be looking back at Bosch. It was a great horned owl, its earlike tufts clearly defined and pointing upward. He was sure it was the one he had seen before.
“Hey, guy,” Bosch whispered.
As he watched, the bird swiveled its head in a signature owl move and then took flight from the branch. Bosch tried to track it with the binoculars, but it flew too fast out of the frame. He lowered the glasses and looked out into the darkness, hoping to see the silhouette of the flying bird against the starry sky. But it was gone.
“What is it, Harry?”
Bosch turned. Hinojos was standing in the threshold of the open slider. She was wearing an old bathrobe that Bosch kept in the closet but never used. He gestured with the binoculars toward the tops of the trees.
“An owl,” he said. “It woke me up, so I came out. Sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “I stirred and saw you were gone. I just wondered where you were.”
She stepped out onto the deck.
“Can I see?” she asked.
“No, he’s gone,” Bosch said. “He flew off. But he’ll be back. He’s gotta have a nest around here somewhere. That’s about the fifth time I’ve seen him.”
“Him?”
“Huh, yeah. I just assumed that, being a night hunter, he was male.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Don’t go Dr. Hinojos on me now.”
“I won’t.”
She put her arms around him from behind.
“It’s cold out here,” she said. “Come back to bed.”
“I will,” he said. “In a few minutes.”
She kissed his neck and then let go.
“Don’t be long,” she said. “It will be light soon.”
She went inside and he was alone on the deck again. He looked down at the freeway. It was quiet there at the moment, but within the hour it would become the blood-pumping aorta of the city as rush hour heated up.
