Jenny hung up the phone and walked to the back of the house. It felt smaller now. Used. Threadbare. Diminished in ways that she could not quite explain to herself. She sat on the man’s bed and looked into the mirror above the dresser. She remembered turning her head away from that mirror a week ago so she would not have to see her reflection. Now she did not have to look away. She touched a smear of lipstick on her mouth. It made her think of blood. For just a moment, only a moment, she felt her heart quicken with a strange sense of pleasure.
Father’s Day by Michael Connelly
The victim’s tiny body was left alone in the emergency room enclosure. The doctors, after halting their resuscitation efforts, had solemnly retreated and pulled the plastic curtains closed around the bed. The entire construction, management, and purpose of the hospital was to prevent death. When the effort failed, nobody wanted to see it.
The curtains were opaque. Harry Bosch looked like a ghost as he approached and then split them to enter. He stepped into the enclosure and stood somber and alone with the dead. The boy’s body took up less than a quarter of the big metal bed. Bosch had worked thousands of cases, but nothing ever touched him like the sight of a young child’s lifeless body. Fifteen months old. Cases in which the child’s age was still counted in months were the most difficult of all. He knew that if he dwelled too long, he would start to question everything – from the meaning of life to his mission in it.
The boy looked like he was only asleep. Bosch made a quick study, looking for any bruising or sign of mishap. The child was naked and uncovered, his skin as pink as a newborn’s. Bosch saw no sign of trauma except for an old scrape on the boy’s forehead.
He pulled on gloves and very carefully moved the body to check it from all angles. His heart sank as he did this, but he saw nothing that was suspicious. When he was finished, he covered the body with the sheet – he wasn’t sure why – and slipped back through the plastic curtains shrouding the bed.
The boy’s father was in a private waiting room down the hall. Bosch would eventually get to him, but the paramedics who had transported the boy had agreed to stick around to be interviewed. Bosch looked for them first and found both men – one old, one young; one to mentor, one to learn – sitting in the crowded ER waiting room. He invited them outside so they could speak privately.
The dry summer heat hit them as soon as the glass doors parted. Like walking out of a casino in Vegas. They walked to the side so they would not be bothered, but stayed in the shade of the portico. He identified himself and told them he would need the written reports on their rescue effort as soon as they were completed.
“For now, tell me about the call.”
The senior man did the talking. His name was Ticotin.
“The kid was already in full arrest when we got there,” he began. “We did what we could, but the best thing was just to ice him and transport him – try to get him in here and see what the pros could do.”
“Did you take a body-temperature reading at the scene?” Bosch asked.
“First thing,” Ticotin said. “It was one oh six eight. So you gotta figure the kid was up around one oh eight, one oh nine, before we got there. There was no way he was going to come back from that. Not a little baby like that.”
Ticotin shook his head as though he were frustrated by having been sent to rescue someone who could not be rescued. Bosch nodded as he took out his notebook and wrote down the temperature reading.
“You know what time that was?” he asked.
“We arrived at twelve seventeen, so I would say we took the BT no more than three minutes later. First thing you do. That’s the protocol.”
Bosch nodded again and wrote the time – 12:20 p.m. – next to the temperature reading. He looked up and tracked a car coming quickly into the ER lot. It parked, and his partner, Ignacio Ferras, got out. He had gone directly to the accident scene while Bosch had gone directly to the hospital. Bosch signaled him over. Ferras walked with anxious speed. Bosch knew he had something to report, but Bosch didn’t want him to say it in front of the paramedics. He introduced him and then quickly got back to his questions.
“Where was the father when you got there?”
“They had the kid on the floor by the back door, where he had brought him in. The father was sort of collapsed on the floor next to him, screaming and crying like they do. Kicking the floor.”
“Did he ever say anything?”
“Not right then.”
“Then when?”
“When we made the decision to transport and work on the kid in the truck, he wanted to go. We told him he couldn’t. We told him to get somebody from the office to drive him.”
“What were his words?”
“He just said, ‘I want to go with him. I want to be with my son,’ stuff like that.”
Ferras shook his head as if in pain.
“At any time did he talk about what had happened?” Bosch asked.
Ticotin checked his partner, who shook his head.
“No,” Ticotin said. “He didn’t.”
“Then how were you informed of what had happened?”
“Well, initially, we heard it from dispatch. Then one of the office workers, a lady, she told us when we got there. She led us to the back and told us along the way.”
Bosch thought he had all he was going to get, but then thought of something else.
“You didn’t happen to take an exterior-air-temperature reading for that spot, did you?”
The two paramedics looked at each other and then at Bosch.
“Didn’t think to,” Ticotin said. “But it’s gotta be at least ninety-five, with the Santa Anas kicking up like this. I don’t remember a June this hot.”
Bosch remembered a June he had spent in a jungle, but wasn’t going to get into it. He thanked the paramedics and let them get back to duty. He put his notebook away and looked at his partner.
“Okay, tell me about the scene,” he said.
“We’ve got to charge this guy, Harry,” Ferras said urgently.
“Why? What did you find?”
“It’s not what I found. It’s because it was just a kid, Harry. What kind of father would let this happen? How could he forget?”
Ferras had become a father for the first time six months earlier. Bosch knew this. The experience had made him a professional dad, and every Monday he came in to the squad with a new batch of photos. To Bosch, the kid looked the same week to week, but not to Ferras. He was in love with being a father, with having a son.
“Ignacio, you’ve got to separate your own feelings about it from the facts and the evidence, okay? You know this. Calm down.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that, how could he forget, you know?”
“Yeah, I know, and we’re going to keep that in mind. So tell me what you found out over there. Who’d you talk to?”
“The office manager.”
“And what did he say?”
“It’s a lady. She said that he came in through the back door shortly after ten. All the sales agents park in the back and use the back door – that’s why nobody saw the kid. The father came in, talking on the cell phone. Then he got off and asked if he’d gotten a fax, but there was no fax. So he made another call, and she heard him ask where the fax was. Then he waited for the fax.”
“How long did he wait?”
“She said not long, but the fax was an offer to buy. So he called the client, and that started a whole back-and-forth with calls and faxes, and he completely forgot about the kid. It was at least two hours, Harry. Two hours!”
Bosch could almost share his partner’s anger, but he had been on the mission a couple of decades longer than Ferras and knew how to hold it in when he had to and when to let it go.
“Harry, something else too.”
“What?”
“The baby had something wrong with him.”