The Dark Hours (Renée Ballard, #4; Harry Bosch, #23; Harry Bosch Universe, #36)

by Michael Connelly

She took one of her hands off the wheel and held her sleeve to her nose. It was her first time back in uniform since the protests. She could make out the smell of tear gas. She had dry-cleaned the uniform twice but the odor was baked in, permanent. It was a strong reminder of the year that had been.

tried to make out the signature scribbled on it. She knew little about baseball or Dodgers players past and present. To her, the first name of the signature looked like Mookie but she thought she had to have that wrong.

The man was carrying a feather duster. “Just doing a little housekeeping,” he said. “We wouldn’t want Sirhan’s gun to get dusty. It’s part of history.”

Ballard pulled her mask all the way up and was holding her badge up when the door of the house next door to Carpenter’s was opened by a woman in her sixties showing one of the signs of being locked down for nine months. She had a thick band of gray at the base of her brunette hair, marking the last time she had been to a salon for a dye job.

I hit him up last night on a pretext call to see what his reaction would be and he sounded like an asshole. He’s in the tech-investment field.” “They’re all assholes.

It was a good thing Ballard liked working alone, because the department had a freeze on promotions and hiring until the world cleared the pandemic.

Lmao oops

“Happy hunting.” This was the homicide detective’s sign-off. It was a show of respect, and Ballard thought there was no one in the entire department whose respect she would take over Harry Bosch’s.

In addition to what she had already seen on the neck, there were laser scars all over the chest, stomach, and arms, a painful map of tattoo removal. She guessed it had taken years to get rid of all the ink. It reminded Ballard of the monks who practiced self-flagellation with whips and other instruments to repent for their sins. Whatever Javier Raffa’s sins were, he had paid a painful price.

She had just entered the hallway when the house started shaking. Not an earthquake, just a low vibration. A tremor. She realized that someone was opening the garage door.