The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #1)

by Michael Connelly

Out of the blue and into the black. That’s what he said going on a tunnel mission was. We called it the black echo. It was like going to hell. You’re down there and you could smell your own fear. It was like you were dead when you were down there.”

She passed closely by him in the small space between the refrigerator and counter and moved out into the hallway. He could smell her hair as she went by. An apple scent, he thought. He noticed that she was looking at the print hanging on the wall opposite the mirror in the hallway. It was in three separate framed sections and was a print of a fifteenth-century painting called The Garden of Delights. The painter was a Dutchman. “Hieronymus Bosch,” she said as she studied the nightmarish landscape of the painting.

“When I saw that was your full name I

wondered if—” “No relation,” he said. “My mother, she just liked his stuff. I guess ’cause of the last name. She sent that print to me once. Said in the note that it reminded her of L.A. All the crazy people. My foster parents… they didn’t like it, but I kept it for a lot of years. Had it hanging there as long...

Biscailuz,”

What he mulled over now, poking at it like a loose tooth with his tongue, was the hit-and-run. The car that had come at them the night before. Why?

“There was no name for it, so we made up a name. It was the darkness, the damp emptiness you’d feel when you were down there alone in those tunnels. It was like you were in a place where you felt dead and buried in the dark. But you were alive. And you were scared. Your own breath kind of echoed in the darkness, loud enough to give you away. Or so you thought. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Just… the black echo.”