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

by Michael Connelly

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers’ bathing suits. It was a beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.

Detectives Pierce Lewis and Don Clarke strode into the office and presented themselves. Neither spoke. They could have been brothers, They shared close-cropped brown hair, the arms-splayed build of weight lifters, conservative gray silk suits. Lewis’s had a thin charcoal stripe; Clarke’s maroon. Each man was built wide and low to the ground for better handling. Each had a slightly forward tilt to his body, as if he were wading out to sea, crashing through breakers with his face.

The boy reached for his cigarettes on the table and Bosch pulled back and got out one of his own. The leaning in and out of his face was a technique Bosch had learned while spending what seemed like ten thousand hours in these little rooms. Lean in, invade that foot and a half that is all theirs, their own space. Lean back when you get what you want. It’s subliminal. Most of what goes on in a police interrogation has nothing to do with what is said. It is interpretation, nuance. And sometimes what isn’t said. He lit Sharkey’s cigarette first. Wish leaned back in her chair as they exhaled the blue smoke.