The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch, #4; Harry Bosch Universe, #4)

by Michael Connelly

The answer is no, no insurance. Like most everybody else, I was living in denial.

My mission, I believe, is to help the men and women of this department. That’s the narrow focus. And by doing that, on a grander scale I help the community, I help the people of this city. The better the cops are that we have out on the street, the better we all are. The safer we all are.

Bosch played the mentor role in the relationship and he trusted Edgar with his life. But that was a bond that held fast on the street. Inside the department was another matter. Bosch had never trusted anyone, never relied on anyone. He wasn’t going to start now.

Edgar laughed loudly into the phone and Bosch knew, after only one week of being grounded, how much he missed the job.

The story was depressing because it was a reminder of what he was no longer doing. It also reminded him about what Hinojos had asked about defining his mission.

The binder contained the case file on the October 28, 1961, homicide of Marjorie Phillips Lowe. His mother.

He should have visited for reasons other than the one that brought him here now.

You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong.

It was because she had made it through and there was dignity in that.

It was simply that she had worked hard to attain the level she was at in life. That position and the material things it brought with it—like glass coffee tables and plush carpets—meant a lot to her and were to be taken care of.

She never stopped trying to get you back, Harry. I hope you know that. She loved you. I loved you.”

Time had eroded the bond between them. They were strangers who shared the same story.

She had what other cops called a getaway face. So beautiful it would always be a shield. No matter what she did or what was done to her, her face would be her ticket. It would open doors in front of her, close them behind her. It would let her get away.

And if I ever act like I forgot that, hit me alongside the head like you did today.

As he did this, he felt a measure of control come back to him. He began to feel good and whole again, and to feel angry. He was ready to go out into the world, whether or not it was ready for him.

a book on creating and honing motivational skills in employees.

The mayor was a Republican. The Times had gone with the Democrat. What was worse, for her, at least, was that the mayor was a supporter of the Police Department. Reporters didn’t like that. That was boring. They wanted City Hall infighting, controversy, scandal.

He had to admit to himself that there was something about her that he liked. She was not threatening and he believed she was telling the truth when she said she was there only to help him.

They are there, plain as day. Your intolerance, your inability to sublimate frustrations, most of all your assault on your commanding officer.”

He felt exhausted, unrepairable. He also couldn’t help but be amazed by her at the same time she was so expertly cutting him open.

She showed no shock on her face, which in turn surprised him. It was as if she expected him to say what he had just said.

He had placed no limit on cigarettes. Hinojos had said nothing about smoking.

Goff was an old-line prosecutor who had been with the office nearly thirty years. He had no political aspirations inside or outside of the office. He just liked his job.

“It’s not funny, Bosch. It’s fucking sad. Administrative prosecutor, whoever heard of such a thing? An oxymoron. Like Andrew and his screenplays.

He’s got a guy trying to solve a murder, the victim’s family waiting for thirty-three years to know who killed her,

if you’re willing to do it, an apology in the form of a letter to Lieutenant Pounds could be beneficial.

I thought that was… I don’t know, there was something noble about her doing that for me. She was protecting me, in a way.”

He knew she’d say it was a symptom of his problem. She wouldn’t see it as a tactful way of flushing the bird from the bush.

the badge was the symbol of what he was. It opened doors better than any key, it gave him more authority than any words, than any weapon. He decided the badge was a necessity.

Taking another cop’s badge was a crime, but Bosch looked at Pounds as being the reason he did not have his own badge. In the inventory of his morality, what Pounds had done to him was equally wrong.

“Because you know what I’m doing. And because I trust you. I don’t think I can trust anybody else.”

This recent relationship you had may have been a highlight but you were still and, I think, have always been, an unhappy man.”

Well, for a long time she didn’t count. Not with this department, this society, not even with me. I have to admit that, not even with me.

“It’s a way of describing a violent outburst that has its roots in several pressures on an individual. It builds up and is released in a quick moment—usually violently, often against a target not wholly responsible for the pressure.”

The Pacific was a cold and forbidding blue, the Gulf a warm green that invited you.

Bosch had sensed a loneliness about her, a mystery of some sort.

It was always in the silences that Bosch felt most comfortable with the women who had moved through his life.

“It makes you forgive a lot, forget a lot… That’s the thing about Los Angeles. It’s got a lot of broken pieces to it. But the ones that still work, really do work.”

All four looked at him with faces of stone, confirming that in fact someone was dead.

And in the moment that he saw that it did, he also saw his own responsibility as well as his own predicament.

For Bosch knew in the dark part of his heart that he was responsible. He didn’t know how or when it had happened but he knew.

The IAD relied so much on its presence as an intimidating factor that most of the detectives assigned to the division never really had to prepare for interviews. And when they hit a wall like this, they didn’t know what to do.