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

by Michael Connelly

There was one story after the traffic report that caught his attention. An octopus on display at a city aquarium in San Pedro had apparently killed itself by pulling a water circulation tube out of its tank fitting with one of its tentacles. The tank emptied and the octopus died. Environmental groups were calling it suicide, a desperate protest by the octopus against its captivity. Only in L.A., Bosch thought as he turned the radio off.

“You seem,” she said while still writing, “to have a low threshold for the toleration of frustrations.”

you said it, lady...

Bosch had sensed a loneliness about her, a mystery of some sort. Behind the pretty face there were scars. The kind that couldn’t be seen.

ok, calm down harry.

The rubber band on the first package of envelopes snapped when he tried to remove it and he was reminded of the band that had been around the blue binder that contained the case files. Everything about this case was old and ready to snap, he thought.

“Look, sorry I was an asshole before,” Bosch offered. “Don’t worry about it, partner,” the guard replied. “It gets to the best of us.” Bosch wondered what the “it” was he was talking about but said nothing. He nodded solemnly, as if he got most of his life lessons from security guards.

He went up to the investigators’ lounge on the second floor, hoping not only that there would be someone there he knew but, more important, someone Bosch hadn’t alienated over the years.

good luck...

“Don’t give yourself a hernia, Bosch. Just take the prints and leave. Never met anybody who tried so hard to make the person doin’ him a favor feel bad.” Bosch dumped his coffee cup in a trash can and started out. At the door he stopped. “Thanks.” It burned him to say it. The guy was an asshole. “Just remember, Bosch, you owe me.” Bosch looked back at him. He was stirring cream into his cup. Bosch walked back, sticking his hand in his pocket. When he got to the counter he pulled out a quarter and dropped it into the slotted tin box that was the coffee fund. “There, that’s for you,” Bosch said. “Now we’re even.”