The Overlook - Michael Connelly [0]
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Little, Brown and Company
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First eBook Edition: May 2007
ISBN: 978-0-316-00522-7
Contents
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Acknowledgments
About The Author
ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY
Fiction
The Black Echo
The Black Ice
The Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
The Poet
Trunk Music
Blood Work
Angels Flight
Void Moon
A Darkness More Than Night
City of Bones
Chasing the Dime
Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
The Lincoln Lawyer
Echo Park
Nonfiction
Crime Beat
To the librarian who gave me
To Kill a Mockingbird
ONE
THE CALL CAME AT MIDNIGHT. Harry Bosch was awake and sitting in the living room in the dark. He liked to think that he was doing this because it allowed him to hear the saxophone better. By masking one of the senses he accentuated another.
But deep down he knew the truth. He was waiting.
The call was from Larry Gandle, his supervisor in Homicide Special. It was Bosch’s first call out in the new job. And it was what he had been waiting for.
“Harry, you up?”
“I’m up.”
“Who’s that you got playing?”
“Frank Morgan, live at the Jazz Standard in New York. That’s George Cables you’re hearing now on piano.”
“Sounds like ‘All Blues.’”
“You nailed it.”
“Good stuff. I hate to take you away from it.”
Bosch used the remote to turn the music off.
“What’s the call, Lieutenant?”
“Hollywood wants you and Iggy to come out and take over a case. They’ve already caught three today and can’t handle a fourth. This one also looks like it might become a hobby. It looks like an execution.”
The Los Angeles Police Department had seventeen geographic divisions, each with its own station and detective bureau, including a homicide squad. But the divisional squads were the first line and couldn’t get bogged down on long-running cases. When a murder came with any sort of political, celebrity or media attachment, it was usually shuttled down to Homicide Special, which operated out of the Robbery-Homicide Division in Parker Center. Any case that appeared to be particularly difficult and time-consuming—that would invariably stay active like a hobby—would also be an immediate candidate for Homicide Special. This was one of those.
“Where is it?” Bosch asked.
“Up on that overlook above the Mulholland Dam. You know the place?”
“Yeah, I’ve been up there.”
Bosch got up and walked to the dining room table. He opened a drawer designed for silverware and took out a pen and a small notebook. On the first page of the notebook he wrote down the date and the location of the murder scene.
“Any other details I should know?” Bosch asked.
“Not a lot,” Gandle said. “Like I said, it was described to me as an execution. Two in the back of the head. Somebody took this guy up there and blew his brains out all over that pretty view.”
Bosch let this register a moment before asking the next question.
“Do they know who the dead guy is?”
“The divisionals are working on it. Maybe they’ll have something by the time you get over there. It’s practically in your neighborhood, right?”
“Not too far.”
Gandle gave Bosch more specifics on the location of the crime scene and asked if Harry would make the next call out to his partner. Bosch said he would take care of it.
“Okay, Harry, get up there and see what’s what, then call me and let me know. Just wake me up. Everybody else does.”
Bosch thought it was just like a supervisor to complain about getting