Michael Connelly

Named one of the Best Books Of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times

“Connelly diabolically teases readers with bits of exposition while scaring the hell out of them in the most accomplished slice of Hitchcock since the Master’s heyday. The result is a tour de force of nerve-shredding suspense.”
— Kirkus Reviews * starred review

“Connelly’s plotting is shrink-wrap tight, his characters… are smartly drawn. It’s the rare reader who will be able to finger the villain behind all the mayhem. …this is the perfect book for a long airplane ride…”
— Publishers Weekly

“…it’s a grabber from the beginning, and the subject matter is utterly compelling. …marvelously detailed particulars of both experimental computing and online sex for hire. Connelly brings the two worlds together in a slam-bang finale that will leave fans gasping.”
— Booklist

“”Chasing the Dime” creates a scarily high-tech brand of intrigue. Mr. Connelly is a spare, expeditious storyteller with a natural talent for generating forward momentum.”
— Janet Maslin, New York Times

“With each chapter, Connelly tests his hero and achieves his full potential as an author.”
— USA Today

“As one of today’s top crime novelists, Michael Connelly does many things well. The strongest aspect of his writing, however, may be his ability to create atmosphere, and his compellingly readable new thriller, “Chasing the Dime,” has it in spades.”
— Connor Ennis, Associated Press

“From the compelling beginning to an action-packed finale, Connelly will have readers Chasing the Dime.”
— Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“…a penetrating look at the power of curiosity to change a life, whether it’s applied to inventing molecular computers or tracking a mysterious call girl. …Taking a supergeek who spends all his time in an underground, copper-clad lab and forcing him to apply scientific method to peer into the sleazy corners of the real world is a stroke of pure brilliance.”
— The Times-Picayune

“Chasing the Dime is the do-not-miss mystery of the season!”
— BookPage

“If you are looking for a great thriller this is it! Michael Connelly does an excellent job. This book is loaded with suspense. It is a book that will hold you captive until you read through the very last page. Be prepared to stay up all night until you finish the book! If you don’t read another book this year, you must read this one!”
—  BestSellersWorld.com

“It’s a brilliant departure from the author’s noir Harry Bosch novels, which I also enjoy a great deal. Chasing the Dime is a powerful combination of mystery (what happened to Lilly?) and thriller (what will happen to Henry?), with the added fascination of a window into one of the most exciting areas of research today.”
— Bookloons.com

“In Chasing the Dime, as he did in Blood Work, Connelly takes an entirely innovative idea and runs with it, creating a story that is hard to put down.”
— MostlyFiction.com

Michael Connelly “Interviews” Harry Bosch

The following conversation between Harry Bosch and Michael Connelly was recorded in Los Angeles at a cyber café called the Frontal Lobe on April 1, 2002. Bosch agreed to the recording on the condition that it would be presented here in its entirety. Because it is unedited it is strongly advised that this conversation not be read until AFTER one reads the accounting of Bosch’s last case contained in the book City Of Bones. Bosch’s comments here contain NUMEROUS SPOILERS that will be detrimental to the reading of the book.

SPOILER ALERT!

April 1, 2002

Harry Bosch: Okay, so I’m here. What do you want to know?

Michael Connelly: First of all, can you identify the music they’ve got playing on the sound system here?

HB: What is this, a test? I thought it was supposed to be a conversation.

MC: No, it’s not a test. It’s just that it sounds like your kind of —

HB: It’s Frank Morgan. Mood Indigo is the CD and this song is called “Lullaby.” Do I pass the test?

MC: Yes, thank you. So let’s start then. Let’s talk about the case you were most recently working on. The bones of a boy found on the hill in Laurel Canyon.

HB: What about it?

MC: Well, I got the sense when I read about it that there was sort of a pallor of futility settling over you as you worked it. I would assume that with cops that constantly see the underside of a city and its inhabitants — the abyss, if you will — that there is a real danger of being infected with a sense of what’s the use. You know, where it hits you that for every murder you solve there will just be another and then another and another and so on. What’s to stop somebody from saying what’s the use and giving up?

HB: I would not characterize what happened on that case as me giving up.

MC: Well, I did feel the cloak of futility upon you.

HB: Maybe that was you. Maybe it was coming down on you and you just read it in me.

MC: Maybe it was in relation to the events of September 11th. One of the ripple effects such a catastrophic tragedy has is that it makes everything small in comparison. Even solving the murder of a long forgotten boy.

HB: Or writing a crime novel.

MC: But we’re talking about you here.

HB: Look, I’ve always said that everybody counts or nobody counts. I choose the former over the latter. Everybody counts. That goes just as much for the boy on the hill as it does for every person that was in the World Trade Center or in the Pentagon or on those planes. I’ve never had a problem keeping my eyes on the prize. Not this case or any of the others before it.

MC: Let me try it from another angle. There is a difference between how a cop works on a case and how a case works on a cop. This case seemed to work on you more than most. Maybe it was the nature of the killing. Maybe it was something to do with your age and what you have seen and where you are at in your personal journey. But by the end of the case, it seemed to have gotten the best of you. You were clearly finished, in my opinion.

HB: But that is not the same as giving up. I haven’t given up.

MC: True, you did work the case to its conclusion but it seems that you also worked it to the conclusion of your own career. Is that a fair assessment then?

HB: To the extent it was the conclusion of my career with the LAPD, yes. But I’m not finished yet. I have not given up. Whether or not it worked on me more than I worked on it, I looked at that case as one in which my eyes were opened and I realized I didn’t need all of that anymore. You know, that the things and the institution I thought I needed might actually be what hold me back.

MC: So you are leaving the institution behind but not leaving behind what sort of has been your personal mission in life.

HB: Exactly. I used to think I could not have one without the other. I don’t think that way anymore.

MC: So what are you going to do, get a mask and a cape and sit on roof tops at night or something?

HB: Very funny. I thought this was supposed to be a serious conversation. If you want to have a bunch of laughs why don’t you go down the street to the Improv?

MC: Sorry, I’m not trying to be funny. It’s just that I’m trying to get a picture of your plans.

HB: There are no plans. It will just happen. When I walked out of that police station for the last time, I carried away enough files to keep me busy if I want to be kept busy.

MC: Are those files the cases that haunt you?

HB: You could say that. Anytime somebody gets away you are haunted. It’s the nature of the mission. You speak for the dead, man, because nobody else does. You let down the dead and you’ve got ghosts that haunt you.

MC: All right, so we have not heard the last of Harry Bosch.

HB: Hope not.

MC: Let me ask you this, have you applied to the state of California for a private investigators license?

HB: Yes, but that is just part of the routine. Every cop I know who put in the kind of time I put in applies to get the private ticket. Doesn’t mean anything will come of it. It just sort of helps with the separation — from insider to outsider.

MC: You always hit me as an outsider even when you were an insider.

HB: I probably was. The department, for me, was a means to an end. I always felt I was in it but not of it. There was something I wanted to do and I thought for a lot of years that being in the department was the only way to do it. Now I am looking at other means to the same end.

MC: Any other options besides getting a private ticket?

HB: A few. The DA’s office is starting a cold case squad. They are looking for people with experience, people who know how to close cases. I might send in my name and see what happens. I know some people over there and they have a measure of my skills.

MC: A measure of your temperament, too, I would hope.

HB: Like I said, they know me. But they’re only going to care about one thing; can this guy come in here and close cases for us. They’re not going to care whether I hang around the water cooler or not.

MC: Will they care if you bend the rules, stretch the lines?

HB: I think they will care about results. In this world results count the most.

MC: Tell me, would you ever consider leaving the City of Angels for a job or a woman or anything else?

HB: I don’t think so. This is my place. I don’t want to go anywhere else. I probably wouldn’t know what to do anywhere else.

MC: Tell me about that. What I mean is, can you verbalize your feelings for this city. What makes you stick here? What is the essence of this place for you?

HB: It’s probably the same with everybody else and wherever you go. It’s home, you know. I’ve seen a lot of things go down in this city. Good and bad but I would have to say mostly bad — it’s the nature of what I did for a living. But the thing about this place is that it is always so close to being something good. So I guess the essence I feel is hope. I hope — we all hope — for that better day and we know it is possible. The reality, of course, is that usually something goes wrong. Defeat is snatched from the hands of victory, or whatever that saying is.

MC: That is being cynical, isn’t it?

HB: Sure, but I’m a cop.

MC: Was.

HB: Right. Was.

MC: Julia Brasher.

HB: What about her?

MC: I’m still puzzled by her. What did you learn from her?

HB: Probably something I already knew but had kind of pushed to the back burner. And that’s that you can never know anybody. Everybody’s got a secret room that they go to. It’s a place nobody else can go. There are paintings on the walls but the outsider will never see them. Only the person whose room it is.

MC: Well, you only knew Julia Brasher a couple weeks. What about the people who have been together a long time. Don’t people — I’m talking about couples bonded by love and sex and family and so on — don’t they end up knowing everything about each other? Don’t they get inside each other’s room?

HB: Are you kidding? Those are the ones with the most secrets.

MC: You’re a cynical guy.

HB: Damn right. Keeps me alive. I see a ring on your finger. You’re a married guy. Children, too, I bet.

MC: So?

HB: You’ve got secrets. Lots of them. Secrets your wife and kids don’t know anything about.

MC: That may be true but we’re here to talk about you?

HB: Same difference.

MC: Well, if we’re going to talk about wives, what about Eleanor Wish? Where is she?

HB: At the moment I couldn’t tell you. She’s just out there somewhere.

MC: Will you ever see her again?

HB: I suppose I will. I hope so.

MC: Why? It seemed to end badly with you and her.

HB: Because she’s the one. No matter what happened at the end or along the way, I know she was the one true connection in my life. She’s the one who came closest to seeing the paintings in my secret room. I don’t think that will happen again. I’m a believer in the single bullet theory. You get one shot. I’m sure that I will be with other women — like Julia — but they won’t get inside the wire like Eleanor did.

MC: Inside the wire. That is a war phrase, isn’t it? It refers to the perimeter put up around a camp. If the enemy intrudes it is called getting inside the wire, right?

HB: Something like that. What about it?

MC: I don’t know. It just sort of seems like an unfortunate choice of words when describing relationships. Single bullets and getting inside the wire. Like maybe you look at it as a war and you are this armed encampment or something.

HB: You read too much into things. They’re just words.

MC: I make my living with words. I think they often mean more than what is actually said. Do you think you can ever be happy with a woman in a relationship?

HB: I’m never going to be a Honey-I’m-home type of guy, if that’s what you mean.

MC: Why?

HB: The nature of the beast. I’m not equipped to be that guy. Growing up, I didn’t see that. Then on the job, I saw even worse. I’m not into self-analysis so all I can tell you is that I can’t do that. And the women I am with usually find that out pretty quick. Julia Brasher never got the chance but she would have eventually found it out, too.

MC: The exception being Eleanor Wish?

HB: That’s right and do you know why? Because she wasn’t looking for that in me. She was just looking at me. That made me lift up the wire and she got in.

MC: So then what happened?

HB: Look, I’m done talking about it. We’re way off course here. This was supposed to be about my work on the department, not my screwed up marriage.

MC: Okay, then back to that. How many homicides did you work in this city?

HB: I don’t know. Hundreds.

MC: Is it a better place now for what you’ve done?

HB: I hope so. I think so. It’s an equation, you know. Evil in, evil out. My job was the second part, taking evil out. Getting rid of it. If you look at it on those terms I think I did pretty well by this place. There is less evil out there. At the end of the day, that is what you cling to in a job like that.

MC: So now that you are on the outside of all of that, what do you cling to?

HB: I guess I cling to hope for that better day we were talking about before.

MC: Your mentioning of the equation of evil in and evil out is interesting. What are your thoughts on evil? Where do you stand on the age old debate about whether it simply exists in the world or it is something that is fostered and cultivated. Grown, if you will, inside a person, just the same as maybe love and joy are.

HB: I guess it’s an age old question because there is no sure answer. At times I think I’ve felt both ways about it. Certainly, I have been in contact with people who are flat out evil. And with some of them I could look back across their lives and see where different gateways opened that led to other gateways and eventually a path of evil intent was arrived at. But for every person like that there is also the case where you see the evil behind their eyes and in their deeds and you have no earthly idea where it came from and how it got there. It’s a mystery that can never be solved. It’s just part of their nature to be evil. It’s like evil just existed out there and somehow they walked into it. Like somebody hitting a cobweb walking through an attic. But I have to tell you I don’t spend a lot of time contemplating that sort of question. For me, I know it is out there, no matter what its source. And I don’t worry about where it came from. Because to think about it might be a dangerous distraction. That might get me killed. My bottom line take on the human existence is that each one of us comes with an unlimited capacity to love and hate, to be afraid, to be lonely, so on and so on. Most often you get a good blend of all of that in everybody’s milkshake. But why somebody’s cup gets filled up with only hatred and evil intent might make for a good intellectual question and discussion, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. What matters is going out there and taking that evil out of the world.

MC: So in a way you’re like a dog catcher. If a dog’s loose in the neighborhood it doesn’t really matter why it’s loose. It has to go into the back of the truck before somebody gets bitten.

HB: Especially kids. You don’t want them to get bitten by that dog.

MC: Right. That evil dog.

HB: Yeah, that’s good. I like that. Just call me a dog catcher. I won’t complain about that.

MC: Okay.

HB: Anything else?

MC: No, I think that covers it.

HB: Okay then. I’ll see you around.

With that Bosch stood up and left the Frontal Lobe.

Read a second interview with Harry Bosch done in 2005.

Here is a compilation excerpt — six abbreviated segments from the book that will help set up the story.

EXCERPT I
The old lady changed her mind about dying but by then it had been too late. She dug her fingers into the paint and plaster of the nearby wall until most of her fingernails had broken off. Then she had gone for the neck, scrabbling to push the bloodied fingertips up and under the cord. She broke four toes kicking at the walls. She had tried so hard, shown such a desperate will to live, that it made Harry Bosch wonder what had happened before. Where was that determination and will and why had it deserted her until after she had put the extension cord noose around her neck and kicked over the chair? Why had it hidden from her?

These were not official questions that would be raised in his death report. But they were the things Bosch couldn’t avoid thinking about as he sat in his car outside the Splendid Age Retirement Home on Sunset Boulevard east of the Hollywood Freeway. It was 4:20 p.m. on the first day of the year.  Bosch had drawn holiday call out duty.

The day more than half over and that duty consisted of two suicide runs — one a gunshot, the other the hanging. Both victims were women. In both cases there was evidence of depression and desperation. Isolation. New Year’s Day was always a big day for suicides. While most people greeted the day with a sense of hope and renewal, there were those who saw it as a good day to die, some — like the old lady — not realizing their mistake until it was too late.

Bosch looked up through the windshield and watched as the latest victim’s body, on a wheeled stretcher and covered in a green blanket, was loaded into the coroner’s blue van. He saw there was one other occupied stretcher in the van and knew it was from the first suicide — a 34-year-old actress who had shot herself while parked at a Hollywood overlook on Mulholland Drive. Bosch and the body crew had followed one case to the other.

Bosch’s cell phone chirped and he welcomed the intrusion into his thoughts on small deaths. It was Mankiewicz, the watch sergeant at the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“You finished with that yet?”

“I’m about to clear.”

“Anything?”

“A changed-my-mind suicide. You got something else?”

“Yeah. And I didn’t think I should go out on the radio with it. Must be a slow day for the media — getting more what’s-happening calls from reporters than I am getting service calls from citizens. They all want to do something on the first one, the actress on Mulholland. You know, a death of a Hollywood dream story. And they’d probably jump all over this latest call, too.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“A citizen up in Laurel Canyon. On Wonderland. He just called up and said his dog came back from a run in the woods with a bone in its mouth. The guy says it’s human — an arm bone from a kid.”

Bosch almost groaned. There were four or five call outs like this a year. Hysteria always followed by simple explanation: animal bones. Through the windshield he saluted the two body movers from the coroner’s office as they headed to the front doors of the van.

“I know what you’re thinking, Harry. Not another bone run. You’ve done it a hundred times and it’s always the same thing. Coyote, deer, whatever. But listen, this guy with the dog, he’s an MD. And he say’s there’s no doubt. It’s a humerus. That’s the upper arm bone. He says it’s a child, Harry. And then get this, he said . . .”

There was silence while Mankiewicz apparently looked for his notes. The blue van pulled off into traffic. When Mankiewicz came back he was obviously reading.

“The bone’s got a fracture clearly visible just above the medial epicondyle, whatever that is.”

Bosch’s jaw tightened. He felt a slight tickle of electric current go down the back of his neck.

“That’s off my notes, I don’t know if I am saying it right. The point is this doctor says it was just a kid, Harry. So could you humor us and go check out this humerus?”

Bosch didn’t respond.

“Sorry, had to get that in.”

“Yeah, that was funny, Mank. What’s the address?”

Mankiewicz gave it to him and told him he had already dispatched a patrol team.

“You were right to keep it off the air. Let’s try to keep it that way.”

Mankiewicz said he would. Bosch closed his phone and started the car. He glanced over at the entrance to the retirement home before pulling away from the curb. There was nothing about it that looked splendid to him. The woman who had hung herself in the closet of her tiny bedroom had no next of kin, according to the operators of the home. In death, she would be treated the way she had been in life, left alone and forgotten.

Bosch pulled away from the curb and headed toward Laurel Canyon.

EXCERPT II
The woods were dark long before the sun disappeared. The overhead canopy created by a tall stand of Monterrey pines knocked down most of the light before it got to the ground. Bosch used the flashlight and made his way up the hillside in the direction in which he had heard the dog moving through the brush. It was slow moving and hard work. The ground contained a foot-thick layer of pine needles that gave way often beneath Bosch’s boots as he tried for purchase on the incline.  Soon his hands were sticky with sap from grabbing branches to keep himself upright.
It took him nearly ten minutes to go thirty yards up the hillside. Then the ground started to level off and the light got better as the tall trees thinned. Bosch looked around for the dog but didn’t see it. He called down to the street, though he could no longer see it or Dr. Guyot.

“Doctor Guyot? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“Whistle for your dog.”

He then heard a three part whistle. It was distinct but very low, having the same trouble getting through the trees and underbrush as the sunlight had. Bosch tried to repeat it and after a few tries thought he had it right. But the dog didn’t come.

Bosch pressed on, staying on the level ground because he believed that if someone was going to bury or abandon a body then it would be done on even ground as opposed to the steep slope. Following a path of least resistance, he moved into a stand of acacia trees. And here he immediately came upon a spot where the earth had recently been disturbed. It had been overturned, as if a tool or an animal had been randomly rooting in the soil. He used his foot to push some of the dirt and twigs aside and then realized they weren’t twigs.

He dropped to his knees and used his flashlight to study the short brown bones scattered over a square foot of dirt. He believed he was looking at the disjointed fingers of a hand. A small hand. A child’s hand.

Bosch stood up. He realized that he had brought no means with him for collecting the bones. Picking them up and carrying them down the hill would violate every tenet of evidence collection.

The Polaroid camera hung on a shoelace around his neck. He raised it now and took a close up shot of the bones. He then stepped back and took a wider shot of the spot beneath the acacia trees.

In the distance he heard Doctor Guyot’s weak whistle. Bosch went to work with the yellow plastic crime scene tape. He tied a short length of it around the trunk of one of the acacia trees and then strung a boundary around the trees. Thinking about how he would work the case the following morning, he stepped out of the cover of the acacia trees and looked for something to use as an aerial marker. He found a nearby growth of sagebrush. He wrapped the crime scene tape around and over top the bush several times.

When he was finished it was almost dark. He made another cursory look around the area but knew that a flashlight search was useless and the ground would need to be exhaustively covered in the morning. Using a small penknife attached to his key chain, he began cutting four-foot lengths of the crime scene tape off the roll.

Making his way back down the hill, he tied the strips off at intervals on tree branches and bushes.  At one point on the incline the soft ground suddenly gave way and he fell, tumbling hard into the base of a pine tree. The tree impacted his midsection, tearing his shirt and badly scratching his side.

Bosch didn’t move for several seconds. He thought he might have cracked his ribs on the right side. His breathing was difficult and painful. He groaned loudly and slowly pulled himself up on the tree trunk so that he could continue to follow the voices.

He soon came back down into the street where Dr. Guyot was waiting with his dog.

“Oh my, what happened?” Guyot cried out.

“Nothing. I fell.”

“You’re shirt is . . . there’s blood.”

“Comes with the job.”

EXCERPT III
Teresa Corazon lived in a Mediterranean mansion with a stone turn around circle complete with koi pond in front. Eight years earlier, when Bosch had shared a brief relationship with her, she had lived in a one bedroom condominium. The riches of television and celebrity had paid for the house and the lifestyle that came with it. She was not even remotely like the woman who used to show up at his house unannounced at midnight with a cheap bottle of red wine from Trader Joe’s and a video of her favorite movie to watch. The woman who was unabashedly ambitious but not yet skilled at using her position to enrich herself.

Bosch knew he now served as a reminder of what she had been and what she had lost in order to gain all that she had. It was no wonder their interactions were now few and far between but as tense as a visit to the dentist when they were unavoidable.

He parked on the circle and got out with the shoebox and the Polaroids. He looked into the pond as he came around the car and could see the dark shapes of the fish moving below the surface. He smiled, thinking about the movie, Chinatown, and how often they had watched it the year they were together. He remembered how much she enjoyed the portrayal of the coroner.  He wore a black butcher’s apron and ate a sandwich while examining a body. Bosch doubted she had the same sense of humor about things anymore.

The light hanging over the heavy wood door to the house went on and Corazon opened it before he got there. She was wearing black slacks and a cream-colored blouse. She was probably on her way to a New Year’s party. She looked past him at the slickback he had been driving.

“Let’s make this quick before that car drips oil on my stones.”

“Hello to you, too, Teresa.”

“That’s it?”

She pointed at the shoe box.

“This is it.”

He handed her the Polaroids and started taking the lid off the box. It was clear she was not asking him in for a glass of New Year’s champagne.

“You want to do this right here?”

“I don’t have a lot of time. I thought you’d be here sooner. What moron took these?”

“That would be me.”

“I can’t tell anything from these. Do you have a glove?”

Bosch pulled a Latex glove out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. He took the photos back and put them in an inside pocket of his jacket. She expertly snapped the glove on and reached into the open box. She held the bone up and turned it in the light. He was silent. He could smell her perfume. It was strong as usual, a holdover from her days when she spent most of her time in autopsy suites.

After a five second examination she put the bone back down in the box.

“Human.”

“You sure?”

She looked up at him with a glare as she snapped off the glove.

“It’s the humerus. The upper arm. I’d say a child of about ten. You may no longer respect my skills, Harry, but I do still have them.”

She dropped the glove into the box on top of the bone. Bosch could roll with all the verbal sparring from her but it bothered him that she did that with the glove, dropping it on the child’s bone like that.

He reached into the box and took the glove out. He remembered something and held the glove back out to her.

“The man whose dog found this said there was a fracture on the bone. A healed fracture. Do you want to take a look and see if you —“

“No. I’m late for an engagement. What you need to know right now is if it is human. You now have that confirmation. Further examination will come later under proper settings at the medical examiner’s office. Now, I really have to go. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

Bosch held her eyes for a long moment.

“Sure, Teresa, have a good time tonight.”

She broke off the stare and folded her arms across her chest. He carefully put the top back on the shoebox, nodded to her and headed back to his car. He heard the heavy door close behind him.

Thinking of the movie again as he passed the koi pond, he spoke the film’s final line quietly to himself.

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

He got in the car and drove home, his hand holding the shoebox secure on the seat next to him.

EXCERPT IV
Bosch and Edgar spread the twelve cadets out in the areas adjacent to the stand of acacia trees and had them begin conducting side by side searches. Bosch then went down and brought up the two K-9 teams to supplement the search.

Once things were underway he left Edgar with the cadets and went back to the acacias to see what progress had been made. He found Dr. Kohl sitting on an equipment crate and supervising the placement of wooden stakes into the ground so that strings could be used to set the excavation grid.

Bosch had worked one prior case with Kohl and knew she was very thorough and good at what she did. She was in her late thirties with a tennis player’s build and tan. Bosch had once run across her at a city park where she was playing tennis with a twin sister. They had drawn a crowd. It looked like somebody hitting the ball off of a mirrored wall.

Kohl’s straight blonde hair fell forward and hid her eyes as she looked down at the oversized clipboard on her lap. She was making notations on a piece of paper with a grid already printed on it. Bosch looked over her shoulder at the chart. Kohl was labeling the individual blocks with letters of the alphabet as the corresponding stakes were placed in the ground. At the top of the page she had written City of Bones.

Bosch reached down and tapped the chart where she had written the caption.

“Why do you call it that?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Because we’re setting out the streets and the blocks of what will become a city to us,” she said, running her fingers over some of the lines on the chart in illustration. “At least while we’re working here it will feel like it. Our little city.”
Bosch nodded.

“In every murder is the tale of a city,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“Who said that?”

“I don’t know. Somebody did.”

He turned his attention to Corazon who was squatting over the small bones on the surface of the soil, studying them while the lens of the video camera studied her. He was thinking of something to say about it when his rover was keyed and he took it off his belt.

“Bosch here.”

“Edgar. Better come on back over here, Harry. We already have something.”

“Right.”

Edgar was standing in an almost level spot in the brush about forty yards from the acacia trees. A half dozen of the cadets had formed a circle and were looking down at something in the two-foot high brush. The police chopper was circling in a tighter circle above.

Bosch got to the circle and looked down. It was a child’s skull partially submerged in the soil, its hollow eyes staring up at him.

“Nobody touched it,” Edgar said.

Bosch pulled the radio off his belt.

“Dr. Corazon?” he said into it.

It was a long moment before her voice came back.

“Yes, I’m here. What is it?”

“We are going to have to widen the crime scene.”

EXCERPT V
On Saturday morning Bosch and Edgar met in the lobby of the medical examiner’s office and told the receptionist they had an appointment with Dr. William Golliher, the forensic anthropologist on retainer from UCLA.

“He’s waiting for you in suite A,” the receptionist said after making a call to confirm. “You know which way that is?”
Bosch nodded and they were buzzed through the gate. They took an elevator down to the basement level and were immediately greeted by the smell of the autopsy floor when they stepped out. It was a mixture of chemicals and decay that was unique in the world. Edgar immediately took a paper breathing mask out of a wall dispenser and put it on. Bosch didn’t bother.

“You really ought to, Harry,” Edgar said as they walked down the hall. “Do you know that all smells are particulate?”
Bosch looked at him.

“Thanks for that, Jerry.”

Suite A was an autopsy room reserved for Teresa Corazon for the infrequent times she actually left her administrative duties as chief medical examiner and performed an autopsy.  Because the case had initially garnered her hands-on attention she had apparently authorized Golliher to use her suite. Corazon had not returned to the crime scene on Wonderland Avenue after the portable toilet incident.

They pushed through the double doors of the suite and were met by a man in blue jeans and a Hawaiian shirt.
“Please call me Bill,” Golliher said. “I guess it’s been a long two days.”

“Say that again,” Edgar said.

Golliher nodded in a friendly manner. He was about fifty with dark hair and eyes and an easy manner. He gestured toward the autopsy table that was in the center of the room. The bones that had been collected from beneath the acacia trees were now spread across the stainless steel surface.

“Well, let me tell you what’s been going on in here,” Golliher said. “As the team in the field has been collecting the evidence, I’ve been here examining the pieces, doing the radiograph work and generally trying to put the puzzle of all of this together.”

Bosch stepped over to the stainless steel table. The bones were laid out in place so as to form a partial skeleton. The most obvious pieces missing were the bones of the left arm and leg and the lower jaw. It was presumed that long ago these were the pieces that had been taken and scattered distantly by animals that had rooted in the shallow grave.
Each of the bones was marked, the larger pieces with stickers and the smaller ones with string tags. Bosch knew that notations on these markers were codes by which the location of each bone had been charted on the grid Kohl had drawn on the first day of the excavation.

“Bones can tell us much about how a person lived and died,” Golliher said somberly. “In cases of child abuse, the bones do not lie. The bones become our final evidence.”

Bosch looked back at him and realized his eyes were not dark. They actually were blue but they were deeply set and seemed haunted in some way. He was staring past Bosch at the bones on the table. After a moment he broke from this reverie and looked at Bosch.

“Let me start by saying that we are learning quite a bit from the recovered artifacts,” the anthropologist said. “But I have to tell you guys, I’ve consulted on a lot of cases but this one blows me away. I was looking at these bones and taking notes and I looked down and my notebook was smeared. I was crying, man. I was crying and I didn’t even know it at first.”

He looked back at the outstretched bones with a look of tenderness and pity. Bosch knew that the anthropologist saw the person that was once there.

“This one is bad, guys. Real bad.”

“Then give us what you’ve got so we can go out there and do our job,” Bosch said in a voice that sounded like a reverent whisper.

Golliher nodded and reached back to a nearby counter for a spiral notebook.

“Okay,” Golliher said. “Let’s start with the basics. Some of this you may already know but I’m just going to go over all of my findings, if you don’t mind.”

“We don’t mind,” Bosch said.

“Good. Then here it is. What you have here are the remains of a young male Caucasoid. Comparisons to the indices of Maresh growth standards put the age at approximately ten years old. However, as we will soon discuss, this child was the victim of severe and prolonged physical abuse. Histiologically, victims of chronic abuse often suffer from what is called growth disruption. This abuse-related stunting serves to skew age estimation. What you often get is a skeleton that looks younger than it is. So what I am saying is that this boy looks ten but is probably twelve or thirteen.”

Bosch looked over at Edgar. He was standing with his arms folded tightly across his chest, as if bracing for what he knew was ahead. Bosch took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and started writing notes in short hand.

“Time of death,” Golliher said. “This is tough. Radiological testing is far from exact in this regard. We have the coin that was buried with the body and that gives us the early marker of 1975. That helps us. What I am estimating is that this kid has been in the ground anywhere from twenty to twenty-five years. I’m comfortable with that and there is some surgical evidence we can talk about in a few minutes that adds support to that estimation.”

“So we’ve got a ten to thirteen year old kid killed twenty to twenty-five years ago,” Edgar summarized, a note of frustration in his voice.

“I know I am giving you a wide set of parameters, Detective,” Golliher said. “But at the moment it’s the best the science can do for you.”

“Not your fault, Doc.”

Bosch wrote it all down. Despite the wide spread of the estimation, it was still vitally important to set a time frame for the investigation. Golliher’s estimation put the time of death into the late ‘70s to early ‘80s. Bosch momentarily thought of Laurel Canyon in that time frame. It had been a rustic, funky enclave, part bohemian and part upscale with cocaine dealers and users, porno purveyors and burned out rock and roll hedonists on almost every street. Could the murder of a child have been part of that mix?

“Cause of death,” Golliher said. “Tell you what, let’s get to cause of death last. I want to start with the extremities and the torso, give you guys an idea of what this boy endured in his short lifetime.”

His eyes locked on Bosch’s for a moment before returning to the bones. Bosch breathed in deeply, producing a sharp pain from his damaged ribs. He knew his fear from the moment he had looked down at the small bones on the hillside was now going to be realized. He instinctively knew all along that it would come to this. That a story of horror would emerge from the overturned soil and that he would have to one more time find a place in the recesses of his mind to hide it.

He started scribbling on the pad, running the ballpoint deep into the paper, as Golliher continued

EXCERPT VI
Bosch thought of the pain he was in, of how he had been unable to sleep well because of the injury to his ribs. He thought of a young boy living with the kind of pain and abuse Golliher had described.

“I gotta go wash my face,” he suddenly said. “You can continue.”

He walked to the door, shoving his notebook and pen into Edgar’s hands. In the hallway he turned right. He knew the layout of the autopsy floor and knew there were restrooms around the next turn of the corridor.

He entered the restroom and went right to an open stall. He felt nauseous and waited but nothing happened. After a long moment it passed.

Bosch walked to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was red. He bent down and used his hands to cup cold water against his face and eyes. He thought about baptisms and second chances. Of renewal. He raised his face until he was looking at himself again.

I’m going to get this guy.

He almost said it out loud.

Nominated for the 2003 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
Named a Notable Book Of The Year by the New York Times

“Harry Bosch is at the top of his form… His latest adventure is as dark and angst-ridden as any of Bosch’s past outings, but it also crackles with energy — especially in the details of police procedure and internal politics that animate virtually every page.”
— Publishers Weekly *starred review

“…Bosch never stops feeling the bruises he has acquired through multiple encounters with evil. His view of the world darkens with each case, and he feels more and more powerless: “True evil could never be taken out of the world. At best he was wading into the dark waters of the abyss with two leaking buckets in his hands.” Hard-boiled cop fiction at its most gripping.”
— Booklist *starred review

“This riveting thriller finds Harry even more introspective than usual, and while the tight prose of the plot swirls around the mystery of the bones, Harry’s turbulent life and career are changed forever in a stunning conclusion. Another thrilling winner for Connelly’s many fans; highly recommended.”
— Library Journal

“I had a few plans for the day on which I read Michael Connelly’s latest mystery. Nothing much, but enough to have made me put the book down once in a while. Well, no way. Not a chance. Everything else took a back seat to following Harry Bosch, Mr. Connelly’s tough, moody Hollywood detective, through the author’s latest carefully wrought maze. …”City of Bones” is a clean, tight, propulsive thriller set in the moral murk of detective-story Los Angeles. And it is an incendiary page turner…”
— New York Times

“Enough to say this is strong Connelly: well-plotted, lean and spare and more than a little sad… The search for truth leading to unintended consequences is a cautionary theme that has worked since Sophocles, and it works here.”
— Los Angeles Times

“…City Of Bones is up to the high standards of its predecessors. …Connelly’s prose has become leaner over the years, and his understanding of how cops work and think remains unsurpassed. …the best American crime series now in progress.”
— Washington Post

“Harry remains Harry as he retains the same edge that readers enjoyed in his previous book, A Darkness More Than Night… City Of Bones is a taut Harry Bosch police procedural.”
— BookReview.com

“Since his Edgar-winning debut Black Echo in 1992, Connelly…has surpassed himself with each novel. Connelly long ago joined the cadre of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald.”
— Sun-Sentinel

“Harry’s still the same tightlipped outsider, taking each crime as a personal affront as he tries to cleanse his beloved city of the darkness he sees engulfing it.”
— Amazon.com Editorial Review

“Book Of The Week. …his melancholy hero deftly weaves a thin thread of hope through a spartan saga of good and evil, light and darkness.”
— People Magazine

“City of Bones is another stunner from the writer doing the best work in the genre today. The plot is interesting, fast-moving, and just complex enough to keep you guessing. …His work is for the ages.”
— MysteryInkOnline.com

“Someone’s coming.”

Terry McCaleb looked at his wife and then followed her eyes down to the winding road below. He could see the golf cart making its way up the steep and winding road to the house. The driver was obscured by the roof of the cart.

They were sitting on the back deck of the house he and Graciela had rented up on La Mesa Avenue. The view ranged from the narrow winding road below the house to the whole of Avalon and its harbor, and then out across the Santa Monica Bay to the haze of smog that marked overland. The view had been the reason they had chosen this house to make their new home on the island. But at the moment his wife had spoken his gaze had been on the baby in his arms, not the view. He could look no farther than his daughter’s wide blue and trusting eyes.

McCaleb saw the rental number on the side of the golf cart passing below. It wasn’t a local coming. It was somebody who had probably come from overland on the Catalina Express. Still, he wondered about how Graciela knew that the visitor was coming to their house and not any of the others on La Mesa.

He didn’t ask about this — she’d had premonitions before. He just waited and soon after the golf cart disappeared from sight, there was a knock at the front door. Graciela went to answer it and soon came back to the deck with a woman McCaleb had not seen in three years.

Sheriff’s Detective Jaye Winston smiled when she saw the child in his arms. It was genuine, but at the same time it was the distracted smile of someone who wasn’t there to admire a new baby. McCaleb knew the thick green binder she carried in one hand and the video cassette in the other meant Winston was there on business. Death business.

“Terry, howya been?” she asked.

“Couldn’t be better. You remember Graciela?”

“Of course. And who is this?”

“This is CiCi.”

McCaleb never used the baby’s formal name around others. He only liked to call her Cielo when he was alone with her.

“CiCi,” Winston said, and hesitated as if waiting for an explanation of the name. When none came, she said, “How old?”

“Almost four months. She’s big.”

“Wow, yeah, I can see … And the boy … where’s he?”

“Raymond,” Graciela said. “He’s with some friends today. Terry had a charter and so he went with friends to the park to play softball.”

The conversation was halting and strange. Winston either wasn’t really interested or was unused to such banal talk.

“Would you like something to drink?” McCaleb offered as he passed the baby to Graciela.

“No, I’m fine. I had a Coke on the boat.”

As if on cue, or perhaps indignant about being passed from one set of hands to another, the baby started to fuss and Graciela said she would take her inside. She left them then, standing on the porch. McCaleb pointed to the round table and chairs where they ate most nights while the baby slept.

“Let’s sit down.”

He pointed Winston to the chair that would give her the best view of the harbor. She put the green binder, which McCaleb recognized as a murder book, on the table and the video on top of it.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah, she’s amazing. I could watch her all —”

He stopped and smiled when he realized she was talking about the view, not his child. Winston smiled, too.

“She’s beautiful, too, Terry. She really is. You look good, too, so tan and all.”

“I’ve been going out on the boat.”

“And your health is good?”

“Can’t complain about anything other than all the pills they make me take. But I’m three years in now and no problems. I think I’m in the clear, Jaye. I just have to keep taking the damn pills and it should stay that way.”

He smiled and he did appear to be the picture of health. As the sun had turned his skin dark it had worked to the opposite effect on his hair. Close cropped and neat, it was almost blonde now. Working on the boat had also defined the muscles of his arms and shoulders. The only giveaway was hidden under his shirt, the ten-inch scar left by transplantation surgery.

“That’s great,” Winston said. “It looks like you have a wonderful setup here. New family, new home … away from everything.”

She was silent a moment, turning her head as if to take in all of the view and the island and McCaleb’s life at once. McCaleb always thought Jaye Winston was attractive in a tomboyish way. She had loose sandy blonde hair that she kept at shoulder length. She had never worn makeup back when he worked with her. But she had sharp, knowing eyes and an easy and somewhat sad smile, as if she saw the humor and tragedy in everything at once. She wore black jeans and a white t-shirt beneath a black blazer. She looked cool and tough and McCaleb knew from experience that she was. She had a habit of hooking her hair behind her ear frequently as she spoke. He found that endearing for some unknown reason. He had always thought that if he had not connected with Graciela he might have tried to know Jaye Winston better. He also sensed that Winston intuitively knew that.

“Makes me feel guilty about why I came,” she said. “Sort of.”

McCaleb nodded at the binder and the tape.

“You came on business. You could have just called, Jaye. Saved some time probably.”

“No, you didn’t send out any change of address or phone cards. Like maybe you didn’t want people to know where you ended up.”

She hooked her hair behind her left ear and smiled again.

“Not really,” he said. “I just didn’t think people would want to know where I was. So how did you find me?”

“Asked around over at the marina on the mainland.”

“Overland. They call it overland here.”

“Overland then. They told me in the harbor master’s office that you still kept a slip there but you moved the boat over here. I came over and took a water taxi around the harbor until I found it. Your friend was there. He told me how to get up here.”

“Buddy.”

McCaleb looked down into the harbor and picked out The Following Sea. It was about a half-mile or so away. He could see Buddy Lockridge bent over in the stern. After a few moments he could tell that Buddy was washing off the reels with the hose from the freshwater tank.

“So what’s this about, Jaye?” McCaleb said without looking at Winston. “Must be important for you to go through all of that on your day off. I assume you’re off on Sundays.”

“Most of them.”

She pushed the tape aside and opened the binder. Now McCaleb looked over. Although it was upside down to him, he could tell the top page was a standard homicide occurrence report, usually the first page in every murder book he had ever read. It was the starting point. His eyes went to the address box.  Even upside down he could make out that it was a West Hollywood case.

“I’ve got a case here I was hoping you’d take a look at. In your spare time, I mean. I think it might be your sort of thing. I was hoping you’d give me a read, maybe point me someplace I haven’t been yet.”

He had known as soon as he had seen the binder in her hands that this was what she was going to ask him. But now that it had been asked he felt a confusing rush of sensations. He felt a thrill at the possibility of having a part of his old life again. He also felt guilt over the idea of bringing death into a home so full of new life and happiness. He glanced toward the open slider to see if Graciela was looking out at them. She wasn’t.

“My sort of thing?” he said. “If it’s a serial you shouldn’t waste time. Go to the bureau, call Maggie Griffin. She’ll —“

“I did all of that, Terry. I still need you.”

“How old is this thing?”

“Two weeks.”

Her eyes looked up from the binder to his.

“New Year’s Day?”

She nodded.

“First murder of the year,” she said. “For L.A. County, at least. Some people think the true millennium didn’t start until this year.”

“You think this is a millennium nut?”

“Whoever did this was a nut of some order. I think. That’s why I’m here.”

“What did the bureau say? Did you take this to Maggie?”

“You haven’t kept up, Terry. Maggie was sent back to Quantico. Things slowed down in the last few years out here and Behavioral Sciences pulled her back. No outpost in L.A. anymore. So, yes, I talked to her. But over the phone at Quantico. She ran it through the computer and got zilched. As far as a profile goes or anything else, I’m on a waiting list. Do you know that across the country there were thirty-four millennium inspired murders on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? So they have their hands full at the moment and the bigger departments like us, we’re at the end of the line because the bureau figures the smaller departments with less experience and expertise and manpower need their help more.”

She waited a moment while letting McCaleb consider all of this. He understood the Bureau’s philosophy. It was a form of triage.

“I don’t mind waiting a month or so until Maggie or somebody else over there can work something up for me, but my gut on this one tells me time is a consideration, Terry. If it is a serial, a month may be too long to wait. That’s why I thought of coming to you. I am banging my head on the wall on this one and you might be our last best hope of coming up with something to move on now. I still remember the Cemetery Man and the Code Killer. I know what you can do with a murder book and some crime scene tape.”

The last few lines were gratuitous and her only false move so far, McCaleb thought. Otherwise he believed she was sincere in the expression of her belief that the killer she was looking for might strike again.

“It’s been a long time for me, Jaye,” McCaleb began. “Other than that thing with Graciela’s sister, I haven’t been involved in —“

“Come on, Terry, don’t bullshit me, okay? You can sit here with a baby in your lap every day of the week and it still won’t erase what you were and what you did. I know you. We haven’t seen each other or talked in a long time but I know you. And I know that not a day goes by that you don’t think about cases. Not a day.”

She paused and stared at him.

“When they took out your heart, they didn’t take out what makes you tick, know what I mean?”

McCaleb looked away from her and back down at his boat. Buddy was now sitting in the main fighting chair, his feet up on the transom. McCaleb assumed he had a beer in his hand but it was too far to see that.

“If you’re so good at reading people, what do you need me for?”

“I may be good but you’re the best I ever knew. Hell, even if they weren’t backed up till Easter in Quantico, I’d take you over any of those profilers. I mean that. You were —“

“Okay, Jaye, we don’t need a sales pitch, okay? My ego is doing okay without all the —“

“Then what do you need?”

He looked back at her.

“Just some time. I need to think about this.”

“l’m here because my gut says I don’t have much time.”

McCaleb got up and walked to the railing. His gaze was out to the sea. A Catalina Express ferry was coming in. He knew it would be almost empty. The winter months brought few visitors.

“The boat’s coming in,” he said. “It’s the winter schedule, Jaye. You better catch it going back or you’ll be here all night.”

“I’II have dispatch send a chopper for me if I have to. Terry, all I need from you is one day at the most. One night, even. Tonight. You sit down, read the book, look at the tape and then call me in the morning, tell me what you see. Maybe it’s nothing or at least nothing that’s new. But maybe you’ll see something we’ve missed or you’ll get an idea we haven’t come up with yet. That’s all I’m asking. I don’t think it’s a lot.”

McCaleb looked away from the incoming boat and turned so his back leaned against the rail.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot to you because you’re in the life. I’m not. I’m out of it, Jaye. Even going back into it for a day is going to change things. I moved out here to start over and to forget all the stuff I was good at. To get good at being something else. At being a father and a husband, for starters.”

Winston got up and walked to the railing. She stood next to him but looked out at the view while he remained facing his home. She spoke in a low voice. If Graciela was listening from somewhere inside, she could not hear this.

“Remember with Graciela’s sister what you told me? You told me you got a second shot at life and that there had to be a reason for it. Now you’ve built this life with her sister and her son and now even your own child. That’s wonderful, Terry, I really think so. But that can’t be the reason you were looking for. You might think it is but it’s not. Deep down you know it. You were good at catching these people. Next to that, what is catching fish?”

McCaleb nodded slightly and was uncomfortable with himself for doing it so readily.

“Leave the stuff,” he said. “I’II call you when I can.”

On the way to the door Winston looked about for Graciela but didn’t see her.

“She’s probably in with the baby,” McCaleb said.

“Well, tell her I said goodbye.“

“I will.”

There was an awkward silence the rest of the way to the door. Finally, as McCaleb opened it, Winston spoke.

“So what’s it like, Terry? Being a father.”

“It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times.”

His stock answer. He then thought a moment and then added something he had thought about but never said, not even to Graciela.

“It’s like having a gun to your head all the time.”

Winston looked confused and maybe even a little concerned.

“How so?”

“Because I know if anything ever happens to her, anything, then my life is over.”

She nodded.

“I think I can understand that.”

She went through the door.  She looked rather silly as she left.  A seasoned homicide detective riding away in a golf cart.

Named one of The Best Books Of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times

“…hard-edged, smartly executed crime drama, pitting two of his most popular protagonists against each other. …cleverly conceived, superbly plotted and morally complex.”
— Publishers Weekly *starred review

“Connelly pits his latest series hero, FBI agent Terry McCaleb (Blood Work, 1998), against his veteran series cop, LAPD detective Harry Bosch (Angels Flight, 1999, etc.), in this extraordinary excursion into good, evil, and the labyrinth of human motives. …Bosch fan or McCaleb fan, you can’t lose with this chilling tour-de-force.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“..this is Connelly at his best. Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal

“In a set of nine blockbuster novels, whose integrity and imagination have redefined the parameters of crime fiction, Michael Connelly has created a range of memorable cops and robbers, any one who could sustain a series….This book is ingenious, original and—with every beat of its procedural heart—authentic.”
— Literary Review (UK)

“…Connelly allows Bosch and McCaleb to regard each other critically in ways that sharpen the reader’s perception of them…”
— The New Yorker

“An intricate plot, rich characterization and deft dialogue play out our medieval moralities in modern dress…”
— USA Today

“…this great thriller will keep you busy…Connelly is the best of a very large group…of thriller writers…”
— Denver Rocky Mountain News

“No one is better at exploring the conflict between good and evil…he tells their story skillfully…”
— San Diego Union Tribune

“A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT is an intelligent, compassionate, unfailingly entertaining thriller.”
— BarnesandNoble.com Editorial Review