Michael Connelly

The Last Coyote Lost Chapter: 1961

Published here for the first time is a chapter from The Last Coyote that never made it into the final published book. It is a glimpse into Harry Bosch’s past. It was originally written as the prologue to the book. It takes place at the youth hall where an 11-year-old Harry was placed after he was removed from his mother’s custody because she was deemed an unfit mother.

Michael was asked why he, initially at least, wanted to start the book with this scene at the youth hall? Here is his answer:

“It doesn’t specifically say it, but this scene was the last time he ever saw his mother. Obviously, that would be a significant moment in his life. So initially I just wanted to create that scene and to show two things; that his mother was working hard to get him back and that despite the sad situation he and she were in, he loved her no matter what. I thought that showing this would help the reader understand why her unsolved murder would haunt Harry until he finally blew the dust off it and investigated it. However, pieces of this scene were mentioned or thought about by Harry in later sections of the book and it was thought that removing the prologue got the reader into the present day story more quickly and smoothly while the sentiment was expressed later on.”

1961

All the picnic tables were already taken by mothers and sons when they got outside so the boy led his visitor to the grass along the fence. The fence served as both the right field limit of the softball field and the barrier to the outside world. Few of the boys ever hit to the fence. And it seemed as though fewer ever got beyond it to the outside world.

They didn’t speak until they got there and then both stood looking out through the fence. The San Gabriel Mountains were distant in the smog. It smelled like rain to the boy but it had been weeks since there had been any and he had had false premonitions of rain before. The Public Social Services lady who had followed them stood about twenty feet away. Watching everybody, but not watching anybody.

The visitor broke the silence.

“Is it any better for you now?”

“It’s okay” the boy replied. “Don’t worry.”

“I have to worry about you, you’re my baby.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“I know. You know what I mean.”

They didn’t speak for a while after that but that was okay. He just liked being with her and there was an easy comfort whether they spoke or not. She never missed a visit. He knew that was so she could show the Court, but he thought that she’d come every time even if it only mattered to them and the Court had nothing to do with it.

The Court was something he didn’t really understand yet. He’d actually never been there, but he had heard awful stories in the Hall from some of the other boys. What he found most baffling was that he didn’t think he had done anything wrong. Why had the Court put him here? Why couldn’t he leave?

He turned and leaned his back against the fence. A couple of the kids were trying to get a game going on the diamond. He knew they wouldn’t ask him. The PSS lady saw the game starting and walked to the side of the field, a safe enough distance from home plate so that she wouldn’t get hit with anything. The boy guessed that she knew they would intentionally try to hit one at her or maybe send an errant throw her way during the warm up between innings.

The woman with the boy also saw the game starting.

“You know, next season the Dodgers will be in the new stadium in downtown. Chavez Ravine. Won’t that be fun? We’ll go see Koufax.  Opening day. I promise. Would you like that?”

He nodded and tried to smile.

“Did you read the books?”

“One of them. I’m not finished with the other one yet.”

“I’ll have to take them back when you’re done. They’re from the library.”

“I know.”

That was why he had hidden them between his pillow and the slip case. He protected the books like they were gold. He thought that if they were stolen and she got blamed for not taking them back to the library, the Court would find out. This was a major fear he had, but he never wanted to tell her not to bring the books. He knew it meant a lot to her and so he read them. And he liked them. Of the two brothers, he thought he liked Joe Hardy the best. But he usually guessed the endings to the mysteries before either of them.

He noticed she was wearing the belt he had given her for her birthday. He knew she liked it because she wore it every time. He’d had help picking it out. And paying for it. That reminded him.

“How is Aunt Meredith?”

“She’s great. She was going to come .. .”

She didn’t finish but that was all right. He could guess the rest.  Meredith had a job.

“I talked to the attorney,” she said. “He said the appeal hasn’t been put on the court’s calendar yet but we’re almost there, baby. When it gets — I’m sorry, I’ll try to stop calling you that. Anyway, when it gets close to being on calendar I’m going to get a job at the coffee shop on Ivar. I already talked to Mr. Sinkowski about it. Me having a regular job will help. The attorney said that if I — Hey, what happened to your new Keds?”

The boy shrank back against the fence and wished the grass was tall enough so that he could hide his feet. He looked down at them as if they were somebody else’s, not his. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice. That was why he had wanted to get one of the picnic tables. She wouldn’t have noticed the missing Keds then.

“Nothing happened to them,” he tried. “I’m just wearing these today.”

“There’s holes in those. Don’t the new ones fit right?”

“They fit fine. I just …”

He looked away, toward the mountains. He hated lying to her. But he hated to hurt her or make her feel bad. He suddenly felt like crying but knew it would then make her cry. She stepped closer and turned his face with her hands. She leaned down a few inches to put her forehead against his. She always did this when she wanted him to tell her something that hurt to tell. She spoke very low and sweetly the way mothers do.

“What happened to your shoes, darling?”

He hesitated only long enough to swallow.

“One of the older kids in the dorm took them.”

“How old?”

“I think he’s thirteen.”

“Thirteen? Why would he take them? They wouldn’t fit him.”

He didn’t answer.

“Hieronymus, tell me.”

Her use of his formal name was always the trick that destroyed all his resistance. She was the only one who ever called him that and so it had taken on a special meaning when she used it.

“He took them because he could.”

She straightened up and the boy could see her anger. It was a mother’s protective anger. She looked around for the PSS lady.

“Come’on, we’re going to talk to Mrs. Matthews and get your shoes back.”

She grabbed his hand and started toward the PSS lady. He pulled back, stopping her.

“No. That would only make it worse.”

“Why?”

“Because. Look, I don’t need the shoes. I can’t go anywhere anyway. It doesn’t matter what shoes I have.”

He realized that with those words he had done what he most of all wanted not to do. He had brought the pain they both shared out into the open. He could see it work its way into her eyes. And he knew that before long she would start to cry.

All the mothers cried when they came here on visiting day. And so did the sons. And none of the boys ever made fun of each other afterward. Even the older ones. Now if a boy cried when hurt on the ballfield or in the dorm when the bigger boys took his shoes away, then that was fair cause for childhood taunting and his demotion to crybaby status. But the unspoken rule was that a boy could cry with his mother on visiting day and not have to pay a price in boyhood pride. That was the way it was.

She pulled him close and hugged him, his head against her cheek. He raised his arms and put them around her. After a while he could feel her tears in his short hair. Then she whispered in his ear.

“I’m going to get you out of here.  I promise, baby.  I don’t care what I have to do, but I’m going to get you back with me.”

“I’m not worried,” he said in a strangled voice.  It was all he could manage to get out.

“Recalls no one so much as Raymond Chandler…ambitious, skillful, moving, intricate, and clever.”
— Los Angeles Times

“Raised the hard-boiled detective novel to a new level…add[ing] substance and depth to modern crime fiction.”
— Boston Globe 

“He not only unravels Bosch’s psyche with a fascinating precision but also produces a classic whodunnit.  “The Last Coyote” is good to the last line.”
— The Orlando Sentinel

“Edgar-winner Connelly smoothly mixes Harry’s detecting forays with his therapy sessions to dramatize how, sometimes, the biggest mystery is the self.”
— Publisher’s Weekly

Bosch cleared all the old mail and carpentry books off the dining room table and placed the binder and his own notebook on top of it.  He went to the stereo and loaded a compact disc, “Clifford Brown with Strings.”  He went to the kitchen and got an ashtray, then he sat down in front of the blue murder book and looked at it for a long time without moving.  The last time he’d had the file, he had barely looked at it as he skimmed through its many pages.  He hadn’t been ready then and had returned it to the archives.

This time, he wanted to be sure he was ready before he opened it, so he sat there for a long time just studying the cracked plastic cover as if it held some clue to his preparedness.  A memory crowded into his mind.  A boy of eleven in a swimming pool clinging to the steel ladder at the side, out of breath and crying, the tears disguised by the water that dripped out of his wet hair.  The boy felt scared.  Alone.  He felt as if the pool were an ocean that he must cross.
Brownie was working through  “Willow Weep for Me,” his trumpet as gentle as a portrait painter’s brush.  Bosch reached for the rubber band he had put around the binder five years earlier and it broke at his touch.  He hesitated only another moment before opening the binder and blowing off the dust.

The binder contained the case file on the October 28, 1961, homicide of Marjorie Phillips Lowe.  His mother.
The pages of the binder were brownish yellow and stiff with age.  As he looked at them and read them, Bosch was initially surprised at how little things had changed in nearly thirty-five years.  Many of the investigative forms in the binder were still currently in use.  The Preliminary Report and the Investigating Officer’s Chronological Record were the same as those presently used, save for word changes made to accommodate court rulings and political correctness.  Description boxes marked NEGRO had sometime along the line been changed to BLACK and then AFRICAN-AMERICAN.  The list of motivations on the Preliminary Case Screening chart did not include DOMESTIC VIOLENCE or HATRED/PREJUDICE classifications as they did now.  Interview summary sheets did not include boxes to be checked after Miranda warnings had been given.

But aside from those kinds of changes, the reports were the same and Bosch decided that homicide investigation was largely the same now as back then.  Of course, there had been incredible technological advances in the past thirty-five years but he believed there were some things that were always the same and always would remain the same.  The legwork, the art of interviewing and listening, knowing when to trust an instinct or a hunch.  Those were things that didn’t change, that couldn’t.

The case had been assigned to two investigators on the Hollywood homicide table.  Claude Eno and Jake McKittrick.  The reports they filed were in chronological order in the binder.  On their preliminary reports the victim was referred to by name, indicating she had immediately been identified.  A narrative on these pages said the victim was found in an alley behind the north side of Hollywood Boulevard between Vista and Gower.  Her skirt and undergarments had been ripped open by her attacker.  It was presumed that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.  Her body had been dropped into an open trash bin located next to the rear door of a Hollywood souvenir store called Startime Gifts & Gags.  The body was discovered at 7:35 A.M. by a foot patrol officer who walked a beat on the Boulevard and usually checked the back alleys at the beginning of each shift.  The victim’s purse was not found with her but she was quickly identified because she was known to the beat officer.  On the continuation sheet it was made clear why she was known to him.

Victim had a previous history of loitering arrests in the Hollywood. (See AR 55-002, 55-913, 56-111, 59-056, 60-815, and 60-1121) Vice Detective Gilchrist and Stano described victim as a prostitute who periodically worked in the Hollywood area and had been repeatedly warned off.  Victim lived at El Rio Efficiency Apts., located two blocks northerly of crime scene.  It was believed that the victim had been currently involved in call girl prostitution activities.  R/O 1906 was able to make identification of the victim because of familiarity of having seen victim in the area in previous years.

Bosch looked at the reporting officer’s serial number.  He knew that 1906 belonged to a patrolman then who was now one of the most powerful men in the department.  Assistant Chief Irvin S. Irving.  Once Irving had confided to Bosch that he had known Marjorie Lowe and had been the one who found her.

Bosch lit a cigarette and read on.  The reports were sloppily written, perfunctory, and filled with careless misspellings.  In reading them, it was clear to Bosch that Eno and McKittrick did not invest much time in the case.  A prostitute was dead.  It was a risk that came with her job.  They had other fish to fry.

He noticed on the Death Investigation Report a box for listing the next of kin.  It said:

Hieronymus Bosch (Harry), son, age 11, McClaren Youth Hall.  Notification made 10/28-1500 hrs.  Custody of Department of Public Social Services since 7/60 — UM.  (See victim’s arrest reports 60-815 and 60-1121) Father unknown.  Son remains in custody pending foster placement.

Looking at the report, Bosch could easily decipher all of the abbreviations and translate what was written.  UM stood for unfit mother.  The irony was not lost on him even after so many years.  The boy had been taken from a presumably unfit mother and placed in an equally unfit system of child protection.  What he remembered most was the noise of the place.  Always loud.  Like a prison.

Bosch remembered McKittrick had been the one who came to tell him.  It was during the swimming period.  The indoor pool was frothing with waves as a hundred boys swam and splashed and yelled.  After being pulled from the water, Harry wore a white towel that had been washed and bleached so many times that it felt like cardboard over his shoulders.  McKittrick told him the news and he returned to the pool, his screams silenced beneath the waves.

Print these questions and use them to lead a discussion about The Scarecrow. SPOILER WARNING! This guide does address the entire book. Do not read it if you have not read the book.

1. Jack McEvoy had been flying high for a while, after The Poet case. He wrote a bestselling book about that story, was featured on TV shows, and was hired at a premier newspaper. However, at the start of The Scarecrow, 12 years after The Poet, he is divorced and seemed to be at the end of his career as a journalist.  Did you like Jack as a protagonist? Could you relate to him or to his career issues?

2. The layoffs at the Los Angeles Times in this novel are a fictional example of what is really happening in the newspaper industry today. Why are so many newspapers shutting down or going bankrupt? What is the future of the news industry? And what will our communities miss if local daily newspapers are gone?

3. Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling reunited in The Scarecrow and appeared to be in a good relationship at the end. Michael Connelly has also written Rachel in an on-and-off again relationship with LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Who do you think is a better fit for Rachel, Jack or Harry? Or neither?

4. Rachel seemed lost when she was forced out of the FBI. Can you imagine Rachel in another line of work? Do you think she can ever really have job security with the FBI or will she always be one mistake away from being fired?

5. Wesley Carver, the Scarecrow, was obviously a very smart man who was very dangerous. Do you think, if his childhood had been different, he would have leaded a healthier, saner life? Or do you think some people are just simply born bad?

6. Carver seemed to have found a home on the Internet, indulging in his twisted sexual fantasies, finding others who shared his tendencies, laying traps, and finding victims. He was able to get information about his victims very easily. Think about Angela Cook and how much information he gathered about her just by visiting a few web pages. Is this book a cautionary tale about our use of the Internet?

7. Did you catch any of the references to the The Wizard of Oz throughout the book?

The Scarecrow audiobook by Hachette Audio is read by narrator Peter Giles. It is available in CD and in downloadable formats.

Listen to an excerpt:

Michael Connelly has always tried to give his readers bonus material with each new novel. This time we have a short film called “Conflict of Interest,” which features the exploits of FBI Agent Rachel Walling leading up to the point she enters the story of The Scarecrow. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here. Starring Julie St. Claire, Chris Bruno, and James Remar (Sex and the City, Dexter.) Written by Michael Connelly, the film has been made available in 3 parts. Watch all 3 below.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3