The Black Echo

Bremmer walked around and got in the car. Bosch took the driveway to the west section of the cemetery. He parked under the shade of a sprawling oak tree, from which they could see the Vietnam memorial. There were several people milling about, mostly men, mostly alone. They all looked at the black stone quietly. A couple of the men wore old fatigue jackets, the sleeves cut off.

“You seen the papers or TV yet on this thing?” Bremmer asked.

“Not yet. But I heard what was put out.”

“And?”

“Bullshit. Most of it, at least.”

“Can you tell me?”

“Not that it gets back to me.”

Bremmer nodded. They had known each other a long time. Bosch did not have to ask for promises and Bremmer did not have to go over the differences between off-the-record statements, background statements and statements not for attribution. They had a trust built on prior credibility, going both ways.

“Three things you should check,” Bosch said. “Nobody’s asked about Lewis and Clarke. They weren’t part of my surveillance. They were working for Irving over at IAD. So once you get that established, put the heat on them to explain what they were doing.”

“What were they doing?”

“That you’ll have to get somewhere else. I know you have other sources in the department.”

Bremmer was writing in a long, thin spiral notebook, the kind that always gave reporters away. He was nodding as he wrote.

“Second, find out about Rourke’s funeral. It will probably be out of state somewhere. Someplace far enough away that the media back here won’t bother to send anybody. But send somebody anyway. Somebody with a camera. He’ll probably be the only one there. Just like today’s planting. That should tell you something.”

Bremmer looked up from his notebook. “You mean no hero’s funeral? You’re saying Rourke was part of this thing, or he just fucked it up? Christ, the bureau-and we, the media-are making the guy out to be John Wayne reincarnated.”

“Yeah, well, you gave him life after death. You can take it away, I guess.”

Bosch just looked at him a moment, contemplating how much he should tell, what was safe for him to tell. For just a moment he felt so outraged he wanted to tell Bremmer everything he knew, and the hell with what would happen and what Irving had said. But he didn’t. Control came back.

“What’s the third thing?” Bremmer asked.

“Get the military records of Meadows, Rourke, Franklin and Delgado. That will tie it up for you. They were in Vietnam, same time, same unit. That’s where this whole thing starts. When you get that far, call me and I’ll try to fill in what you don’t have.”

Then all at once Bosch grew tired of the charade being orchestrated by his department and the FBI. The thought of the boy, Sharkey, kept coming to mind. Flat on his back, his head cocked at that odd, sickening angle. The blood. They were going to mop that one up like it didn’t matter.

“There’s a fourth thing,” he said. “There was a kid.”

When the story about Sharkey was finished, Bosch started the car and drove Bremmer back down the driveway to his own car. The TV reporters had cleared out of the cemetery and a man in a small front loader was pushing dirt into Meadows’s grave. Another man leaned on a shovel nearby and watched.

“I’ll probably need a job after your story comes out,” Bosch said while watching the gravediggers.

“You won’t be in it as an attribution. Plus, when I get the military records, they’ll speak for themselves. I’ll be able to scam the department’s public information officers into confirming some of this other stuff, make it look like it came from them. And then near the bottom of the story, I’ll say, ‘Detective Harry Bosch declined comment.’ How’s that?”

“I’ll probably need a job after your story comes out.”

Bremmer just looked at the detective for a long moment.

“Are you going over to the grave?”

“I might. After you leave me alone.”

“I’m leaving.” He opened the car door and got out, then leaned back in. “Thanks, Harry. This is going to be a good one. Heads are going to bounce.”

Bosch looked at the reporter and sadly shook his head. “No they aren’t,” he said.

Bremmer stared uneasily and Bosch dismissed him with his hand. The reporter closed the door and went to his own car. Bosch had no misconceived notion about Bremmer. The reporter was not guided by any genuine sense of outrage or by his role as a watchdog for the public. All he wanted was a story no other reporter had. Bremmer was thinking of that, and maybe the book that would come after, and the TV movie, and the money and ego-feeding fame. That was what motivated him, not the outrage that had made Bosch tell him the story. Bosch knew this and accepted it. It was the way things worked.

“Heads never bounce,” he said to himself.