The Last Coyote

by Michael Connelly

  “I guess. But what are you asking me about him for anyway? I’m a cop reporter. You’re a cop. What’s this have to do with Gordon Mittel?”

  She pointed to the photocopy. Bosch became aware that he might have asked too many questions.

  “I’m just trying to catch up,” he said. “Like you said, I don’t read the papers.”

  “That’s paper, not papers,” she said smiling. “I better not catch you reading or talking to the Daily Snews.”

  “Hell hath no fury like a reporter scorned, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  He felt assured that he had deflected her suspicions. He held up the photocopy.

  “There was no follow-up to this? They never caught anybody?”

  “I guess not or there would be a story.”

  “Can I keep this?”

  “Sure.”

  “You feel like taking another walk back to the morgue?”

  “For what?”

  “Stories about Conklin.”

  “There will be hundreds, Bosch. You said he was DA for two terms.”

  “I only want stories from before he was elected. And if you have the time, throw in stories on Mittel, too.”

  “You know, you’re asking a lot. I could get in trouble if they knew I was doing clip searches for a cop.”

  She put on a fake pout and he ignored that, too. He knew what she was driving at.

  “You want to tell me what this is about, Bosch?”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “I didn’t think so. Well, look, I’ve got two interviews to do this afternoon. I’m going to be gone. What I can do is get an intern to get the clips together and leave it all for you with the guard in the globe lobby. It will be in an envelope so nobody will know what it is. Would that be okay?”

  He nodded. He’d been to Times Square before on a handful of occasions, usually meetings with reporters. It was a block-sized building with two lobbies. The centerpiece of the lobby at the First and Spring entrance was a huge globe that never stopped rotating, just as the news never stopped happening.

  “You’ll just leave it under my name? Won’t that get you in trouble? You know, like you said, being too friendly with a cop. That’s got to be against the rules over there.”

  She smiled at his sarcasm.

  “Don’t worry. If an editor or somebody asks, I’ll just say it’s an investment in the future. You better remember that, Bosch. Friendship is a two-way street.”

  “Don’t worry. I never forget that.”

  He leaned forward across the table so he was up close to her face.

  “I want you to remember something, too. One of the reasons I’m not telling you why I need this stuff is because I’m not sure what it means. If anything. But don’t you get too curious. Don’t you go making any calls. You do that, and you might mess things up. I might get hurt. You might get hurt. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  The man with the waxed mustache appeared at the side of the table with their plates.

  Chapter Twelve

  I NOTICED YOU ARRIVED early today. Am I to take that as a sign that you want to be here?”

  “Not especially. I was downtown having lunch with a friend, so I just came over.”

  “Well, it’s good to hear you were out with a friend. I think that is good.”

  Carmen Hinojos was behind her desk. The notebook was out and open but she sat with her hands clasped together in front of her. It was as if she was going out of her way to make no move that could be construed as threatening to the dialogue.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  Bosch held it up and looked at the bandages on his fingers.

  “I hit it with a hammer. I was working on my house.”

  “That’s too bad. I hope it’s okay.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Why are you so dressed up? I hope you don’t feel you have to do that for these sessions.”

  “No. I…I just like following my routine. Even if I’m not going to work, I got dressed like I was.”

  “I understand.”

  After she made an offer of coffee or water and Bosch declined, she got the session going.

  “Tell me, what would you like to talk about today?”

  “I don’t care. You’re the boss.”

  “I’d rather that you not look at the relationship in that way. I’m not your boss, Detective Bosch. I’m just a facilitator, someone to help you talk about whatever you want, whatever you want to get off your chest.”

  Bosch was silent. He couldn’t think of anything to volunteer. Carmen Hinojos drummed her pencil on her yellow tablet for a few moments before taking up the slack.

  “Nothing at all, huh?”

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “Then why don’t we talk about yesterday. When I called you, to remind you of our session today, you obviously seemed upset about something. Was that when you hit your hand?”

  “No, that wasn’t it.”

  He stopped but she said nothing and he decided to give in a little bit. He had to admit to himself that there was something about her that he liked. She was not threatening and he believed she was telling the truth when she said she was there only to help him.

  “What happened when you called was that I had found out earlier that my partner, you know, my partner before all of this, had been paired up with a new man. I’ve been replaced already.”

  “And how’d that make you feel?”

  “You heard how I was. I was mad about it. I think anybody would be. Then I called my partner up later and he treated me like yesterday’s news. I taught that guy a lot and…”

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know. It hurt, I guess.”

  “I see.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. You’d have to be me to see it the way I did.”

  “I guess that’s true. But I can sympathize. Let’s leave it at that. Let me ask you this. Shouldn’t you have expected your partner to be paired up again? After all, isn’t it a department rule that detectives work in pairs? You are on leave for a so-far-unknown period of time. Wasn’t it a given that he’d get a new partner, whether permanent or otherwise?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Isn’t it safer to work in pairs?”

  “I suppose.”

  “What is your own experience? Did you feel safer the times you were with a partner on the job as opposed to those times when you were alone?”

  “Yes, I felt safer.”

  “So what happened was inevitable and inarguable, yet still it made you angry.”

  “It wasn’t that it happened that brought it on. I don’t know, it was the way he told me and then the way he acted when I called. I really felt left out. I asked him for a favor and he…I don’t know.”

  “He what?”

  “He hesitated. Partners don’t do that. Not with each other. They’re supposed be there for each other. It’s supposedly a lot like a marriage, but I’ve never been married.”

  She paused to write some notes, which made Bosch wonder what had just been said that was so important.

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

  Her statement immediately made him angry but he knew that if he showed it then he would be confirming her statement. He thought maybe it was a trick designed to elicit such a response. He tried to calm himself.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” he said in a controlled voice.

  “I suppose, to a degree. When I reviewed your records I saw that you were in the Army during the Vietnam War. Did you see any combat?”

  “Did I see any combat? Yes, I saw combat. I was in the middle of combat, too. I was even under it. Why do people always ask, did you see combat, like it was a goddamn movie they took you to over there?”

  She was quiet for a long time, holding the pen but doing no writing. It seemed like she was simply waiting for the sails of his anger t
o lose the wind. He waved his hand in a gesture he hoped told her that he was sorry, that it was behind him, that they should move on.

  “Sorry,” he said, just to make sure.

  She still didn’t say anything and her stare was beginning to weigh on him. He looked away from her to the bookshelves along one wall of the office. They were filled with heavy, leather-bound psychiatry texts.

  “I am sorry to intrude on such an emotionally sensitive area,” she finally said. “The reason—”

  “But that’s what this is all about, right? What you have is a license to intrude and I can’t do anything about it.”

  “So, then, accept it,” she said sternly. “We’ve been over this before. To help you we have to talk about you. Accept it and maybe we can move on. Now, as I was saying, the reason I mentioned the war was that I wanted to ask you if you are familiar with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Have you ever heard of it?”

  He looked back at her. He knew what was coming.

  “Yes, of course. I’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, Detective, in the past it’s primarily been associated with servicemen returning from the war but it’s not just a war or post-war problem. It can happen in any kind of stressful environment. Any kind. And I have to say I think that you are a walking, talking example of this disorder’s symptoms.”

  “Jesus…,” he said, shaking his head. He turned in his seat so he wasn’t looking at her or her bookcase. He stared at the sky through the window. It was cloudless. “You people sit up here in these offices and have no idea…”

  He didn’t finish. He just shook his head. He reached to his neck and loosened his tie. It was like he couldn’t get enough air into his chest.

  “Hear me out, Detective, okay? Just look at the facts here. Can you think of anything more stressful to be in this city during the last few years than a police officer? Between Rodney King and the scrutiny and villainy that brought, the riots, fires, floods and earthquakes, each officer on this force has had to write the book on stress management and, of course, mismanagement.”

  “You left out killer bees.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. It was on the news.”

  “With all that’s happened and gone on in this city, with every one of these calamities, who is in the middle every time? The police officers. The ones who have to respond. The ones who can’t stay at home, duck down and wait until it’s over. So let’s go from that generalization to the individual. You, Detective. You have been a front-line contender with all of these crises. At the same time you’ve had your real job to contend with. Homicide. It’s one of the highest-stress jobs in the department. Tell me, how many murders have you investigated in the last three years?”

  “Look, I’m not looking for an excuse. I told you before that I did what I did because I wanted to. It had nothing to do with riots or—”

  “How many dead bodies have you looked at? Just answer my question, please. How many dead bodies? How many widows did you break the news to? How many mothers did you tell about their dead children?”

  He brought his hands up and rubbed his face. All he knew was that he wanted to hide from her.

  “A lot,” he finally whispered.

  “More than a lot…”

  He exhaled loudly.

  “Thank you for answering. I’m not trying to corner you. The point of my questions and the treatise on the social, cultural and even geologic fragmentation of this city is that what I’m saying here is that you’ve been through more than most, okay? And this doesn’t even include the baggage you might still have from Vietnam or the loss of the romantic relationship. But whatever the reasons, the symptoms of stress are showing. They are there, plain as day. Your intolerance, your inability to sublimate frustrations, most of all your assault on your commanding officer.”

  She paused but Bosch didn’t say anything. He had a feeling she wasn’t finished. She wasn’t.

  “There are other signs as well,” she continued. “Your refusal to leave your damaged home can be perceived as a form of denial of what is happening around you. There are physical symptoms. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? I don’t think I need to ask to know that you’re drinking too much. And your hand. You didn’t hurt yourself with a hammer. You fell asleep with a cigarette in your hand. That is a burn and I’d bet my state license on it.”

  She opened a drawer and took out two plastic cups and a bottle of water. She filled the cups and pushed one across the desk to him. A peace offering. He watched her silently. He felt exhausted, unrepairable. He also couldn’t help but be amazed by her at the same time she was so expertly cutting him open. After she took a sip of water she continued.

  “These things are all indicative of a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome. However, we have one problem with that. The word post when used in such a diagnosis indicates the time of stress has passed. That’s not the case here. Not in L.A. Not with your job. Harry, you are in a nonstop pressure cooker. You owe yourself some breathing room. That’s what this leave is all about. Breathing room. Time to recoup and recover. So don’t fight it. Grab it. That’s the best advice I can give you. Grab it and use it. To save yourself.”

  Bosch breathed out heavily and held up his bandaged hand.

  “You can keep your state license.”

  “Thank you.”

  They rested a moment until she continued in a voice meant to soothe him.

  “You also have to know you are not alone. This is nothing to be embarrassed about. There has been a sharp increase in incidents of officer stress in the last three years. Behavioral Sciences Services just made a request to the City Council for five more psychologists. Our caseload went from eighteen hundred counseling sessions in 1990 to more than double that last year. We’ve even got a name for what’s going on here. The blue angst. And you have it, Harry.”

  Bosch smiled and shook his head, still clinging to what denial he had left.

  “The blue angst. Sounds like the name of a Wambaugh novel, doesn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “So what you’re saying is that I’m not going to get my job back.”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. All I am saying is that we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

  “I feel like I’ve been broken down by the world champ. You mind if I call you sometime when I’m trying to get a confession out of a hump who won’t talk to me?”

  “Believe me, just saying that is a start.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to want to come here. That’s all. Don’t look at it as a punishment. I want you to work with me, not against me. When we talk I want you to talk about everything and nothing. Anything that comes to mind. Hold back nothing. And one other thing. I’m not telling you to completely cut it out, but you have to cut back on the drinking. You have to have a clear mind. As you obviously know, the effects of alcohol stay with an individual long after the night they were consumed.”

  “I’ll try. All of it. I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I ask. And since you suddenly seem so willing, I have another thought. I have a cancelation of a session tomorrow at three. Can you make it?”

  Bosch hesitated, didn’t say anything.

  “We seem to finally be working well and I think it will help. The sooner we get through with our work, the sooner you should be able to get back to your work. What do you say?”

  “Three?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll be here.”

  “Good. Let’s get back to our dialogue. Why don’t you start? Whatever you want to talk about.”

  He leaned forward and reached for the cup of water. He looked at her as he drank from it, then put the cup back on the desk.

  “Just say anything?”

  “Anything. Whatever is happening in your life or mind that you want to talk about.”

  He thought for a long moment.

  “I saw a coyote last night.
Near my house. I…I was drunk, I guess, but I know I saw him.”

  “Why was that significant to you?”

  He tried to compose the proper answer.

  “I’m not sure…I guess there’s not too many left in the hills in the city—least near where I live. So whenever I see one, I get this feeling that it might be the last one left out there. You know? The last coyote. And I guess that would bother me if it ever turned out to be true, if I never saw one again.”