The Narrows

Darkness waits. All things come to the dark.

He knew evil could never be vanquished. It just moved from one place to another and waited.

You can become unhinged and cut loose from the world. You can believe you are a permanent outsider. But the innocence of a child will bring you back and give you the shield of joy with which to protect yourself. I have learned this late in life but not too late. It’s never too late.

The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies. "Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "why are these places always named after women -- as if women actually own them?" "You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys." Rachel smiled. "You're right. I guess it's a shrewd move. Name a place of female degradation and slavery after a female and it doesn't sound so bad, does it? It's packaging.

We were parked in the lot of a strip shopping center on Tustin Boulevard in the city of Orange. Book Carnival was a small business between a rock shop and what looked like a vacant slot. Three doors down was a gun store.

I was simply in love with my daughter and how she viewed her world. The literal way in which she took it all in and took it on. I knew it wouldn’t last long and so I treasured every moment I saw and heard of it.

It is an amazing thing to be able to hold everything that is important to you in one arm.

Well, if this thing finally hits the radar, you can expect to see him. He wrote a bestselling book on the first go-round. I guarantee he’ll be back for the sequel.” Rachel thought about the book she had been reading on the plane and that was now in her bag. She wasn’t sure whether it was the subject or the author that had drawn her

Living in L.A. sometimes felt like you were riding shotgun with the devil to the apocalypse.

EVEN THOUGH I KNEW it was going to be what she would ask me, Graciela McCaleb’s request gave me pause. Terry McCaleb had died on his boat a month earlier. I had read about it in the Las Vegas Sun. It had made the papers because of the movie. FBI agent gets heart transplant and then tracks down his donor’s killer. It was a story that had Hollywood written all over it and Clint Eastwood played the part, even though he had a couple decades on Terry. The film was a modest success at best, but it still gave Terry the kind of notoriety that guaranteed an obituary notice in papers across the country. I had just gotten back to my apartment near the strip one morning and picked up the Sun. Terry’s death was a short story in the back of the A section.

Vegas papers and what I had then heard when I attended McCaleb’s funeral. McCaleb and Lockridge had been on a four-day, three-night charter, taking a party of one into waters off Baja California to fish for marlin. While returning to Avalon Harbor on

their house? He probably has them in a warehouse somewhere.” Rachel watched Bosch adjust

But sometimes the risks you face dictate the other risks you must take.

But the innocence of a child will bring you back and give you the shield of joy with which to protect yourself.

Serial killers operate this way in most cases, with violent psychosexual urges building and then subsiding after a kill.

The decreasing interval was common in case history, a symptom of the killer’s diminishing control of his urges at the same time his belief in his invincibility grows.

immediately step off so the big man could

think maybe I only know one thing in this world. One thing for sure. And that is that the truth does not set you free. Not like I have heard it said and not like I have said it myself the countless times I sat in small rooms and jail cells and urged ragged men to confess their sins to me. I lied to them, tricked them. The truth does not salvage you or make you whole again. It does not allow you to rise above the burden of lies and secrets and wounds to the heart. The truths I have learned hold me down like chains in a dark room, an underworld of ghosts and victims that slither around me like snakes. It is a place where the truth is not something to look at or behold. It is the place where evil waits. Where it blows its breath, every breath, into your mouth and nose until you cannot escape from it.

I knew, thanks to the notations on the map page, that one side of the triangle—Zzyzx to the airport in Vegas—was 92 miles. That left 236 miles for the remaining two sides. That number could be divided in a variety of ways, putting the missing point of the triangle in a myriad of possible positions on the map. What

That number could be divided in a variety of ways, putting the missing point of the triangle in a myriad of possible positions on the map. What

Actually, I wanted to take care of Terry. Yes, he had the potential of becoming a stone in my shoe. But I—” “Shut up, Bob!” Rachel yelled. “You couldn’t carry Terry’s lunch. Harry, this is too dangerous. Put him down! Do it now!

Yeah, listen, Kiz, you just said books. You knew a guy who retired and sold books. Is that Ed Thomas?