“Jesus, man, what’s the problem with you?”

“I had no problem until you showed up.”

Bosch held his hands chest-high in a nonthreatening pose.

“Just take it easy.”

“You take it easy. Put your fucking hands down. I want to see that badge again. Take it out and toss it over here. Slowly.”

Bosch complied, all the while trying to look around the docks without turning his head more than a few inches. He didn’t see anyone. He was alone. And unarmed. He threw the badge wallet down on the deck near McKittrick’s feet.

“Now I want you to walk around the bridge to the bow up there. Stand against the bow rail where I can see you. I knew somebody would try to fuck with me someday. Well, you picked the wrong guy and the wrong day.”

Bosch did as instructed and went up to the bow. He grabbed the railing for support and turned around to face his captor. Without taking his eyes off Bosch, McKittrick bent and picked up the wallet. Then he moved into the cockpit and put the gun down on top of the console. Bosch knew if he tried for it McKittrick would get there first. McKittrick reached down and turned something and the engine kicked over.

“What are you doing, McKittrick?”

“Oh, now it’s McKittrick. What happened to the friendly ‘Jake’? Well, what’s doing is, we’re going fishing. You wanted to fish, that’s what we’ll do. You try to jump and I’ll shoot you in the water. I don’t care.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Just take it easy.”

“Now, reach down to that cleat and unhook that line. Throw it up on the dock.”

When Bosch had finished completing the order, McKittrick picked up the gun and stepped back three paces into the stern. He untied the other line and pushed off from a pylon. He returned to the helm and gently put the boat in reverse. It glided out of the slip. McKittrick then put it in forward and they started moving through the inlet toward the mouth of the canal. Bosch could feel the warm salt breezes drying the sweat on his skin. He decided he would jump as soon as they got to some open water, or where there were other boats with people on them.

“Kind of surprised you’re not carrying. What kind of guy says he’s a cop, then doesn’t carry a piece?”

“I am a cop, McKittrick. Let me explain.”

“You don’t have to, boy, I already know. Know all about you.”

McKittrick flipped open the badge wallet and Bosch watched him study the ID card and the gold lieutenant’s badge. He threw it on the console.

“What do you know about me, McKittrick?”

“Don’t worry, I still have a few teeth left, Bosch, and I still have a few friends in the department. After the wife called, I made a call. One of my friends. He knew all about you. You’re on leave, Bosch. Involuntary. So I don’t know about this bullshit story about earthquakes you were spinning. Makes me think maybe you picked up a little freelance work while you’re off the job.”

“You got it wrong.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. Once we get out into some open water, you’re gonna tell me who sent you or you’re gonna be fish food. Makes no difference to me.”

“Nobody sent me. I sent myself.”

McKittrick slapped his palm against the red ball on the throttle lever and the boat surged forward. Its bow rose and Bosch grabbed the railing to hold on.

“Bullshit!” McKittrick yelled above the engine noise. “You’re a liar. You lied before, you’re lying now.”

“Listen to me,” Bosch yelled. “You said you remember every case.”

“I do, goddamnit! I can’t forget them.”

“Cut it back!”

McKittrick pulled the throttle back and the boat evened off and the noise reduced.

“On the Marjorie Lowe case you pulled the dirty work. You remember that? Remember what we call the dirty work? You had to tell the next of kin. You had to tell her kid. Out at McClaren.”

“That was in the reports, Bosch. So-”

He stopped and stared at Bosch for a long moment. Then he flipped open the badge case and read the name. He looked back at Bosch.

“I remember that name. The swimming pool. You’re the kid.”

“I’m the kid.”

Chapter Twenty-five

MCKITTRICK LET THE boat drift in the shallows of Little Sarasota Bay while Bosch told the story. He asked no questions. He simply listened. At a moment where Bosch paused, he opened the cooler his wife had packed and took out two beers, handing one to Bosch. The can felt ice-cold in Bosch’s hand.

Bosch didn’t pull the tab on his beer until he finished the story. He had told everything he knew to McKittrick, even the nonessential part about his run-in with Pounds. He had a hunch, based on McKittrick’s anger and bizarre behavior, that he had been wrong about the old cop. He had flown out to Florida believing he was coming to see either a corrupt or a stupid cop and he wasn’t sure which he would dislike more. But now he believed that McKittrick was a man who was haunted by memories and the demons of choices made badly many years ago. Bosch thought that the pebble still had to come out of the shoe and that his own honesty was the best way to get to it.

“So that’s my story,” he said at the end. “I hope she packed more than two of these.”

He popped the beer and drank nearly a third of it. It tasted delicious going down his throat in the afternoon sun.

“Oh, there’s plenty more where that came from,” McKittrick replied. “You want a sandwich?”

“Not yet.”

“No, what you want is my story now.”

“That’s what I came for.”

“Well, let’s get out there to the fish.”

He restarted the engine and they followed a trail of channel markers south through the bay. Bosch finally remembered he had sunglasses in the pocket of his sport coat and put them on.

It seemed like the wind was cutting in on him from all directions and on occasion its warmth would be traded for a cool breeze that would come up off the surface of the water. It was a long time since Bosch had been on a boat or had even been fishing. For a man who had had a gun pointed at him twenty minutes earlier, he realized he felt pretty good.

As the bay tapered off into a canal, McKittrick pulled back on the throttle and cut their wake. He waved to a man on the bridge of a giant yacht tied up outside a waterside restaurant. Bosch couldn’t tell if he knew the man or was just being neighborly.

“Take it on a line even with the lantern on the bridge,” McKittrick said.

“What?”

“Take it.”

McKittrick stepped away from the wheel and into the stern of the boat. Bosch quickly stepped behind the wheel, sighted the red lantern hanging at center point beneath the span of a drawbridge a half mile ahead and adjusted the wheel to bring the boat into line. He looked back and saw McKittrick pull a plastic bag of small dead fish out of a compartment in the deck.

“Let’s see who we’ve got here today,” he said.

He went to the side of the boat and leaned well over the gunwale. Bosch saw him start slapping an open palm on the side of the boat. McKittrick then stood up, surveyed the water for about ten seconds and repeated the banging.

“What’s going on?” Bosch asked.

Just as he said it, a dolphin crested the water off the port stern and reentered no more than five feet from where McKittrick was standing. It was a slippery gray blur and Bosch wasn’t exactly sure at first what had happened. But the dolphin quickly resurfaced next to the boat, its snout out of the water and chattering. It sounded like it was laughing. McKittrick dropped two of the fish into its open mouth.

“That’s Sergeant, see the scars?”

Bosch took a quick look back at the bridge to make sure they were still reasonably on line and then stepped back to the stern. The dolphin was still there. McKittrick pointed down into the water beneath its dorsal fin. Bosch could see three white stripes slashed across its smooth gray back.