what an investigation could lead to if we did not proceed slowly and cautiously and correctly. Those were his words. Asshole."
"Let sleeping dogs lie," Bosch said.
"Right. So I just flat-out told them I was not going to rule it a suicide. And then . . . then they talked me out of ruling it a homicide. So that's where the inconclusive comes from. A compromise. For now. It makes me feel like I am guilty of something. Those bastards."
"They're just going to drop it," Bosch said.
He couldn't figure it out. The reluctance had to be because of the IAD investigation. Whatever Moore was into, Irving must believe it either led him to kill himself or got him killed. And either way Irving didn't want to open that box without knowing first what was in it. Maybe he never wanted to know. That told Bosch one thing. He was on his own. No matter what he came up with, turning it over to Irving and RHD would get it buried. So if Bosch went on with it, he was freelancing.
"Do they know that Moore was working on something for you?" Teresa asked.
"By now they do, but they probably didn't when they were with you. Probably won't make any difference."
"What about the Juan Doe case? About him finding the body."
"I don't know what they know on that."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything. What will you do?"
She was silent for a long time, then she got up and walked to him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the lips. She whispered, "Let's forget about all of this for a while."
He conceded to her in their lovemaking, letting her lead and direct him, use his body the way she wanted. They had been together often enough so that they were comfortable and knew each other's ways. They were beyond the stages of curiosity or embarrassment. At the end, she was straddled over him as he leaned back, propped on pillows, against the headboard. Her head snapped back and her clipped nails dug painlessly into his chest. She made no sound at all.
In the darkness he looked up and saw the glint of silver dripping from her ears. He reached up and touched the earrings and then ran his hands down her throat, over her shoulders and breasts. Her skin was warm and damp. Her slow methodical motion drew him further into the void where everything else in the world could not go.
When they were both resting, she still huddled on top of him, a sense of guilt came over him. He thought of Sylvia Moore. A woman he had met only the night before, how could she intrude on this? But she had. He wondered where the guilt came from. Maybe it was for what was still ahead of them.
He thought he heard the short, high-pitched bark of the coyote in the distance behind the house. Teresa raised her head off his chest and then they heard the animal's lonesome baying.
"Timido," he heard her say quietly.
Harry felt the guilt pass over him again. He thought of Teresa. Had he tricked her into telling him? He didn't think so. Maybe, again, it was guilt over what he had not yet done. What he knew he would do with the information she had given.
She seemed to know his thoughts were away from her. Perhaps a change in his heartbeat, a slight tensing in his muscles.
"Nothing," she said.
"What?"
"You asked what I was going to do. Nothing. I'm not going to get involved in this bullshit any further. If they want to bury it, let them bury it."
Harry knew then that she would make a good permanent chief medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles.
He felt himself falling away from her in the dark.
Teresa rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the three-quarter moon. They had left the curtain open. The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance.
"Are you like him?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Timido. Alone out there in the dark world."
"Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes."
"Yes, but you like it, don't you?"
"Not always."
"Not always . . ."
He thought about what to say. The wrong word and she'd be gone.
"I'm sorry if I'm distant," he tried. "There's a lot of things . . ."
He didn't finish. There was no excuse.
"You do like living up here in this little, lonely house, with the coyote as your only friend,