City of Bones by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online

glad he had eaten most of his sandwich because he was suddenly not hungry. The prospect of mounting an investigation with multiple victims was daunting. He looked at the others at the table.
    “That doesn’t leave this table. I already caught one reporter sniffing around for a serial killer, we don’t want media hysteria here. Even if you tell them what we’re doing is routine and just to make sure, it will be the top of the story. All right?”
    Everyone nodded, including Brasher. Bosch was about to say something when there was a loud banging from the row of portable toilets on the Special Services trailer on the other side of the circle. Someone was inside one of the phone booth–sized bathrooms pounding on its thin aluminum skin. After a moment Bosch could hear a woman’s voice behind the sharp banging. He recognized it and jumped up from the table.
    Bosch ran across the circle and up the steps to the truck’s platform. He quickly determined which toilet the banging was coming from and went to the door. The exterior hasp—used for securing the toilet for transport—had been closed over the loop and a chicken bone had been used to secure it.
    “Hold on, hold on,” Bosch yelled.
    He tried to pull the bone out but it was too greasy and slipped from his grip. The pounding and screaming continued. Bosch looked around for a tool of some kind but didn’t see anything. Finally, he took his pistol out of his holster, checked the safety and used the butt of the weapon to hammer the bone through the hasp, careful all the time to aim the barrel of the gun at a downward angle.
    When the bone finally popped out he put the gun away and flipped the hasp open. The door burst outward and Teresa Corazon charged out, almost knocking him over. He grabbed her to maintain his balance but she roughly pushed him away.
    “You did that!”
    “What? No, I didn’t! I was over there the whole—”
    “I want to know who did it!”
    Bosch lowered his voice. He knew everyone in the encampment was probably looking at them. The media down the street as well.
    “Look, Teresa, calm down. It was a joke, okay? Whoever did it did it as a joke. I know you don’t like confined spaces but they didn’t know that. Somebody just wanted to ease the tension around here a little bit, and you just happened to be—”
    “It’s because they’re jealous, that’s why.”
    “What?”
    “Of who I am, what I’ve done.”
    Bosch was nonplussed by that.
    “Whatever.”
    She headed for the stairs, then abruptly turned around and came back to him.
    “I’m leaving, you happy now?”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “Happy? That has nothing to do with anything here. I’m trying to conduct an investigation, and if you want to know the truth, not having the distraction of you and your cameraman around might be a help.”
    “Then you’ve got it. And you know that phone number you called me on the other night?”
    Bosch nodded. “Yeah, what about—”
    “Burn it.”
    She walked down the steps, angrily hooked a finger at her cameraman and headed toward her official car. Bosch watched her go.
    When he got back to the picnic table, only Brasher and Edgar remained. His partner had reduced his second order of fried chicken to bones. He sat with a satisfied smirk on his face.
    Bosch dropped the bone he had knocked out of the hasp onto Edgar’s plate.
    “That went over real well,” he said.
    He gave Edgar a look that told him he knew he had been the one who did it. But Edgar revealed nothing.
    “The bigger the ego the harder they fall,” Edgar said. “I wonder if her cameraman got any of that action on tape.”
    “You know, it would have been good to keep her as an ally,” Bosch said. “To just put up with her so that she was on our side when we needed her.”
    Edgar picked up his plate and struggled to slide his large body out of the picnic table.
    “I’ll see you up on the hill,” he said.
    Bosch looked at Brasher. She raised her eyebrows.
    “You mean