Lost Light

Vic. It made me think about how he would react when he found out the last clue I had put together had been so close all along.
    “It’s about time,” I said.
    I hung up and got out of the Mercedes. When Lindell pulled up I leaned into his window.
    “Did you bring the bolt cutter?”
    Lindell looked out the windshield at the gate.
    “For that? I’m not going to cut that. They’ll climb all over me if I break their lock.”
    “Roy, I thought you were a big-time federal agent. Give me the cutter, I’ll do it.”
    “And you can take all the heat. Just tell them you had a hunch.”
    I threw him a look, hoping to communicate that I was operating on more than a hunch now. He popped the trunk lid and I went back and pulled out the bolt cutter he had probably checked out of the federal equipment shed. He stayed in the car while I walked over and cut the lock and pushed the gate open.
    I walked by his window on the way back to the trunk.
    “By any means, Roy,” I said as I passed. “I think I’m getting the idea why you weren’t picked for the squad.”
    I threw the tool in the trunk, slammed it and told him to follow me up the hill.
    We drove up the winding road, the gravel crunching under our wheels sounding like the rain that was still coming. The road up took a final 180 and terminated in front of the main tunnel entrance, a fifteen-foot-high opening cut into a granite deposit the size of an office building. I parked next to Lindell and met him at the trunk. He’d brought two shovels and two flashlights. As I was reaching in for mine he put his hand on my arm.
    “Okay, Bosch, what are we doing?”
    “She’s here. We’re going to go in and find her.”
    “Confirmed?”
    I looked at him and nodded. In my life I have told a lot of people-too many to count-about loved ones they weren’t going to see alive again. I knew Lindell had long ago given up hope for Marty Gessler, but the final confirmation is still never easy to get. Or to give.
    “Yes, confirmed. Lawton Cross told me.”
    Lindell nodded and turned away from the trunk. He looked up at the crest of the granite mountain. I busied myself with getting the tools from the trunk and checking to see if my cell phone was catching a signal. Over my shoulder I heard him say, “It’s going to rain.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”
    I handed him a light and a shovel and we approached the mouth of the tunnel.
    “He’s going to pay for this,” Lindell said.
    I nodded. I didn’t bother to tell him that Lawton Cross had already been paying for it every day of his life.
    The tunnel was big. Shaquille O’Neal could walk through with Wilt Chamberlain on his shoulders. It was nothing like the stale, claustrophobic systems I had crawled through thirty-five years before. The air inside was fresh. It smelled clean. Ten feet in we put on the lights, and in another fifty feet the channel curved and we were out of sight of the entrance. I remembered Cross’s directions and kept to the right, moving slowly.
    We came to a central cavern and stopped. There were three tributary tunnels. I focused my light on the third opening and knew it was the way. I then turned my light off and told Lindell to do the same.
    “Why? What’s going on?”
    “Nothing. Just turn it off for a second.”
    He did and I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. My vision and focus came back and I could pick up the outline of the rock walls and jutting surfaces. I could see the light that had followed us in.
    “What is it?” Lindell asked.
    “Lost light. I wanted to see the lost light.”
    “What?”
    “You can always find it. Even in the dark, even underground.”
    I snapped my light back on, careful not to hit Lindell in the face with the beam, and headed toward the third tributary tunnel.
    This time we needed to duck and proceed in single file as the tunnel grew smaller and more cramped. The channel curved to the right and soon we could see light ahead. An opening. We moved through and came out into an open bowl, a granite stadium chiseled out decades before. The Devil’s Punchbowl.
    Over time the bottom of the bowl had filled with a layer of run-off granite debris and dust, a layer just thick enough for brush to put down roots and for a body to be buried. It was here that Dorsey and Cross had been led to the body of Antonio Markwell and where they would come back again with Marty Gessler. I found myself wondering how long she had been alive on that night