A Darkness More Than Night (11 page)
“I have some stuff for you. Not a lot, but maybe a start.”
“You someplace I can call you back in a few minutes?”
“Actually, I’m in the central conference room. We’re about to brainstorm a case and I’m the leader. It could be a couple hours before I’m free. You could call me at home tonight if you —”
“No, hold on.”
He held the phone down and looked at Bosch.
“I better take this. I’ll talk to you later if anything comes up, okay?”
“Sure.”
Bosch started getting up. He was going to carry his Coke with him.
“Thanks,” McCaleb said, extending his hand. “Good luck with the trial.”
Bosch shook his hand.
“Thanks. We’ll probably need it.”
McCaleb watched him walk out of the picnic area and to the sidewalk leading back to the courthouse. He brought the phone back up then.
“Brass?”
“Here. Okay, you were talking about owls in general, right? You don’t know the specific kind or breed, right?”
“Right. It’s just a generic owl, I think.”
“What color is it?”
“Uh, it’s brown mostly. Like on the back and the wings.”
As he spoke he took a couple of folded pages of notebook paper and a pen out of his pockets. He shoved his half-eaten chili dog out of the way and got ready to take notes.
“Okay, modern iconography is what you’d expect. The owl is the symbol of wisdom and truth, denotes knowledge, the view of the greater picture as opposed to the small detail. The owl sees in the night. In other words, seeing through the darkness is seeing the truth. It is learning the truth, therefore, knowledge. And from knowledge comes wisdom. Okay?”
McCaleb didn’t need to take notes. What Doran had said was obvious. But just to keep his head in it he wrote down a line.
Seeing in the dark
=
Wisdom
=
Wisdom
He then underlined the last word.
“Okay, fine. What else?”
“That’s basically what I have as far as contemporary application. But when I go backward it gets pretty interesting. Our friend the owl has totally rejuvenated his reputation. He used to be a bad guy.”
“Tell me, Brass.”
“Get your pencil out. The owl is seen repeatedly in art and religious iconography from early medieval through late Renaissance periods. It is found often depicted in religious allegorical displays — paintings, church panels and stations of the cross. The owl was —”
“Okay, Brass, but what did it mean?”
“I’m getting to that. Its meaning could be different from depiction to depiction and according to species depicted. But essentially its depiction was the symbol of evil.”
McCaleb wrote the word down.
“Evil. Okay.”
“I thought you’d be more excited.”
“You can’t see me. I’m standing on my hands here. What else you have?”
“Let me run down the list of hits. These are taken from the extracts, the critical literature of the art of the period. References to depictions of owls come up as the symbol of — and I quote — doom, the enemy of innocence, the Devil himself, heresy, folly, death and misfortune, the bird of darkness, and finally, the torment of the human soul in its inevitable journey to eternal damnation. Nice, huh? I like that last one. I guess they didn’t sell too many bags of potato chips with owls on them back in the fourteen hundreds.”
McCaleb didn’t answer. He was busy scribbling down the descriptions she had read to him.
“Read that last one again.”
She did and he wrote it down verbatim.
“Now, there is more,” Doran said. “There is also some interpretation of the owl as being the symbol of wrath as well as the punishment of evil. So it obviously was something that meant different things at different times
and
to different people.”
and
to different people.”
“The punishment of evil,” McCaleb said as he wrote it down.
He looked at the list he had written.
“Anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Probably. Was there anything about books showing some of this stuff or the names of artists or writers who used the so-called ‘bird of darkness’ in their work?”
McCaleb heard some pages turning over the phone and Doran was silent for a few moments.
“I don’t have a lot here. No books but I can give you the name of some of the artists mentioned and you could probably get something over the Internet or maybe the library at UCLA.”
“All right.”
“I have to do this quickly. We’re about to go here.”
“Give it to me.”
“All right, I have an artist named Bruegel who painted a huge face as the gateway to hell. A brown owl was nesting in the nostril of the face.”
She started laughing.
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “I’m just giving you what I found.”
“Fine,” McCaleb said, writing the description down. “Go on.”
“Okay, two others noted for using the owl as the symbol of evil were Van Oostanen and Dürer. I don’t have specific paintings.”
He heard more pages turning. He asked for spellings of the artists’ names and wrote them down.
“Okay, here it is. This last guy’s work is supposedly replete with owls all over the place. I can’t pronounce his first name. It’s spelled H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S. He was Netherlandish, part of the northern Renaissance. I guess owls were big up there.”
McCaleb looked at the paper in front of him. The name she had just spelled seemed familiar to him.
“You forgot his last name. What’s his last name?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s Bosch. Like the spark plugs.”
McCaleb sat frozen. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. He stared at the name on the page, unable to write the last part that Doran had just given him. Finally, he turned his head and looked out of the picnic area to the spot on the sidewalk where he had last seen Harry Bosch walking away.
“Terry, you there?”
He came out of it.
“Yeah.”
“That’s really all I have. And I have to go. We’re starting here.”
“Anything else on Bosch?”
“Not really. And I’m out of time.”
“Okay, Brass. Listen, thanks a lot. I owe you one for this.”
“And I’ll collect one day. Let me know how it all comes out, okay?”
“You got it.”
“And send me a photo of that little girl.”
“I will.”
She hung up and McCaleb slowly closed his phone. He wrote a note at the bottom of the page reminding him to send Brass a photo of his daughter. It was just an exercise in avoiding the name of the painter he had written down.
“Shit,” he whispered.
He sat with his thoughts for a long time. The coincidence of receiving the eerie information just minutes after eating with Harry Bosch was unsettling. He studied his notes for a few more moments but knew they did not contain the immediate information he needed. He finally reopened the phone and called
213
information. A minute later he called the personnel office of the Los Angeles Police Department. A woman answered after nine rings.
213
information. A minute later he called the personnel office of the Los Angeles Police Department. A woman answered after nine rings.
“Yes, I’m calling on behalf of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and I need to contact a particular LAPD officer. Only I don’t know where he works. I only have his name.”
He hoped the woman wouldn’t ask what he meant by
on behalf of.
There was what seemed to be a long silence and then he heard the sound of typing on a keyboard.
on behalf of.
There was what seemed to be a long silence and then he heard the sound of typing on a keyboard.
“Last name?”
“Uh, it’s Bosch.”
He spelled it and then looked down at his notes, ready to spell the first name.
“And the first na — never mind, there’s only one. Higher — ronny — mus. Is that it? I can’t pronounce it, I don’t think.”
“Hieronymus. Yes, that’s it.”
He spelled the name and asked if it was a match. It was.
“Well, he’s a detective third grade and he works in Hollywood Division. Do you need that number?”
McCaleb didn’t answer.
“Sir, do you need —”
“No, I have it. Thank you very much.”
He closed the phone, looked at his watch, and then reopened the phone. He called Jaye Winston’s direct number and she picked up right away. He asked if she had gotten anything back from the lab on the examination of the plastic owl.
“Not yet. It’s only been a couple hours and one of them was lunch. I’m going to give it until tomorrow before I start knocking on their door.”
“Do you have time to make a few calls and do me a favor?”
“What calls?”
He told her about the icon search Brass Doran had conducted but left out any mention of Hieronymus Bosch. He said that he wanted to talk with an expert on Northern Renaissance painting but thought the arrangements could be made more quickly and cooperation would be more forthcoming if the request came from an official homicide detective.
“I’ll do it,” Winston said. “Where should I start?”
“I’d try the Getty. I’m in Van Nuys now. If somebody will see me I could be there in a half hour.”
“I’ll see what I can do. You talk to Harry Bosch?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything new?”
“Not really.”
“I didn’t think so. Hang tight. I’ll call you back.”
McCaleb dumped what was left of his lunch into one of the trash barrels and headed back toward the courthouse, where he had left the Cherokee parked on a side street by the state parole offices. As he walked he thought about how he had lied by omission to Winston. He knew he should have told her about the Bosch connection or coincidence, whichever it was. He tried to understand what it was that made him hold it back. He found no answer.
His phone chirped just as he got to the Cherokee. It was Winston.
“You have an appointment at the Getty at two. Ask for Leigh Alasdair Scott. He’s an associate curator of paintings.”
McCaleb got out his notes and wrote the name down, using the front hood of the Cherokee, after asking Winston to spell it.
“That was quick, Jaye. Thanks.”
“We aim to please. I spoke directly to Scott and he said if he couldn’t help you he would find someone who could.”
“You mention the owl?”
“No, it’s your interview.”
“Right.”
McCaleb knew he had another chance to tell her about Hieronymus Bosch. But again he let it pass.
“I’ll call you later, okay?”
“See ya.”
He closed the phone and unlocked the car. He looked over the roof at the parole offices and saw a large white banner with blue lettering hanging across the facade above the building’s entrance.
WELCOME BACK THELMA!
He got into the car wondering whether the Thelma being welcomed back was a convict or an employee. He drove off in the direction of Victory Boulevard. He’d take it to the
405
and then head south.
405
and then head south.
11
As the freeway rose to cross the Santa Monica Mountains in the Sepulveda Pass, McCaleb saw the Getty rise in front of him on the hilltop. The structure of the museum itself was as impressive as any of the great artworks housed within. It looked like a castle sitting atop a medieval hill. He saw one of the double trams slowly working its way up the side of the hill, delivering another group to the altar of history and art.
By the time he parked at the bottom of the hill and caught his own tram ride up, McCaleb was fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Leigh Alasdair Scott. After getting directions from a museum guard, McCaleb hurried across the travertine stone plaza to a security entrance. Having checked in at the counter he waited on a bench until Scott came for him.
Scott was in his early fifties and spoke with an accent McCaleb placed as originating in either Australia or New Zealand. He was friendly and happy to oblige the L.A. County sheriff’s office.
“We have had occasion to offer our help and expertise to detectives in the past. Usually in regard to authenticating artwork or offering historical background to specific pieces,” he said as they walked down a long hallway to his office. “Detective Winston indicated this would be different. You need some general information on the Northern Renaissance?”
He opened a door and ushered McCaleb into a suite of offices. They stepped into the first office past the security counter. It was a small office with a view through a large window across the Sepulveda Pass to the hillside homes of Bel-Air. The office felt crowded because of the bookshelves lining two walls and the cluttered worktable. There was just room for two chairs. Scott pointed McCaleb to one while he took the other.
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