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different game. Back then they gave you a flashlight and a forty-five, said good luck and dropped you in a hole. Now it’s sound and motion detectors, heat sensors, infrared… it’s a different game.”
    “Maybe. But a hunter is still a hunter.”
    Bosch look lu">Bosched at him for a moment before speaking.
    “Take it easy, Sugar Ray.”
    He headed toward the door and one more time Sugar Ray stopped him.
    “Hey, Santa Claus.”
    Bosch turned back.
    “You strike me as a man who is alone in the world,” Sugar Ray said. “That true?”
    Bosch nodded without hesitation.
    “Most of the time.”
    “You got plans for Christmas dinner?”
    Bosch hesitated. He finally shook his head.
    “No plans.”
    “Then, come back here at three tomorrow. We have a dinner and I can bring a guest. I’ll sign you up.”
    Bosch hesitated. He had been alone so often on Christmases past that he thought it might be too late, that being around anyone might be intolerable.
    “Don’t worry,” Sugar Ray said. “They won’t put your turkey in the blender as long as you’ve got teeth.”
    Bosch smiled.
    “All right, Sugar Ray, I’ll be by.”
    “Then, I’ll see you then.”
    Bosch walked down the yellowed corridor and out into the night. As he headed to the car he heard Christmas music still playing from an open window somewhere. It was an instrumental, slow and heavy on the saxophone. He stopped and it took him a moment to recognize it as “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” He stood there on the walkway and listened until the end of the song.

    The author would like to gratefully acknowledge John Houghton for recounting and sharing the experience on the USS Sanctuary that inspired this story.

Father’s Day

    The victim’s tiny body was left alone in the emergency room enclosure. The doctors, after halting their resuscitation efforts, had solemnly retreated and pulled the plastic curtains closed around the bed. The entire construction, management and purpose of the hospital was to prevent death. When the effort failed, nobody wanted to see it.
    The curtains were opaque. Harry Bosch looked like a ghost as he approached and then split them to enter. He stepped into the enclosure and stood somber and alone with the dead. The boy’s body took up less than a quarter of the big metal bed. He had worked thousands of cases but nothing ever touched Bosch liket di the sight of a young child’s lifeless body. Fifteen months old. Cases in which the child’s age was still counted in months were the most difficult of all. He knew that if he dwelled too long he would start to question everything—from the meaning of life to his mission in it.
    The boy looked like he was only asleep. Bosch made a quick study, looking for any bruising or other sign of mishap. The child was naked and uncovered, his skin as pink as a newborn’s. Bosch saw no sign of trauma except for an old scrape on the boy’s forehead.
    He pulled on gloves and very carefully moved the body to check it from all angles. His heart sank as he did this but he saw nothing that was suspicious. When he was finished, he covered the body with the sheet—he wasn’t sure why—and slipped back through the plastic curtains shrouding the bed.
    The boy’s father was in a private waiting room down the hall. Bosch would eventually get to him but the paramedics who had transported the boy had agreed to stick around to be interviewed. Bosch looked for them first and found both men—one old, one young, one to mentor, one to learn—sitting in the crowded ER waiting room. He invited them outside so they could speak privately.
    The dry summer heat hit them as soon as the glass doors parted. Like walking out of a casino in Vegas. They walked to the side so they would not be bothered but stayed in the shade of the portico. He identified himself and told them he would need the written reports on their rescue effort as soon as they were completed.
    “For now, tell me about the call.”
    The senior