The Black Echo

“Possibly. We have not identified them yet, so we don’t know it for a fact. But if that is the case, there would seem a possibility that the players in the conspiracy may have met here. I stress the word ‘may.’ Therefore, there are two things we want from you. A look at any records you still have on Meadows and a list of every man that was here during the ten months he was.”

Scales was tamping his pipe and seemingly paying no attention to what had just been said. Then he said, “No problem on his records-he’s dead. On the other, I suppose I should call my lawyer just to make sure I can do that. We run a good program here. And vegetables and money from the state and the feds don’t cover it. I get out the soapbox and make the rounds. We rely on the tithings of the community, civic organizations, things like that. Bad publicity will dry that money up faster than a Santa Ana wind. I help you, I risk that. The other risk is the loss in the faith of the men who come here for a new start. See, most of those men that were here back when Meadows was, they’ve gone on to new lives. They aren’t criminals anymore. If I’m handing out their names to every cop that comes around, then that doesn’t look too good for my program, does it?”

“Colonel Scales, we don’t have time for lawyers to look this over,” Bosch said. “We are on a murder case, sir. We need this information. You know we can get it if we go to the state and federal correctional departments, but that might take longer than your lawyer. We can also get it with a subpoena, but we thought mutual cooperation would be best. We are much more inclined to tread lightly if we have your cooperation.”

Scales didn’t move and again didn’t seem to be listening. A curl of blue smoke swirled like a ghost out of his pipe bowl.

“I see,” he finally said. “Then I’ll just get those files, won’t I?” He stood up then and went to a row of beige file cabinets that lined the wall behind his desk. He went to one drawer marked M-N-O and after a short search pulled out a thin manila file. He dropped it on his desk near Bosch. “That’s the file on Meadows, there,” he said. “Now let’s see what else we can find here.”

He went to the first drawer, which had no marking in the card slot on front. He looked through files without taking any out. Then he chose one and sat down with it.

“You are free to look through that file and I can copy anything you need from it,” Scales said. “This one is my master flow chart of people through here. I can make you a list of any people Meadows could have met here. I assume you will need DOBs and PINs?”

“That would help, thank you,” Wish said.

It took only fifteen minutes to look through Meadows’s file. He had started a correspondence with Scales a year before his release from TI. He had the backing of a chaplain and an intake counselor who knew him because he had been assigned to maintenance at the prison’s intake and placement office. In one of the letters Meadows had described the tunnels he had been into in Vietnam and how he had been drawn to their darkness.

“Most of the other guys were scared to go down there,” he wrote. “I wanted to go. I didn’t know why then, but I think now that I was testing my limits. But the fulfillment I received from it was false. I was as hollow as the ground we fought on. The fulfillment I now have is in Jesus Christ and knowing He is with me. If given the chance, and with His guidance, I can make the right choices this time and leave these bars forever behind. I want to go from hollow ground to hallowed ground.”

“Tacky but sincere enough, I guess,” Wish said.

Scales looked up from the desk, where he was writing names, birth dates and prison identification numbers on a sheet of yellow paper. “He was sincere,” he said in a voice that suggested there was no other way about it. “When Billy Meadows left here, I thought, I believed, he was ready for the outside and that he had shed past alliances with drugs and crime. It becomes obvious that he fell back into that temptation. But I doubt you two will find what you are looking for here. I give you these names but they won’t help you.”

“We’ll see,” Bosch said. Scales went back to writing, and Bosch watched him. He was too consumed by his faith and loyalty to see he might have been used. Bosch believed Scales was a good man but one who might be too quick to see his beliefs and hopes in someone else, perhaps someone like Meadows.

“Colonel, what do you get out of all this?” Bosch asked.