“I’m here with Mora. He filled me in. Anything on the prints?”
“Not yet. I missed my man at SID. Musta gone to lunch. So I left the prints there. Should have a confirmation later today. But I’m not waiting on it.”
“Where are you now?”
“Missing Persons. Trying to see if this girl ever got reported missing, now that I have a name to go with the body.”
“You gonna be there a while?”
“Just started. We’re looking through hard copies. They only went to computer eighteen months ago.”
“I’ll be over.”
“You got your trial, man.”
“I have some time.”
Bosch felt that he had to keep moving, to keep thinking. It was the only way to keep from examining the horror building in his mind, the possibility he had taken down the wrong man. He drove back to Parker Center and took the stairs down to the first subterranean level. Missing Persons was a small office inside the Fugitives section. Edgar was sitting on a desk, looking through a stack of white forms. Bosch recognized these as cases that were not even investigated after the reports had been made. They would have been in files if there had been any follow-up.
“Nothing so far, Harry,” Edgar said. He then introduced Bosch to Detective Morgan Randolph, who was sitting at a nearby desk. Randolph gave Bosch a stack of reports and he spent the next fifteen minutes looking through the pages, each one an individual story of someone’s pain that had fallen on the deaf ears of the department.
“Harry, on the description, look for a tattoo above the ass,” Edgar said.
“How do you know?”
“Mora had some photos of Magna Cum Loudly. In action, as Mora says. And there’s a tattoo-it’s Yosemite Sam, you know, the cartoon?-to the left of the dimple over the left side of her ass.”
“Well, did you find that on the body?”
“Didn’t notice it ’cause of the severe skin discoloration. But I didn’t really look at the backside, either.”
“What’s going on with that? I thought you said the cut was going to be done yesterday.”
“Yeah, that’s what they said, but I called over and they’re still backed up from the weekend. They haven’t even prepped it yet. I called Sakai a little while ago and he’s going to take a look in the freezer after lunch. Check on the tattoo.”
Bosch looked back at his stack. The recurrent theme was the young ages of the missing people. L.A. was a drain which drew a steady stream of the nation’s runaways. But there were many who disappeared from here as well.
Bosch finished his stack without seeing the name Rebecca Kaminski, her alias, or anyone that matched her description. He looked at his watch and knew he had to get back to court. He took another stack off Randolph’s desk anyway and began to wade through it. As he searched, he listened to the banter between Edgar and Randolph. It was clear that they had known each other before this day’s meeting. Edgar called him Morg. Bosch figured they might’ve known each other from the Black Peace Officers Association.
He found nothing in the second stack.
“I gotta go. I’m gonna be late.”
“Okay, man. I’ll let you know what we find.”
“And the prints, too, okay?”
“You got it.”
Court was already in session when Bosch got to courtroom 4. He quietly opened the gate, went through and took his seat next to Belk. The judge eyed him disdainfully but said nothing. Bosch looked up to see Assistant Chief Irvin Irving in the witness seat. Money Chandler was at the lectern.
“Good going,” Belk whispered to him. “Late for your own trial.”
Bosch ignored him and watched as Chandler began asking Irving general questions about his background and years on the force. They were preliminary questions; Bosch knew he couldn’t have missed much.
“Look,” Belk whispered next. “If you don’t care about this, at least pretend you do for the jury’s sake. I know we are only talking about taxpayers’ money here, but act like it’s going to be your own money they will be deciding to give.”
“I got tied up. It won’t happen again. You know, I’m trying to figure out this case. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, since you’ve already decided.”
He leaned back in his chair to get away from Belk. He was reminded that he had not eaten lunch by a sharp signal of resentment from his stomach. He tried to concentrate on the testimony.
“As assistant chief, what does your command include?” Chandler asked Irving.
“I am presently the commanding officer of all detective services.”
“At the time of the Dollmaker investigation, you were one rank below. A deputy chief, correct?”
“Yes.”
“As such you were in charge of the Internal Affairs Division, correct?”
“Yes. IAD and Operations Bureau, which basically means I was in charge of managing and allocating the department’s personnel.”
“What is the mission of the IAD, as it is known?”
“To police the police. We investigate all citizen complaints, all interior complaints of misconduct.”
“Do you investigate police shootings?”
“Not per se. There is an Officer Involved Shooting team that handles the initial investigation. After that, if there is an allegation of misconduct or any impropriety, it is forwarded to IAD for follow-up.”
“Yes, and what do you recall of the IAD investigation of the shooting of Norman Church by Detective Harry Bosch?”
“I recall all of it.”
“Why was it referred to IAD?”
“The shooting team determined that Detective Bosch had not followed procedures. The shooting itself was within departmental policy but some of his actions prior to the gunfire were not.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Yes. Basically, he went there alone. He went to this man’s apartment without backup, placing himself in danger. It ended in the shooting.”
“It’s called cowboying it, isn’t it?”
“I’ve heard the phrase. I don’t use it.”
“But does it fit?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t know. Chief, would you know if Mr. Church would be alive today if Detective Bosch had not created this situation by playing cow-”
“Objection!” Belk shrieked.
But before he could walk to the lectern to argue, Judge Keyes sustained the objection and told Chandler to avoid speculative questions.
“Yes, Your Honor,” she said pleasantly. “Chief, basically what you have testified to is that Detective Bosch set in motion a series of events that ultimately ended with an unarmed man being killed, am I right?”
“That is incorrect. The investigation found no substantive indication or evidence that Detective
