Bosch looked at her with outrage on his face but immediately saw she didn't understand.
'Wasn't that the right thing to do?' she asked. 'Aren't you required by law to inform people of their rights?'
Bosch struggled to contain his anger, reminding himself that Hinojos might work for the department, but she was an outsider. Her perceptions of police work were likely based more on the media than on the actual reality.
'Let me give you a quick lesson on what's the law and what's real. We — the cops — have the deck stacked against us. What Miranda and all the other rules and regs amount to is that we have to take some guy we know is, or at least think is, guilty and basically say, 'Hey, look, we think you did it and the Supreme Court and every lawyer on the planet would advise you not to talk to us, but, how about it, will you talk to us?' It just doesn't work. You gotta get around that. You gotta use guile and some bluffing and you gotta be sneaky. The rules of the courts are like a tightrope that you're walking on. You have to be very careful but there is a chance you can walk on it to get to the other side. So when some asshole who doesn't know shit walks in on your guy and informs him, it can pretty much ruin your whole day, not to mention the case.' -He stopped and studied her. He still saw skepticism. He knew then that she was just another citizen who would be
scared shitless if she ever got a dose of the way things really were on the street.
'When someone is informed, that's it,' he said. 'It's over. Me and Edgar came back in from coffee and the John sits there and says he thinks he wants his lawyer. I said, 'What lawyer, who's talking about lawyers? You're a witness, not a suspect,' and he tells us that the lieutenant just read him his rights. I don't know at that moment who I hated more, Pounds for blowing it or this guy for killing the girl.'
'Well, tell me this, what would have happened if Pounds had not done what he did?'
'We would've made friendly with the guy, asked him to tell his story in as much detail as possible and hoped there would be inconsistencies when compared to what he'd told the uniforms. Then we would have said, 'The inconsistencies in your statements make you a suspect.' Then we would have informed him and hopefully clubbed the shit out of him with the inconsistencies and the problems we found with the scene. We would have tried, and maybe succeeded, in finessing a confession. Most of what we do is just get people to talk. It's not like the stuff on TV. It's a hundred times harder and dirtier. But just like you, what we do is get people to talk ... Anyway, that's my view. But we'll never know now what could've happened because of Pounds.'
'Well, what did happen after you found out he'd been informed?'
'I left: the room and walked straight into where Pounds was in his office. He knew something was wrong because he stood up. I remember that. I asked him if he'd informed my guy and when he said yes, we got into it. Both of us, screaming ... then I don't really remember how it happened. I'm not trying to deny anything. I just don't remember the details. I must've grabbed him and pushed him. And his face went through the glass.'
'What did you do when that happened?'
'Well, some of the guys came running in and pulled me out of there. The station commander sent me home. Pounds had to go to the hospital to fix his nose. IAD took a statement from him and I was suspended. And then Irving stepped in and changed it to ISL. Here I am.'
'What happened with the case?'
'The John never talked. He got his lawyer and waited it out. Edgar went with what we had to the DA last Friday and they kicked it. They said they weren't going into court with a no-witness case with a few minor inconsistencies ... Her prints were on the knife. Big surprise. What it came down to is that she didn't count. At least not enough for them to take the chance of losing.'
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Bosch guessed that she was thinking about the corollaries between this case and his mother's.
'So what we've got,' he finally said, 'is a murderer out there on the street and the guy who allowed him to go free is back behind his desk, the broken glass already replaced, business as usual. That's our system. I got mad about it and look what it got me. Stress leave and maybe the end of my
job.'
She cleared her throat before going into her appraisal of
the story.
'As you have set down the circumstances of what happened, it is quite easy to see your rage. But not the ultimate action you took. Have you ever heard the phrase, 'a mad minute?' '
Bosch shook his head.
'It's a way of describing a violent outburst that has its roots in several pressures on an individual. It builds up and is released in a quick moment — usually violently, often against a target not wholly responsible for the pressure.'
'If you need me to say Pounds was an innocent victim, I'm not going to say it.'
'I don't need that. I just need you to look at this situation and how it could happen.'
'I don't know. Shit just happens.'
'When you physically attack someone, don't you feel that you lower yourself to the same level as the man who was set free?'
'Not by a long shot, Doctor. Let me tell you something, you can look at all parts of my life, you can throw in earthquakes, fires, floods, riots and even Vietnam, but when it came down to just me and Pounds in that glass room, none of that mattered. You can call it a mad minute or whatever you want. Sometimes, the moment is all that matters and in that moment I was doing the right thing. And if these sessions are designed to make me see I did something wrong, forget it. Irving buttonholed me the other day in the lobby and asked me to think about an apology. Fuck that. I did the right thing.'
She nodded, adjusted herself in her seat and looked more uncomfortable than she had through his long diatribe. Finally, she looked at her watch and he looked at his. His time was up.
'So,' he said, 'I guess I've set the cause of psychotherapy back a century, huh?'
'No, not at all. The more you know of a person and the more you know of a story, the more you understand how things happen. It's why I enjoy my job.'
'Same here.'
'Have you spoken to Lieutenant Pounds since the incident?'
'I saw him when I dropped off the keys to my car. He had it taken away. I went into his office and he practically got hysterical. He's a very small man and I think he knows it.'
'They usually do.'
Bosch leaned forward, ready to get up and leave, when he noticed the envelope she had pushed to the side of her desk.
'What about the photos?'
'I knew you'd bring that up one more time.'
She looked at the envelope and frowned.
'I need to think about it. On several levels. Can I keep them while you go to Florida? Or will you need them?'
'You can keep 'em.'
At four-forty in the morning California time the air carrier landed at Tampa International Airport. Bosch leaned bleary-eyed against a window in the coach cabin, watching the sun rising in the Florida sky for the first time. As the plane taxied, he took off his watch and moved the hands ahead three hours. He was tempted to check into the nearest motel for some real sleep but knew he didn't have the time. From the AAA map he had brought with him, it looked like it was at least a two-hour drive down to Venice.
'It's nice to see a blue sky.'
It was the woman next to him in the aisle seat. She was leaning over toward him, looking out the window herself. She was in her mid-forties with prematurely gray hair. It was almost white. They had talked a bit in the early part of the flight and Bosch knew she was heading back to Florida rather than visiting as he was. She had given LA five years but had had enough. She was going home. Bosch didn't ask who or what she was coming home to, but had wondered if her hair was white when she had first landed in LA five years before.
'Yeah,' he replied. 'These night flights take forever.'
'No, I meant the smog. There is none.'
Bosch looked at her and then out the window, studying the sky.
