The Drop

Bosch pulled to a stop in front of his house. His daughter had left the porch light on. He stayed in the car.

“Hannah . . . the truth is, all I’ve been doing is working. I’ve got two cases here and I’m trying to work them both. Why don’t we see how we feel over the weekend or early next week? I’ll call you then or you can call me if you want.”

“Okay, Harry. We’ll talk next week.”

“Yes, Hannah. Good night and have a good weekend.”

Bosch opened the car door and practically had to roll out of the car. He was tired. The burden of knowledge was heavy. And all he wanted was to crash into a black dream where nothing could find him.

31

Bosch got in to the squad room late Friday morning because his daughter had been late in getting ready for school. By the time he entered and headed toward his cubicle, the rest of the Open-Unsolved Unit was in place. He could tell they were watching him without watching him and this told him that the story he had told David Chu to feed to Emily Gomez-Gonzmart had been published that morning in the Times. As he entered his cubicle, Harry threw a casual glance toward the lieutenant’s office and noted that the door was closed and the blinds were down. She was either late herself or hiding.

A copy of the Times was waiting for Bosch on his desk, courtesy of his partner.

“You see it yet?” Chu asked from his seat.

“No, I don’t get the Times.”

Bosch sat down, putting his briefcase on the floor next to his chair. He didn’t have to hunt through the newspaper for the story. It was on the bottom left corner of the front page. The headline was all he needed to read.

LAPD: Councilman’s Son’s Death Ruled Suicide

He noted that the byline was shared by Emily Gomez-Gonzmart and another reporter, Tad Hemmings, whom Bosch had never heard of. He was about to read the story when his desk phone buzzed. It was Tim Marcia, the squad whip.

“Harry, you and Chu have a forthwith from the chief’s office. The lieutenant’s already up there and they’re waiting for you.”

“I was hoping to get a cup of coffee but I guess we’d better go up.”

“Yeah, I would. Good luck up there. I heard the councilman was in the building.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Bosch stood and turned to Chu, who was on the phone. Bosch pointed toward the ceiling, meaning they were going upstairs. Chu got off his call and stood up, grabbing his sport coat off the back of his chair.

“The chief’s office?” he asked.

“Yeah. They’re waiting for us.”

“How do we play this?”

“You talk as little as possible. Let me answer the questions. If you don’t agree with something I say, don’t show it or say it. Just agree with it.”

“Whatever you say, Harry.”

Bosch noted his partner’s sarcasm.

“Yeah. Whatever I say.”

There was no need for further discussion. They took the elevator up in silence and when they entered the OCP, they were immediately whisked into a meeting room where the chief of police waited. It was the fastest Bosch had ever been able to gain an audience with a member of the department’s command staff, let alone the chief himself.

The boardroom looked like it belonged in a downtown law firm. Long polished table, glass wall of views across the civic center. Seated at the head of the table was the chief of police and to his right was Kiz Rider. The three seats going down one side of the table were taken by Councilman Irvin Irving and two members of his staff.

Across from them sat Lieutenant Duvall, with her back to the city view, and she signaled Bosch and Chu to the seats next to her. Eight people in a meeting about one suicide, Bosch noted. And nobody in the entire building who gave a shit about Lily Price being dead for twenty years or Chilton Hardy being free for just as long.

The chief did the talking first.

“All right, everybody’s here. I’m sure everybody’s seen the Times today or read it online. I think everybody is a bit surprised by the public turn this case has taken and—”

“More than surprised,” Irving cut in. “I want to know why the L.A. goddamn Times had this information before I did. Before my son’s family did.”

He stabbed a finger down on the table to hammer home his outrage. Luckily Bosch was seated on a swivel chair. This allowed him to calmly pivot and look at the faces across from him and at the head of the table. He said nothing in response, waiting for the power in the room to tell him to speak. That power was not Irvin Irving, no matter how hard he hit the table with his stubby finger.

“Detective Bosch,” the chief finally said. “Tell us what you know about this.”

Bosch nodded and swiveled back so that he was directly facing Irving.

“First of all, I don’t know anything about the story in the paper. It didn’t come from me but it doesn’t surprise me. This investigation has been leaking like a sieve since day one. Whether it was coming out of the OCP or the city council staff or RHD doesn’t matter, the story is out there and it’s accurate. And I want to correct one thing the city councilman said. The victim’s immediate family was informed of our conclusions. The victim’s wife, in fact, provided the information that was most important to my partner and me in calling the death a suicide.”

“Deborah?” Irving said. “She told you nothing.”

“On the first day she told us nothing. That is correct. It was during a subsequent interview that she was more forthcoming about the details of her marriage and her husband’s life and work.”

Irving leaned back, dragging a balled fist on the table.

“I was informed by this office just yesterday that this was a homicide investigation, that there was evidence of assault on my son’s body prior to the fatal impact and that it was likely that there was a former or current police officer involved. Now today I pick up the paper and read something completely different. I read that it’s a suicide. You know what this is? This is a payback. And it’s a cover-up and I will formally petition the council for an independent review of your so-called investigation and I will ask the district attorney—whoever that may be after next month’s election—to also review the case and its handling.”

“Irv,” the chief said. “You asked for Detective Bosch to be put on the case. You said let the chips fall and now you don’t like how they have fallen. So you want to investigate how it was investigated?”

The chief went back long enough in the department to call the councilman by his first name. No one else in the room would even dare.

“I chose him because I thought he had the integrity not to be swayed from the truth but what obviously has —”

“Harry Bosch has more integrity than anybody I’ve ever met. Anybody in this room.”

It was Chu and the whole room looked at him, shocked by his outburst. Even Bosch was taken aback.

“We’re not going to get into personal attacks here,” the chief said. “We first want to—”

“If there is an investigation of the investigation,” Bosch said, daring to cut the chief off, “it will most likely lead to your indictment, Councilman.”

That stunned the group. But Irving recovered quickly.

“How dare you!” he said, his eyes full of growing rage. “How dare you say such a thing about me in front of other people. I will have your badge for this! I have served this city for nearly fifty years and not once has anyone accused me of any impropriety. I am less than a month from being reelected to my seat for the fourth time and you won’t stop me or the will of the people who want me to represent them.”

A silence followed, during which one of Irving’s aides opened a leather folder with a legal pad inside. He wrote something down on the pad and Bosch half-imagined it was Take Bosch’s