calls and the scenes of cop shootings. An old nickname for the chief—Marty MyCock—had found a renaissance in the locker rooms, parking lots, and bars where cops gathered on or off duty.
For a long time Bosch had kept the faith, but the year before, he had inadvertently helped the chief win a treacherous political battle with a city councilman who was the department’s top critic. It was a setup in which Bosch had been used by Kiz Rider. She got a promotion out of it—she was now a captain running West Valley Division. But Bosch had not spoken to her or the chief since.
Alta Rose returned through the inner sanctum door and held it open for Bosch.
“You have five minutes with the chief, Detective Bosch.”
“Thank you, Ms. Rose.”
Bosch entered and found Maycock sitting behind a large desk festooned with police and sports tchotchkes and memorabilia. The office was large and included a large private balcony, an adjoining boardroom with a twelve- foot-long meeting table, and a sweeping view of the civic center.
“Harry Bosch, I had a feeling I might hear from you today.”
They shook hands. Bosch stayed standing in front of the great wide desk. He couldn’t deny that he liked his old colleague. He just didn’t like what he was doing and what he had become.
“Then, why did you use O’Toole? Why didn’t you just call me up? You called me up last year on that Irving thing.”
“Yeah, but that got messy. I went with O’Toole and now it’s messy again.”
“What do you want, Marty?”
“Do I have to say it?”
“She was executed, Marty. Put up against a wall and shot in the eye. And because she was white, you don’t want me to clear it?”
“It’s not like that. Of course I want you to clear it. But it’s a sensitive situation. If it comes out big that the only riot killing we clear during the twentieth-anniversary year is the white girl murdered by some gangbanger, then we’re going to have to deal with some ugly shit. It’s been twenty years but we haven’t come that far, Harry. You never know what could light the match again.”
Bosch turned from the desk and looked out through the glass at City Hall.
“You’re talking about public relations,” he said. “I’m talking about murder. What happened to everybody counting, no matter who they are? Or were. Do you even remember that from Homicide Special?”
“Of course I do and it still stands, Harry. I’m not asking you to drop the case. Just put some space in it. Wait a month, till after the first, clear it then and clear it quietly. And we’ll tell the family and leave it at that. If we’re lucky, the suspect will be dead and we won’t have to worry about a trial. Meantime, O’Toole told me he had a hot shot from the Death Squad that you can run with. Maybe that one will bring us the kind of attention we want.”
Bosch shook his head.
“I have a case I’m running with now.”
Maycock was losing patience with Bosch. His ruddy complexion was turning a deeper red.
“Put it on hold and go with the hot shot.”
“Did O’Toole tell you that if I clear this one, I may clear five or six others?”
Maycock nodded but dismissed the news with a wave of the hand.
“Yeah, gangbangers all, and none during the riots.”
“This was your idea, to go into these cases.”
“How was I to know that you’d be the only one to get some traction on a case and it would happen to be Snow White? Jesus Christ, the name alone, Harry. In fact, no matter what happens, stop calling her that.”
Bosch took a few steps around the room. He found an angle where the spire of City Hall was doubled in the reflection of the glass skin of the PAB’s northern wing. Fresh kills or cold cases, the pursuit of killers had to be relentless. It was the only way to go and the only way Bosch knew how to go. But when political and social considerations intruded, his patience always stretched thin.
“Goddamn it, Marty,” he said.
“I know how you feel,” the chief said.
Bosch finally looked back at him.
“No, you don’t. Not anymore.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion.”
“But not to work my case.”
“Again, that is not what I’m saying. You keep putting it in a way that is not—”
“It’s too late, Marty. It’s about to break.”
“Break how?”
“I needed information about my victim. I went to the paper she worked for and traded information. I’m working with a reporter on it. If I blow it off now, he’ll know why and it will be a bigger story for that than for me closing it.”
“You son of a bitch. What paper? In Sweden?”
“Denmark. She was from Denmark. But don’t think it’ll stay in Denmark. The media is global. The story may break over there but it will ping-pong right back here—eventually. And you’ll have to answer to why you killed the investigation.”
Maycock grabbed a baseball off his desk and started working it with his fingers like a pitcher breaking in a new ball.
“You can go now,” he said.
“Okay. And?”
“And just get the hell out. We’re done.”
Bosch paused, then started moving toward the door.
“I will keep all public relations issues in mind as I proceed,” he said.
It was his meager offering.
“Yes, you do that, Detective,” the chief said.
As he left the suite, Bosch thanked Alta Rose for getting him in.
11
It was 6 P.M. when Bosch knocked on the door of the house on 73rd Place. Normally residential search warrants were executed in the morning hours so they drew little notice in the neighborhood. People were at work, at school, sleeping late.
But that wasn’t the plan this time. Bosch didn’t want to wait. The case had momentum and he didn’t want it to stall.
The door was answered after the third knock by a short woman in a housedress and a colorful bandana wrapped around her head. Tattoos rose like a scarf around her neck and up to her jawline. She stood behind a security gate, the kind most of the houses in the neighborhood had.
Bosch stood front and center on the front stoop. This was by design. Behind him were two white officers from the Gang Enforcement Detail. Jordy Gant and David Chu were standing farther back in the front yard and to the left. Bosch wanted to hammer home to the woman of the house that she was in for a major intrusion—uniformed white police officers searching through her home.
“Gail Briscoe? I’m Detective Bosch with the LAPD. I have a document here giving me access to search your home.”
“Search my home? For what?”
“This specifies that we are searching for a Beretta model ninety-two handgun known to have been in the possession of Trumont Story, who resided here until his death on December first, two thousand and nine.”
Bosch held the document out to her but she couldn’t reach for it because of the security door. He was hoping she wouldn’t anyway.
Instead, she went into full outrage.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” the woman said. “You ain’t comin’ in here and searching my place. This is my home, motherfuckers.”
“Ma’am,” Bosch said calmly. “Are you Gail Briscoe?”
