“It’s warm over here by the fire,” he said. He dawdled a bit over the filet and then said, “I think what it was is that maybe they didn’t want anybody checking around that USDA contractor’s business. You know? They didn’t want that body connected to that place. So they take the guy’s body far away.”

“Yeah, but all the way to L.A.?”

“Maybe they were… well, I don’t know. That is pretty far away.”

They were both silent with their thoughts for a few moments. Bosch could hear and smell the pineapple sizzling as it dripped on the coals. He said, “How do you smuggle a dead body across the border?”

“Oh, I think they’ve smuggled larger things than that across, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“Ever been down there, Harry, to Mexicali?”

“Just to drive through on my way to Bahia San Felipe, where I went fishing last summer. I never stopped. You?”

“Never.”

“You know the name of the town just across the border? On our side?”

“Uh uh.”

“Calexico.”

“You’re kidding? Is that where-”

“Yup.”

The fish was done. He forked it onto a plate, put the cover on the grill and they went inside. He served it with Spanish rice he made with Pico Pico. He opened a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. Blood of the gods. He didn’t have any white. As he put everything on the table he saw a smile on her face.

“Thought I was a TV dinner guy, didn’t you?”

“Crossed my mind. This is very nice.”

They clicked glasses and ate quietly. She complimented him on the meal but he knew the fish was a little too dry. They descended into small talk again. The whole time he was looking for the opening to ask her about the Moore autopsy. It didn’t come until they were finished.

“What will you do now?” she asked after putting her napkin on the table.

“Guess I’ll clear the table and see if-”

“No. You know what I mean. About the Juan Doe case.”

“I’m not sure. I want to talk to Porter again. And I’ll probably look up the USDA. I’d like to know more about how those flies get here from Mexico.”

She nodded and said, “Let me know if you want to talk to the entomologist. I can arrange that.”

He watched her as she once again got the far-off stare that had been intruding all night.

“What about you?” he asked. “What will you do now?”

“About what?”

“About the problems with the Moore autopsy.”

“That obvious, huh?”

He got up and cleared the plates away. She didn’t move from the table. He sat back down and emptied the bottle into the glasses. He decided he would have to give her something in order for her to feel comfortable giving him something in return.

“Listen to me, Teresa. I think you and I should talk about things. I think we have two investigations, probably three investigations, here, that may all be part of the same thing. Like different spokes on the same wheel.”

She brought her eyes up, confused. “What cases? What are you talking about?”

“I know that all of what I’m about to say is outside your venue but I think you need to know it to help make your decision. I’ve been watching you all night and I can tell you have a problem and don’t know what to do.”

He hesitated, giving her a chance to stop him. She didn’t. He told her about Marvin Dance’s arrest and its relation to the Jimmy Kapps murder.

“When I found out Kapps had been bringing ice over from Hawaii, I went to Cal Moore to ask about black ice. You know, the competition. I wanted to know where it comes from, where you get it, who’s selling it, anything that would help me get a picture of who might’ve put down Jimmy Kapps. Anyway, the point is I thought Moore shined me on, said he knew nothing, but today I find out he was putting together a file on black ice. He was gathering string on my case. He held stuff back from me, but at the same time was putting something together on this when he disappeared. I got the file today. There was a note. It said ‘Give to Harry Bosch’ on it.”

“What was in it? The file.”

“A lot. Including an intelligence report, says the main source of black ice is probably a ranch down in Mexicali.”

She stared at him but said nothing.

“Which brings us to our Juan Doe. Porter bails out and the case comes to me today. I am reading through the file and I’ll give you one guess who it was that found the body and then disappeared the next day.”

“Shit,” she said.

“Exactly. Cal Moore. What this means I don’t know. But he is the reporting officer on the body. The next day he is in the wind. The next week he is found in a motel room, a supposed suicide. And then the next day-after the discovery of Moore has been in the papers and on TV-Porter calls up and says, ‘Guess what, guys, I quit.’ Does all of this sound aboveboard to you?”

She abruptly stood up and walked to the sliding door to the porch. She stared through the glass out across the pass.

“Those bastards,” she said. “They just want to drop the whole thing. Because it might embarrass somebody.”

Bosch walked up behind her.

“You have to tell somebody about it. Tell me.”

“No. I can’t. You tell me everything.”

“I’ve told you. There isn’t much else and it’s all a jumble. The file didn’t have much, other than that the DEA told Moore that black ice is coming up from Mexicali. That’s how I guessed about the fruit fly contractor. And then there’s Moore. He grew up in Calexico and Mexicali. You see? There are too many coincidences here that I don’t think are coincidences.”

She still faced the door and he was talking to her back, but he saw the reflection of her worried face in the glass. He could smell her perfume.

“The important thing about the file is that Moore didn’t keep it in his office or his apartment. It was in a place where someone from IAD or RHD wouldn’t find it. And when the guys on his crew found it, there was the note that said to give it to me. You understand?”

The confused look in the glass answered for her. She turned and moved into the living room, sitting on the cushioned chair and running her hands through her hair. Harry stayed standing and paced on the wood floor in front of her.

“Why would he write a note saying give the file to me? It wouldn’t have been a note to himself. He already knew he was putting the file together for me. So, the note was for someone else. And what does that tell us? That he either knew when he wrote it that he was going to kill himself. Or he-”

“Knew he was going to be killed,” she said.

Bosch nodded. “Or, at least, he knew he had gotten into something too deep. That he was in trouble. In danger.”

“Jesus,” she said.

Harry approached and handed her her wineglass. He bent down close to her face.

“You have to tell me about the autopsy. Something’s wrong. I heard that bullshit press release they put out. Inconclusive. What is that shit? Since when can’t you tell if a shotgun blast to the face killed somebody or not?

“So tell me, Teresa. We can figure out what to do.”

She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, but Harry knew she was going to tell.

“They told me because I wasn’t a hundred percent-Harry, you can’t reveal where you got this information. You can’t.”

“It won’t get back to you. If I have to, I will use it to help us, but it won’t get back to you. That’s my promise.”

“They told me not to discuss it with anyone because I couldn’t be completely sure. The assistant chief, Irving, that arrogant prick knew just where to stick it in. Talking about the County Commission deciding soon about my position. Saying they would be looking for a chief ME who knew discretion. Saying what friends he had on the commission. I’d like to take a scalpel-”

“Never mind all of that. What was it you weren’t one hundred percent sure about?”

She drained her wineglass. Then the story came out. She told him that the autopsy had proceeded as routine, other than the fact that in addition to the two case detectives observing it, Sheehan and Chastain from IAD, was assistant police chief Irving. She said a lab technician was also on hand to make the fingerprint comparisons.