“Well, now, you can tell him all the rest I told you.”

“No chance. This conversation didn’t take place. I gotta try to put it all together like it was my own before I hand anything over to him.”

Bosch was thinking quickly. What else was there to ask?

“What about the note? That’s the part that doesn’t fit now. If it was no suicide then where’s this note come from?”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. That’s why we gave the coroner such a hard time. Far as we can guess, he either had it all along in his back pocket or whoever did him made him write it. I don’t know.”

“Yeah.” Bosch thought a moment. “Would you write a note like that if somebody was about to put you down on the floor?”

“I don’t know, man. People do things you’d never expect when they’ve got the gun on them. They always’ve got hope that things might turn out all right. That’s the way I see it.”

Bosch nodded. But he didn’t know if he agreed or not.

“I gotta go,” Sheehan said. “Let me know what comes up.”

Bosch nodded and Sheehan left him there with two cups of coffee on the table. A few moments later Sheehan was back.

“You know, I never told you, it was too bad about what happened with you. We could use you back here, Harry. I’ve always thought that.”

Bosch looked up at him.

“Yeah, Frankie. Thanks.”

14

The Medfly Eradication Project Center was at the edge of East L.A., on San Fernando Road not far from County-USC Med Center, which housed the morgue. Bosch was tempted to drop by to see Teresa but he figured he should give her time to cool. He also figured that decision was cowardly but he didn’t change it. He just kept driving.

The project center was a former county psychiatric ward which had been abandoned to that cause years earlier when Supreme Court rulings made it virtually impossible for the government-in the form of the police-to take the mentally ill off the streets and hold them for observation and public safety. The San Fernando Road ward was closed as the country consolidated its psych centers.

It had been used since for a variety of purposes, including a set for a slasher movie about a haunted nuthouse and even a temporary morgue when an earthquake damaged the facility at County-USC a few years back. Bodies had been stored in two refrigerated trucks in the parking lot. Because of the emergency situation, county administrators had to get the first trucks they could get their hands on. Painted on the side of one of them had been the words “Live Maine Lobsters!” Bosch remembered reading about it in the “Only in L.A. ” column in theTimes.

There was a check-in post at the entry manned by a state police officer. Bosch rolled down the window, badged him and asked who the head medfly eradicator was. He was directed to a parking space and an entrance to the administration suite.

The door to the suite still said No Unescorted Patients on it. Bosch went through and down a hallway, nodding to and passing another state officer. He came to a secretary’s desk where he identified himself again to the woman sitting there and asked to see the entomologist in charge. She made a quick phone call to someone and then escorted Harry into a nearby office, introducing him to a man named Roland Edson. The secretary hovered near the door with a shocked look on her face until Edson finally told her that would be all.

When they were alone in the office, Edson said, “I kill flies for a living, not people, Detective. Is this a serious visit?”

Edson laughed hard and Bosch forced a smile to be polite. Edson was a small man in a short-sleeved white shirt and pale green tie. His bald scalp had been freckled by the sun and was scarred by misjudgments. He wore thick, rimless glasses that magnified his eyes and made him somewhat resemble his quarry. Behind his back his subordinates probably called him “The Fly.”

Bosch explained that he was working a homicide case and could not tell Edson a lot of the background because the investigation was of a highly confidential nature. He warned him that other investigators might be back with more questions. He asked for some general information about the breeding and transport of sterile fruit flies into the state, hoping that the appeal for expert advice would get the bureaucrat to open up.

Edson responded by giving him much of the same information Teresa Corazón had already provided, but Bosch acted as if it was all new to him and took notes.

“Here’s the specimen here, Detective,” Edson said, holding up a paperweight. It was a glass block in which a fruit fly had been perpetually cast, like a prehistoric ant caught in amber.

Bosch nodded and steered the interview specifically toward Mexicali. The entomologist said the breeding contractor there was a company called EnviroBreed. He said EnviroBreed shipped an average of thirty million flies to the eradication center each week.

“How do they get here?” Bosch asked.

“In the pupal stage, of course.”

“Of course. But my question is how?”

“This is the stage in which the insect is nonfeeding, immobile. It is what we call the transformation stage between larva and imago-adult. This works out quite well because it is an ideal point for transport. They come in incubators, if you will. Environment boxes, we call them. And then, of course, shortly after they get here metamorphosis is completed and they are ready to be released as adults.”

“So when they get here, they have already been dyed and irradiated?”

“That is correct. I said that.”

“And they are in the pupal stage, not larva?”

“Larvae is the plural, Detective, but, yes, that is essentially correct. I said that, also.”

Bosch was beginning to think Edson was essentially an officious prick. He was sure they definitely called him The Fly around here.

“Okay,” Harry said. “So what if, here in L.A., I found a larvae, I mean a larva, that was dyed but not irradiated? Is that possible?”

Edson was silent a moment. He didn’t want to speak too soon and be wrong. Bosch was getting the idea that he was the type of guy who watched “Jeopardy” on the tube each night and barked out the answers ahead of the contestants even if he was alone.

“Well, Detective, any given scenario is possible. I would, however, say the example you just gave is highly unlikely. As I said, our suppliers send the pupae packages through an irradiation machine before they are shipped here. In these packages we often find larvae mixed with the pupae because it would generally be impossible to completely separate the two. But these larvae samplings have been through the same irradiation as the pupae. So, no, I don’t see it.”

“So if I had a person who on their body carried a single pupa that had been dyed but not irradiated, that person would not have come from here, right?”

“Yes, that would be my answer.”

“Would?”

“Yes, Detective, thatis my answer.”

“Then where would this person have come from?”

Edson gave it some thought first. He used the eraser end of a pencil he had been fiddling with to press his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

“I take it this person is dead, you having introduced yourself as a homicide detective and obviously being unable to ask the person this question yourself.”

“You should be on ‘Jeopardy,’ Mr. Edson.”

“It’s Doctor. Anyway, I couldn’t begin to guess where the person would have picked up this specimen you speak of.”

“He could have been from one of the breeders you mentioned, down in Mexico or over in Hawaii, couldn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s a possibility. One of them.”

“And what’s another?”

“Well, Mr. Bosch, you saw the security we have around here. Frankly, there are some people who are not happy with what we are doing. Some extremists believe nature should take its course. If the medfly comes to southern California, who are we to try to eradicate it? Some people believe we have no business being in this business. There have been threats from some groups. Anonymous, but nevertheless, threats to breed nonsterile medflies and release them, causing a massive infestation. Now, if I were going to do that, I might dye them to obfuscate my opponent.”