Bosch looked away. He wished he could light a cigarette but the county had passed a no-smoking code, even in the jail. It had nearly caused an inmate riot.

“Look,” he said to Rickard, “I don’t know what to tell you about Moore. I’m working on it but I’m not, you know what I mean? Thing is, it runs across two cases I do have. So, it’s unavoidable. If this kid can give me Dance, then it’s a help. I could look at Dance for my two cases, maybe even Moore’s. But I don’t know that. I do know, and they will go public with this today, that Moore looks like a homicide. What they won’t go public with is that he crossed. That’s why IAD was sniffing around. He crossed.”

“Can’t be,” Rickard said, but there was no conviction in it. “I’d’ve known.”

“You can’t know people that well, man. Everybody’s got a private room.”

“So what’s Parker Center going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think they know what to do. I think they wanted to let it go as suicide. But the ME started making waves, so they’ll call it homicide. But I don’t think they are going to put the dirty laundry basket out there on Spring Street for every reporter in town to pick through.”

“Well, they better get their shit together. I’m not going to stand by. I don’t care if he crossed, man. I’ve seen him do things. He was a good cop. I’ve seen him go into a gallery and take out four dealers without a backup. I’ve seen him step between a pimp and his property and take the punch meant for her, pop his teeth right onto the sidewalk. I been with him when he blew nine stoplights trying to get a wretched old hype to the hospital before he went out on a heroin overdose.

“Those aren’t things a cop on the pad does. So what I’m saying is that if he crossed, then I think he was trying to cross back and that’s why somebody did him.”

He stopped then and Bosch didn’t interrupt the silence. They both knew that once you cross, you can never come back. Bosch could hear footsteps coming toward the bars.

Rickard said, “They better show me something down there at Parker, not let this thing go. Or I’ll show them something.”

Bosch wanted to say something but the deputy was at the door with Tyge. He looked like he had aged ten years in the last ten hours. Now he had a distance in his eyes that reminded Bosch of men he had seen and known in Vietnam. There was also a bruise high on his left cheekbone.

The door was slid open by means of unseen electronics and the boy/man walked to the bench after the deputy pointed the way. He sat down tentatively and seemed purposely to keep his eyes away from Rickard.

“How’s it hanging, Kerwin?” Rickard asked.

Now the boy looked at Rickard and his eyes made Bosch’s stomach knot. He remembered the first night he had spent in McLaren Youth Hall as a boy. The pure fear and screaming loneliness. And there he had been surrounded by kids, most of them nonviolent. This boy had been surrounded for the last twelve hours by wild animals. Bosch felt ashamed to be part of this but said nothing. It was Rickard’s show.

“Look, my man, I know you’re probably having a not-so-fun time in there. That’s why we came by, t’see if you changed your mind any about what we discussed last night.”

Rickard was speaking very low so the monster at the end would not hear.

When the boy said nothing, gave no indication that he even heard, Rickard pressed on.

“Kerwin, you want out of here? Here’s your man. Mr. Harry Bosch. He’ll let me drop the whole thing, even though it was a righteous bust, if you talk to us about this cat Dance. Here, look-it here.”

Rickard unfolded a piece of white paper from his shirt pocket. It was a standard case-filing form from the district attorney’s office.

“Man, I have forty-eight hours to file a case on you. ’Cause of the weekend, that’s puts it over ’til Monday. This here is the paperwork about you. I haven’t done nothing with it ’cause I wanted to check with you one more time to see if you wanted to help yourself out. If you don’t, then I’ll go file it and this will be your home for the next-probably you’re looking at a year with good time.”

Rickard waited and nothing happened.

“A year. What do you think you’ll be like after a year back in there, Kerwin?”

The boy looked down for a moment and then the tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Go to hell,” he managed to say in a strangled voice.

Bosch already was there. He would remember this one for a long time. He realized that he was clenching his teeth and tried to relax his jaw. He couldn’t.

Rickard leaned forward to say something to the boy but Bosch put his hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Fuck it,” Bosch said. “Cut him loose.”

“What?”

“We’re dropping it.”

“The fuck you talking about?”

The boy looked over at Bosch, an expression of skepticism on his face. But it was no act with Bosch. He felt sick at what they had done.

“Look,” Rickard said. “We got two ounces of PCP off this asshole. He’s mine. If he don’t want to help out, then too fucking bad. He goes back into the zoo.”

“No, he doesn’t.” And then Bosch leaned close to Rickard so the deputy behind the boy could not hear. “No, he doesn’t, Rickard. We’re taking him out. Now do it, or I’m going to fuck you up.”

“What did you say?”

“I’ll go to the fifth floor with it. This boy should’ve never been up here with that charge. That’s on you, Rickard. I’ll make the complaint. Your connection in here will get burned too. You want that? Just because you couldn’t get this kid to talk?”

“You think IAD’s going to give a shit about a little punk pusher?”

“No. But they’ll give a shit about bagging you. They’ll love you. You’ll come out walking slower than this boy.”

Harry leaned back away from him. Nobody said anything for a few moments and Bosch could see Rickard thinking it through, trying to decide if it was a bluff.

“A guy like you, going to IAD. I can’t see it.”

“That’s the risk you take.”

Rickard looked down at the paper in his hand and then slowly crumpled it.

“Okay, my man, but you better put me on the list.”

“What list?”

“The one you got of people you have to watch your back with.”

Bosch stood up and so did Rickard.

“We’re cutting him loose,” Rickard said to the guard.

Bosch pointed to the boy and said, “I want an escort with this man until he is out of there, got it?”

The deputy nodded. The boy said nothing.

It took an hour to get him out. After Rickard signed the appropriate papers and they got their badges back, they waited wordlessly by the glass window on the seventh floor.

Bosch was disgusted with himself. He had lost sight of the art. Solving cases was simply getting people to talk to you. Not forcing them to talk. He had forgotten that this time.

“You can go if you want,” he said to Rickard.

“As soon as he walks out that door and you’ve got him, I’m gone. Want nothing to do with him. But I want to see him leave with you, Bosch. In case any of this comes back on me.”

“Yeah, that’s smart.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But you still’ve got a lot to learn, Rickard. Everything isn’t black and white. Not everybody has to be ground into the sidewalk. You take a kid like that and-”

“Spare me the lesson, Bosch. I might have a lot to learn but it won’t be from you. You’re a class A fuckup. Think the only thing you could teach me is how to climb down the ladder. No thanks.”

“Sure,” Bosch said and walked to the other side of the room where there was a bench. He sat down and fifteen minutes later the boy came out. He walked between Rickard and Bosch to the elevator. Outside the Hall of Justice, Rickard headed off to his car after simply saying to Bosch, “Fuck you.”

“Right,” Bosch said.

He stood on the sidewalk, lit a cigarette and offered one to the boy. He declined.

“I’m not telling you anything,” the boy said.