Bosch slid the report back into the dispatch envelope and dropped it on the desk. The report was inconclusive but to Bosch the factors Jesper had outlined leaned toward the skateboard not having been Arthur Delacroix’s. In his mind the report tilted toward clearing rather than implicating Nicholas Trent in the boy’s death. In the morning he would type up a report with his conclusions and give it to Lt. Billets to send up the chain to Deputy Chief Irving’s office.

As if to punctuate the end of this line of investigation, the sound of the back door to the station banging open echoed down the hallway. Several loud male voices followed, all heading out into the night. Roll call was over and fresh troops were taking the field, their voices full of us-versus-them bravado.

The police chief’s wishes notwithstanding, Bosch flicked off the light and headed back down the hallway to the watch office. There were two sergeants in the small office. Lenkov was going off duty, while Renshaw was just starting her shift. They both registered surprise at Bosch’s appearance so late at night but then didn’t ask him what he was doing in the station.

“So,” Bosch said, “anything on my guy, Johnny Stokes?”

“Nothing yet,” Lenkov said. “But we’re looking. We’re putting it out at all roll calls and we’ve got the pictures in the cars now. So…”

“You’ll let me know.”

“We’ll let you know.”

Renshaw nodded her agreement.

Bosch thought about asking if Julia Brasher had come in to end her shift yet but thought better of it. He thanked them and stepped back into the hallway. The conversation had felt odd, like they couldn’t wait for him to get out of there. He sensed it was because of the word getting around about him and Julia. Maybe they knew she was coming off of shift and wanted to avoid seeing them together. As supervisors they would then be witnesses to what was an infraction of department policy. As minor and rarely enforced as the rule was, things would be better all the way around if they didn’t see the infraction and then have to look the other way.

Bosch walked out the back door and into the parking lot. He had no idea whether Julia was in the station locker room, still out on patrol or had come and gone already. Mid-shifts were fluid. You didn’t come in until the watch sergeant sent your replacement out.

He found her car in the parking lot and knew he hadn’t missed her. He walked back toward the station to sit down on the Code 7 bench. But when he got to it, Julia was already sitting there. Her hair was slightly wet from the locker room shower. She wore faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved pullover with a high neck.

“I heard you were in the house,” she said. “I checked and saw the light out and thought maybe I’d missed you.”

“Just don’t tell the chief about the lights.”

She smiled and Bosch sat down next to her. He wanted to touch her but didn’t.

“Or us,” he said.

She nodded.

“Yeah. A lot of people know, don’t they?”

“Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that. Can you get a drink?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s walk over to the Cat and Fiddle. I’m tired of driving today.”

Rather than walk through the station together and out the front door, they took the long way through the parking lot and around the station. They walked two blocks up to Sunset and then another two down to the pub. Along the way Bosch apologized for missing her in the squad room before her shift and explained he had driven to Palm Springs. She was very quiet as they walked, mostly just nodding her head at his explanations. They didn’t talk about the issue at hand until they reached the pub and slid into one of the booths by the fireplace.

They both ordered pints of Guinness and then Julia folded her arms on the table and fixed Bosch with a hard stare.

“Okay, Harry, I’ve got my drink coming. You can give it to me. But I have to warn you, if you are going to say you want to just be friends, well, I already have enough friends.”

Bosch couldn’t help but break into a broad smile. He loved her boldness, her directness. He started shaking his head.

“Nah, I don’t want to be your friend, Julia. Not at all.”

He reached across the table and squeezed her forearm. Instinctively, he glanced around the pub to make sure no one from the cop shop had wandered over for an after-shift drink. He didn’t recognize anyone and looked back at Julia.

“What I want is to be with you. Just like we’ve been.”

“Good. So do I.”

“But we have to be careful. You haven’t been around the department long enough. I have and I know how things get around, and so it’s my fault. We should’ve never left your car in the station lot that first night.”

“Oh, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

“No, it’s-”

He waited while the barmaid put their beers down on little paper coasters with the Guinness seal on them.

“It’s not like that, Julia,” he said when they were alone again. “If we’re going to keep going, we need to be more careful. We have to go underground. No more meeting at the bench, no more notes, no more anything like that. We can’t even go here anymore because cops come here. We have to be totally underground. We meet outside the division, we talk outside the division.”

“You make it sound like we’re a couple of spies or something.”

Bosch picked up his glass, clicked it off hers and drank deeply from it. It tasted so good after such a long day. He immediately had to stifle a yawn, which Julia caught and repeated.

“Spies? That’s not too far off. You forget, I’ve been in this department more than twenty-five years. You’re just a boot, a baby. I’ve got more enemies inside the wire than you’ve got arrests under your belt. Some of these people would take any opportunity to put me down if they could. It sounds like I’m just worrying about myself here, but the thing is if they need to go after a rookie to get to me, they’ll do it in a heartbeat. I mean that. A heartbeat.”

She turtled her head down and looked both ways.

“Okay, Harry-I mean, Secret Agent double-oh-forty-five.”

Bosch smiled and shook his head.

“Yeah, yeah, you think it’s all a joke. Wait until you get your first IAD jacket. Then you’ll see the light.”

“Come on, I don’t think it’s a joke. I’m just having fun.”

They both drank from their beers, and Bosch leaned back and tried to relax. The heat from the fireplace felt good. The walk over had been brisk. He looked at Julia and she was smiling like she knew a secret about him.

“What?”

“Nothing. You just get so worked up.”

“I’m trying to protect you, that’s all. I’m plus-twenty-five, so it doesn’t matter as much to me.”

“What does that mean? I’ve heard people say that-‘plus-twenty-five’-like they’re untouchable or something.”

Bosch shook his head.

“Nobody’s untouchable. But after you hit twenty-five years in, you top out on the pension scale. So it doesn’t matter if you quit at twenty-five years or thirty-five years, you get the same pension. So ‘plus-twenty-five’ means you have some fuck-you room. You don’t like what they’re doing to you, you can always pull the pin and say have a nice day. Because you’re not in it for the check and the bennies anymore.”

The waitress came back to the table and put down a basket of popcorn. Julia let some time go by and then leaned across the table, her chin almost over the mouth of her pint.

“Then what are you in it for?”

Bosch shrugged his shoulders and looked down at his glass.

“The job, I guess… Nothing big, nothing heroic. Just the chance to maybe make things right every now and then in a fucked-up world.”

He used his thumb to draw patterns on the frosted glass. He continued speaking without taking his eyes off the glass.

“This case, for example…”

“What about it?”

“If we can just figure it out and put it together… we can maybe make up a little bit for what happened to that kid. I don’t know, I think it might mean something, something really small, to the world.”