Bosch nodded his thanks. He made a move toward leaving but then looked back up at her and smiled.

“You’re not going to believe this, especially in light of what just happened, but we’re looking at Trent again. The skateboard. SID found a link to the boy on it.”

Billets threw her head back and laughed loudly, loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the squad room.

“Well,” she said, “when Irving hears that, he’s definitely going to change RHD to Southeast Division, for sure.”

Her reference was to the gang-infested district at the far end of the city. A posting that would be the pure-form example of freeway therapy.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Bosch said.

Billets dropped the smile and got serious. She asked Bosch about the latest turn in the case and listened intently while he outlined the plan to put together what would basically be a full-life profile on the dead set decorator.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said when he was finished. “I’ll take you guys off rotation. No sense in you pulling a new case if you’re splitting for RHD. I’m also authorizing weekend OT. So work on Trent and hit it hard and let me know. You’ve got four days, Harry. Don’t leave this one on the table when you go.”

Bosch nodded and left the office. On his way back to his space he knew all eyes in the squad room were on him. He gave nothing away. He sat down at his space and kept his eyes down.

“So?” Edgar eventually whispered. “What did you get?”

“RHD.”

“RHD?”

He had practically yelled it. It would now be known to all in the squad room. Bosch felt his face getting red. He knew everybody else would be looking at him.

“Jesus Christ,” Edgar said. “First Kiz and now you. What am I, fucking chopped liver?”

Chapter 48

KIND of Blue played on the stereo. Bosch held a bottle of beer and leaned back in the recliner with his eyes closed. It had been a confusing day at the end of a confusing week. He now just wanted to let the music move through him and clear out his insides. He felt sure that what he was looking for he already had in his possession. It was a matter of ordering things and getting rid of the unimportant things that cluttered the view.

He and Edgar had worked until seven before deciding on an early night. Edgar couldn’t concentrate. The news of Bosch’s transfer had affected him more deeply than it did Bosch. Edgar perceived it as a slight against him because he wasn’t chosen to go to RHD. Bosch tried to calm him by assuring him that it was a pit of snakes that Bosch would be entering, but it was no use. Bosch pulled the plug and told his partner to go home, have a drink and get a good night’s sleep. They would work through the weekend gathering information on Trent.

Now it was Bosch who was having the drink and falling asleep in his chair. He sensed he was at a threshold of some sort. He was about to begin a new and clearly defined time in his life. A time of higher danger, higher stakes and higher rewards. It made him smile, now that he knew no one was watching him.

The phone rang and Bosch bolted upright. He clicked off the stereo and went into the kitchen. When he answered, a woman’s voice told him to hold for Deputy Chief Irving. After a long moment Irving’s voice came on the line.

“Detective Bosch?”

“Yes?”

“You received your transfer orders today?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Good. I wanted to let you know that I made the decision to bring you back to Robbery-Homicide Division.”

“Why is that, Chief?”

“Because I decided after our last conversation to hold out one last chance to you. This assignment is that chance. You will be in a position where I can watch your moves very closely.”

“What position is that?”

“You were not told?”

“I was just told to report to RHD next pay period. That was it.”

There was silence on the phone and Bosch thought now he would find the sand in the engine oil. He was going back to RHD, but as what? He tried to think, What was the worst assignment within the best assignment?

Irving finally spoke.

“You are getting your old job back. Homicide Special. An opening came up today when Detective Thornton turned in his badge.”

“Thornton.”

“That is correct.”

“I’ll be working with Kiz Rider?”

“That will be up to Lieutenant Henriques. But Detective Rider is currently without a partner and you have an established working relationship with her.”

Bosch nodded. The kitchen was dark. He was elated but did not want to transmit his feelings over the phone to Irving.

As if knowing these thoughts, Irving said, “Detective, you may feel as though you fell into the sewer but came out smelling like a rose. Do not think that. Do not make any assumptions. Do not make any mistakes. If you do, I will be there. Am I clear?”

“Crystal clear.”

Irving hung up without another word. Bosch stood there in the dark holding the phone to his ear until it started making a loud, annoying tone. He hung up and went back into the living room. He thought about calling Kiz and seeing what she knew but decided he would wait. When he sat back down on the recliner he felt something hard jab into his hip. He knew it wasn’t his gun because he had already unclipped it. He reached into his pocket and came up with his mini-cassette recorder.

He turned it on and listened to his verbal exchange with Surtain, the TV reporter outside Trent’s house on the night he killed himself. Filtering it through the history of what would happen, Bosch felt guilty and thought that maybe he should have done or said more in an effort to stop the reporter.

After he heard the car door slam on the tape he stopped it and hit the rewind button. He realized that he had not yet heard the whole interview with Trent because he had been out of earshot while searching some parts of the house. He decided he would listen to the interview now. It would be a starting point for the weekend’s investigation.

As he listened, Bosch tried to analyze the words and sentences for new meanings, things that would reveal a killer. All the while he was warring with his own instincts. As he listened to Trent speak in almost desperate tones he still felt convinced the man was not the killer, that his protests of innocence had been true. And this of course contradicted what he now knew. The skateboard-found in Trent’s house-had the dead boy’s initials on it and the year he both got the skateboard and was killed. The skateboard now served as a tombstone of sorts. A marker for Bosch.

He finished the Trent interview, but nothing in it, including the parts he had not previously heard, sparked any ideas in him. He rewound the tape and decided to play it again. And it was early in the second go-through that he picked up on something that made his face suddenly grow hot, almost with a feeling of being feverish. He quickly reversed the tape and replayed the exchange between Edgar and Trent that had drawn his attention. He remembered standing in the hallway in Trent’s house and listening to this part of the interview. But he had missed its significance until this moment.

“Did you like watching the kids play up there in the woods, Mr. Trent?”

“No, I couldn’t see them if they were up in the woods. On occasion I would be driving up or walking my dog-when he was alive-and I would see the kids climbing up there. The girl across the street. The Fosters next door. All the kids around here. It’s a city-owned right-of-way-the only undeveloped land in the neighborhood. So they went up there to play. Some of the neighbors thought the older ones went up there to smoke cigarettes, and the concern was they would set the whole hillside on fire.”

He turned off the tape and went back to the kitchen and the phone. Edgar answered after one ring. Bosch could tell he had not been asleep. It was only nine o’clock.