She cleared her throat before going into her appraisal of the story.

“As you have set down the circumstances of what happened, it is quite easy to see your rage. But not the ultimate action you took. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘a mad minute?’ ”

Bosch shook his head.

“It’s a way of describing a violent outburst that has its roots in several pressures on an individual. It builds up and is released in a quick moment-usually violently, often against a target not wholly responsible for the pressure.”

“If you need me to say Pounds was an innocent victim, I’m not going to say it.”

“I don’t need that. I just need you to look at this situation and how it could happen.”

“I don’t know. Shit just happens.”

“When you physically attack someone, don’t you feel that you lower yourself to the same level as the man who was set free?”

“Not by a long shot, Doctor. Let me tell you something, you can look at all parts of my life, you can throw in earthquakes, fires, floods, riots and even Vietnam, but when it came down to just me and Pounds in that glass room, none of that mattered. You can call it a mad minute or whatever you want. Sometimes, the moment is all that matters and in that moment I was doing the right thing. And if these sessions are designed to make me see I did something wrong, forget it. Irving buttonholed me the other day in the lobby and asked me to think about an apology. Fuck that. I did the right thing.”

She nodded, adjusted herself in her seat and looked more uncomfortable than she had through his long diatribe. Finally, she looked at her watch and he looked at his. His time was up.

“So,” he said, “I guess I’ve set the cause of psychotherapy back a century, huh?”

“No, not at all. The more you know of a person and the more you know of a story, the more you understand how things happen. It’s why I enjoy my job.”

“Same here.”

“Have you spoken to Lieutenant Pounds since the incident?”

“I saw him when I dropped off the keys to my car. He had it taken away. I went into his office and he practically got hysterical. He’s a very small man and I think he knows it.”

“They usually do.”

Bosch leaned forward, ready to get up and leave, when he noticed the envelope she had pushed to the side of her desk.

“What about the photos?”

“I knew you’d bring that up one more time.”

She looked at the envelope and frowned.

“I need to think about it. On several levels. Can I keep them while you go to Florida? Or will you need them?”

“You can keep ’em.”

Chapter Twenty-two

AT FOUR-FORTY IN the morning California time the air carrier landed at Tampa International Airport. Bosch leaned bleary-eyed against a window in the coach cabin, watching the sun rising in the Florida sky for the first time. As the plane taxied, he took off his watch and moved the hands ahead three hours. He was tempted to check into the nearest motel for some real sleep but knew he didn’t have the time. From the AAA map he had brought with him, it looked like it was at least a two-hour drive down to Venice.

“It’s nice to see a blue sky.”

It was the woman next to him in the aisle seat. She was leaning over toward him, looking out the window herself. She was in her mid-forties with prematurely gray hair. It was almost white. They had talked a bit in the early part of the flight and Bosch knew she was heading back to Florida rather than visiting as he was. She had given L.A. five years but had had enough. She was going home. Bosch didn’t ask who or what she was coming home to, but had wondered if her hair was white when she had first landed in L.A. five years before.

“Yeah,” he replied. “These night flights take forever.”

“No, I meant the smog. There is none.”

Bosch looked at her and then out the window, studying the sky.

“Not yet.”

But she was right. The sky had a quality of blue he rarely saw in L.A. It was the color of swimming pools, with billowing white cumulus clouds floating like dreams in the upper atmosphere.

The plane cleared out slowly. Bosch waited until the end, got up and rolled his back to relieve the tension. The joints of his backbone cracked like dominoes going down. He got his overnighter out of the compartment above and headed out.

As soon as he stepped off the plane into the jetway, the humidity surrounded him like a wet towel with an incubating warmth. He made it into the air-conditioned terminal and decided to scratch his plan to rent a convertible.

A half hour later he was on the 275 freeway crossing Tampa Bay in another rented Mustang. He had the windows up and the air-conditioning on but he was sweating as his body still had not acclimated to the humidity.

What struck him most about Florida on this first drive was its flatness. For forty-five minutes not a hillrise came in sight until he reached the concrete-and-steel mountain called the Skyway Bridge. Bosch knew that the steeply graded bridge over the mouth of the bay was a replacement for one that had fallen but he drove across it fearlessly and above the speed limit. After all, he came from postquake Los Angeles, where the unofficial speed limit under bridges and overpasses was on the far right side of the speedometer.

After the skyway the freeway merged with the 75 and he reached Venice two hours after landing. Cruising along the Tamiami Trail, he found the small pastel-painted motels inviting as he struggled with fatigue, but he drove on and looked for a gift shop and a pay phone.

He found both in the Coral Reef Shopping Plaza. The Tacky’s Gifts and Cards store wasn’t due to open until ten and Bosch had five minutes to waste. He went to a pay phone on the outside wall of the sand-colored plaza and looked up the post office in the book. There were two in town so Bosch took out his notebook and checked Jake McKittrick’s zip code. He called one of the post offices listed in the book and learned that the other one catered to the zip code Bosch had. He thanked the clerk who had provided the information and hung up.

When the gift shop opened, Bosch went to the cards aisle and found a birthday card that came with a bright red envelope. He took it to the counter without even reading the inside or the outside of the card. He picked a local street map out of a display next to the cash register and put that on the counter as well.

“That’s a nice card,” said the old woman who rang up the sale. “I’m sure she’ll just love it.”

She moved as if she were underwater and Bosch wanted to reach over the counter and punch in the numbers himself, just to get it going.

In the Mustang, Bosch put the card in the envelope without signing it, sealed it and wrote McKittrick’s name and post office box number on the front. He then started the car and got back on the road.

It took him fifteen minutes working with the map to find the post office on West Venice Avenue. When he got inside, he found it largely deserted. An old man was standing at a table slowly writing an address on an envelope. Two elderly women were in line for counter service. Bosch stood behind them and realized that he was seeing a lot of senior citizens in Florida and he’d only been here a few hours. It was just like he had always heard.

Bosch looked around and saw the video camera on the wall behind the counter. He could tell by its positioning it was there more for recording customers and possible robbers than for surveilling the clerks, though their workstations were probably fully in view as well. He was undeterred. He took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket, folded it cleanly and held it with the red envelope. He then checked his loose change and came up with the right amount. It seemed like an excruciatingly long time as the one clerk waited on the women.