A Darkness More Than Night

again. Then the interrogators switched rooms and they heard the same questions once more from different mouths. Five hours after the shooting on The Following Sea the doors were opened and McCaleb and Bosch stepped out into a hallway at Parker Center. Bosch came up to him then.
    “You okay?”
    “Tired.”
    “Yeah.”
    McCaleb watched him put a cigarette in his mouth but not light it.
    “I’m heading out to the sheriff’s,” Bosch said. “I want to be there.”
    McCaleb nodded.
    “I’ll see you there.”

    ***

    They stood side by side behind the one-way glass, squeezed in next to the videographer. McCaleb was close enough to smell Bosch’s menthol cigarette breath and the glove-box cologne he had seen him put on in his car while driving behind him out to Whittier. He could see the faint reflection of Bosch’s face in the glass and he realized he was looking through it into what was happening in the next room.
    On the other side of the glass was a conference table with Rudy Tafero seated next to a public defender named Arnold Prince. Tafero had white tape spread across his nose and cotton in both nostrils. He had six stitches in the crown of his head which could not be seen because of his full head of hair. Paramedics had treated him for a broken nose and the head laceration at Cabrillo Marina.
    Across from Tafero sat Jaye Winston. To her right was Alice Short, from the DA’s office. To her left were Deputy Chief Irvin Irving of the LAPD and Donald Twilley of the FBI. The early morning hours had been spent with all law enforcement agencies remotely involved in the investigation jockeying for the best position to take advantage of what all players knew to be a major case. It was now six-thirty in the morning and time to question the suspect.
    It had been decided that Winston would handle the questioning – it being her case from the beginning – while the other three looked on and were available to her for advice. She began the interview by stating the date, time and identities of those in the room. She then read Tafero his constitutional rights and had him sign an acknowledgment form. His attorney said that Tafero would not be making a statement at the present time.
    “That’s fine,” Winston said, her eyes on Tafero. “I don’t need him to talk to me. I want to talk to him. I want to give him an idea of what he is facing here. I don’t want there to be any regrets down the line over miscommunications or his passing up the one opportunity to cooperate that he’ll be given.”
    She looked down at the file in front of her and opened it. McCaleb recognized the top sheet as a DA’s office complaint form.
    “Mr. Tafero,” Winston began, “I want you to know that this morning we are charging you with the first-degree murder of Edward Gunn on January first of this year, the attempted murder of Terrell McCaleb on this date, and the murder of Jesse Tafero, also on this date. I know you know the law but I am compelled to explain the last charge. Your brother’s death occurred during the commission of a felony. Therefore, under California law you, as his co-conspirator, are held responsible for his death.”
    She waited a beat, staring into Tafero’s seemingly dead eyes. She went back to reading the complaint.
    “Further, you should know that the district attorney’s office has agreed to file a count of special circumstances in regard to the murder of Edward Gunn. To wit, murder for hire. The addition of special circumstances will make it a death penalty case. Alice?”
    Short leaned forward. She was an attractive, petite woman in her late thirties with big, engaging eyes. She was the deputy chief in charge of major trials. It was a lot of power in such a small body – especially when contrasted with the size of the man across the table from her.
    “Mr. Tafero, you were a policeman for twenty years,” she said. “You more than most know the gravity of your actions. There is not a case I can think of that cries out more for the death penalty. We will ask a jury for it. And I have no doubt we will get it.”
    Her rehearsed part of the play finished, Short leaned back in her chair and deferred to Winston. There was a long silence while Winston stared at Tafero and waited for him to look back at her. Eventually, his eyes came up and held on hers.
    “Mr. Tafero, you’ve been around and you’ve even been in the opposite position in rooms just like this before. I don’t think we could play a game