Angels Flight

spoke with the chief,” he said. “He will handle Reverend Tuggins. He is not to be your concern.”
    Irving put a sneer into the word Reverend.
    “Okay. He isn’t.”
    “So where are we?”
    “We’re still at the scene, just finishing up. We need to canvass the building over here for witnesses, then we’ll clear out. Elias kept an apartment downtown. That was where he was headed. We need to search that and his office as soon as the search warrants are signed.”
    “What about next of kin on the woman?”
    “Perez should be done by now, too.”
    “Tell me how it went at the Elias home.”
    Since Irving had not asked before, Bosch assumed he was asking now because the chief of police wanted to know. Bosch quickly went over what had happened and Irving asked several questions about the reaction of Elias’s wife and son. Bosch could tell he asked them from the standpoint of public relations management. He knew that, just as with Preston Tuggins, the way in which Elias’s family reacted to his murder would have a direct bearing on how the community reacted.
    “So it does not at this time sound as though we can enlist the widow or the son in helping us contain things, correct?”
    “As of now, that’s correct. But once they get over the initial shock, maybe. You also might want to talk to the chief about calling the widow personally. I saw his picture on the wall in the house with Elias. If he’s talking to Tuggins, maybe he could also talk to the widow about helping us out.”
    “Maybe.”
    Irving switched gears and told Bosch that his office’s conference room on the sixth floor of Parker Center was ready for the investigators. He said that the room was unlocked at the moment but in the morning Bosch would be given keys. Once the investigators moved in, the room was to remain locked at all times. He said that he would be in by ten and was looking forward to a more expanded rundown of the investigation at the team meeting.
    “Sure thing, Chief,” Bosch said. “We should be in from the canvass and the searches by then.”
    “Make sure you are. I will be waiting.”
    “Right.”
    Bosch was about to disconnect when he heard Irving’s voice.
    “Excuse me, Chief?”
    “One other matter. I felt because of the identity of one of the victims in this case that it was incumbent upon me to notify the inspector general. She seemed – how do I put this – she seemed acutely interested in the case when I explained the facts we had at that time. Using the word acutely is probably an understatement.”
    Carla Entrenkin. Bosch almost cursed out loud but held it back. The inspector general was a new entity in the department: a citizen appointed by the Police Commission as an autonomous civilian overseer with ultimate authority to investigate or oversee investigations. It was a further politicizing of the department. The inspector general answered to the police commission which answered to the city council and the mayor. And there were other reasons Bosch almost cursed as well. Finding Entrenkin’s name and private number in Elias’s phone book bothered him. It opened up a whole set of possibilities and complications.
    “Is she coming out here to the scene?” he asked.
    “I think not,” Irving said. “I waited to call so that I could say the scene was clearing. I saved you that headache. But do not be surprised if you hear directly from her in the daylight.”
    “Can she do that? I mean, talk to me without going through you? She’s a civilian.”
    “Unfortunately, she can do whatever she wants to. That is how the Police Commission set up the job. So what it means is that this investigation, wherever it goes, it better be seamless, Detective Bosch. If it is not, we will be hearing from Carla Entrenkin about it.”
    “I understand.”
    “Good, then all we need is an arrest and all will be fine.”
    “Sure, Chief.”
    Irving disconnected without acknowledging. Bosch looked up. Chastain and Baker were stepping onto the train.
    “There’s only one thing worse than having the IAD tagging along on this,” he whispered to Rider. “That’s the inspector general watching over our shoulders.”
    Rider looked at him.
    “You’re kidding? Carla I’mthinkin’ is on this?”
    Bosch almost smiled at Rider’s use of the nickname bestowed on Entrenkin by an editorialist in the police union’s Thin Blue Line newsletter. She was called Carla I’mthinkin’ because of her tendency toward slow and deliberate