City Of Bones

the cut on his cheek. He’d taken the butterfly bandages off before his shower that morning but the wound was still quite noticeable.
    “It’s not going to happen for an hour or so. Delacroix has a public defender. That looks like it hurts.”
    “Only when I smile. Can I use your phone?”
    “Until the judge comes out.”
    Bosch picked up the phone and called the DA’s Office, which was three floors above. He asked for Portugal and was transferred.
    “Yeah, it’s Bosch. All right if I come up? We’ve gotta talk.”
    “I’m here until I’m called down to arraignments.”
    “See you in five.”
    On the way out Bosch told the bailiff that if a detective named Edgar checked in he should be sent up to the DA’s Office. The bailiff said no problem.
    The hallway outside the courtroom was teeming with lawyers and citizens, all with some business with the courts. Everybody seemed to be on a cell phone. The marble floor and high ceiling took all of the voices and multiplied them into a fierce cacophony of white noise. Bosch ducked into the little snack bar and had to wait more than five minutes in line just to buy a coffee. After he was out, he legged it up the fire exit stairs because he didn’t want to lose another five minutes waiting for one of the horribly slow elevators.
    When he stepped into Portugal’s small office Edgar was already there.
    “We were beginning to wonder where you were,” Portugal said.
    “What the hell happened to you?” Edgar added after seeing Bosch’s cheek.
    “It’s a long story. And I’m about to tell it.”
    He took the other chair in front of Portugal’s desk and put his coffee down on the floor next to him. He realized he should have brought cups for Portugal and Edgar, so he decided not to drink in front of them.
    He opened his briefcase on his lap and took out a folded section of the Los Angeles Times. He closed the briefcase and put it on the floor.
    “So what’s going on?” Portugal said, clearly anxious about the reason Bosch had called the meeting.
    Bosch started unfolding the newspaper.
    “What’s going on is we charged the wrong guy and we better fix it before he gets arraigned.”
    “Whoa, shit. I knew you were going to say something like that,” Portugal said. “I don’t know if I want to hear this. You are messing up a good thing, Bosch.”
    “I don’t care what I’m doing. If the guy didn’t do it, he didn’t do it.”
    “But he told us he did it. Several times.”
    “Look,” Edgar said to Portugal. “Let Harry say what he wants to say. We don’t want to fuck this up.”
    “It may be too late with Mr. Can’t-Leave-A-Good-Thing-Alone here.”
    “Harry, just go on. What’s wrong?”
    Bosch told them about taking the dummy up to Wonderland Avenue and re-creating Delacroix’s supposed trek up the steep hillside.
    “I made it-just barely,” he said, gently touching his cheek. “But the point is, Del-”
    “Yeah, you made it,” Portugal said. “You made it, so Delacroix could have made it. What’s the problem with that?”
    “The problem is that I was sober when I did it and he says he wasn’t. I also knew where I was going. I knew it leveled off up there. He didn’t.”
    “This is all minor bullshit.”
    “No, what’s bullshit is Delacroix’s story. Nobody dragged that kid’s body up there. He was alive when he was up there. Somebody killed him up there.”
    Portugal shook his head in frustration.
    “This is all wild conjecture, Detective Bosch. I’m not going to stop this whole process because-”
    “It’s conjecture. Not wild conjecture.”
    Bosch looked over at Edgar but his partner didn’t look back at him. He had a glum look on his face. Bosch looked back at Portugal.
    “Look, I’m not done. There’s more. After I got home last night I remembered Delacroix’s cat. We left it in his trailer and told him we’d take care of it but we forgot. So I went back.”
    Bosch could hear Edgar breathing heavily and he knew what the problem was. Edgar had been left out of the loop by his own partner. It was embarrassing for him to be getting this information at the same time as Portugal. In a perfect world Bosch would have told him what he had before going to the prosecutor. But there hadn’t been time for that.
    “All I was going to do was feed the cat. But when I got there somebody was already in the trailer. It was his daughter.”
    “Sheila?” Edgar said. “What was she doing there?”
    The news was apparently