City Of Bones

Bosch and Edgar for not being prepared and Bradley of IAD for not returning Bosch’s tape recorder.
    “All I can say is that this better not put hair on the cake, Harry,” she said, referring to the possibility of a legal challenge to any confession because Delacroix’s initial words were not on tape. “If we lose this one because of a screwup on our part…”
    She didn’t finish but didn’t need to.
    “Look, I think we’ll be all right. Edgar got everything he said down verbatim. We stopped as soon as we got enough to hook him up and now we’ll lock it all down with sound and video.”
    Billets seemed barely placated.
    “And what about Miranda? You’re confident we will not have a Miranda situation,” she said, the last part not a question but an order.
    “I don’t see it. He started spouting off before we had a chance to advise him. Then he kept talking afterward. Sometimes it goes like that. You’re ready to go with the battering ram and they just open the door for you. Whoever he gets as a lawyer might have a heart attack and start screaming about it but nothing’s going to come of it. We’re clean, Lieutenant.”
    Billets nodded, a sign that Bosch was convincing her.
    “I wish they were all this easy,” she said. “What about the DA’s office?”
    “I’m calling them next.”
    “Okay, which room if I want to take a look?”
    “Three.”
    “Okay, Harry, go wrap him up.”
    She turned back to her computer. Bosch threw a salute at her and was about to duck out of the doorway when he stopped. She sensed he had not left and turned back to him.
    “What is it?”
    Bosch shrugged his shoulders.
    “I don’t know. The whole way in I was thinking about what could have been avoided if we just went to him instead of dancing around him, gathering string.”
    “Harry, I know what you’re thinking and there’s no way in the world you could have known that this guy-after twenty-some years-was just waiting for you to knock on his door. You handled it the right way and if you had it to do again you would still do it the same way. You circle the prey. What happened with Officer Brasher had nothing to do with how you ran this case.”
    Bosch looked at her for a moment and then nodded. What she said would help ease his conscience.
    Billets turned back to her computer.
    “Like I said, go wrap him up.”
    Bosch went back to the homicide table to call the District Attorney’s Office to advise that an arrest had been made in a murder case and that a confession was being taken. He talked to a supervisor named O’Brien and told her that either he or his partner would be coming in to file charges by the end of the day. O’Brien, who was familiar with the case only through media reports, said she wanted to send a prosecutor to the station to oversee the handling of the confession and the forward movement of the case at this stage.
    Bosch knew that with rush hour traffic out of downtown it would still be a minimum of forty-five minutes before the prosecutor got to the station. He told O’Brien the prosecutor was welcome but that he wasn’t going to wait for anyone before taking the suspect’s confession. O’Brien suggested he should.
    “Look, this guy wants to talk,” Bosch said. “In forty-five minutes or an hour it could be a different story. We can’t wait. Tell your guy to knock on the door at room three when he gets here. We’ll bring him into it as soon as we can.”
    In a perfect world the prosecutor would be there for an interview but Bosch knew from years working cases that a guilty conscience doesn’t always stay guilty. When someone tells you they want to confess to a killing, you don’t wait. You turn on the tape recorder and say, “Tell me all about it.”
    O’Brien reluctantly agreed, citing her own experiences, and they hung up. Bosch immediately picked the phone back up and called Internal Affairs and asked for Carol Bradley. He was transferred.
    “This is Bosch, Hollywood Division, where’s my damn tape recorder?”
    There was silence in response.
    “Bradley? Hello? Are you-”
    “I’m here. I have your recorder here.”
    “Why did you take it? I told you to listen to the tape. I didn’t say take my machine, I don’t need it anymore.”
    “I wanted to review it and have the tape checked, to make sure it was continuous.”
    “Then open it up and take the tape. Don’t take the machine.”
    “Detective, sometimes they need the original recorder to authenticate the