Echo Park

happened to you?”
    She indicated his wet clothes with her hand.
    “I had to hose off. It was bad. I need about a two-hour shower. Are you leaving?”
    “Yes. They’re done with me for the time being.”
    Bosch nodded toward the man in the sunglasses ten feet behind her.
    “Are you in trouble?” he asked quietly.
    “I don’t know yet. I should be all right. You got the bad guy and saved the girl. How can that be a bad thing?”
    “
We
got the bad guy and saved the girl,” Bosch corrected. “But there are people in every institution and bureaucracy who can find a way to turn something good into shit.”
    She looked him in the eyes and nodded.
    “I know,” she said.
    Her look froze him and he knew they were now different.
    “Are you mad at me, Rachel?”
    “Mad? No.”
    “Then, what?”
    “Then, nothing. I have to go.”
    “Will you call me, then?”
    “When I can. Good-bye, Harry.”
    She took two steps toward the waiting car but then stopped and turned back to him.
    “That was O’Shea you were talking to out by the car, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Be careful, Harry. If you let your emotions run you the way they did out here today, O’Shea could put you in a world of pain.”
    Bosch smiled slightly.
    “You know what they say about pain, don’t you?”
    “No, what?”
    “They say pain is weakness leaving the body.”
    She shook her head.
    “Well ‘they’ are full of shit. Don’t put it to the test unless you have to. Good-bye, Harry.”
    “I’ll see you, Rachel.”
    He watched as the man in sunglasses held the tape up for her to duck under. She got into the front passenger seat and Sunglasses drove them off. Bosch knew that something had changed in the way she saw him. His actions in the garage and going into the tunnel had made her change her mind about him. He accepted it and guessed that he might never see her again. He decided that it would be one more thing that he would blame on Rick O’Shea.
    He turned back to the scene, where Randolph and Osani were standing waiting for him. Randolph was putting away his cell phone.
    “You two again,” Bosch said.
    “Gettin’ to be like déjà vu all over again, isn’t it?” Randolph said.
    “Something like that.”
    “Detective, we are going to need to take you over to Parker Center and conduct a more formal interview this time around.”
    Bosch nodded. He knew the drill. This time it wasn’t about shooting into the trees or the woods. He had killed somebody, so this time it would be different. They would need to nail down every detail.
    “I’m ready to go,” he said.

31

    BOSCH WAS SEATED in an interview room in the Officer Involved Shooting Unit at Parker Center. Randolph had allowed him to shower in the basement locker room and he’d changed into blue jeans and a black West Coast Choppers sweatshirt, clothing he kept in a locker for the times he was downtown and unexpectedly needed to fly below the radar that a suit would bring. On the way out of the locker room he had dumped his contaminated suit into a trash can. He would now be down to two.
    The tape recorder on the table was turned on, and from separate sheets of paper, Osani read to him his constitutional rights as well as the police officer’s bill of rights. The double insulation of protections was designed to safeguard the individual and police office from the unfair assault of the government, but Bosch knew that when push came to shove, in one of these little rooms neither piece of paper would do much to protect him. He had to fend for himself. He said he understood his rights and agreed to be interviewed.
    Randolph took over from there. At his request Bosch once more told the story of the shooting of Robert Foxworth, aka Raynard Waits, beginning with the discovery made during the review of records from the Fitzpatrick case and ending with the two bullets he fired into Foxworth’s chest. Randolph asked few questions until Bosch was finished going through the story. Then he asked many detailed questions about the moves Bosch had made in the garage and then the tunnel. More than once he asked Bosch why he didn’t listen to the cautioning words of FBI agent Rachel Walling.
    This question told Bosch not only that Rachel had been interviewed by the OIS but also that she had not said things particularly favorable to his case. This disappointed Bosch greatly but he tried to keep his thoughts and feelings about Rachel out of the interview room. To Randolph he repeated