Echo Park

of heartburn he’d ever had. He kept his eyes on Pratt and watched him turn away from their position once he crossed the street. He was heading toward the far stairwell.
    “Now what? You going to follow him?”
    Bosch remembered Pratt saying he had something to do after work.
    “I want to but I can’t. I’ve got to shoot you back to DWP .”
    “Don’t worry about it, man. I can walk it. Probably be faster with this traffic, anyway.”
    Edgar cracked his door and turned to get out. He looked back at Bosch.
    “I don’t know what’s going on but good luck, Harry. I hope you get who you’re looking for.”
    “Thanks, Jason. Hope to see you again.”
    After Edgar was clear Bosch backed out and left the garage. He took San Pedro over to Temple because he assumed that Pratt would take that route on his way to the freeway. Whether he was going home or not, the freeway was the likely choice.
    Bosch crossed Temple and pulled to the curb in a red zone. It gave him a good angle on the exit to the police garage.
    In two minutes a silver SUV came out of the garage and headed toward Temple. It was a Jeep Commander with a retro boxy design. Bosch identified Pratt behind the wheel. He immediately fit the dimensions and color of the Commander to those of the mystery SUV he had seen take off from the street near his house the night before.
    Bosch leaned down across the seat as the Commander approached Temple. He heard it make the turn and after a few seconds he got back up behind the wheel. Pratt was on Temple up at the light at Los Angeles Street and he was turning right. Bosch waited until he completed the turn and then took off to follow.
    Pratt entered the crowded northbound lanes of the 101 Freeway and joined the crawl of rush-hour traffic. Bosch came down the ramp and pushed into the line of cars about six vehicles behind the Jeep. He got lucky in that Pratt’s vehicle had a white ball with a face on it atop the radio antenna. It was a giveaway promotion from a fast-food chain. It allowed Bosch to track the Jeep without having to get too close. He was in an unmarked Crown Vic which might as well have had a neon sign on its roof that flashed POLICE!
    Slowly but surely Pratt made his way north with Bosch following at a distance. When the freeway cut past Echo Park he looked up to the ridgeline and saw that the crime scene and media soirée on Figueroa Lane was still in full swing. He counted two media choppers still circling overhead. He wondered if his car would be towed from the scene or if he would be able to go back and retrieve it later.
    As he drove, Bosch tried to piece together what he had on Pratt. There was little doubt that Pratt had been following him while he was on home duty. His SUV matched the SUV that had been on his street the night before, and Pratt had been IDed by Jason Edgar as the cop who had followed him into the DWP Building. It was not feasible to think that he had been following Bosch simply to see if he was abiding by the rules of home duty. There had to be another reason and Bosch could think of only one thing.
    The case.
    Once he’d made this assumption, other things quickly came together and they served to only stoke the fire that was burning in Bosch’s chest. Pratt had told the story about Maury Swann earlier in the week, and that made it clear they knew each other. While he had relayed a negative story about the defense attorney, that could have been a cover or an attempt to distance himself from someone he was actually close to and possibly working with.
    Also obvious to Bosch was the fact that Pratt was intimately aware that Bosch had regarded Anthony Garland as a person of interest in the Gesto case. Bosch had routinely informed Pratt of his activities in reopening the case. Pratt was also notified when Garland’s lawyers successfully reacquired a court order restraining Bosch from talking to Garland without one of his lawyers present.
    Last, and perhaps most important, Pratt had access to the Gesto murder book. It sat most of the time on Bosch’s desk. It could have been Pratt who put in the phony connection to Robert Saxon, aka Raynard Waits. He could have planted the connection long before the book was given to Olivas. He could have planted it so Olivas would discover it.
    Bosch realized that the whole plan for Raynard Waits to confess to the murder of Marie Gesto and to lead investigators to the body could have completely originated with Abel Pratt. He was in a perfect