Echo Park

carotid arteries. That’s what they are working on now—getting her ready to take to the OR so they can repair the artery. Meantime, since she lost a lot of blood, the risk right now is stroke. So she’s not out of the woods yet, but if she avoids going into stroke she should come out of this okay. ‘Okay’ meaning alive and functioning with a lot of rehab ahead of her.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “That’s the unofficial version. I’m not a doctor and I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”
    Bosch felt his cell phone vibrating in his pocket but he ignored it.
    “I appreciate that you did,” he said. “When will I be able to see her?”
    “I have no idea, man. I just bring ’em in here. I told you all I know and that was probably too much. If you’re going to wait around I suggest you wash your face and change out of those clothes. You’re probably scaring people with the way you look.”
    Bosch nodded and Dillon stood up. He had defused a potentially explosive ER situation and his work was done.
    “Thanks, Dale.”
    “No problemo. Take her easy and if you see the security guard, you might want to . . .”
    He left it at that.
    “I will,” Bosch said.
    After the paramedic left, Bosch went into the lavatory and stripped off his sweatshirt. Because there were no pockets in the surgical clothes and no place for him to carry his weapon, phone, badge and other things, he decided to leave his dirty jeans on. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he had blood and dirt smeared on his face. He spent the next five minutes washing up, running the soap and water over his hands until he finally saw the water running clear into the drain.
    When he stepped out of the lavatory he noticed that someone had come into the break room and either taken or thrown out his coffee. He checked his pockets again for change but still didn’t find any.
    Bosch walked back to the ER reception area and now found it crowded with police, both uniformed and not. His supervisor, Abel Pratt, was there among the suits. He looked as though the blood had completely drained from his face. He saw Bosch and immediately came over.
    “Harry, how is she? What happened?”
    “They’re not giving me anything official. The paramedic who brought her in said it looks like she’ll be okay, unless something new happens.”
    “Thank Christ! What happened up there?”
    “I’m not sure. Waits got a gun and started shooting. Anything on whether they’ve got a bead on him?”
    “He dumped the car he jacked by the Red Line station on Hollywood Boulevard. They don’t know where the fuck he is.”
    Bosch thought about that. He knew that if Waits had gone underground on the Red Line, he could have gone anywhere from North Hollywood to downtown. The downtown line had a stop near Echo Park.
    “Are they looking in Echo Park?”
    “They’re looking everywhere, man. OIS is sending a team here to talk to you. I didn’t think you’d be willing to leave to go to Parker.”
    “Right.”
    “Well, you know how to handle it. Just tell it like it was.”
    “Right.”
    The Officer Involved Shooting squad would not be a problem. As far as Bosch could see he had not personally done anything wrong in the handling of Waits. OIS was a rubber-stamp squad, anyway.
    “They’ll be a while,” Pratt said. “They’re up at Sunset Ranch right now interviewing the others. How the fuck did he get a gun?”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “Olivas got too close to him while he was coming up a ladder. He grabbed it then and started shooting. Olivas and Kiz were up top. It happened so fast and I was down below them.”
    “Jesus Christ!”
    Pratt shook his head and Bosch knew he wanted to ask more questions about what had happened and how it could have happened. He was probably worried about his own situation as much as he was worried about Rider pulling through. Bosch decided he needed to tell him about the thing that could be a containment problem.
    “He wasn’t cuffed,” he said in a low voice. “We had to take off the cuffs so he could go up a ladder. The cuffs were going to be off for thirty seconds at the max, and that’s when he made his move. Olivas let him get too close. That’s how it started.”
    Pratt looked stunned. He spoke slowly, as if not understanding.
    “You took the cuffs off?”
    “O’Shea told us to.”
    “Good. They can blame him. I don’t want any blowback on Open-Unsolved. I don’t want any on me. It’s not my idea of the way to go