The Black Box

talking about public relations,” he said. “I’m talking about murder. What happened to everybody counting, no matter who they are? Or were. Do you even remember that from Homicide Special?”
    “Of course I do and it still stands, Harry. I’m not asking you to drop the case. Just put some space in it. Wait a month, till after the first, clear it then and clear it quietly. And we’ll tell the family and leave it at that. If we’re lucky, the suspect will be dead and we won’t have to worry about a trial. Meantime, O’Toole told me he had a hot shot from the Death Squad that you can run with. Maybe that one will bring us the kind of attention we want.”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “I have a case I’m running with now.”
    Maycock was losing patience with Bosch. His ruddy complexion was turning a deeper red.
    “Put it on hold and go with the hot shot.”
    “Did O’Toole tell you that if I clear this one, I may clear five or six others?”
    Maycock nodded but dismissed the news with a wave of the hand.
    “Yeah, gangbangers all, and none during the riots.”
    “This was your idea, to go into these cases.”
    “How was I to know that you’d be the only one to get some traction on a case and it would happen to be Snow White? Jesus Christ, the name alone, Harry. In fact, no matter what happens, stop calling her that.”
    Bosch took a few steps around the room. He found an angle where the spire of City Hall was doubled in the reflection of the glass skin of the PAB’s northern wing. Fresh kills or cold cases, the pursuit of killers had to be relentless. It was the only way to go and the only way Bosch knew how to go. But when political and social considerations intruded, his patience always stretched thin.
    “Goddamn it, Marty,” he said.
    “I know how you feel,” the chief said.
    Bosch finally looked back at him.
    “No, you don’t. Not anymore.”
    “You’re entitled to your opinion.”
    “But not to work my case.”
    “Again, that is not what I’m saying. You keep putting it in a way that is not—”
    “It’s too late, Marty. It’s about to break.”
    “Break how?”
    “I needed information about my victim. I went to the paper she worked for and traded information. I’m working with a reporter on it. If I blow it off now, he’ll know why and it will be a bigger story for that than for me closing it.”
    “You son of a bitch. What paper? In Sweden?”
    “Denmark. She was from Denmark. But don’t think it’ll stay in Denmark. The media is global. The story may break over there but it will ping-pong right back here—eventually. And you’ll have to answer to why you killed the investigation.”
    Maycock grabbed a baseball off his desk and started working it with his fingers like a pitcher breaking in a new ball.
    “You can go now,” he said.
    “Okay. And?”
    “And just get the hell out. We’re done.”
    Bosch paused, then started moving toward the door.
    “I will keep all public relations issues in mind as I proceed,” he said.
    It was his meager offering.
    “Yes, you do that, Detective,” the chief said.
    As he left the suite, Bosch thanked Alta Rose for getting him in.

11
    I t was 6 P.M. when Bosch knocked on the door of the house on 73rd Place. Normally residential search warrants were executed in the morning hours so they drew little notice in the neighborhood. People were at work, at school, sleeping late.
    But that wasn’t the plan this time. Bosch didn’t want to wait. The case had momentum and he didn’t want it to stall.
    The door was answered after the third knock by a short woman in a housedress and a colorful bandana wrapped around her head. Tattoos rose like a scarf around her neck and up to her jawline. She stood behind a security gate, the kind most of the houses in the neighborhood had.
    Bosch stood front and center on the front stoop. This was by design. Behind him were two white officers from the Gang Enforcement Detail. Jordy Gant and David Chu were standing farther back in the front yard and to the left. Bosch wanted to hammer home to the woman of the house that she was in for a major intrusion—uniformed white police officers searching through her home.
    “Gail Briscoe? I’m Detective Bosch with the LAPD. I have a document here giving me access to search your home.”
    “Search my home? For what?”
    “This specifies that we are searching for a Beretta model ninety-two handgun known to have been in the possession of Trumont Story, who resided