The Black Box

squad except Bosch. He knew that the play by O’Toole would ultimately hurt him more than it would Bosch. Now nobody in the squad would trust him. Nobody would tell him more than the minimum required. Some supervisors inspired their squad’s best work. Now the detectives of the Open-Unsolved Unit would give their best effort in spite of the man in charge.
    Bosch pulled his chair out and sat down. He looked at Mendenhall’s card and considered calling her, confronting the bullshit beef head-on and dealing with it. He opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out the old leather address book he’d had for going on three decades. He found the number he could not remember before and called the League’s Defense Assistance line. He gave his name, rank, and assignment within the department and said he needed to speak to a defense rep. The unit’s supervisor told him there wasn’t a rep available at the moment but that he would get a call back without delay. He almost pointed out that there was already a delay but just thanked the supervisor and disconnected.
    Almost immediately a shadow loomed over his desk, andBosch looked up to see O’Toole hovering. He had his suit jacket on, and that told Bosch he was probably heading up to the tenth floor.
    “Where have you been, Detective?”
    “At the gun shop running ballistics.”
    O’Toole paused as if committing the answer to memory so he could check on Bosch’s veracity later.
    “Pete Sargent,” Bosch said. “Call him. We had lunch, too. Hope that wasn’t against the rules.”
    O’Toole shrugged off the shot and leaned forward, tapping his finger on Mendenhall’s card on the desk.
    “Call her. She needs to set up an interview.”
    “Sure. When I get to it.”
    Bosch saw Chu come through the doorway from the exterior hallway. He stopped when he saw O’Toole in the cubicle, acted like he had suddenly forgotten something, and pirouetted and went back out through the door.
    O’Toole didn’t notice.
    “It was not my intention to have a situation like this,” he said. “My hope had been to promote strong and trusting relationships with the detectives in my squad.”
    Bosch replied without looking up at O’Toole.
    “Yeah, well, that didn’t last long, did it?” he said. “And it’s not your squad, Lieutenant. It’s just the squad. It was here before you came and it will be here after you’re gone. Maybe that’s where it turned south on you, when you didn’t understand that.”
    He said it loud enough for some of the others in the squad to hear it.
    “If that sentiment had come from someone without a filedrawer full of past complaints and internal investigations, I might be insulted.”
    Bosch leaned back in his chair and finally looked up at O’Toole.
    “Yeah, all of those complaints and yet I’m still sitting here. And I’ll still be sitting here after they’re finished with yours.”
    “We’ll see.”
    O’Toole was about to walk away but he couldn’t help himself. He put a hand on Bosch’s desk and leaned down to speak in a low, venomous voice.
    “You are the worst kind of police officer, Bosch. You are arrogant, you are a bully, and you think the laws and regulations simply don’t apply to you. I’m not the first to attempt to rid this department of you. But I will be the last.”
    Finished having his say, O’Toole took his hand off the desk and rose to his full height. He straightened his jacket by pulling it down from the bottom with a sharp tug.
    “You left something out, Lieutenant,” Bosch said.
    “What was that?” O’Toole asked.
    “You forgot that I close cases. Not for the stats you send up to the tenth-floor PowerPoint shows. For the victims. And their families. And that’s something you’ll never understand because you’re not out there like the rest of us.”
    Bosch gestured to the rest of the squad room. Jackson was obviously listening to the conversation and he stared at O’Toole with unblinking judgment.
    “We do the work, we clear the cases, and you ride up the elevator to get the pat on the back.”
    Bosch stood up, coming face-to-face with O’Toole.
    “That’s why I don’t have time for you or your bullshit.”
    He walked away, heading to the door Chu had gone through, while O’Toole headed to the door leading to the elevator alcove.
    Bosch pushed through the door and into the hallway. One side was a wall of glass, affording a view of the front plaza and off toward the heart of the civic