The Black Box

your life or somebody else’s. It doesn’t matter.”
    “Okay.”
    “I have one question for you, though. How did you assess what you saw? What I mean is, what made you think that was a teacher being threatened by a bad guy? How did you know the woman wasn’t the bad guy who had just been disarmed by a teacher?”
    Bosch had drawn the same immediate conclusions as his daughter. It had just been instinct. He would have fired just as she had.
    “Well,” Maddie said. “Their clothes. He had his shirt out, and I don’t think a teacher would do that. And she had glasses and her hair up like a teacher. I saw she had a rubber band around her wrist, and I had a teacher who did that.”
    Holodnak nodded.
    “Well, you got it right. I was just curious about how. It’samazing what can be assimilated by the mind in so short a time.”
    They moved on, and Holodnak next put her in an unusual scenario where she was traveling on a commercial airliner, as detectives often do. She was armed and in her seat when a traveler two seats ahead of her jumped up and grabbed a flight attendant around the neck and threatened her with a knife.
    Madeline stood and raised her weapon, identifying herself as a police officer and ordering the man to release the shrieking woman. Instead, the man pulled his hostage closer as cover and threatened to cut her. Other passengers were yelling and moving about the cabin, seeking places to hide. Finally, there was a moment when the flight attendant tried to break free, and a few inches separated her and the man with the knife. Madeline fired.
    And the flight attendant went down.
    “Shit!”
    Madeline bent over in horror. The man on the screen yelled, “Who’s next?”
    “Madeline!” Holodnak yelled. “Is it over? Is the danger over?”
    Maddie realized she had lost focus. She straightened up and fired five rounds into the man with the knife. He dropped to the floor.
    The lights came up and Holodnak came out from behind the computer station.
    “I killed her,” Maddie said.
    “Well, let’s talk about it,” Holodnak said. “Why did you shoot?”
    “Because he was going to kill her.”
    “Good. That’s good under the IDOL rule—immediate defense of life. Could you have done anything else?”
    “I don’t know. He was going to kill her.”
    “Did you have to stand and show your weapon, identify yourself?”
    “I don’t know. I guess not.”
    “That was your advantage. He didn’t know you were a cop. He didn’t know you were armed. You forced the action by standing. Once your gun came out, there was no going back.”
    Maddie nodded and hung her head, and Bosch suddenly felt bad that he had set up the whole session.
    “Kid,” Holodnak said. “You’re doing better than most of the cops who come through here. Let’s do another and end it on a good note. Forget this one and get ready.”
    He returned to the computer, and Maddie went through one more scenario, an off-duty incident where she was approached by an armed carjacker. She put him down with a center-mass shot as soon as he started to pull his gun. Then she held back when a passing civilian suddenly ran up and started shaking a cell phone at her and screaming, “What did you do? What did you do?”
    Holodnak said she handled the situation expertly and that seemed to raise her spirits. He once again added that he was impressed with her shooting and decision-making processes.
    Harry and Maddie thanked Holodnak for the time on the machine and headed out. They were recrossing the basketball court when Holodnak called from the door of the simulator room. He was still playing pin the tail on the donkey with Bosch.
    “Michael Formanek,” he said. “ The Rub and Spare Change.”
    He pointed at Bosch in a gotcha gesture. Maddie laughed even though she didn’t know that Holodnak was talking jazz. Bosch turned, started walking backwards and raised his hands in an I-give-up fashion.
    “Bass player from San Francisco,” Holodnak said. “Great inside/outside stuff. You gotta expand your equation, Harry. Not everybody who’s worth listening to is dead. Madeline, your dad’s next birthday, you come see me.”
    Bosch waved him off as he turned back around.

25
    T hey stopped for lunch at the Academy Grill, where the walls were adorned with LAPD memorabilia, and the sandwiches were named after past police chiefs and famous cops real and imagined.
    Soon after Maddie ordered the Bratton Burger and Bosch asked for the Joe Friday, the