The Black Echo

had stopped alongside a sound barrier wall Bosch realized he had a big problem. He put on the high beams, but still only the passenger-side headlight responded. The car in front was too close to the wall for Bosch and Wish to see if the right side was damaged. Meantime, the driver sat in his car, mostly shrouded in darkness.
    “Shit,” Bosch said. “Okay. Don’t come up till I say it’s clear, okay?”
    “Got it,” she said.
    Bosch had to throw his weight hard against the door to open it. He came out of the car, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. He held the light out away from his body and trained its beam on the driver of the car ahead. The roar of passing traffic in his ears, Bosch started to shout, but a diesel horn drowned him out and a blast of wind from the passing semi shoved him forward. Bosch tried again, shouting for the driver to stick both hands out the side window where Bosch could see them. Nothing. Bosch shouted the order again. After a long moment, with Bosch poised off the left rear fender of the maroon car, the driver finally complied. Bosch ran the flash beam through the back window and saw no other occupants. He ran up and put the light on the driver and ordered him to step out slowly.
    “What is this?” the man protested. He was small, with pale skin, reddish hair and a transparent mustache. He opened the car door and stepped out with his hands up. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and beige pants held up by suspenders. He looked out into the passing field of cars, almost as if beckoning for a witness to this commuter’s nightmare.
    “Can I see a badge?” he stammered. Bosch rushed forward, spun him around and slammed his body into the side of his car, his head and shoulders over its roof. With one hand on the back of the man’s neck, holding him down, and the other holding the gun to his ear, Bosch shouted to Eleanor that it was clear.
    “Check the front side.”
    The man beneath Bosch let out a moaning sound, like a scared animal, and Bosch could feel him shaking. His neck felt clammy. Bosch never took his eyes off him to see where Eleanor was. Suddenly her voice was right behind him.
    “Let him go,” she said. “It’s not him. There’s no damage. We’ve got the wrong car.”

PART VI
    FRIDAY, MAY 25

    They were interviewed by the Santa Monica police, the California Highway Patrol, LAPD and the FBI. A DUI unit had been called to give Bosch a sobriety test. He passed. And by 2A.M. he sat in an interview room at the West Los Angeles bureau, bone-tired and wondering if the Coast Guard or IRS would be next. He and Eleanor had been separated and he hadn’t seen her since they had arrived three hours earlier. It bothered him that he could not be with her to protect her from the interrogators. Lieutenant Harvey “Ninety-eight” Pounds came into the room then and told Bosch they were finished for the night. Bosch could tell that Ninety-eight was angry, and it wasn’t just because he had been rousted from home.
    “What kind of cop doesn’t get the make of the car that tries to run him down?” he asked.
    Bosch was used to the second-guessing tone to the questions. It had been that way all night.
    “Like I told every one of those guys before you, I was a little busy at the time. I was trying to save my ass.”
    “And this guy you pull over,” Pounds cut in. “Jesus, Bosch, you rough him up on the side of the freeway. Every asshole with a car phone is dialing nine one one reporting kidnap, murder, who knows what else. Couldn’t you have tried to get a look at the right side of his car before you pulled him over?”
    “It was impossible. All of this is covered in the report we typed up, Lieutenant. I’ve gone over it, seems like ten times already.”
    Pounds acted as though he didn’t hear. “And he’s a lawyer no less.”
    “So what?” Bosch said, now losing his patience. “We apologized. It was a mistake. The car looked the same. And if he is going to sue anybody it will be the FBI. They’ve got deeper pockets. So don’t worry about it.”
    “No, he’ll sue us both. He’s already talking about it, fer crissake. And this is not the time to try to be funny, Bosch.”
    “It’s also not the time to be worried about what we did or didn’t do right. None of the suits that have come in here to interview me have seemed to care that somebody might be trying to kill us. They just want to know how far away I was when I fired and whether I endangered