The Black Echo

cigarettes, he added, “First rule of interrogation: make the subject think he is comfortable. Give ’im the cigarettes. Hold your breath if you don’t like it.”
    He started to walk away but she said, “Bosch, what was he doing with those pictures?”
    So that was what was bothering her, he thought. “Look. Five years ago a kid like him would have gone with that man and done who knows what. Nowadays, he sells him a picture instead. There are so many killers-diseases and otherwise-these kids are getting smart. It’s safer to sell your Polaroids than to sell your flesh.”
    She opened the door to the interview room and went in. Bosch crossed the squad room and checked the chrome spike on his desk for messages. His lawyer had finally called back. So had Bremmer over at the
Times,
though he had left a pseudonym they had both agreed on earlier. Bosch didn’t want anybody snooping around his desk to know the press had called.
    Bosch left the messages on the spike, took out his ID card and went to the supply closet and slipped the lock. He opened a new ninety-minute cassette and popped it into the recorder on the bottom shelf of the closet. He turned on the machine and made sure the backup cassette was turning. He set it on record and watched to make sure both tapes were rolling. Then he went back down the hallway to the front desk and told a fat Explorer Scout who was sitting there to order a pizza to be delivered to the station. He gave the kid a ten and told him to bring it to the interview room with three Cokes when it came.
    “What do you want on it?” the kid asked.
    “What do you like?”
    “Sausage and pepperoni. Hate anchovies.”
    “Make it anchovies.”
    Bosch walked back to the detective bureau. Wish and Sharkey were silent when he walked back into the small interview room, and he had the feeling they had not been talking much. Wish had no feel for the boy. She sat to Sharkey’s right. Bosch took the seat on his left. The only window was a small square of mirrored glass in the door. People could look in but not out. Bosch decided to be up front with the boy from the start. He was a kid, but he was probably wiser than most of the men who had sat on the Slider before him. If he sensed deceit, he would start answering questions in one-syllable words.
    “Sharkey, we are going to tape this because it might help us later to go over it,” Bosch said. “Like I said, you are not a suspect, so you don’t have to worry about what you say, unless of course you’re going to say you did it.”
    “See what I mean?” the boy protested. “I knew you’d get around to saying that and putting on the tape. Shit, I been in one of these rooms before, you know.”
    “That’s why we aren’t bullshitting you. So let’s say it once for the record. I’m Harry Bosch, LAPD, this is Eleanor Wish, FBI, and you are Edward Niese, AKA Sharkey. I want to start by-”
    “What’s this shit? Was that the president what got dragged in that pipe? What’s the FBI doing here?”
    “Sharkey!” Bosch said loudly. “Cool it. It’s just an exchange program. Like when you used to go to school and the kids would come from France or someplace. Think like she’s from France. She’s just kinda watching and learning from the pros.” He smiled and winked at Wish. Sharkey looked over at her and smiled a little, too. “First question, Sharkey, let’s get it out of the way so we can get to the good stuff. Did you do the guy up at the dam?”
    “Fuck no. I see-”
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Wish broke in. She looked at Bosch. “Can we go outside a moment?”
    Bosch got up and walked out. She followed, and this time she closed the interview room door.
    “What are you doing?” he said.
    “What are
you
doing? Are you going to read that kid his rights, or do you want to taint this interview from the start?”
    “What are you talking about? He didn’t do it. He isn’t a suspect. I’m just asking him questions because I’m trying to establish an interrogation pattern.”
    “We don’t know he isn’t the killer. I think we should give him his rights.”
    “We read him his rights and he is going to think we think he’s a suspect, not a witness. We do that and we might as well go in there and talk to the walls. He won’t remember a thing.”
    She walked back into the interview room without another word. Bosch followed and picked up where he had left off, without saying anything about anybody’s rights.
    “You