The Black Ice (hb-2)

chance. This conversation didn’t take place. I gotta try to put it all together like it was my own before I hand anything over to him.”
    Bosch was thinking quickly. What else was there to ask?
    “What about the note? That’s the part that doesn’t fit now. If it was no suicide then where’s this note come from?”
    “Yeah, that’s the problem. That’s why we gave the coroner such a hard time. Far as we can guess, he either had it all along in his back pocket or whoever did him made him write it. I don’t know.”
    “Yeah.” Bosch thought a moment. “Would you write a note like that if somebody was about to put you down on the floor?”
    “I don’t know, man. People do things you’d never expect when they’ve got the gun on them. They always’ve got hope that things might turn out all right. That’s the way I see it.”
    Bosch nodded. But he didn’t know if he agreed or not.
    “I gotta go,” Sheehan said. “Let me know what comes up.”
    Bosch nodded and Sheehan left him there with two cups of coffee on the table. A few moments later Sheehan was back.
    “You know, I never told you, it was too bad about what happened with you. We could use you back here, Harry. I’ve always thought that.”
    Bosch looked up at him.
    “Yeah, Frankie. Thanks.”

Chapter 14
    The Medfly Eradication Project Center was at the edge of East L.A., on San Fernando Road not far from County-USC Med Center, which housed the morgue. Bosch was tempted to drop by to see Teresa but he figured he should give her time to cool. He also figured that decision was cowardly but he didn’t change it. He just kept driving.
    The project center was a former county psychiatric ward which had been abandoned to that cause years earlier when Supreme Court rulings made it virtually impossible for the government-in the form of the police-to take the mentally ill off the streets and hold them for observation and public safety. The San Fernando Road ward was closed as the country consolidated its psych centers.
    It had been used since for a variety of purposes, including a set for a slasher movie about a haunted nuthouse and even a temporary morgue when an earthquake damaged the facility at County-USC a few years back. Bodies had been stored in two refrigerated trucks in the parking lot. Because of the emergency situation, county administrators had to get the first trucks they could get their hands on. Painted on the side of one of them had been the words “Live Maine Lobsters!” Bosch remembered reading about it in the “Only in L.A.” column in the
Times
.
    There was a check-in post at the entry manned by a state police officer. Bosch rolled down the window, badged him and asked who the head medfly eradicator was. He was directed to a parking space and an entrance to the administration suite.
    The door to the suite still said No Unescorted Patients on it. Bosch went through and down a hallway, nodding to and passing another state officer. He came to a secretary’s desk where he identified himself again to the woman sitting there and asked to see the entomologist in charge. She made a quick phone call to someone and then escorted Harry into a nearby office, introducing him to a man named Roland Edson. The secretary hovered near the door with a shocked look on her face until Edson finally told her that would be all.
    When they were alone in the office, Edson said, “I kill flies for a living, not people, Detective. Is this a serious visit?”
    Edson laughed hard and Bosch forced a smile to be polite. Edson was a small man in a short-sleeved white shirt and pale green tie. His bald scalp had been freckled by the sun and was scarred by misjudgments. He wore thick, rimless glasses that magnified his eyes and made him somewhat resemble his quarry. Behind his back his subordinates probably called him “The Fly.”
    Bosch explained that he was working a homicide case and could not tell Edson a lot of the background because the investigation was of a highly confidential nature. He warned him that other investigators might be back with more questions. He asked for some general information about the breeding and transport of sterile fruit flies into the state, hoping that the appeal for expert advice would get the bureaucrat to open up.
    Edson responded by giving him much of the same information Teresa Corazon had already provided, but Bosch acted as if it was all new to him and took notes.
    “Here’s the specimen here, Detective,” Edson