The Black Ice (hb-2)

Porter? What’s he say about all of this?”
    Bosch had been doing his best to keep Porter clear. He didn’t know why. Porter had fallen and had lied, but somewhere inside Bosch still felt something. Maybe it was that last question.
Harry, you going to take care of me on this?
    “I haven’t found Porter,” Bosch lied. “No answer on his phone. But I don’t think he’d had much time to put all of this together.”
    Pounds shook his head disdainfully.
    “Of course not. He probably was on a drunk.”
    Bosch didn’t say anything. It was in Pounds’s court now.
    “Listen, Harry, you’re not… you’re being straight with me here, right? I can’t afford to have you running around like a loose cannon. I’ve got it all, right?”
    Bosch knew that what he meant was he wanted to know how badly he could be fucked if this went to shit.
    Bosch said, “You know what I know. There are two cases, probably three, including Moore, out there to be cleared. You want ’em cleared in six, eight weeks, then I’ll write up the paper and you can ship it to Parker Center. If you want to get them cleared by the first like you said, then let me have the four days.”
    Pounds was staring off somewhere above Bosch’s head and using the ruler to scratch himself behind the ear. He was making a decision.
    “Okay,” he finally said. “Take the weekend and see what you can do. We’ll see where things stand Monday. We might have to call in RHD then. Meantime, I want to hear from you tomorrow and Sunday. I want to know your movements, what’s happening, what progress has been made.”
    “You got it,” Bosch said. He stood up and turned to leave. He noticed that above the door was a small crucifix. He wondered if that had been what Pounds had been staring at. Most said he was a political born-again. There were a lot in the department. They all joined a church up in the Valley because one of the assistant chiefs was a lay preacher there. Bosch guessed they all went there Sunday mornings and gathered around him, told him what a great guy he was.
    “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then,” Pounds said from behind.
    “Right. Tomorrow.”
    A short while after that, Pounds locked his office and went home. Bosch hung around the office alone, drinking coffee and smoking and waiting for the six o’clock news. There was a small black-and-white television on top of the file cabinet behind the autos table. He turned it on and played with the rabbit ears until he got a reasonably clear picture. A couple of the uniforms walked down from the watch office to watch.
    Cal Moore had finally made the top of the news. Channel 2 led with a report on the press conference at Parker Center in which Assistant Chief Irvin Irving revealed new developments. The tape showed Irving at a cluster of microphones. Teresa stood behind him. Irving credited her with finding new evidence during the autopsy that pointed to homicide. Irving said a full-scale homicide investigation was underway. The report ended with a photograph of Moore and a voiceover from the reporter.
    “Investigators now have the task, and they say the personal obligation, to dig deep into the life of Sergeant Calexico Moore to determine what it was that led him to the beat-up motel room where someone executed him. Sources tell me the investigators do not have much to start with, but they do start with a debt of thanks to the acting chief medical examiner, who discovered a murder that had been written off… as a cop’s lonely suicide.”
    The camera zoomed in closer on Moore’s face here and the reporter ended it, “And so, the mystery begins…”
    Bosch turned the TV off after the report. The uniforms went back down the hall and he went back to his spot at the homicide table and sat down. The picture they had shown of Moore had been taken a few years back, Harry guessed. His face was younger, the eyes clearer. There was no portent of a hidden life.
    Thinking about it brought to mind the other photographs, the ones Sylvia Moore had said her husband had collected over his life and looked at from time to time. What else had he saved from the past? Bosch didn’t have one photo of his mother. He hadn’t known his father until the old man was on his deathbed. What baggage did Cal Moore carry with him?
    It was time for him to head for the Code Seven. But before heading out to the car, Harry walked down the hall to the watch office. He picked up the clipboard that hung on the wall next to the