The Closers

been sitting with him for twenty minutes, updating him on the day’s progress on the cold hit.
    “Shit, I’m still hungry,” he said after finishing the last spoonful.
    “What is that, the South Beach diet?” Rider asked.
    “No, just my own thing. What I need, though, is the South Bureau diet.”
    “Really? And what is the South Bureau diet?”
    Bosch could feel Rider tense. The South Bureau encompassed the majority of the city’s black community. She had to wonder if what Pratt had just said was some sort of backhanded racial comment. Bosch had often seen in the department the elevation of the us versus them ethic to the point that white cops would make racially tinged comments in front of black or Latino cops simply because they believed that within the rank and file, the color blue superseded skin color. Rider was about to find out if Pratt was one of these cops.
    “Put down your antenna,” Pratt said. “All I’m saying is that I worked in South for ten years and I never had to worry about my weight. You’re always on the run down there. Then I got to RHD and gained fifteen pounds in two years. It’s sad.”
    Rider relaxed and so did Bosch.
    “Get off your ass and knock on doors,” Bosch said. “That was the rule in Hollywood.”
    “Good rule,” Pratt said. “Except it’s hard when they put you in charge. I have to sit in here and hear about how you guys get to knock on doors.”
    “But you get the big bucks,” Rider said.
    “Oh, yeah.”
    This was a joke because as a supervisor Pratt could not pull overtime. But those on his squad could, thereby setting up the possibility that some of his detectives would make more than him, even though he was the unit boss.
    Pratt turned in his chair and opened a cooler on the floor beside him. He took out another tub of yogurt.
    “Fuck it,” he said as he straightened up and opened it.
    He didn’t add cornflakes this time. Bosch only had to put up with the slurping as he started spooning the white gunk into his mouth.
    “Okay, back to this,” Pratt said, his mouth full of it. “What you are telling me is that at the end of the day you can tie the gun to this mope Mackey. He fired this weapon. But you’ve got nobody who ties him to the victim yet and therefore you cannot tie him to the fatal shot.”
    “That and other things,” Rider said.
    “So if I was a defense lawyer,” Pratt continued, “I would have Mackey cop to the burglary because the statute of limitations has long expired. He would say the gun bit him when he tried it out so he got rid of the damn thing-long before any murder. He’d say, ‘No sir I didn’t kill that little girl with it and you can’t prove I did. You can’t prove I ever laid eyes on her.’”
    Rider and Bosch nodded.
    “So you got nothing.”
    They nodded again.
    “Not bad for a day’s work. What do you want to do about it?”
    “We want a wiretap,” Bosch said. “Two, maybe three locations. One on his cell, one on the phone at the gas station. And then one on his home once we find it and if he’s got a line there. We plant a story in the paper that says we’re working the case again and make sure he sees it. Then we see if he talks about it with anybody.”
    “And what makes you think he would talk to someone else about a murder he may or may not have committed seventeen years ago?”
    “Because, like we said, so far we can’t connect this guy to the girl in any way. So we’re thinking there is somebody in the middle in this thing. Mackey either did this for somebody or he got the gun for that somebody to do it himself.”
    “There is a third possibility,” Rider added. “That he helped. That girl was carried up a steep hillside. It was either somebody big or somebody with help.”
    Pratt took two spoonfuls of yogurt, frowning as he looked down into the tub, before responding.
    “Okay, what about the newspaper? You going to be able to make a plant?”
    “We think so,” Rider said. “We’re going to use Commander Garcia of Valley Bureau. He was on the case originally. Haunted by the one that got away, that sort of pitch. He says he’s got a connection at the
Daily News.
”
    “Okay, sounds like a plan. Write up the warrants and give them to me. The captain has to approve them and then they go to the DA’s office for approval before going to the judge. It’s going to take some time. Once we get a judge to okay it we’ll take the other teams off what they’re doing and put them on the