The Closers

listened for any sound behind him but heard none. When he made it to the street he looked back at the house but saw nothing that gave him reason to believe the chirping from his phone had been heard inside the house above the sounds of the television.
    Bosch knew it had been a close call. He was out of breath. He walked back to his car, trying to gather himself and recover from the near disaster. As with the badly handled interview with Daniel Kotchof, he knew he was showing signs of rust. He had forgotten to mute his phone before creeping the house. It was a mistake that could have blown everything and maybe put him into a confrontation with an investigative target. Three years ago, before he had left the job, it would never have happened. He started thinking about what Irving had said about his being a retread that would come apart at the seams, that would blow out.
    Inside the car he checked the caller ID list on his phone and saw that the call had come from Kiz Rider. He called her back.
    “Harry, I checked my call list and saw you had called me a little while ago. I had my phones off. What’s up?”
    “Nothing much. I was checking in to see how it was going.”
    “Well, it’s going. I’ve got it all structured and most of the writing done. I’ll finish tomorrow morning, then I’ll start it through the channels.”
    “Good.”
    “Yeah, I’m about to call it a night. What about you? Did you find Robert Verloren?”
    “Not yet. But I’ve got an address for you. I followed Mackey after he left work. He’s got a little house by the freeway in Woodland Hills. There might be a phone line in there that you’ll want to add to the tap.”
    “Good. Give me the address. That should be easy enough to check. But I’m not sure I want you following the suspect alone. That’s not smart, Harry.”
    “We had to find his address.”
    He wasn’t going to tell her about the near miss. He gave her the address and waited a moment while she wrote it down.
    “I’ve got some other stuff, too,” he said. “I made some calls.”
    “You’ve been busy for just a day back on the job. What’ve you got?”
    He recounted the phone calls he made and received after she had left the office. Rider asked no questions and then was silent after he finished.
    “That brings you up to date,” Bosch said. “What do you think, Kiz?”
    “I think there might be a picture coming together, Harry.”
    “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Plus, the year, nineteen eighty-eight. I think you were onto something about that. Maybe these assholes were trying to prove a point in ’eighty-eight. The problem is, it all went under the door at PDU. Who knows where all of that stuff ended up. Irving probably dumped it in the evidence incinerator at the ESB.”
    “Not all of it. When the new chief came in he wanted a full assessment of everything. He wanted to know where the bodies were buried. Anyway, I wasn’t involved in that but I knew about it and I heard that a lot of the PDU files were kept after the unit was disbanded. A lot of it Irving put in Special Archives.”
    “Special Archives? What the hell is that?”
    “It just means limited access. You need command approval. It’s all in the basement at Parker Center. It’s mostly in-house investigations. Political stuff. Dangerous stuff. This Chatsworth business doesn’t really seem to qualify, unless it was connected to something else.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like somebody in the department or somebody in the city.”
    The latter meant someone powerful in city politics.
    “Can you get in there and see if any files on this still exist? What about your pal on six? Maybe he’d -”
    “I can try.”
    “Then try.”
    “First thing. What about you? I thought you were going out to find Robert Verloren tonight, and now I hear you were following our suspect.”
    “I went down there. I didn’t find him.”
    He proceeded to update her on his earlier swing through the Toy District, leaving out his encounter with the would-be robbers. That incident and the phone fiasco behind Mackey’s house were not things he cared to share with her.
    “I’ll go back out there tomorrow morning,” he said in conclusion.
    “Okay, Harry. Sounds like a plan. I should have the warrant together by the time you get in. And I’ll check on the PDU files.”
    Bosch hesitated but then decided not to hold back any warnings or concerns with his partner. He looked out the windshield at the dark street. He