The Narrows

wrong."
    "I was the profiler. Right now I handle reservation crimes in the Dakotas."
    The traffic was starting to open up as we passed by downtown, the spires of the financial district disappearing in the upper mist of the storm. The city always looked haunting in the rain to me. There was a foreboding sense about it that always depressed me, that always made me feel like something had broken loose in the world and was wrong.
    "There is only one thing wrong with all of that, Bosch."
    "What?"
    "The director is holding a press conference today but he isn't going to say we caught the Poet. Just like you, we don't think that was Backus in that trailer."
    "So, Backus doesn't know that. He'll watch it on CNN like everybody else. But it won't change his plan. Either way, I say he hits Ed Thomas today. Either way, he makes his point. 7 am better and smarter than you.'"
    She nodded and thought about that for a long moment.
    "Okay," she finally said. "What if I'm buying it? What is our play? Have you called Ed Thomas?"
    "I don't know what our play is yet and I haven't called Ed Thomas. We're heading toward his store now. It's down in Orange and he opens up at eleven. I called and got his hours off the answering machine."
    "Why his store? AD the other cops Backus killed were in their homes, one in his car."
    "Because at the moment I don't know where Ed Thomas lives and because of the book. My guess is Backus will make his move at the bookstore. If I'm wrong and Ed doesn't show up at the store, then we find out where he lives and go there."
    Rachel nodded in agreement with the plan.
    "There were three different books written on the Poet case. I read them all and they all had postscripts on the players. They said Thomas retired and opened a bookstore. I think one even named the store."
    "There you go."
    She looked at her watch.
    "Are we going to make it there before he opens?"
    "We'll make it. Did they set a time for the director's press conference?"
    "Three o'clock D.C. time."
    I checked the dash clock. It was ten a.m. We had an hour before Ed Thomas opened for business and two hours before the press conference. If my theory and hunch were correct we would be in the presence of the Poet very soon. I was ready and I was juiced. I felt the high octane moving in my Wood. By old habit I dropped my hand off the wheel and checked my hip. I had a Glock 27 holstered there. It was illegal for me to be carrying a weapon and if I ended up using it, there could be trouble-the kind that could prevent me from rejoining the police department.
    But sometimes the risks you face dictate the other risks you must take. And my guess was that this was going to be one of those times.

CHAPTER 40
    The rain made it hard to watch the store. If we had left the windshield wipers on, it would have been a dead giveaway. So we watched at first through the murk of water on glass.
    We were parked in the lot of a strip shopping center on Tustin Boulevard in the city of Orange. Book Carnival was a small business between a rock shop and what looked like a vacant slot. Three doors down was a gun store.
    There was a single public entrance. Before taking our position in the front lot we had driven behind the shopping center and seen a rear door with the store's name on it. There was a doorbell and a sign that said RING BELL FOR DELIVERIES.
    In a perfect world we'd have been on the front and back of the store with a minimum of four sets of eyes. Backus could come in either way, posing as a customer through the front or as a deliveryman through the back. But nothing was perfect about the world on this day. It was raining and it was just the two of us. We parked the Mercedes at a distance from the front of the store but still close enough to see and act if necessary.
    The front counter and cash register were just behind the front window of Book Carnival. This worked in our favor. Shortly after we watched him open the store for business, we watched Ed Thomas take a position behind the counter. He put a cash drawer into the register and made some phone calls. Even with the rain and the blurring of the windshield we could keep him in view as long as he stayed at the register. It was the recesses of the store behind him that disappeared in the gloom. On the occasions that he left his post and walked back toward the shelves and displays in the rear, we lost sight of him and the tingling sense of panic took hold.
    On the way down Rachel had told me about the discovery of the