The Overlook

hear that the big federal machine was gearing up for battle. A greater alarm had now been sounded. The e-mail sent to Stanley Kent had brought things into better focus and what was once a federal curiosity had now gone completely off the scale.
    When Brenner finally closed the phone and put it back in his jacket pocket he turned slightly in his seat and looked over at Bosch.
    “I’ve got a RAT team heading to Saint Aggy’s,” he said. “They’ll go into the materials safe to check it out.”
    “A rat team?”
    “Radiological-attack team.”
    “What’s their ETA?”
    “Didn’t ask but they might beat us. They’ve got a chopper.”
    Bosch was impressed. It meant that there had been a rapid-response team on duty somewhere in the middle of the night. He thought about how he had been awake and waiting for the call out that night. The members of the radiological-attack team must wait for the call they hope never comes. He remembered what he had heard about the LAPD’s own OHS unit taking training in urban assault tactics. He wondered if Captain Hadley had a RAT team, too.
    “They’re going full field on this,” Brenner said. “The Department of Homeland Security is overseeing from DC. This morning at nine there will be meetings on both coasts to bring everybody together on it.”
    “Who is everybody?”
    “There’s a protocol. We’ll bring in Homeland, the JTTF, everybody. It’ll be alphabet soup. The NRC, the DOE, RAP… who knows, before we get this contained we might even have FEMA setting up a tent. It’s going to be federal pandemonium.”
    Bosch didn’t know what all the acronyms stood for but didn’t need to. They all spelled out
feds
to him.
    “Who will be running the show?”
    Brenner looked over at Bosch.
    “Everybody and nobody. Like I said, pandemonium. If we open up that safe at Saint Aggy’s and the cesium is gone, then our best shot at tracking it and getting it back will be to do it before all hell breaks loose at nine and we get micromanaged to death from Washington.”
    Bosch nodded. He thought maybe he had misjudged Brenner. The agent seemed to want to get things done, not wallow in the bureaucratic mire.
    “And what’s the LAPD status going to be in a full-field investigation?”
    “I already told you, the LAPD remains in. Nothing changes on that. You remain in, Harry. My guess is that bridges are already being built between our people and your people. I know the LAPD has its own Homeland Security office. I am sure they will be brought in. We’re obviously going to need all hands on deck with this.”
    Bosch glanced over at him. Brenner looked serious.
    “Have you worked with our OHS before?” Bosch asked.
    “On occasion. We shared some intelligence on a few things.”
    Bosch nodded but felt that Brenner was being disingenuous or was completely naive about the gulf between the locals and the feds. But he noted that he had been called by his first name and wondered if that was one of the bridges being built.
    “You said you checked me out. Who did you check with?”
    “Harry, we’re working well here, why stir it up? If I made a mistake I apologize.”
    “Fine. Who’d you check me out with?”
    “Look, all I’m going to tell you is that I asked Agent Walling who the LAPD point man was and she gave me your name. I made a few calls while driving in. I was told you were a very capable detective. That you had more than thirty years in, that a few years back you retired, didn’t like it too much and came back to the job to work cold cases. Things went sideways in Echo Park -a little thing you dragged Agent Walling into. You were off the job a few months while that was, uh, cleared up and now you’re back and assigned to Homicide Special.”
    “What else?”
    “Harr-”
    “What else?”
    “Okay. The word I got is that you can be difficult to get along with-especially when it comes to working with the federal government. But I have to say, so far I don’t see any of that at all.”
    Bosch figured that most of this information had come from Rachel-he remembered seeing her on the phone and her saying it was her partner. He was disappointed if she had said such things about him. And he knew that Brenner was probably holding back most of it. The truth was that he’d had so many run-ins with the feds-going back well before he ever met Rachel Walling-that they probably had a file on him as thick as a murder book.
    After a minute or so of silence Bosch decided to