The Overlook

furniture. A small square table and two chairs. Assuming there was a camera somewhere he raised his hand and shot his middle finger into the air. He gave his hand a twirl to emphasize the message.
    Bosch pulled one of the chairs out and sat down on it backwards, ready to wait them out. He took his cell phone out and opened it. He knew that if they were watching him they wouldn’t want him calling out and reporting his situation-it could be embarrassing for the bureau. But when he looked at the screen there was no signal. It was a safe room. Radio signals could not get out or in. Leave it to the feds, Bosch thought. They think of everything.
    A long twenty minutes went by and then the door finally opened. Rachel Walling stepped in. She closed the door, took the chair opposite Bosch and quietly sat down.
    “Sorry, Harry, I was over at Tactical.”
    “What the fuck, Rachel. You people hold cops against their will now?”
    She looked surprised.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “What are you talking about?” Bosch repeated in a mocking voice. “Your partner locked me in here.”
    “It wasn’t locked when I came in. Try it now.”
    Bosch waved all the bullshit away.
    “Forget it. I don’t have time to play games. What’s going on with the investigation?”
    She pursed her lips as if considering how to respond.
    “What’s going on is that you and your department have been running around like thieves in a jewelry store, smashing every goddamn case in sight. You can’t tell the glass from the diamonds.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “So you know about Ramin Samir.”
    “Who doesn’t? It’s already on I-Missed-It News. What happened up there?”
    “A class-A fuckup is what happened. We were set up. OHS was set up.”
    “Sounds like somebody was.”
    Bosch leaned across the table.
    “But it means something, Rachel. The people who put the OHS onto Samir knew who he was and that he’d make an easy target. They left the Kents ’ car right in front of his house because they knew we’d end up spinning our wheels.”
    “It also could have worked as a payback to Samir.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “All those years he was on CNN fanning the flames. He could’ve been seen as hurting their cause because he was giving the enemy a face and heightening American anger and resolve.”
    Bosch didn’t get it.
    “I thought agitation was one of their tools. I thought they loved this guy.”
    “Maybe. It’s hard to say.”
    Bosch wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. But when Rachel leaned across the table he suddenly could see how angry she was.
    “Now let’s talk about you and how you have been single-handedly fucking things up since before the car was even found.”
    “What are you talking about? I’m trying to solve a homicide. That’s my-”
    “Yes, trying to solve a homicide at the possible cost of endangering the entire city with this petty, selfish and self-righteous insistence on-”
    “Come on, Rachel, don’t you think I have an idea about what could be at stake here?”
    She shook her head.
    “Not if you are holding back a key witness from us. Don’t you see what you are doing? You have no idea where this investigation is headed because you’ve been busy hiding witnesses and sucker punching agents.”
    Bosch leaned back, clearly surprised.
    “Is that what Maxwell said, that I sucker punched him?”
    “It doesn’t matter what he said. We are trying to control a potentially devastating situation here and I don’t understand why you are making the moves you are making.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “That makes sense,” he said. “You shut somebody out of his own investigation and it stands to reason you won’t know what he is up to.”
    She held her hands up as if to stop an oncoming train.
    “Okay, let’s just stop everything right here. Talk to me, Harry. What is your problem?”
    Bosch looked at her and then up at the ceiling. He studied the upper corners of the room and dropped his eyes back to hers.
    “You want to talk? Let’s take a walk outside, then we can talk.”
    She didn’t hesitate.
    “Okay, fine,” she said. “Let’s walk and talk. And then you’ll give me Mitford.”
    Walling got up and moved to the door. Bosch saw her quickly glance up at an air-conditioning grille high on the back wall and it confirmed for him that they were on camera.
    She opened the unlocked door and Brenner and another agent were waiting in the hallway.
    “We’re going to take a little walk,” Walling