guarded by commanders and deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs. And each group had its suspicions about the others. Each was a society within the great society.
Bosch had been a master of the maze during his eight years in Robbery-Homicide. And then he crashed and burned under the weight of an Internal Affairs investigation into his shooting of an unarmed suspect in a series of killings. Bosch had fired as the man reached under a pillow in his killing pad for what Harry thought was a gun. But there was no gun. Beneath the pillow was a toupee. It was almost laughable, except for the man who took the bullet. Other RHD investigators tied him to eleven killings. His body was shipped in a cardboard box to a crematorium. Bosch was shipped out to Hollywood Division.
The elevator was crowded and smelled like stale breath. He got out on the fourth floor and walked into the Scientific Investigations Division offices. The secretary had already left. Harry leaned over the countertop and reached the button that buzzed open the half door. He walked through the Ballistics lab and into the squad room. Donovan was still there, sitting at his desk.
"How'd you get in here?"
"Let myself in."
"Harry, don't do that. You can't go around breaching security like that."
Bosch nodded his contrition.
"What do you want?" Donovan asked. "I don't have any of your cases."
"Sure you do."
"What one?"
"Cal Moore."
"Bullshit."
"Look, I've got a part of it, okay? I just have a few questions. You can answer them if you want. If you don't, that's fine, too."
"What've you got?"
"I'm running down some things that came up on a couple cases I'm working and they run right across Cal Moore's trail. And so I just . . . I just want to be sure about Moore. You know what I mean?"
"No, I don't know what you mean."
Bosch pulled a chair away from another desk and sat down. They were alone in the squad room but Bosch spoke low and slow, hoping to draw the SID tech in.
"Just for my own knowledge I need to be sure. What I am wondering is, can you tell me if all the stuff checked out."
"Checked out to what?"
"Come on, man. Was it him and was there anybody else in that room?"
There was a long silence and then Donovan cleared his throat. He finally said, "What do you mean, you're working cases that cross his trail?"
Fair enough question, Bosch thought. There was a small window of opportunity there.
"I got a dead drug dealer. I had asked Moore to do some checking on the case. Then, I got a dead body, a Juan Doe, in an alley off Sunset. Moore's the one who found the body. The next day he checks into that dump and does the number with the shotgun. Or so it looks. I just want some reassurances it's the way it looks. I heard they got an ID over at the morgue."
"So what makes you think these two cases are connected with Moore's thing?"
"I don't think anything right now. I'm just trying to eliminate possibilities. Maybe it's all coincidences. I don't know."
"Well," Donovan said. "I don't know what they got over at the ME's, but I got lifts in the room that belonged to him. Moore was in that room. I just got finished with it. Took me all day."
"How come?"
"The DOJ computer was down all morning. Couldn't get prints. I went up to personnel to get Moore's prints from his package and they told me Irving had already raided it. He took the prints out and took 'em over to the coroner. You know, you're not supposed to do that, but who's gonna tell him, get on his shit list. So I had to wait for the Justice computer to come back on line. Got his prints off of that after lunch and just finished with it a little while ago. That was Moore in the room."
"Where were the prints?"
"Hang on."
Donovan rolled back his chair to a set of file cabinets and unlocked a drawer with a key from his pocket. While he was leafing through the files, Bosch lit a cigarette. Donovan finally pulled out a file and then rolled his chair back to his desk.
"Put that shit out, Harry. I hate that shit."
Bosch dropped the cigarette to the linoleum, stepped on it and then kicked the butt under Donovan's desk. Donovan began reviewing some pages he had pulled from a file. Bosch could see that each one showed a