guess we have to keep that, too," Bosch said.
They drove to the police station on Wilcox because it was rush hour and it would have taken them an hour to get to the Federal Building in Westwood. It was after six by the time they got into the detective bureau, and the place was deserted, everybody having gone home. Bosch took Sharkey into one of the eight-by-eight interview rooms. There was a small, cigarette-scarred table and three chairs in the room. A handmade sign on one wall said No Sniveling! He sat Sharkey down in the Slider—a wooden chair with its seat heavily waxed and a quarter-inch of wood cut off the bottom of the front two legs. The incline was not enough to notice, but enough that the people who sat in the chair could not get comfortable. They would lean back like most hard cases and slowly slide off the front. The only thing they could do was lean forward, right into the face of their interrogator. Bosch told the boy not to move, then stepped outside to plan a strategy with Wish, shutting the door. She opened the door after he closed it.
She said, "It's illegal to leave a juvenile in a closed room unattended."
Bosch closed the door again.
"He isn't complaining," he said. "We've got to talk. What's your feel for him? You want him, or you want me to take it?"
"I don't know," she said.
That settled it. That was a no. An initial interview with a witness, a reluctant witness at that, required a skillful blend of scamming, cajoling, demanding. If she didn't know, she didn't go.
"You're supposed to be the expert interrogator," she said in what seemed to Bosch to be a mocking voice. "According to your file. I don't know if that's using brains or brawn. But I'd like to see how it's done."
He nodded, ignoring the jab. He reached into his pocket for the boy's cigarettes and matches.
"Go in and give him these. I want to go check my desk for messages and set up a tape." When he saw the look on her face as she eyed the cigarettes, he added, "First rule of interrogation: make the subject think he is comfortable. Give 'im the cigarettes. Hold your breath if you don't like it."
He started to walk away but she said, "Bosch, what was he doing with those pictures?"
So that was what was bothering her, he thought. "Look. Five years ago a kid like him would have gone with that man and done who knows what. Nowadays, he sells him a picture instead. There are so many killers—diseases and otherwise—these kids are getting smart. It's safer to sell your Polaroids than to sell your flesh."
She opened the door to the interview room and went in.
Bosch crossed the squad room and checked the chrome spike on his desk for messages. His lawyer had finally called back. So had Bremmer over at the Times, though he had left a pseudonym they had both agreed on earlier.
Bosch didn't want anybody snooping around his desk to know the press had called.
Bosch left the messages on the spike, took out his ID card and went to the supply closet and slipped the lock. He opened a new ninety-minute cassette and popped it into the recorder on the bottom shelf of the closet. He turned on the machine and made sure the backup cassette was turning. He set it on record and watched to make sure both tapes were rolling. Then he went back down the hallway to the front desk and told a fat Explorer Scout who was sitting there to order a pizza to be delivered to the station.
He gave the kid a ten and told him to bring it to the interview room with three Cokes when it came.
"What do you want on it?" the kid asked.
"What do you like?"
"Sausage and pepperoni. Hate anchovies."
"Make it anchovies."
Bosch walked back to the detective bureau. Wish and Sharkey were silent when he walked back into the small interview room, and he had the feeling they had not been talking much. Wish had no feel for the boy. She sat to Sharkey's right. Bosch took the seat on his left. The only window was a small square of mirrored glass in the door. People could look in but not out. Bosch decided to be up front with the boy from the start. He was a kid, but he was probably wiser than most of the men who had sat