a hold on this one. And you'll be the one hung out to dry.”

Bosch thought a moment before answering.

“It's off the record, Detective Bosch,” she said. “I'm just making conversation.”

“I told him not to settle. I told him if he wanted to settle, I'd go out and pay for my own lawyer.”

“That sure of yourself, huh?” She paused to inhale on her cigarette. “Well, we'll see, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“You know it's nothing personal.”

He knew she would get around to saying that. The biggest lie in the game.

“Maybe not for you.”

“Oh, it is for you? You shoot an unarmed man and then you take it personally when his wife objects, when she sues you?”

“Your client's husband used to cut the strap off the purses of his victims, tie it in a slipknot around their neck and then slowly but steadily strangle them while he was raping them. He preferred leather straps. He didn't seem to care about what women he did this to. Just the leather.”

She didn't even flinch. He hadn't expected her to.

“That's late husband. My client's late husband. And the only thing that is for sure in this case, that is provable, is that you killed him.”

“Yeah, and I'd do it again.”

“I know, Detective Bosch. That's why we're here.”

She pursed her lips in a frozen kiss which sharply set the line of her jaw. Her hair caught the glint of the afternoon sun. She angrily stubbed her cigarette out in the sand and then went back inside. She swung the door open as if it were made of balsa wood.

4

Bosch pulled into the rear parking lot of the Hollywood station on Wilcox shortly before four. Belk had used only ten minutes of his allotted hour for his opening statement and Judge Keyes had recessed early, saying he wanted to start testimony on a separate day from openers so the jury would not confuse evidentiary testimony with the lawyers' words.

Bosch had felt uneasy with Belk's short discourse in front of the jurors but Belk had told him there was nothing to worry about. He walked in through the back door near the tank and took the rear hallway to the detective bureau. By four the bureau is usually deserted. It was that way when Bosch walked in, except for Jerry Edgar, who was parked in front of one of the IBMs typing on a form Bosch recognized as a 51—an Investigating Officer's Chronological Record. He looked up and saw Bosch approaching.

“Whereyat, Harry?”

“Right here.”

“Got done early, I see. Don't tell me, directed verdict. The judge threw Money Chandler out on her ass.”

“I wish.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What do you have so far?”

Edgar said there was nothing so far. No identification yet. Bosch sat down at his desk and loosened his tie. Pounds's office was dark so it was safe to light a cigarette. His mind trailed off into thinking about the trial and Money Chandler. She had captured the jury for most of her argument. She had, in effect, called Bosch a murderer, hitting with a gut-level, emotional charge. Belk had responded with a dissertation on the law and a police officer's right to use deadly force when danger was near. Even if it turned out there was no danger, no gun beneath the pillow, Belk said, Church's own actions created the climate of danger that allowed Bosch to act as he did.

Finally, Belk had countered Chandler's Nietzsche by quoting The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Belk said Bosch had entered the “Dying Ground” when he kicked Church's apartment door open. At that point he had to fight or perish, shoot or be shot. Second-guessing his actions afterward was unjust.

Sitting across from Edgar now, Bosch acknowledged to himself that it hadn't worked. Belk had been boring while Chandler had been interesting, and convincing. They were starting in the hole. He noticed Edgar had stopped talking and Harry had not registered anything he had said.

“What about prints?” he asked.

“Harry, you listening to me? I just said we finished with the rubber silicone about an hour ago. Donovan got prints off the hand. He said they look good, came up in the rubber pretty well. He'll start the DOJ run tonight and probably by morning we'll have the similars. It will probably take him the rest of the morning to go through them.

But, at least, they're not letting this one drown in the backup. Pounds gave it a priority status.”

“Good, let me know what comes out. I'll be in and out all week, I