Bosch reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brown bag. It contained several copies of the key Irving had given him that he had had made in Chinatown on his way to the restaurant. He turned the bag over on the center of the table and keys clattered onto the table.

“Everybody take a key. They’ll open the door to Irving’s conference room. Once the files are in there I want the room locked at all times.”

Everybody reached to the center of the table and took a key except Bosch. He had already put the original on his key ring. He stood up and looked at Chastain.

“Let’s go get those files out of my car.”

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

THE interviews with the secretary and the clerk were so uneventful that Bosch wished the detectives could have spent the time in their beds sleeping. Tyla Quimby, the secretary, had been out with the flu and holed up in her home in the Crenshaw district for the last week. She had no knowledge of Howard Elias’s activities during the days before his death. Aside from exposing Bosch, Edgar and Rider to the flu, she gave the detectives very little. She explained that Elias kept his case strategies and other aspects of his work largely to himself. Her role was primarily opening mail, answering phones, handling walk-in visitors and clients, and paying the office expenses through a small operating account Elias put money into each month. As far as the phone traffic went, she said Elias had a direct private phone line in his office that over the years had become widely known among friends and associates as well as some reporters and even enemies. So she was of little use in helping them determine whether Elias had been specifically threatened in the weeks before his murder. The investigators thanked her and left her home, hoping they would not fall victim to her illness.