He thought about the letters for a moment. He was mostly going on instinct and premonition, but he felt the charge sustaining in his blood. He felt he had found his focus. This exhilarated him but at the same time he also felt a bit foolish at having unknowingly carried such a potentially key piece of the case around in his briefcase now for about twelve hours.

“Did Howard ever talk to you about this case?” he asked.

“No, we never talked about each other’s work,” Entrenkin said. “We had a rule. You see, we knew that what we were doing was . . . something that wouldn’t be understood — the inspector general with one of the department’s most vocal and well-known critics.”

“Not to mention him being married and all.”

Her face turned hard.

“Look, what is wrong with you? One minute we’re getting along fine and maybe making some progress on this and the next you just want to antagonize me.”

“What’s wrong is that I wish you would save the we-knew-it-was-wrong sermon for somebody else. I find it hard to believe you two didn’t talk about the LAPD when you were alone up in that apartment.”

Bosch saw pure fire in her eyes.

“Well, I don’t give a good goddamn what you find hard to believe, Detective.”

“Look, we made our deal. I’m not going to tell anyone. If I make trouble for you, you can make trouble for me. If I did tell even my partners, you know what they’d say? They’d say I was crazy for not treating you as a suspect. That’s what I should be doing but I’m not. I’m flying on pure instinct and that can be scary. So to make up for it I’m looking for any edge or piece of luck or help I can get.”

She was silent a moment before responding.

“I appreciate what you are doing for me, Detective. But I am not lying to you. Howard and I never spoke in detail about his cases or my work with the department. Never in detail. The one thing I remember him saying about the Harris case is so vague as to defy interpretation. But if you must know what it was, I will tell you. He told me to brace myself because he was going to blow the department and a few of the city’s big shots out of the water on this one. I didn’t ask him what he meant.”

“And when was that?”

“That was Tuesday night.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

Bosch got up and walked around a bit. He found himself at the window staring out at Anthony Quinn in shadows. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost six. He was supposed to rendezvous with Edgar and Rider at seven at the Hollywood station.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, without turning back to Entrenkin.