“Frankie,” Bosch said, “between you and me, I gotta know about the fingerprints. I don’t want to be chasing my tail out there. I mean, I got no reason to doubt you. But I want to know if you heard anything, you know what I mean?”

Sheehan got out of the Cherokee without a word and walked to the door. Bosch watched him go in and then got out himself. Inside, the place was just about empty. Sheehan was sitting at the bar. The bartender was drawing a beer off the tap. Bosch took the stool next to his former partner and said, “Make it two.”

Bosch took out a twenty and put it on the bar. Sheehan still hadn’t looked at him since he had asked the question.

The bartender put down the frosted mugs on napkins that advertised a Superbowl party almost three months before. He took Bosch’s twenty and went down to the cash register. In unison Bosch and Sheehan took long pulls on their drinks.

“Ever since O.J.,” Sheehan said.

“What’s that?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Ever since the Juice, nothing is solid anymore. No evidence, no cop, nothing. You can take anything you want into a courtroom and there still will be somebody who can tear it to shreds, drop it on the floor and piss on it. Everybody questions everything. Even cops. Even partners.”

Bosch took more of his beer before saying anything.

“I’m sorry, Frankie. I got no reason to doubt you or the prints. It’s just that weeding through this Elias stuff, it looks like he was going into court next week with the idea of proving who killed the girl. And he wasn’t talking about Harris. Somebody — ”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But I’m trying to look at it from his side of things. If he had somebody other than Harris, then how the hell did these prints end up on — ”

“Elias was a fucking mutt. And as soon as they get him in the ground I’m gonna go out there one night and do my granddaddy’s Irish jig on his grave. Then I’m gonna piss on it and never think about Elias again. All I can say is that it’s too fucking bad Harris wasn’t with him on that train. Goddamned murderer. That would have been hitting the quinella, the both of them being put down together.”

Sheehan held his glass up in a toast to Elias’s killer and then took a deep swallow. Bosch could almost feel the hate radiating from him.

“So nobody fucked with the scene,” Bosch said. “The prints are legit.”