“He just stared at me as if I wasn’t there. He said nothing. He did nothing. And then . . . then the anger just came over me like . . . like I don’t know what. Like it was a bone caught in my throat. Like it never had before. There was a trash can in the corner of the room. I went over and pulled the bag out and just pulled it right down over his fucking head. And I grabbed it around his neck and I held it and I held it and . . .”

Sheehan started crying and trying to finish.

“. . . and they . . . they had to pull me off of him.”

He put his elbows on the bar and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. For a long time he didn’t move. Bosch saw a drop fall from his chin and into his beer. He reached over and put his hand on his old partner’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, Frankie.”

Without moving his hands away from his face, Sheehan spoke.

“You see, Harry, I became the very thing that I spent all these years hunting. I wanted to kill him right there and then. I would have if my guys hadn’t come in. I’m never going to be able to forget that.”

“It’s okay, man.”

Sheehan drank some beer and seemed to recover somewhat.

“After I did what I did, that opened the door. The other guys, they did that thing with the pencil — popped his fucking ear drum. We all became monsters. Like Vietnam, going wild in the villages. We probably would’ve killed the guy but you know what saved him? The girl. Stacey Kincaid saved him.”

“How’s that?”

“They found the body. We got the word and went out to the scene. We left Harris in a cell. Alive. He was lucky the word came when it did.”

He stopped to take another gulp of beer.

“I went out there — just a block from Harris’s place. She was pretty much decomposed, the young ones go fast. But I remember how she looked. Like a little angel, her arms out like she was flying . . .”

Bosch remembered the pictures from the newspapers. Stacey Kincaid had been a pretty little girl.

“Harry, leave me alone now,” Sheehan said quietly. “I’m going to walk back.”

“No, let me give you a ride.”

“No thanks. I’m walking.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Just a little worked up. That’s all. This is going to stay between us, right?”

“Till the end, man.”

Sheehan tried a weak smile. But he still didn’t look at Bosch.

“Do me one favor, Hieronymus.”

Bosch remembered when they had been a team. They only used their formal names, Hieronymus and Francis, when they were talking seriously and from the heart.

“Sure, Francis. What?”