“We are sitting on a powder keg here, people,” Irving said. “And the way to defuse it is to solve this case one way or the other . . . quickly.”

While he talked, Bosch took out the phone message pad and wrote on it. He then checked the room to make sure all eyes were on Irving and quietly tore off the top sheet. He reached over and tacked it to the bulletin board and then nonchalantly moved inch by inch down the wall and away from the board. The sheet he had put on the board had Chastain’s name on it. In the message section it said: “Harvey Button called, said thanks for the tip. Will call back later.”

Irving wound up his comments with a mention about the Channel 4 story.

“Someone in this room leaked information to a television reporter yesterday. I am warning you people that we will not have this. That one story was your grace period. One more leak and you people will be the ones under investigation.”

He looked around the room at the LAPD faces, to make sure the message was clear.

“Okay, that is it,” he finally said. “I will leave you to it. Detective Bosch, Agent Lindell? I would like to be briefed at noon on our progress.”

“No problem, Chief,” Lindell said before Bosch could respond. “I will be talking to you then.”

Fifteen minutes later Bosch was walking down the hallway to the elevators again. Edgar and Rider were following behind.

“Harry, where are we going?” Edgar asked.

“We’ll work out of Hollywood station.”

“What? Doing what? Who is going to run the show?”

“Lindell. I made a deal. He runs the show. We do something else.”

“Suits me,” Edgar said. “Too many agents and too much brass around here anyway.”

Bosch got to the elevators and pushed the call button.

“What exactly are we doing, Harry?” Rider asked.

He turned and looked at them.

“Starting over,” he said.

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

THE squad room was completely empty, which was unusual, even for a Sunday. Under the twelve-and-twelve readiness plan all detectives not assigned to time-critical investigations were to be in uniform and out on the street. The last time such deployment had been instituted was after a major earthquake had rocked the city in 1994. The Elias murder was a social rather than a geologic cataclysm, but its magnitude was just as great.

Bosch carried the box containing Elias’s files on the Black Warrior case to what they called the homicide table, a raft of desks pushed up against each other to create a huge boardroom-like table. The section that belonged to team one, Bosch’s team, was at the end, near an alcove of file cabinets. He put the box in the middle, where his team’s three desks conjoined.

“Dig in,” he said.

“Harry . . . ,” Rider said, not happy with his lack of direction.