“Right now that is only your opinion. The only fact we have is that it appears this man killed himself the night before the day we would get the ballistics. And you, Detective, talked me into cutting him loose so that he could do it.”

Bosch looked away from Irving and tried to contain the anger that was building inside.

“The weapon,” Irving said. “An old Baretta twenty-five. Serial number acid-burned. Untraceable, illegal. A throw-down gun. Was it your weapon, Detective Bosch?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Are you sure, Detective? I would like to handle this now, without the need for an internal investigation.”

Bosch looked back at him.

“What are you saying? I gave him the gun so he could kill himself? I was his friend — the only friend he had today. It’s not my gun, okay? We stopped by his house so he could get some things. He must’ve gotten it then. I might have helped him do it but that didn’t include giving him the gun.”

Bosch and Irving held each other’s stares.

“You’re forgetting something, Bosch,” Lindell said, interrupting the moment. “We searched Sheehan’s place today. There was no weapon found there.”

Bosch broke away from Irving and looked at Lindell.

“Then your people missed it,” he said. “He came here with that gun in his bag, because it wasn’t mine.”

Bosch moved away from them before he let his anger and frustration get the better of him and he said something that might bring departmental charges. He slid down into one of the stuffed chairs in the living room. He was wet but didn’t care about the furniture. He stared blankly out the glass doors.

Irving stepped over but didn’t sit down.

“What did you mean when you said you helped him?”

Bosch looked up at him.

“Last night I had a drink with him. He told me things. Told me about how he got carried away with Harris, how the things Harris claimed in his lawsuit — the things he said the cops did to him — were true. All of it was true. You see, he was sure Harris had killed the girl, there was no doubt in him about that. But it bothered him what he had done. He told me that in those moments in the room with Harris he had lost it. He said he became the very thing he had hunted all these years. A monster. It bothered him a lot. I could see it had been eating at him. Then I come along tonight and drive him home . . .”

Bosch felt the guilt rising up like a tide in his throat. He had not been thinking. He had not seen the obvious. He had been too consumed with the case, with Eleanor and his empty house, with things other than Frankie Sheehan.

“And?” Irving prompted.