“Nothing. I just don’t understand you sometimes.”

“Join the club.”

More silence.

“I have the files here. The whole box. I was just typing out my final report. I’ll pack it all up and try to drop it off tomorrow. But I can’t be held to it — I’m on patrol until things calm down on the South Side.”

“That will be fine.”

“Are you taking over his office, too? Is that where I should bring everything?”

“Yes. That’s the plan. That would be fine.”

Bosch nodded but he knew she couldn’t see this.

“Well,” he said. “Thanks for your help. I don’t know if Irving has said anything, but the lead to Sheehan came out of the files. One of the old cases. I guess you heard about that.”

“Actually . . . no. But you’re welcome, Detective Bosch. I’m curious, though. About Sheehan. He was your former partner . . .”

“Yes. He was.”

“Does all of this seem plausible? That he would first kill Howard and then himself? That woman on the train, too?”

“If you asked me that yesterday I would have said never in a million years. But today I feel like I couldn’t read myself let alone anybody else. We have a saying when we can’t explain things. The evidence is what it is . . . And we leave it at that.”

Bosch leaned back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He held the phone to his ear. After a long moment she spoke.

“But is it possible that there is another interpretation of the evidence?”

She said it slowly, concisely. She was a lawyer. She chose her words well.

“What are you saying, Inspector?”

“It’s just Carla now.”

“What are you saying, Carla? What are you asking me?”

“You have to understand, my role is different now. I am bound by attorney-client ethics. Michael Harris is now my client in a lawsuit against your employer and several of your colleagues. I have to be care — ”

“Is there something that clears him? Sheehan? Something you held back before?”

Bosch sat up and now leaned forward. He was staring wide-eyed at nothing. He was all internal, trying to remember something he could have missed. He knew Entrenkin had held back the trial strategy file. There must have been something in there.

“I can’t answer your — ”

“The strategy file,” Bosch cut in excitedly. “It was something in there that puts the lie to this. It . . .”

He stopped. What she was suggesting — or the suggestion he was reading in her words — did not make sense. Sheehan’s service weapon had been linked to the Angels Flight shootings. There was a ballistics match. Three bullets from the body of Howard Elias, three matches. End of argument, end of case. The evidence is what it is.