He looked up Lindell’s cell phone number and called. Lindell still had it turned on and he answered.

“It’s Bosch. You remember Sunday morning, after you and your people came into the case, you spent most of the morning in the conference room with the files, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Who was answering the phones?”

“Me mostly. A couple of the others.”

“Did you take a call from a guy said he was a process server?”

“Sounds familiar. But we were getting lots of calls that morning. Reporters and people thinking they knew something. People threatening the cops.”

“A process server named Vascik. Steve Vascik. He said he had some information that might be important.”

“Like I said, it’s familiar. What about it, Bosch? I thought this case was over.”

“It is. I’m just checking some loose ends. Who’d you give the call to?”

“I gave those kind of calls — you know, info off the street — to the IAD guys. To keep them busy.”

“Which one did you give the process server to?”

“I don’t know, probably Chastain. He was in charge of that group. He might’ve taken it or told one of the others to call the guy back. See, Irving set up some shitty phones in there. We couldn’t transfer one to the other and I wanted the main line free. So we took numbers and passed them on.”

“Okay, thanks, man. Have a nice night.”

“Hey, what is — ”

Bosch disconnected before he had to answer any questions. He thought about the information from Lindell. He believed there was a high probability that the call from Vascik had been routed to Chastain himself, who then called back — probably taking the message to his own office for privacy — and posed as Edgar.

Bosch had one more call to make. He opened his phone book and found a number that he had not used in many years. He called Captain John Garwood, head of Robbery-Homicide Division, at home. He knew it was late but he doubted very many people were sleeping in Los Angeles tonight. He thought about what Kiz Rider had said about Garwood reminding her of Boris Karloff and only coming out at night.

Garwood answered after two rings.

“It’s Harry Bosch. We need to talk. Tonight.”

“About?”

“John Chastain and the Black Warrior case.”

“I don’t want to talk on the phone.”

“Fine. Name the place.”

“Frank Sinatra?”

“How soon?”

“Give me half an hour.”

“I’ll be there.”

Chapter 36

Chapter 36