Inside, he passed the front counter, which had four cops behind it, also wearing helmets, and went through the elevator lobby and took the stairwell. He went down to the basement level and then followed the hallway to the evidence storage center. He realized as he went through the door into evidence that he hadn’t passed a soul since the front counter. The place seemed empty. Under the emergency response plan, all available hands of the A shift were out on the street.

Bosch looked through the wire-mesh window but didn’t recognize the man on duty. He was an old vet with a white mustache on a face flushed with gin blossoms. They moved a lot of the old broken-down ones to the basement. This one got off his stool and came to the window.

“So what’s the weather like outside? I don’t have no windows in here.”

“The weather? It’s partly cloudy with a chance of riots.”

“I figured. Tuggins still got his crowd out front?”

“They’re there.”

“Yeah, the mutts. Wonder how’d they’d like it if there were no coppers around. See how they’d like life in the jungle then.”

“That’s not their point. They want police. They just don’t want cops that are killers. Can you blame ’em for that?”

“Yeah, well some people need killing.”

Bosch had nothing to say to that. He didn’t even know why he was parrying with this old dog. He looked down at his nameplate. It said HOWDY. Bosch almost laughed. Something about seeing the unexpected name cracked through the tension and anger that had been twisting him all night.

“Fuck you. It’s my name.”

“Sorry. I’m not laughing at — it’s something else.”

“Sure.”

Howdy pointed over Bosch’s shoulder at a little counter with forms on it and pencils tied to strings.

“You want something you gotta fill out the form with the case number.”

“I don’t know the case number.”

“Well, we must have a couple million in here. Why don’t you take a wild guess?”

“I want to see the log.”

The man nodded.

“Right. You the one Garwood sent over?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

Bosch didn’t answer. Howdy reached below the window to someplace Bosch couldn’t see. Then he came up with a clipboard and put it into the pass-through slot beneath the wire mesh.

“How far back you want to look?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Bosch said. “I think just a couple days will do it.”

“There’s a week on there. That’s all the sign outs. You want sign outs not sign ins, right?”

“Right.”