Bosch felt anger and bile back up in his throat. He thought about one of the unsaid messages he had received from Garwood. He wanted street justice, and at that moment so did Bosch.

“Fine, we’ll go back,” Chastain said. “But you don’t know what you’re talking about. You are full of shit! The case is CLOSED, Bosch. Live with it.”

Bosch started reciting the list of Constitutional rights against self-incrimination and then asked Chastain if he understood them.

“Fuck you.”

Bosch pressed on, glancing up at the mirror every few seconds.

“That’s okay, you’re a cop. No judge in the world would say you didn’t understand your rights.”

He waited a moment and checked his prisoner in the mirror one last time before going on.

“You were Elias’s source. All these years, you were the guy giving him whatever he needed on whatever case he had. You — ”

“Wrong.”

“—sold out the department. You are the lowest of the low, Chastain. Isn’t that what you called it before? The lowest of the low? That was you, man, a bottom feeder, a scumbag . . . a motherfucker.”

Bosch saw police barricades across the street ahead. Two hundred yards beyond them he saw flashing blue lights and fire. He realized they were heading toward the hot spot where the firefighters had been attacked and their truck set ablaze.

At the blockade he turned right and started looking north at each intersection he passed through. He was out of his element here. He had never worked an assignment at any of the department’s South Central divisions and didn’t know the geographic territory well. He knew he could become lost if he strayed too far from Normandie. He gave no indication of this when he checked Chastain in the mirror again.

“You want to talk to me, Chastain? Or play it out?”

“There is nothing to talk about. You are enjoying your last precious moments with a badge. What you’re doing here is pure suicide. Like your buddy, Sheehan. You’re killing yourself, Bosch.”

Bosch slammed on the brakes and the car swerved to a stop. He drew his weapon and leaned over the seat, pointing it at Chastain’s face.

“What did you say?”

Chastain looked genuinely scared. He clearly believed that Bosch was on the edge of losing it.

“Nothing, Bosch, nothing. Just drive. Let’s go to Parker and we’ll get this all straightened out.”

Bosch slowly dropped back into the driver’s seat and started the car moving again. After four blocks he turned north again, hoping to run parallel to the disturbance spot and cut back onto Normandie after they were clear.

“I just came from the basement at Parker,” he said.

He glanced in the mirror to see if that had changed anything in Chastain’s face. It hadn’t.