“I don’t care what you want to hear! You’re going to hear this, douche bag. This is Frankie Sheehan talking to you from the grave. You understand that? You had to put it on Sheehan but it wouldn’t work if Sheehan ever went to a trial. Because the coroner would testify and he’d say, ‘Wait a sec, folks, these aren’t my marks on these bullets. There’s been a switch.’ So you had no choice. You had to put Sheehan down, too. You followed us last night. I saw your lights. You followed us and then you did Frankie Sheehan. Made it look like a drunken suicide, lots of beers, lots of shots. But I know what you did. You put one in him, then you fired a couple more with his hand wrapped around the gun. You made it all fit, Chastain. But it’s coming apart now.”

Bosch felt his anger overtaking him. He reached up and slapped the mirror so he wouldn’t have to look at Chastain’s face. He was coming up to Normandie now. The intersection was clear.

“I know the story,” Bosch said. “I know it. I just have one question. Why did you snitch to Elias all those years? Was he paying you? Or did you just hate cops so much that you’d do whatever you could to nail them any way you could?”

Again there was no answer from the backseat. At the stop sign Bosch looked to his left and could see the blue lights and the flames again. They had circumnavigated the police perimeter. The barricades started a block down and he paused with his foot on the brakes and took in the scene. He could see a line of police cruisers behind the barricades. There was a small liquor store on the corner with the windows shattered and jagged pieces of glass still hanging in the frames. Outside its doors the ground was littered with broken bottles and other debris left by the looters.

“You see that down there, Chastain? All of that? You —”

“Bosch — ”

“— did that. That’s — ”

“— you didn’t go far enough!”

“— all on you.”

Picking up on the fear in Chastain’s voice, Bosch began turning to his right. In that instant the windshield shattered as a chunk of concrete crashed through it and hit the seat. Through the falling glass Bosch saw the crowd moving toward the car. Young men with dark angry faces, their individualities lost inside the mob. He saw a bottle in midair coming at the car. He saw it all so clearly and with seemingly so much time that he could even read the label. Southern Comfort. His mind began registering some kind of humor or irony in that.