“That is understood. You are to feel no pressure from the media. I do not care if the press conference is merely to confirm who is dead and nothing else. The media will not be running this case. I want you to run with it full bore, but at ten hundred I want everyone back at my conference room. Questions?”

There were none.

“Okay, then I will turn it over to Detective Bosch and leave you people to it.”

He turned directly to Bosch and handed him a white business card.

“You have all my numbers there. Lieutenant Tulin’s as well. Anything comes up that I should know about, you call me forthwith. I do not care what time it is or where you are at. You call me.”

Bosch nodded, took the card and put it in his jacket pocket.

“Go to it, people. As I said before, let the chips fall where they may.”

He left the room and Bosch heard Rider whisper, “Yeah, right.”

Bosch turned and looked at the faces of the new team, coming to Chastain’s last.

“You know what he’s doing, don’t you?” Bosch said. “He thinks we can’t work together. He thinks we’ll be like those fighting fish that you put in the same bowl and they go nuts trying to get at each other. Meantime, the case is never cleared. Well, it’s not going to happen. Anything anybody in here’s ever done to me or anyone else, forget about it. I let it go. This case is the thing. There are two people in that train that somebody blew away without so much as a second thought. We’re going to find that person. That’s all I care about now.”

He held Chastain’s eyes until he finally saw a slight nod of agreement. Bosch nodded back. He was sure all the others had seen the exchange. He then took out his notebook and opened it to a fresh page. He handed it to Chastain.

“Okay, then,” he said. “I want everybody to write down their names followed by their home and pager numbers. Cell phones, too, if you got ’em. I’ll make a list up and everybody will get copies. I want everybody in communication. That’s the trouble with these big gang bangs. If everybody isn’t on the same wavelength, something can slip through. We don’t want that.”

Bosch stopped and looked at the others. They were all watching him, paying attention. It seemed that for the moment the natural animosities were relaxed, if not forgotten.

“Okay,” he said. “This is how we’re going to break this down from here on out.”

Chapter 6

Chapter 6