The jury acquitted Harris in four hours. Penny then turned the case over to his colleague, Howard Elias, for civil proceedings and Harris took his place next to Rodney King in the pantheon of civil rights victims and heroes in South L.A. Most of them deserved such honored status, but some were the creations of lawyers and the media. Whichever Harris was, he was now seeking his payday — acivil rights trial in which $10 million would be just the opening bid.

Despite the verdict and all the attached rhetoric, Bosch didn’t believe Harris’s claims of innocence or police brutality. One of the detectives Harris specifically accused of brutality was Bosch’s former partner, Frankie Sheehan, and Bosch knew Sheehan to be a total professional when dealing with suspects and prisoners. So Bosch simply thought of Harris as a liar and murderer who had walked away from his crime. He would have no qualms about rousting him and taking him downtown for questioning about Howard Elias’s murder. But Bosch also knew as he stood there with Rider that if he now brought Harris in, he would run the risk of compounding the alleged wrongs already done to him — at least in the eyes of much of the public and the media. It was a political decision as much as a police decision that he had to make.

“Let me think about this for a second,” he said.

He walked off by himself through the atrium. The case was even more perilous than he had realized. Any misstep could result in disaster — to the case, to the department, to careers. He wondered if Irving had realized all of this when he had chosen Bosch’s team for the case. Perhaps, he thought, Irving’s compliments were just a front for a real motive — leaving Bosch and his team dangling in the wind. Bosch knew he was now venturing into paranoia. It was unlikely that the deputy chief could have come up with such a plan so quickly. Or that he would even care about Bosch’s team with so much else at stake.

Bosch looked up and saw the sky was much brighter now. It would be a sunny and hot day.

“Harry?”

He turned. It was Rider.

“She’s off.”

He walked back to the group and Langwiser handed him his phone.

“You’re not going to like this,” she said. “Dave Sheiman wants to bring in a special master to look at the files before you do.”

“Special master?” Dellacroce asked. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s an attorney,” Langwiser said. “An independent attorney appointed by a judge who will oversee the files. He will be hired to protect the rights of those clients while still giving you people what you need. Hopefully.”