“It’s a goddamn Internet whorehouse,” Chastain said. Bosch and Rider said nothing. Rider moved the arrow onto the box marked Mistress Regina.

“This is your directory,” she said. “You choose which page you want and click.”

She clicked the mouse and the Regina page appeared again.

“He chose her,” Rider said.

“A white woman,” Chastain said. There was glee in his voice. “Golden blessings from a white woman. I bet they aren’t going to be too pleased about that on the South Side, either.”

Rider turned around and looked sharply at Chastain. She was about to say something when her eyes widened and looked past the IAD detective. Bosch noticed this and turned. Standing in the doorway of the office was Janis Langwiser. Next to her was a woman Bosch recognized from her newspaper photos and television appearances. She was an attractive woman with the smooth coffee-and-cream skin of mixed races.

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said to Langwiser. “This is a crime investigation. She can’t come in here and — ”

“Yes, Detective Bosch, she can,” Langwiser said. “Judge Houghton just appointed her special master on the case. She’ll be reviewing the files for us.”

With that the woman Bosch recognized stepped fully into the room, smiled, but not warmly, and held her hand out to him in order to shake his.

“Detective Bosch,” she said. “It’s good to meet you. I hope we will be able to work together on this. I’m Carla Entrenkin.”

She waited a beat but no one responded. She continued.

“Now the first thing I am going to need is for you and all of your people to vacate these premises.”

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

OUTSIDE the front doors of the Bradbury the detectives walked empty-handed to their cars. Bosch was still angry but was cooler now. He walked slowly, allowing Chastain and Dellacroce to get to their car first. As he watched them drive off on their way back up Bunker Hill to California Plaza he opened the passenger door of Kiz’s slickback but didn’t get in. He bent down and looked in at her as she pulled the seat belt across her lap.

“You go on up, Kiz. I’ll meet you up there.”

“You’re going to walk it?”

Bosch nodded and looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty.

“I’ll take Angels Flight. It should be running again. When you get up there you know what to do. Start everybody knocking on doors.”

“Okay, see you up there. You going to go back up and talk to her again?”

“Entrenkin? Yeah, I think so. Do you still have Elias’s keys?”

“Yeah.” She dug them out of her purse and handed them to Bosch. “Is there something I should know about?”

Bosch paused for a moment.

“Not yet. I’ll see you up there.”

Rider started the car. She looked over at him again before putting it into drive.

“Harry, you okay?”