When she got to the PAB, she saw a handful of television crews setting up in front of a lectern with a large gold replica of the LAPD badge affixed to it. On the badge was the image of City Hall, the iconic building Ballard had just come from—Old Faithful, as it was called by the denizens of the Civic Center. When the chief took the lectern for the press conference, the twenty-seven-floor tower would be reflected behind him in the glass facade of the PAB. It would be a reminder that politics and police work could never really be separated.

Ballard badged her way into the building and took the elevator to the tenth floor, where a pre–press conference meeting was scheduled in the media relations office just down the hall from the OCP—the Office of the Chief of Police.

The department’s chief spokesperson was a civilian, a former reporter for Channel 5 News named Ramon Rivera. He welcomed Ballard into his office, and she was surprised to see the chief of police sitting there as well. They were going over the statement the chief would read at the press conference. A copy of the statement would be distributed to the reporters.

Ballard sat down and Rivera gave her a copy to read. The statement included the case details Ballard had given Rivera in an earlier phone call. It was a strict recitation of the facts of the case. That would be the easy part of the press conference. The difficult part would be anticipating what questions would be asked and deciding how to answer them.

A year earlier, the chief of police had urged Ballard to return to the department after she had resigned in frustration. It was his promise to give her the assignment of her choosing that had resulted in her getting the job running the reconstituted Open-Unsolved Unit. He now asked her the questions he anticipated the gathered media would hurl at him when he was finished reading the statement.

“Why was Bosch following Rawls by himself?” he asked.

“Following him wasn’t the plan, actually,” Ballard said. “But he had no choice. Bosch saw Rawls’s car outside his place of business. He was keeping watch while I went to see a judge to get a search warrant signed. When Rawls took off before I got there, Bosch had no choice but to attempt a one-car follow. It’s unclear whether Rawls knew he had a tail from the start or spotted Bosch’s car while he was in transit.”

“And you recruited Bosch for the Open-Unsolved Unit?”

“I did. He’s the most experienced detective on the team.”

“Did you know about his issues when he was with the department?”

“Issues, sir?”

“He’d been involved in several previous shootings. He didn’t leave the department on good terms. Some might say he retired before the department retired him.”