She stood and leaned into him. He put his arm around her shoulders and they walked down the hall to her bedroom.

“You’re on your own again tomorrow morning, kid. That okay?”

“You don’t have to ask, Dad.”

“I’ve got a breakfast appointment at seven and—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

At her doorway he let her go, kissing her on the top of her head, smelling the pomegranate from her shampoo.

“Yes, I do. You deserve somebody who’s more around. Who’s here for you.”

“Dad, I’m too tired. I don’t want to talk about this.”

Bosch gestured back down the hall toward the living room.

“You know if I could play that song like him, I would. Then you’d know.”

He had gone too far with it, pushing his guilt on her.

“I do know!” she said in an annoyed tone. “Now, good night.”

She went through the doorway and closed the door behind her.

“Good night, baby,” he said.

Bosch went to the kitchen and took the pizza box out to the trash can. He made sure the top was sealed against coyotes and other creatures of the night.

Before going back inside, he used his keys to open the padlock on the storage room at the back wall of the carport. He pulled the string to the overhead light and started scanning the crowded shelves. Junk he had kept through most of his life was in boxes on the dusty shelves. He reached up and brought one box down to the workbench and then reached back for what had been behind it on the shelf.

He pulled down the white riot helmet he had worn on the night he met Anneke Jespersen. He looked over its scratched and dirty surface. With his palm he wiped the dust off the sticker affixed to the front. The winged badge. He studied the helmet and remembered the nights the city came apart. Twenty years had gone by. He thought about all of those years, all that had come to him and all that had stayed or gone away.

After a while he put the helmet back on the shelf and replaced the box that had hidden it. He locked the storage room and went back inside to bed.

Chapter 17

17

Detective Nancy Mendenhall was a small woman with a sincere if not disarming smile. She didn’t look the least bit threatening, which immediately put Bosch on guard. Not that he wasn’t alert and ready for anything when he and Rick Jackson entered the Bradbury Building for Harry’s scheduled interview. His long history of fending off internal investigators dictated that he not return Mendenhall’s smile and that he be suspicious of her statement that she was simply seeking the truth with an open mind and no agenda dictated from above.