“Bass player from San Francisco,” Holodnak said. “Great inside/outside stuff. You gotta expand your equation, Harry. Not everybody who’s worth listening to is dead. Madeline, your dad’s next birthday, you come see me.”

Bosch waved him off as he turned back around.

Chapter 25

25

They stopped for lunch at the Academy Grill, where the walls were adorned with LAPD memorabilia, and the sandwiches were named after past police chiefs and famous cops real and imagined.

Soon after Maddie ordered the Bratton Burger and Bosch asked for the Joe Friday, the humor Holodnak had injected at the end of the shooting session wore off and Bosch’s daughter grew silent and slumped in her seat.

“Cheer up, baby,” Bosch tried. “It was just a simulator. Overall you did very well. You heard what he said. You have three seconds to recognize and shoot. . . . I think you did great.”

“Dad, I killed a flight attendant.”

“But you saved a teacher. Besides, it wasn’t real. You took a shot that you probably wouldn’t have taken in real life. There’s this sense of urgency with the simulator. When it happens in real life, things actually seem to slow down. There’s—I don’t know—more clarity.”

That didn’t seem to impress her. He tried again.

“Besides that, the gun probably wasn’t zeroed out perfectly.”

“Thanks a lot, Dad. That means all the shots I did hit on target were actually off target because the gun wasn’t zeroed.”

“No, I—”

“I have to go wash my hands.”

She abruptly slid out of the booth and headed to the back hallway as Bosch realized how stupid it had been for him to blame a bad shot on the adjustment of the gun to the screen.

While he waited for her, he looked at a framed front page of the Los Angeles Times on the wall above the booth. The whole top of the page was dedicated to the police shoot-out with the Symbionese Liberation Army at 54th and Compton in 1974. Bosch had been there that day as a young patrol officer. He worked traffic and crowd control during the deadly standoff and the next day stood guard as a team combed through the debris of the burned-out house, looking for the remains of Patty Hearst.

Lucky for her, she hadn’t been there.

Bosch’s daughter slid back into the booth.

“What’s taking so long?” she asked.

“Relax,” Bosch said. “We just ordered five minutes ago.”

“Dad, why did you become a cop?”

Bosch was momentarily taken aback by the question that came out of the blue.

“A lot of reasons.”

“Like what?”

He paused while he put together his thoughts. This was the second time in a week that she had asked the question. He knew it was important to her.