“I had him moved down to the D bureau. You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

Bosch saw a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts on a counter behind the patrol lieutenant’s desk. It was open and there were only two doughnuts left, probably sitting there since the morning’s roll call.

“Hey, does anybody mind?”

He pointed toward the doughnuts.

“Knock yourself out,” Gant said.

Bosch took a glazed doughnut and ate it in four bites while he followed Gant down the back hallway of the station to the detective bureau.

They entered the sprawling squad room of desks, file cabinets, and piles of paperwork. Most of the desks were empty and Bosch figured the detectives were out working cases or on lunch break. He saw a tissue box on one of the empty desks and pulled out three tissues to wipe the sugar off his fingers.

A patrol officer was sitting outside the door of one of the two interrogation rooms. He stood up as Gant and Bosch approached. Gant introduced him as Chris Mercer, the patrolman who had spotted 2 Small Washburn.

“Nice work,” Bosch said, shaking his hand. “Did you read him the words?”

Meaning his constitutional rights and protections.

“I did.”

“Great.”

“Thank you, Chris,” Gant said. “We’ll take it from here.”

The officer gave a mock salute and headed out. Gant looked at Bosch.

“Any particular way you want to do this?”

“We have anything on him besides the warrant?”

“A little. He had a half ounce of weed on him.”

Bosch frowned. It wasn’t much.

“He also had six hundred dollars cash.”

Bosch nodded. That made things a little better. He might be able to work with the money, depending on how smart Washburn was about current drug laws.

“I’m going to run a game on him, see if I can get him to hurt himself. I think it’s our best shot. Put him in a corner so he has to talk his way out.”

“Okay, I’ll play along if you need it.”

On the wall between the doors to the two interrogation rooms was a documents file. Bosch pulled a standard rights-waiver form, folded it, and put it in his inside coat pocket.

“Open it and let me go in first,” he said.

Gant did so and Bosch walked into the interrogation room with a dark look on his face. Washburn was sitting at a small table, his wrists bound by snap ties to the back of his chair. As advertised, he was a small man who wore baggy clothes to help disguise how little he was. On the table was a plastic evidence bag containing the items found in his clothing at the time of his arrest. Bosch took the chair directly across from him. Gant pulled the third chair back to the door and sat down as if guarding it. He was a few feet behind Bosch’s left shoulder.

Bosch lifted the evidence bag and looked through it. A wallet, cell phone, set of keys, the money roll, and the plastic bag containing the half ounce of marijuana.