It was his meager offering.

“Yes, you do that, Detective,” the chief said.

As he left the suite, Bosch thanked Alta Rose for getting him in.

11

It was 6 P.M. when Bosch knocked on the door of the house on 73rd Place. Normally residential search warrants were executed in the morning hours so they drew little notice in the neighborhood. People were at work, at school, sleeping late.

But that wasn’t the plan this time. Bosch didn’t want to wait. The case had momentum and he didn’t want it to stall.

The door was answered after the third knock by a short woman in a housedress and a colorful bandana wrapped around her head. Tattoos rose like a scarf around her neck and up to her jawline. She stood behind a security gate, the kind most of the houses in the neighborhood had.

Bosch stood front and center on the front stoop. This was by design. Behind him were two white officers from the Gang Enforcement Detail. Jordy Gant and David Chu were standing farther back in the front yard and to the left. Bosch wanted to hammer home to the woman of the house that she was in for a major intrusion—uniformed white police officers searching through her home.

“Gail Briscoe? I’m Detective Bosch with the LAPD. I have a document here giving me access to search your home.”

“Search my home? For what?”

“This specifies that we are searching for a Beretta model ninety-two handgun known to have been in the possession of Trumont Story, who resided here until his death on December first, two thousand and nine.”

Bosch held the document out to her but she couldn’t reach for it because of the security door. He was hoping she wouldn’t anyway.

Instead, she went into full outrage.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” the woman said. “You ain’t comin’ in here and searching my place. This is my home, motherfuckers.”

“Ma’am,” Bosch said calmly. “Are you Gail Briscoe?”

“Yes, I am, and this is my motherfucking house.”

“Would you please open the door so you can read the document? It is fully enforceable whether you cooperate with us or not.”

“I don’t want to read a goddamn thing. I know my rights and you can’t just show me a piece of paper and expect me to open my door.”

“Ma’am, you—”

“Harry, can I talk to the lady?”

It was Gant, coming up to the stoop at just the right moment and just according to the script they had worked out.

“Sure, knock yourself out,” Bosch said gruffly, as if he was more annoyed with Gant’s intrusion than with Briscoe. He stepped back and Gant stepped up.

“She’s got five minutes to open up, or we cuff her, put her in a car, and then go in. I’m calling backup now.”

Bosch pulled his cell phone out and walked into the scrub grass out in front so Briscoe could see him making the call.

Gant started speaking in a low voice to the woman in the doorway, doing the Louis Gossett Jr. act, trying to sweet-talk his way to the prize.