“At the gun shop running ballistics.”

O’Toole paused as if committing the answer to memory so he could check on Bosch’s veracity later.

“Pete Sargent,” Bosch said. “Call him. We had lunch, too. Hope that wasn’t against the rules.”

O’Toole shrugged off the shot and leaned forward, tapping his finger on Mendenhall’s card on the desk.

“Call her. She needs to set up an interview.”

“Sure. When I get to it.”

Bosch saw Chu come through the doorway from the exterior hallway. He stopped when he saw O’Toole in the cubicle, acted like he had suddenly forgotten something, and pirouetted and went back out through the door.

O’Toole didn’t notice.

“It was not my intention to have a situation like this,” he said. “My hope had been to promote strong and trusting relationships with the detectives in my squad.”

Bosch replied without looking up at O’Toole.

“Yeah, well, that didn’t last long, did it?” he said. “And it’s not your squad, Lieutenant. It’s just the squad. It was here before you came and it will be here after you’re gone. Maybe that’s where it turned south on you, when you didn’t understand that.”

He said it loud enough for some of the others in the squad to hear it.

“If that sentiment had come from someone without a file drawer full of past complaints and internal investigations, I might be insulted.”

Bosch leaned back in his chair and finally looked up at O’Toole.

“Yeah, all of those complaints and yet I’m still sitting here. And I’ll still be sitting here after they’re finished with yours.”

“We’ll see.”

O’Toole was about to walk away but he couldn’t help himself. He put a hand on Bosch’s desk and leaned down to speak in a low, venomous voice.

“You are the worst kind of police officer, Bosch. You are arrogant, you are a bully, and you think the laws and regulations simply don’t apply to you. I’m not the first to attempt to rid this department of you. But I will be the last.”

Finished having his say, O’Toole took his hand off the desk and rose to his full height. He straightened his jacket by pulling it down from the bottom with a sharp tug.

“You left something out, Lieutenant,” Bosch said.

“What was that?” O’Toole asked.

“You forgot that I close cases. Not for the stats you send up to the tenth-floor PowerPoint shows. For the victims. And their families. And that’s something you’ll never understand because you’re not out there like the rest of us.”

Bosch gestured to the rest of the squad room. Jackson was obviously listening to the conversation and he stared at O’Toole with unblinking judgment.