Bosch took surface streets the whole way. Almost all of them were deserted and he never stopped once for a traffic light or stop sign. It was like driving through a ghost town. He knew there were hot spots of looting and arson, but he never passed through them. He thought about the picture the media was projecting compared to what he was seeing.
Most of the people were inside, locked down and waiting for this to pass. They were good people waiting out the storm, staring at the television and wondering if that was really their city that was being shown on fire.
The front of the Seventy-seventh station was also strangely empty when Bosch finally pulled up. A police academy bus had been pulled across the entranceway as a guard against drive-by shots and other attacks. But there were no protesters out front and no cops. As Bosch pulled to the no-parking curb in front, Chastain stepped out from the rear of the bus and approached. He was in uniform, his weapon holstered on his hip. He came to Bosch’s window and Bosch lowered it.
“Where you been, Bosch, you said fif – ”
“I know what I said. Get in.”
“No, Bosch. I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what the hell you’re doing here. I’m on duty, remember?”
“I want to talk about Sheehan and the ballistics. About the Wilbert Dobbs case.”
He noticed Chastain take a slight step back from the car. Mentioning Dobbs had landed a punch. Bosch noticed the sharpshooter ribbon on Chastain’s uniform below the badge.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but the case on Sheehan is closed. He’s dead, Elias is dead. Everybody’s dead. That’s it. Now we have this – the whole city coming apart again.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Chastain stared at him, trying to read him.
“You’re not making sense, Bosch. You need to get some sleep. We all do.”
Bosch opened the door and stepped out. Chastain moved back another step and drew his right hand up a little until he hooked his thumb on his belt near his gun. There were unwritten rules of engagement. That was one of them. Bosch was now on deadly ground. He understood this. He was ready.
Bosch turned and swung his car door closed. While Chastain’s eyes involuntarily followed that movement, Bosch swiftly reached inside his coat and pulled his pistol out of his holster. He had it pointing at Chastain before the IAD detective could make a move.
“All right, we do it your way. Put your hands on the roof of the car.”
“What the hell are you – ”
“PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE CAR!”
Chastain’s hands went up.
“Okay, okay… easy, Bosch, be easy.”
He moved to the car and put his hands flat on the roof. Bosch came up behind him and took his gun from its holster. He stepped back and put it into his own holster.
“I guess I don’t have to check you for a throw-down. You already used yours on Frankie Sheehan, right?”
“What? I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“That’s okay.”
Keeping his right hand pressed against Chastain’s back, Bosch reached around and took the handcuffs off the man’s belt. He pulled one of Chastain’s arms behind his back and cuffed his wrist. He then pulled the other arm back and completed the handcuffing.
Bosch walked him around and sat him in the backseat of the slickback opposite the driver’s side. He then got back behind the wheel. He took Chastain’s gun out of his holster, put it into his briefcase and reholstered his own weapon. Bosch adjusted the rearview mirror so he could quickly see Chastain at a glance and flicked the lock switch which rendered the rear doors inoperable from the inside.
“You stay right there where I can see you. At all times.”
“Fuck you! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Where are you taking me?”
Bosch put the car in drive and headed away from the police station. He headed west until he could turn north on Normandie. Almost five minutes went by before he answered Chastain’s question.
“We’re going to Parker Center,” he said. “When we get there you’re going to tell me about killing Howard Elias, Catalina Perez… and Frankie Sheehan.”
Bosch felt anger and bile back up in his throat. He thought about one of the unsaid messages he had received from Garwood. He wanted street justice, and at that moment so did Bosch.
“Fine, we’ll go back,” Chastain said. “But you don’t know what you’re talking about. You are full of shit! The case is CLOSED, Bosch. Live with it.”
Bosch started reciting the list of Constitutional rights against self-incrimination and then asked Chastain if he understood them.
“Fuck you.”
Bosch pressed on, glancing up at the mirror every few seconds.
“That’s okay, you’re a cop. No judge in the world would say you didn’t understand your rights.”
He waited a moment and checked his prisoner in the mirror one last time before going on.
“You were Elias’s source. All these years, you were the guy giving him whatever he needed on whatever case he had. You – ”
“Wrong.”
“-sold out the department. You are the lowest of the low, Chastain. Isn’t that what you called it before? The lowest of the low? That was you, man, a bottom feeder, a scumbag… a motherfucker.”
Bosch saw police barricades across the street ahead. Two hundred yards beyond them he saw flashing blue lights and fire. He realized they were heading toward the hot spot where the firefighters had been attacked and their truck set ablaze.
At the blockade he turned right and started looking north at each intersection he passed through. He was out of his element here. He had never worked an assignment at any of the department’s South Central divisions and didn’t know the geographic territory well. He knew he could become lost if he strayed too far from Normandie. He gave no indication of this when he checked Chastain in the mirror again.
“You want to talk to me, Chastain? Or play it out?”
“There is nothing to talk about. You are enjoying your last precious moments with a badge. What you’re doing here is pure suicide. Like your buddy, Sheehan. You’re killing yourself, Bosch.”
Bosch slammed on the brakes and the car swerved to a stop. He drew his weapon and leaned over the seat, pointing it at Chastain’s face.
“What did you say?”
Chastain looked genuinely scared. He clearly believed that Bosch was on the edge of losing it.
“Nothing, Bosch, nothing. Just drive. Let’s go to Parker and we’ll get this all straightened out.”
Bosch slowly dropped back into the driver’s seat and started the car moving again. After four blocks he turned north again, hoping to run parallel to the disturbance spot and cut back onto Normandie after they were clear.
“I just came from the basement at Parker,” he said.
He glanced in the mirror to see if that had changed anything in Chastain’s face. It hadn’t.
“I pulled the package on Wilbert Dobbs. And I looked at the sign-out log. You pulled the package this morning and you took the bullets. You took the bullets from Sheehan’s service nine, the bullets he shot Dobbs with five years ago, and you turned three of them in to ballistics saying they were the bullets from the Howard Elias autopsy. You set him up to take the fall. But it’s your fall, Chastain.”
He checked the mirror. Chastain’s face had changed. The news Bosch just delivered had hit like the flat side of a shovel in the face. Bosch moved in for the finish.