Angels Flight

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.
    “You killed Elias,” he said quietly, finding it hard to pull his eyes away from the mirror and back onto the road. “He was going to put you on that stand and expose you. He was going to ask you about the true findings of your investigation because you had told him the true findings. Only the case was too big. He knew how high he could go with it and you became expendable. He was going to burn you in order to win the case… You lost it, I guess. Or maybe you’ve always been cold in the blood. But on Friday night you followed him home and when he was getting on Angels Flight, you made your move. You put him down. And then you looked up and there was the woman sitting there. Shit, that must’ve shocked the hell out of you. I mean, after all, the train car had been sitting there. It was supposed to be empty. But there was Catalina Perez on that bench and you had to put one in her, too. How am I doing, Chastain? I have the story right?”
    Chastain didn’t answer. Bosch came to an intersection, slowed and looked left. He could see down to the lighted area that was Normandie. He saw no barricades and no blue lights. He turned left and headed that way.
    “You lucked out,” he continued. “The Dobbs case. It fit perfectly. You came across Sheehan’s threat in the files and took it from there. You had your patsy. A little research on the case and a little maneuvering here and there and you got to handle the autopsy. That gave you the bullets and all you had to do was switch them. Of course, the coroner’s ID markings on the bullets would be different but that discrepancy would only come up if there was a trial, if they took Sheehan to trial.”
    “Bosch, shut up! I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t – ”
    “I don’t care what you want to hear! You’re going to hear this, douche bag. This is Frankie Sheehan talking to you from the grave. You understand that? You had to put it on Sheehan but it wouldn’t work if Sheehan ever went to a trial. Because the coroner would testify and he’d say, ‘Wait a sec, folks, these aren’t my marks on these bullets. There’s been a switch.’ So you had no choice. You had to put Sheehan down, too. You followed us last night. I saw your lights. You followed us and then you did Frankie Sheehan. Made it look like a drunken suicide, lots of beers, lots of shots. But I know what you did. You put one in him, then you fired a couple more with his hand wrapped around the gun. You made it all fit, Chastain. But it’s coming apart now.”
    Bosch felt his anger overtaking him. He reached up and slapped the mirror so he wouldn’t have to look at Chastain’s face. He was coming up to Normandie now. The intersection was clear.
    “I know the story,” Bosch said. “I know it. I just have