The Closers

exam and final paperwork that brought him back onto the job.
    The other desk was clean, empty and waiting for him. He moved behind it and put his coffee down. He suppressed a smile as well as he could.
    “Welcome back, Roy,” Rider said.
    That made the smile break through. It made Bosch feel good to be called Roy again. It was a tradition carried by many of the city’s homicide detectives. There was a legendary homicide man named Russell Kuster who had worked out of Hollywood Division many years back. He was the ultimate professional, and many of the detectives working murders in the city today had come under his tutelage at one point or another. He was killed in an off-duty shootout in 1990. But his habit of calling people Roy-no matter their real name-was carried on. Its origin had become obscure. Some said it was because Kuster once had a partner who loved Roy Acuff and it had started with him. Others said it was because Kuster liked the idea of the homicide cop being the Roy Rogers type, wearing the white hat and riding to the rescue, making things right. It didn’t matter anymore. Bosch knew it was an honor just to be called Roy again.
    He sat down. The chair was old and lumpy, guaranteed to give him a backache if he spent too much time in it. But he hoped that would not be the case. In his first run as a homicide detective he had lived by the adage
Get off your ass and knock on doors
. He didn’t see any reason that should change this time around.
    “Where is everybody?” he asked.
    “Having breakfast. I forgot. They told me last week that the routine is that on Monday mornings everybody meets early for breakfast. They usually go over to the Pacific. I didn’t remember until I got in here this morning and found the place dead, but they should be back here soon.”
    Bosch knew the Pacific Dining Car was a longtime favorite with LAPD brass and the Robbery-Homicide Division. He also knew something else.
    “Twelve bucks for a plate of eggs. I guess that means this is an overtime-approved squad.”
    Rider smiled in confirmation.
    “You got that right. But you wouldn’t have been able to finish your fancy eggs anyway, once you got the forthwith from the chief.”
    “You heard about that, huh?”
    “I still have an ear out on six. Did you get your badge?”
    “Yeah, he gave it to me.”
    “I told him what number you’d want. Did you get it?”
    “Yeah, Kiz, thanks. Thanks for everything.”
    “You already told me that, partner. You don’t need to keep saying that.”
    He nodded and looked around their space. He noticed that on the wall behind Rider was a photo of two detectives huddled beside a body lying in the dry concrete bed of the Los Angeles River. It looked like a shot from the early fifties, judging by the hats the detectives wore.
    “So, where do we start?” he asked.
    “The squad breaks the cases up in three-year increments. It provides some continuity. They say you get to know the era and some of the players in the department. It overlaps. It also helps with identifying serials. In two years they’ve already come up with four serials nobody ever knew about.”
    Bosch nodded. He was impressed.
    “What years did we get?” he asked.
    “Each team has four or five blocks. Since we’re the new team we got four.”
    She opened the middle drawer of her desk, took out a piece of paper and handed it across to him.

    Bosch studied the listing of years for which they would be responsible. He had been out of the city and in Vietnam for most of the first block.
    “The summer of love,” he said. “I missed it. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.”
    He said it just to be saying something. He noticed that the second block included 1972, the year he had come onto the force. He remembered a call out to a house off of Vermont on his second day on the job in patrol. A woman back east asked police to check on her mother, who was not answering the phone. Bosch found her drowned in a bathtub, her hands and feet bound with dog leashes. Her dead dog was in the tub with her. Bosch wondered if the old woman’s murder was one of the open cases he would now be charged with solving.
    “How was this arrived at? I mean, why did we get these years?”
    “They came from the other teams. We lightened their caseload. In fact, they already started the ball rolling on cases from a lot of those years. And I heard on Friday that a cold hit came in from ’eighty-eight. We’re supposed to run with it starting