The Drop

he and Dolan leaned together to read it, just as Bosch and Chu had earlier.
    “What’s that?” Dolan said, not picking up on the significance of the birth date yet. “This guy looks perfect.”
    “He’s perfect now,” Bosch said. “But back then he was only eight years old.”
    “You’re kidding,” Dolan said.
    “What the fuck?” Shuler added.
    Dolan pulled the sheet away from her partner as if to see it clearer and to double-check the birth date. Shuler leaned back and looked at Bosch with those suspicious eyes.
    “So you think we fucked up and mixed up cases,” he said.
    “Nope,” Bosch said. “The lieutenant asked us to check out the possibility but I don’t see any fuckup on this end.”
    “So it happened at the lab,” Shuler said. “Do you realize that if they screwed things up at regional, every defense lawyer in the county is going to be able to raise doubt about DNA matches that come out of there?”
    “Yeah, I kind of figured that,” Bosch said. “Which is why you should keep this under your hats until we know what happened. There are other possibilities.”
    Dolan held up the hit sheet.
    “Yeah, what if there is no fuckup anywhere in the line? What if it’s really this kid’s blood on that dead girl?”
    “An eight-year-old boy snatches a nineteen-year-old girl off the street, rapes and strangles her and dumps the body four blocks away?” Chu asked. “Never happened.”
    “Well, maybe he was there,” Dolan said. “Maybe this was how he got his start as a predator. You see his record. This guy fits—except for his age.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Maybe,” he said. “Like I said, there are other possibilities. No reason to panic yet.”
    His phone started to vibrate again. He pulled it and saw it was Kiz Rider again. Two calls in five minutes, he decided he’d better take it. This wasn’t about lunch.
    “I have to step out for a second.”
    He got up and answered the call as he stepped out of the conference room into the hallway.
    “Kiz?”
    “Harry, I’ve been trying to get to you with a heads-up.”
    “I’m in a meeting. What heads-up?”
    “You are about to get a forthwith from the OCP.”
    “You want me to come up to ten?”
    In the new PAB, the chief’s suite of offices was on the tenth floor, complete with a private courtyard balcony that looked out across the civic center.
    “No, Sunset Strip. You’re going to be told to go to a scene and take over a case. And you’re not going to like it.”
    “Look, Lieutenant, I just got a case this morning. I don’t need another one.”
    He thought that using her formal title would communicate his wariness. Forthwiths and assignments out of the OCP always carried high jingo—political overtones. It was sometimes hard to navigate your way through it.
    “He’s not going to give you a choice here, Harry.”
    “He” being the chief of police.
    “What’s the case?”
    “A jumper at the Chateau Marmont.”
    “Who was it?”
    “Harry, I think you should wait for the chief to call you. I just wanted to—”
    “Who was it, Kiz? If you know anything about me, I think you know I can keep a secret until it’s no longer a secret.”
    She paused before answering.
    “From what I understand, there is not a lot that is recognizable—he came down seven floors onto concrete. But the initial ID is George Thomas Irving. Age forty-six of eight—”
    “Irving as in Irvin Irving? As in Councilman Irvin Irving?”
    “Scourge of the LAPD in general and one Detective Harry Bosch in particular. Yes, one and the same. It’s his son, and Councilman Irving has insisted to the chief that you take over the investigation. The chief said no problem.”
    Bosch paused with his mouth open for a moment before responding.
    “Why does Irving want me? He’s spent most of his careers in police and politics trying to end mine.”
    “This I don’t know, Harry. I only know that he wants you.”
    “When did this come in?”
    “The call came in at about five forty-five this morning. My understanding is that it is unclear when it actually happened.”
    Bosch checked his watch. The case was more than three hours old. That was quite late to be coming into a death investigation. He’d be starting out at a disadvantage.
    “What’s to investigate?” he asked. “You said it was a jumper.”
    “Hollywood originally responded and they were going to wrap it up as a suicide. The councilman arrived and is not ready to sign off on that. That’s