After the jury filed out, Chandler went to the lectern. She asked for a directed verdict in favor of the plaintiff, which the judge denied. Belk did the same thing, asking for a verdict in favor of the defendant. In a seemingly sarcastic tone, the judge told him to sit down.

Bosch met Sylvia in the hallway outside after the crowded courtroom took several minutes to empty. There was a large gathering of reporters around the two lawyers and Bosch took her arm and moved her down the hall.

“I told you not to come here, Sylvia.”

“I know, but I felt I had to come. I wanted you to know that I support you no matter what. Harry, I know things about you the jury will never know. No matter how she tries to portray you, I know you. Don’t forget that.”

She was wearing a black dress with a silvery-white pattern that Bosch liked. She looked very beautiful.

“I, uh, I-how long were you here?”

“For most of it. I’m glad I came. I know it was rough, but I saw the goodness of what you are come through all the harshness of what you sometimes have to do.”

He just looked at her a moment.

“Be optimistic, Harry.”

“The stuff about my mother…”

“Yes, I heard it. It hurt me that this is where I learned about it. Harry, where are we if there are those kinds of secrets between us? How many times do I have to tell you that it is endangering what we have?”

“Look,” he said, “I can’t do this right now. Deal with this and you, us-it’s too much for right now. It’s not the right place. Let’s talk about it later. You’re right, Sylvia, but I, uh, I just can’t… talk. I-”

She reached up and straightened his tie and then smoothed it on his chest.

“It’s okay,” she said. “What will you do now?”

“Follow the case. Whether officially or not, I have to follow this. I have to find the second man, the second killer.”

She just looked at him for a few moments and he knew she had probably hoped for a different answer.

“I’m sorry. It’s not something I can put off. Things are happening.”

“I’m going to go in to school then. So I don’t lose the whole day. Will you be up to the house tonight?”

“I’ll try.”

“Okay, see you, Harry. Be optimistic.”

He smiled and she leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. Then she walked off toward the escalator.

Bosch was watching her go when Bremmer came up.

“You want to talk about this? That was some interesting testimony in there.”

“I said all I’m saying on the stand.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nope.”

“What about what she says? That the second killer is really the first and that Church didn’t kill anybody.”

“What do you expect her to say? It’s bullshit. Just remember, what I said in the courtroom was under oath. What she says out here isn’t. It’s bullshit, Bremmer. Don’t fall for it.”

“Look, Harry, I have to write this. You know? It’s my job. You going to understand that? No hard feelings?”

“No hard feelings, Bremmer. Everybody has got their job to do. Now I’m going to go do mine, okay?”

He walked off toward the escalator. Outside at the statue, he lit a cigarette and gave one to Tommy Faraway, who had been sifting through the ash can.

“What’s happening, Lieutenant?” the homeless man asked.

“Justice is happening.”

Bosch drove over to Central Division and found an open parking space at the front curb. For a while, he sat in his car looking at two trustees from the lockup washing the painted enamel mural that stretched along the front wall of the bunkerlike station. It was a depiction of a nirvana where black and white and brown children played together and smiled at friendly police officers. It was a depiction of a place where the children still had hope. In angry black spray paint along the bottom of the mural someone had written, “This is a damnable lie!”

Bosch wondered whether someone from the neighborhood or a cop had done it. He smoked two cigarettes and tried to clear his mind of what had happened in the courtroom. He felt strangely at peace with the idea that some of his secrets had been revealed. But he held little hope for the outcome of the trial. He had moved into a feeling of resignation, an acceptance that the jury would find against him, that the twisted delivery of evidence in the case would convince them that he had acted, if not like the monster Chandler had described, then at least in an undesirable and reckless manner. They would never know what it was like to have to make such decisions as he had made in so fleeting a moment.

It was the same old story that every cop knew. The citizens want their police to protect them, to keep the plague from their eyes, from their doors. But those same John Q.’s are the first to stare wide-eyed and point the finger of outrage when they see close up exactly what the job they’ve given the cops entails. Bosch wasn’t a hardliner. He didn’t condone the actions taken by police in the André Galton cases and the Rodney King cases. But he understood those actions and knew that his own actions ultimately shared a common root.

Through political opportunism and ineptitude, the city had allowed the department to languish for years as an understaffed and underequipped paramilitary organization. Infected with political bacteria itself, the department was top-heavy with managers while the ranks below were so thin that the dog soldiers on the street rarely had the time or inclination to step out of their protective machines, their cars, to meet the people they served. They only ventured out to deal with the dirtbags and, consequently, Bosch knew, it had created a police culture in which everybody not in blue was seen as a dirtbag and was treated as such. Everybody. You ended up with your André Galtons and your Rodney Kings. You ended up with a riot the dog soldiers couldn’t control. You ended up with a mural on a station house wall that was a damnable lie.

He badged his way past the front desk and took the stairs up to the Administrative Vice offices. At the door to the squad room he stood for a half minute and watched Ray Mora sitting at his desk on the other side of the room. It looked as if Mora was writing a report, rather than typing it. That probably meant it was a Daily Activity Report, which required little attention-just a few lines-and wasn’t worth the time it took to get up and find a working typewriter.

Bosch noticed that Mora wrote with his right hand. But he knew this did not eliminate the vice cop as possibly being the follower. The follower knew the details and would have known about pulling the ligature around his victim’s neck from the left side, thereby emulating the Dollmaker. Just as he knew about painting the white cross on the toe.

Mora looked up and saw him.

“What’re you doing over there, Harry?”

“Didn’t want to interrupt.”

Bosch walked over.

“What, interrupt a day report? Are you kidding?”

“Thought it might be something important.”

“It’s important for me to get my paycheck. That’s about it.”

Bosch dragged a chair away from an empty desk and pulled it up and sat down. He noticed the statue of the Infant of Prague had been moved. Turned, actually. Its face was no longer looking at the nakedness of the actress on the porn calendar. Bosch looked at Mora and realized he was not sure how to proceed here.

“You left a message last night.”

“Yeah, I was thinking…”

“About what?”

“Well, we know Church didn’t kill Maggie Cum Loudly because of the timing, right? He was already dead when she got her ass dropped in the concrete.”

“That’s right.”

“So, we’ve gotta copycat.”

“Right again.”

“So I was thinking: what if the copycat who did her started earlier?”