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“Renée exaggerates but she always has my back.”
“She’s great. We work together well,” said Tepps.
“Crossover cases?”
“Exactly.”
“Serials, I bet.”
“That would be a good bet.”
Bosch knew that when it came to serials, killers didn’t care about jurisdictions — not unless it was part of a strategy to fly beneath law enforcement radar by spreading kills across multiple agencies. In his days with a badge, he had worked several cases with the sheriff’s homicide team.
They walked through a room with at least twenty half-walled workstations, each with two desks for detective pairs, and into a smaller room with eight individual desks. Most of the desks were empty, and Bosch took that to mean that the detectives were out working cases. He thought of the sign he had once taped to his own workstation: GET OFF YOUR ASS AND KNOCK ON DOORS. Words for a homicide detective to live by.
“I’ve got you set up in one of our interview rooms,” Tepps said. “We went over the ground rules on the phone yesterday. Any questions about that?”
“No questions,” Bosch said.
Tepps led Bosch to a door marked INTERVIEW 1 on a placard and opened it. Bosch entered while Tepps stayed in the doorway. It was a tiny room with a table and two chairs. On the table was a yellowed white binder no more than an inch thick. Written down its spine was 65-40032.
“That’s all you’ve got?” Bosch asked.
“That’s it,” Tepps said.
“Did you take a look?”
“I did, and I’m embarrassed to say they pretty much NHI’d it.”
Bosch nodded. NHI: No human involved. In 1965, a fifteen-year-old Black kid killed in a county youth hall apparently didn’t warrant a full-field investigation. If there was no family to ask questions, an institutional silence would follow.
“Anything stand out?” Bosch asked.
“Not that I saw,” Tepps said. “But I didn’t look that closely. What’s your connection to this? Renée didn’t say.”
Bosch gestured to the binder on the table.
“I knew him,” he said. “When we were kids.”
“In that place?” Tepps asked. “MacLaren?”
“The Mac — yeah.”
“That must have been tough. How long were you there?”
“On and off, six years.”
“I read about the lawsuit against the county. That why this came up?”
“In a way, yeah.”
“Old memories.”
Bosch nodded but said nothing else. There was an awkward silence. Tepps wanted more information. Bosch didn’t want to give it.
“Well, like I told you,” Tepps said, “you can take notes, but no copies, and the file doesn’t leave the room.”
“And why no copies again?” Bosch asked.
