Bosch looked at her, doing the math. He nodded. He had asked for the maximum — five years nonretroactive — but he’d take what they gave. It wouldn’t keep him much past high school but it was better than nothing.
“Well, I’m glad,” Duvall said. “It gives you thirty-nine more months with us.”
Her tone indicated that she had read disappointment in his face.
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m glad. I was just thinking about where that would put me with my daughter. It’s good. I’m happy.”
“Good, then.”
That was her way of saying the meeting was over. Bosch thanked her and left the office. As he stepped back into the squad room, he looked across the vast expanse of desks and dividers and file cabinets. He knew it was home and that he would get to stay — for now.
2
The Open-Unsolved Unit shared access to the two fifth-floor conference rooms with all other units in the Robbery-Homicide Division. Usually detectives had to reserve time in one of the rooms, signing on the clipboard hooked on the door. But this early on a Monday, they both were open and Bosch, Chu, Shuler and Dolan commandeered the smaller of the two rooms without making a reservation.
They brought with them the murder book and the small archival evidence box from the 1989 case.
“Okay,” Bosch said when everyone was seated. “So you are cool with us running with this case? If you’re not, we can go back to the lieutenant and say you really want to work it.”
“No, it’s okay,” Shuler said. “We both are involved in the trial, so it’s better this way. It’s our first case in the unit and we want to see it through to that guilty verdict.”
Bosch nodded as he casually opened the murder book.
“You want to give us the rundown on this one, then?”
Shuler gave Dolan a nod and she began to summarize the 1989 case as Bosch flipped through the pages of the binder.