Title: "Ask the Dust"
Directed by: Aaron Lipstadt
Written by: Daniel Pyne and John Mankiewicz
Air Date: April 13, 2018
Previous: The Sea King
Next: Dreams of Bunker Hill
Guest Starring: Paul Calderón, John Getz, Winter Ave Zoli, Clark Johnson
"Ask the Dust" is the 1st episode of the fourth season of Bosch. The main plot of this season is adapted from Michael Connelly novel Angels Flight, although elements of the season are loosely inspired by 9 Dragons and The Last Coyote.
It is three months after the end of Season 3. Bosch is following Councilman Bradley Walker around; Walker remains the prime suspect in the murder of Bosch's mother. Bosch is indiscreet enough to run into Walker at one of his fundraisers at the Biltmore Hotel (which is also being attended by Phil Gentry, a banker whose daughter Becca is one of Maddie's classmates) and tells him, in a menacing tone, that he is investigating a cold case.
Jerry Edgar is still working light duty, selling houses, and rehabbing the shoulder that was wrecked by Xavi Moreno's bullet the previous season. He is also having sex with his ex-wife.
Crusading lawyer Howard Elias (Clark Johnson) is suing the city and the LAPD over a police brutality case called "Black Guardian". Allegedly, Elias's client, Michael Harris, was detained by Robbery-Homicide detectives on suspicion that he kidnapped a young girl named Stacey Kincaid. Hoping that the child was still alive and desperate to find her in time, the cops tortured Harris, going so far as to jam a Black Guardian brand pencil into his ear and rupture his eardrum—or so Elias alleges. Elias, who has a long history of suing the LAPD and has ruined the careers of many cops, is eager to go to trial, rejecting a settlement offer from the city of $420,000.
After a night at the office, Elias boards the Angels Flight
funicular. Just before he arrives at the top, a gunman shoots the operator, Landon Johnson. Then as Elias is getting up to disembark, the gunman shoots him twice. The first bullet goes through Elias's left hand and hits him in the heart. Elias falls to the aisle and tries to crawl away, at which point the gunman shoots again, the second bullet going straight up Elias's rectum.
Angels Flight being just down the street from the Biltmore, Harry sees the police response just as he's getting called to the scene on the direct orders of Irving, as Irving knows Bosch is a straight shooter and miraculously, has never been sued by Elias. Because RHD has a conflict of interest on account of the lawsuit, Irving sanctions a special task force based out of Hollywood Station to handle the investigation. Bosch is the lead investigator, with the detectives under him being Robertson, Pierce, and, much to Bosch's disgust, Amy Snyder and Gabriella Lincoln from Internal Affairs. Snyder, now a detective, was the one who pursued a complaint against Bosch last November for his public altercation with Rick O'Shea.
Eleanor Wish is back to poker playing, dueling against high rollers. Except that this time, it's part of an FBI investigation against some shady Triad types. After the Chinese gangsters known to frequent Eleanor's casino invite her for a private game, the Bureau stakes her $50,000 to play. Jay Griffin assures Eleanor that Reggie's family has been cleared...in what is the first reveal to the audience that Reggie has any Triad connections at all.
The Koreatown Killer assaults a man and steals his bike.
Bosch faces a lot of resistance from the LAPD, since the police force as a whole is pretty happy that Elias is dead. After Bosch warns Captain Garwood and Terry Drake, the first officers on the scene, against staging things to look like a robbery, the cops receive an "anonymous" tip. Bosch finds Elias's missing wallet and watch in a nearby trash can.
At the end of the episode, Bosch goes back to Angels Flight to check the scene again in daylight. He finds Elias's cell phone, wedged under one of the rails right below the upper station.
Tropes:
- Adapted Out: Catalina Perez, the cleaning lady killed with Howard Elias on Angels Flight in the novel, is left out of the TV show.
- Bland-Name Product: Black Guardian pencils. Oddly, a change from the book, which used a real brand, Black Warrior pencils.
- Chekhov's Gun: Believe it or not, that coin that Howard Elias is flipping in the opening scene will be important, as will the tech request he tells his co-counsel.
- Chekhov's Gunman: A drunken Francis Sheehan shows up at the Elias crime scene. Sheehan can be seen in the very first episode of season 1 as one of the cops milling around the scene after Bosch shot and killed Roberto Flores, and his drunkenness will become a plot point.
- Death by Adaptation: The secondary victim in the book was Catalina Perez, a Hispanic housekeeper riding Angel's Flight with Elias. In this version of the story, the secondary victim is the tram operator Landon Johnson, whose equivalent character survived and was the one to find the bodies.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: A careful viewer will catch the muzzle flash and sound of the gunshot from the shooter killing the operator right before the car with Elias arrives at the top.
- Internal Affairs: Irving assigns two IA cops as part of the Howard Elias investigation. It's logical enough, with the obvious conflict of interest for most of the rest of the department, but Bosch doesn't like the assignment of Snyder as one of them.
- Joggers Find Death: The crime scene is found 50 minutes after the fact, after a late night jogger sees the broken control booth window and finds the operator's body.
- Sex with the Ex: Jerry and LaTonya have taken Amicably Divorced up a notch. He clearly wants a complete reconciliation but his ex-wife is noncommittal.
- Shot in the Ass: After Elias is down, the killer shoots him one last time up the rectum. Bosch and Robertson agree that this is a signal the killing was personal, because the first shot was fatal all by itself.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Bosch is saddled with two Internal Affairs cops and is not happy at all about it. He gives them useless make-work assignments and, after he personally teams up with Snyder, refuses to talk to her.
- Time Skip: Three months after the end of Season 2. Edgar is still rehabbing.
- The Triads and the Tongs: Eleanor Wish is given the assignment of penetrating a Triad crime ring via poker tournament. Her husband Reggie Woo's family is somehow associated with the Triads.
