Title: "Everybody Counts"
Directed by: Tim Hunter
Written by: Michael Connelly and Terrill Lee Lankford
Air Date: March 11, 2016
Previous: Queen of Martyrs
Next: The Smog Cutter
Guest Starring: Mimi Rogers, Steven Culp
"Everybody Counts" is the 10th and last episode of the second season of Bosch.
Bosch meets with Annette McKay, his mother's old friend and fellow hooker. Annette relates that on the night Marjorie Lowe was murdered, Annette had too many clients, so she foisted a man named "Mitch" off on Marjorie. They went to a particular fleabag hotel. After Marjorie was murdered Annette left town and went straight, but not before making an anonymous call to the police. Bosch takes this information and then rips into Annette for waiting 35 years, until she was dying, to report it.
Harry, Eleanor, and Maddie take a walk on the beach before the latter two have to go to the airport to fly home. Harry tells her about his investigation into his mother's death. Eleanor says that her marriage with Reggie is in a tough place right now and she doesn't know what will happen.
Bosch goes to the hotel where his mother went with "Mitch". They still have the registration books from 1979, and he finds the name Fox Mitchell in the book for the night in question.
Acting Chief Irving has a tense meeting with Rick O'Shea. O'Shea says he will release the Waits grand jury report if Irving withdraws his endorsement. Irving says he doesn't care and then tells O'Shea that he sent the Waits video—the one that shows O'Shea giving the order to unshackle Waits—to the Los Angeles Times. O'Shea, who knows that with this his mayoral campaign is in deep trouble, is livid.
Bosch goes to an old folks' home to visit John Caffrey, who was the investigating officer on Marjorie Lowe's murder back in 1979. Caffrey eventually admits that he laid off on the Fox Mitchell lead because he was told to, because Fox Mitchell was a highly valuable informant for Narcotics. An enraged Harry storms out after telling Caffrey that his mother "never had a chance" with him on the case. Later, Bosch goes to Narcotics and gets a helpful officer to give him the real name of the man who used the alias "Fox Mitchell"—Mitchell's real name was Arno Epperson, and he was eventually put into witness protection.
Veronica Allen is claiming self-defense in the murder of Father Tabakian. She hires as her attorney Honey Chandler, Bosch's nemesis from the Flores lawsuit in Season 1. Chandler says she took the case in part just to screw with Bosch again.
The serial numbers lifted off of the weapons recovered from the bank shootout reveal that Carl Nash bought them all legally, then sold them to a hunting lodge up in the mountains, where he then "stole" them, resold them to his crew, and pocketed the insurance money. The hunting preserve is now out of business but Bosch and Edgar still go to check it out.
It's Nash's hideout. Bosch and Edgar are walking up to the front door when Nash starts shooting with a submachine gun. Bosch and Edgar duck for cover, but Nash has grenades—and that's how he dies, when he pulls the pin on a grenade only to drop it when Harry wings him with a shot.
Near the end of the episode the scene cuts to the coast of Spain. Layla is there, spending some of her four million dollars of Mafiya money at a resort. However, Martin Weiss, the Marks family's crooked attorney, has tracked her there, and he makes a call.
It turns out that one of the Narcotics cops handling Mitchell/Epperson back in 1979 was none other than Irvin Irving. Bosch goes to Irving and asks for help. It turns out that Epperson relocated to Morro Bay under the name "Dave Aronson"—and he died two years ago. The episode, and the season, ends with Bosch standing at Dave Aronson's grave, snarling "You got away with it."
Tropes:
- Adaptational Heroism: Bosch tears into Annette for not reporting what she knew, but she's certainly not as bad as her book counterpart from The Last Coyote, Meredith Roman. In the book, Meredith is the murderer, but the show came up with a completely different "who killed Harry's mom" storyline.
- All for Nothing: Bosch's investigation will bring his mother's killer to justice, right? Nope, because the guy who killed her is dead. (In later seasons this is subverted, when Harry discovers that Mitchell/Epperson/Aronson didn't do it.)
- Answer Cut: Bosch thinks about Layla, saying "I wonder where she is with all that money." Cut to Layla on the beach in Spain sipping wine.
- Bottomless Magazines: Carl Nash gets off several long bursts of fire with a submachine gun, one that in reality takes a 30-round magazine.
- The Bus Came Back: Honey Chandler, not seen since Episode 1-4 when she was suing Bosch, pops back up as Veronica Allen's lawyer.
- Call-Back: The Narcotics supervisor Bosch goes to for the Fox Mitchell file used to work under Harvey Pounds, and says he enjoyed it when he heard that Bosch threw Pounds threw a window.
- Creator Cameo: The picture of Dave Aronson on the wall of the surfboard shop is actually that of Michael Connelly.
- Grenade Hot Potato: A variant. Nash has pulled the pin on a grenade and is about to throw it when Bosch wings him with a bullet, and he drops the grenade. Nash has just enough time for an Oh, Crap! when the grenade explodes and kills him.
- Left Hanging: The audience never sees Layla again after the scene where Weiss has tracked her down to a Spanish resort.
- No-Tell Motel: The motel where Marjorie Lowe took "Mitch" in 1979 is the sort of place where the desk clerk sits in a glass-paneled booth. He tells Bosch that two prostitutes were murdered there in 1980.
- Omnidisciplinary Lawyer: Honey Chandler, who was arguing a wrongful death lawsuit a year ago, is now handling a murder case. She justifies it by saying she wants "to blow the dust off of my criminal court skills", and also that she wants to screw with Bosch again.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Bosch gives two. First he points out that Annette waited 36 years to tell him, then sarcastically says "Thank you for telling me at last." Then he gives an even angrier one to Caffrey for basically punting on the case, saying "My mother got you. She never had a chance."
- Shout-Out: When Bosch comes to see Caffrey, Caffrey is watching This Gun for Hire on TV.
- Spiteful Spit: Bosch visits the grave of the man who killed his mother, and spits on it.
- Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee: Bosch asks a cop from Narcotics for the real name of "Fox Mitchell". The Narcotics guy says that he can't give that out without command staff authorization, then very pointedly says he's going to step out to make a pot of coffee, and leaves his keys on the desk. After he leaves Bosch unlocks the files and gets the name.
