The Closers

1

WITHIN THE PRACTICE and protocol of the Los Angeles Police Department a two-six call is the one that draws the most immediate response while striking the most fear behind the bulletproof vest. For it is a call that often has a career riding on it. The designation is derived from the combination of the Code 2 radio call out, meaning “respond as soon as possible,” and the sixth floor of Parker Center, from which the chief of police commands the department. A two-six is a forthwith from the chief’s office, and any officer who knows and enjoys his position in the department will not delay.

Detective Harry Bosch spent over twenty-five years with the department in his first tour and never once received a forthwith from the chief of police. In fact, other than receiving his badge at the academy in 1972, he never shook hands or spoke personally with a chief again. He had outlasted several of them-and, of course, seen them at police functions and funerals-but simply never met them along the way. On the morning of his return to duty after a three-year retirement he received his first two-six while knotting his tie in the bathroom mirror. It was an adjutant to the chief calling Bosch’s private cell phone. Bosch didn’t bother asking how they had come up with the number. It was simply understood that the chief’s office had the power to reach out in such a way. Bosch just said he would be there within the hour, to which the adjutant replied that he would be expected sooner. Harry finished knotting his tie in his car while driving as fast as traffic allowed on the 101 Freeway toward downtown.

It took Bosch exactly twenty-four minutes from the moment he closed the phone on the adjutant until he walked through the double doors of the chief’s suite on the sixth floor at Parker Center. He thought it had to have been some kind of record, notwithstanding the fact that he had illegally parked on Los Angeles Street in front of the police headquarters. If they knew his private cell number, then surely they knew what a feat it had been to make it from the Hollywood Hills to the chief’s office in under a half hour.

But the adjutant, a lieutenant named Hohman, stared him down with disinterested eyes and pointed to a plastic-sealed couch that already had two other people waiting on it.

“You’re late,” he said. “Take a seat.”

Bosch decided not to protest, not to make matters possibly worse. He stepped over to the couch and sat between the two men in uniform, who had staked out the armrests. They sat bolt upright and did not small-talk. He figured they had been two-sixed as well.

Ten minutes went by. The men on either side of him were called in ahead of Bosch, each dispensed with by the chief in five minutes flat. While the second man was in with the chief, Bosch thought he heard loud voices from the inner sanctum, and when the officer came out his face was ashen. He had somehow fucked up in the eyes of the chief and the word-which had even filtered to Bosch in retirement-was that this new man did not suffer fuckups lightly. Bosch had read a story in the Times about a command staffer who was demoted for failing to inform the chief that the son of a city councilman usually allied against the department had been picked up on a deuce. The chief only found out about it when the councilman called to complain about harassment, as if the department had forced his son to drink six vodka martinis at Bar Marmount and drive home via the trunk of a tree on Mulholland.

Finally Hohman put down the phone and pointed his finger at Bosch. He was up. He was quickly shuttled into a corner office with a view of Union Station and the surrounding train yards. It was a decent view but not a great one. It didn’t matter because the place was coming down soon. The department would move into temporary offices while a new and modern police headquarters was rebuilt on the same spot. The current headquarters was known as the Glass House by the rank and file, supposedly because there were no secrets kept inside. Bosch wondered what the next place would become known as.

The chief of police was behind a large desk signing papers. Without looking up from this work he told Bosch to have a seat in front of the desk. Within thirty seconds the chief signed his last document and looked up at Bosch. He smiled.

“I wanted to meet you and welcome you back to the department.”

His voice was marked by an eastern accent. De-paht-ment. This was fine with Bosch. In L.A. everybody was from somewhere else. Or so it seemed. It was both the strength and the weakness of the city.

“It is good to be back,” Bosch said.

“You understand that you are here at my pleasure.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes sir, I do.”

“Obviously, I checked you out extensively before approving your return. I had concerns about your… shall we say style, but ultimately your talent won the day. You can also thank your partner, Kizmin Rider, for her lobbying effort. She’s a good officer and I trust her. She trusts you.”

“I have already thanked her but I will do it again.”

“I know it has been less than three years since you retired but let me assure you, Detective Bosch, that the department you have rejoined is not the department you left.”

“I understand that.”

“I hope so. You know about the consent decree?”

Just after Bosch had left the department the previous chief had been forced to agree to a series of reforms in order to head off a federal takeover of the LAPD following an FBI investigation into wholesale corruption, violence and civil rights violations within the ranks. The current chief had to carry out the agreement or he would end up taking orders from the FBI. From the chief down to the lowliest boot, nobody wanted that.

“Yes,” Bosch said. “I’ve read about it.”

“Good. I’m glad you have kept yourself informed. And I am happy to report that despite what you may read in the Times, we are making great strides and we want to keep that momentum. We are also trying to update the department in terms of technology. We are pushing forward in community policing. We are doing a lot of good things, Detective Bosch, much of which can be undone in the eyes of the community if we resort to old ways. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“I think so.”

“Your return here is not guaranteed. You are on probation for a year. So consider yourself a rookie again. A boot-the oldest living boot at that. I approved your return-I can also wash you out without so much as a reason anytime in the course of the year. Don’t give me a reason.”

Bosch didn’t answer. He didn’t think he was supposed to.

“On Friday we graduate a new class of cadets at the academy. I would like you to be there.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to be there. I want you to see the dedication in our young people’s faces. I want to reacquaint you with the traditions of this department. I think it could help you, help you rededicate yourself.”

“If you want me to be there I will be there.”

“Good. I will see you there. You will sit under the VIP tent as my guest.”

He made a note about the invite on a pad of paper next to the blotter. He then put the pen down and raised his hand to point a finger at Bosch. His eyes took on a fierceness.

“Listen to me, Bosch. Don’t ever break the law to enforce the law. At all times you do your job constitutionally and compassionately. I will accept it no other way. This city will accept it no other way. Are we okay on that?”

“We are okay.”

“Then we are good to go.”

Bosch took his cue and stood up. The chief surprised him by also standing and extending his hand. Bosch thought he wanted to shake hands and extended his own. The chief put something in his hand and Bosch looked down to see the gold detective’s shield. He had his old number back. It had not been given away. He almost smiled.

“Wear it well,” the police chief said. “And proudly.”

“I will.”

Now they shook hands, but as they did so the chief didn’t smile.

“The chorus of forgotten voices,” he said.

“Excuse me, Chief?”

“That’s what I think about when I think of the cases down there in Open-Unsolved. It’s a house of horrors. Our greatest shame. All those cases. All those voices. Every one of them is like a stone thrown into a lake. The ripples move out through time and people. Families, friends, neighbors. How can we call ourselves a city when there are so many ripples, when so many voices have been forgotten by this department?”

Bosch let go of his hand and didn’t say anything. There was no answer for the chief’s question.

“I changed the name of the unit when I came into the department. Those aren’t cold cases, Detective. They never go cold. Not for some people.”

“I understand that.”

“Then go down there and clear cases. That’s what your art is. That’s why we need you and why you are here. That’s why I am taking a chance with you. Show them we do not forget. Show them that in Los Angeles cases don’t go cold.”

“I will.”

Bosch left him there, still standing and maybe a little haunted by the voices. Like himself. Bosch thought that maybe for the first time he had actually connected on some level with the man at the top. In the military it is said that you go into battle and fight and are willing to die for the men who sent you. Bosch never felt that when he was moving through the darkness of the tunnels in Vietnam. He had felt alone and that he was fighting for himself, fighting to stay alive. That had carried with him into the department and he had at times adopted the view that he was fighting in spite of the men at the top. Now maybe things would be different.

In the hallway he punched the elevator button harder than he needed to. He had too much excitement and energy and he understood this. The chorus of forgotten voices. The chief seemed to know the song they were singing. And Bosch certainly did, too. Most of his life had been spent listening to that song.

2

BOSCH RODE THE ELEVATOR just one flight down to five. This, too, was new territory for him. Five had always been a civilian floor. It primarily housed many of the department’s mid- and low-level administrative offices, most of them filled with nonsworn employees, budgeters, analysts, pencil pushers. Civilians. Before now there had been no reason to come to the fifth.

There were no placards in the elevator lobby that pointed the way to specific offices. It was the kind of floor where you knew where you were going before you stepped off the elevator. But not Bosch. The hallways on the floor formed the letter H and he went the wrong way twice before finally finding the door marked 503. There was nothing else on the door. He paused before opening it and thought about what he was doing and what he was starting. He knew it was the right thing. It was almost as if he could hear the voices coming through the door. All eight thousand of them.

Kiz Rider was sitting on a desk just inside, sipping a cup of steaming coffee. The desk looked like a place for a receptionist but Bosch knew from his frequent calls in the prior weeks that there was no receptionist in this squad. There was no money for such a luxury. Rider raised her wrist and shook her head as she checked her watch.

“I thought we agreed on eight o’clock,” she said. “Is that how it’s going to be, partner? You waltzing in every morning whenever you feel like it?”

Bosch looked at his watch. It was five minutes after eight. He looked back at her and smiled. Rider smiled and said, “We’re over here.”

Rider was a short woman who carried a few extra pounds. Her hair was short and now had some gray in it. She was very dark complected, which made her smile all the more brilliant. She slipped off the desk, and from behind where she had perched she raised a second cup of coffee to him.

“See if I remembered that right.”

He checked and nodded.

“Black, just like I like my partners.”

“Funny. I’ll have to write you up for that.”

She led the way. The office seemed to be empty. It was large, even for a squad room serving nine investigators-four teams and an OIC. The walls were painted a light shade of blue, like Bosch often saw on the screens of computers. It was carpeted in gray. There were no windows. At the positions on the walls where there should have been windows there were bulletin boards or nicely framed crime scene photos from many years back. Bosch could tell that in these black and whites the photographers had often put their artistic skills ahead of their clinical duties. The shots were heavy on mood and shadows. Not many of the crime scene details were apparent.

Rider must have known he was looking at the photos.

“They told me that writer James Ellroy picked these out and had them framed for the office,” she said.

She led him around a partial wall that broke the room in two and into an alcove where two gray steel desks were pushed together so the detectives who sat at them would face each other. Rider put her coffee down on one. There were already files stacked on it and personal things like a coffee mug full of pens and a picture frame at an angle that hid the photo it held. A laptop computer was open and humming on the desk. She had moved into the squad the week before while Bosch was still clearing customs-customs being the medical exam and final paperwork that brought him back onto the job.

The other desk was clean, empty and waiting for him. He moved behind it and put his coffee down. He suppressed a smile as well as he could.

“Welcome back, Roy,” Rider said.

That made the smile break through. It made Bosch feel good to be called Roy again. It was a tradition carried by many of the city’s homicide detectives. There was a legendary homicide man named Russell Kuster who had worked out of Hollywood Division many years back. He was the ultimate professional, and many of the detectives working murders in the city today had come under his tutelage at one point or another. He was killed in an off-duty shootout in 1990. But his habit of calling people Roy-no matter their real name-was carried on. Its origin had become obscure. Some said it was because Kuster once had a partner who loved Roy Acuff and it had started with him. Others said it was because Kuster liked the idea of the homicide cop being the Roy Rogers type, wearing the white hat and riding to the rescue, making things right. It didn’t matter anymore. Bosch knew it was an honor just to be called Roy again.

He sat down. The chair was old and lumpy, guaranteed to give him a backache if he spent too much time in it. But he hoped that would not be the case. In his first run as a homicide detective he had lived by the adage Get off your ass and knock on doors. He didn’t see any reason that should change this time around.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

“Having breakfast. I forgot. They told me last week that the routine is that on Monday mornings everybody meets early for breakfast. They usually go over to the Pacific. I didn’t remember until I got in here this morning and found the place dead, but they should be back here soon.”

Bosch knew the Pacific Dining Car was a longtime favorite with LAPD brass and the Robbery-Homicide Division. He also knew something else.

“Twelve bucks for a plate of eggs. I guess that means this is an overtime-approved squad.”

Rider smiled in confirmation.

“You got that right. But you wouldn’t have been able to finish your fancy eggs anyway, once you got the forthwith from the chief.”

“You heard about that, huh?”

“I still have an ear out on six. Did you get your badge?”

“Yeah, he gave it to me.”

“I told him what number you’d want. Did you get it?”

“Yeah, Kiz, thanks. Thanks for everything.”

“You already told me that, partner. You don’t need to keep saying that.”

He nodded and looked around their space. He noticed that on the wall behind Rider was a photo of two detectives huddled beside a body lying in the dry concrete bed of the Los Angeles River. It looked like a shot from the early fifties, judging by the hats the detectives wore.

“So, where do we start?” he asked.

“The squad breaks the cases up in three-year increments. It provides some continuity. They say you get to know the era and some of the players in the department. It overlaps. It also helps with identifying serials. In two years they’ve already come up with four serials nobody ever knew about.”

Bosch nodded. He was impressed.

“What years did we get?” he asked.

“Each team has four or five blocks. Since we’re the new team we got four.”

She opened the middle drawer of her desk, took out a piece of paper and handed it across to him.

Bosch studied the listing of years for which they would be responsible. He had been out of the city and in Vietnam for most of the first block.

“The summer of love,” he said. “I missed it. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.”

He said it just to be saying something. He noticed that the second block included 1972, the year he had come onto the force. He remembered a call out to a house off of Vermont on his second day on the job in patrol. A woman back east asked police to check on her mother, who was not answering the phone. Bosch found her drowned in a bathtub, her hands and feet bound with dog leashes. Her dead dog was in the tub with her. Bosch wondered if the old woman’s murder was one of the open cases he would now be charged with solving.

“How was this arrived at? I mean, why did we get these years?”

“They came from the other teams. We lightened their caseload. In fact, they already started the ball rolling on cases from a lot of those years. And I heard on Friday that a cold hit came in from ’eighty-eight. We’re supposed to run with it starting today. I guess you could say it’s your welcome-back present.”

“What’s a cold hit?”

“When a DNA stamp or a latent we send through the computers or the DOJ makes a blind match.”

“What’s ours?”

“I think it’s a DNA match. We’ll find out this morning.”

“They didn’t tell you anything last week? I could have come in over the weekend, you know.”

“I know that, Harry. But this is an old case. There was no need to start running the minute a piece of paper came in the mail. Working Open-Unsolved is different.”

“Yeah? How come?”

Rider looked exasperated, but before she could answer they heard the door open and the squad room started filling with voices. Rider stepped out of the alcove and Bosch followed. She introduced Bosch to the other members of the squad. Two of the detectives, Tim Marcia and Rick Jackson, Bosch knew well from previous cases. The other two pairs of partners were Robert Renner and Victor Robleto, and Kevin Robinson and Jean Nord. Bosch knew them, as well as Abel Pratt, the officer in charge of the unit, by reputation. Every one of them was a top-notch homicide investigator.

The greeting was cordial and subdued, a bit overly formal. Bosch knew that his posting in the unit was probably viewed with suspicion. An assignment on the squad would have been highly coveted by detectives throughout the department. The fact that he had gotten the posting after nearly three years in retirement raised questions. Bosch knew, as the chief of police had reminded him, that he had Rider to thank for the job. Her last posting had been in the chief’s office as a policy analyst. She had cashed in whatever markers she had accrued with the chief in order to get Bosch back inside the department and working open-unsolved cases with her.

After all the handshakes, Pratt invited Bosch and Rider back into his office for a private welcome-aboard speech. He sat behind his desk and they took the side-by-side chairs in front of it. There was no room in the closet-sized space for other furnishings.

Pratt was a few years younger than Bosch, on the south side of fifty. He kept himself in shape and carried the esprit de corps of the vaunted Robbery-Homicide Division, of which the Open-Unsolved Unit was just one branch. Pratt appeared confident in his skills and his command of the unit. He had to be. The RHD took on the city’s most difficult cases. Bosch knew that if you did not believe you were smarter, tougher and more cunning than the people you were after then you didn’t belong.

“What I really should do is split you two up,” he began. “Make you work with guys already established here in the unit because this is different from what you’ve done in the past. But I got the word from six and I don’t mess with that. Besides, I understand you two have a prior chemistry that worked. So forget what I should do and let me tell you a little bit about working open-unsolveds. Kiz, I know you already got this speech last week but you’ll just have to suffer along, okay?”

“Of course,” Rider said.

“First of all, forget closure. Closure is bullshit. Closure is a media term, something they put in newspaper articles about cold cases. Closure is a joke. It’s a fucking lie. All we do here is provide answers. Answers have to be enough. So don’t mislead yourself about what you are doing here. Don’t mislead the family members you deal with on these cases and don’t be misled by them.”

He paused for reaction, got none and moved on. Bosch noticed that the crime scene photo framed on the wall was of a man collapsed in a bullet-riddled phone booth. It was the kind of phone booth you only saw in old movies and at the Farmers Market or over at Phillippe’s.

“Without a doubt,” Pratt said, “this squad is the most noble place in the building. A city that forgets its murder victims is a city lost. This is where we don’t forget. We’re like the guys they bring in in the bottom of the ninth inning to win or lose the game. The closers. If we can’t do it, nobody can. If we blow it, the game is over because we’re the last resort. Yes, we’re outnumbered. We’ve got eight thousand open-unsolveds since nineteen sixty. But we are undaunted. Even if this whole unit clears only one case a month-just twelve a year-we are doing something. We’re the closers, baby. If you’re in homicide, this is the place to be.”

Bosch was impressed by his fervor. He could see sincerity and even pain in his eyes. He nodded. He immediately knew that he wanted to work for this man, a rarity in his experience in the department.

“Just don’t forget that closure isn’t the same as being a closer,” Pratt added.

“Got it,” Bosch said.

“Now, I know you both have long experience working homicides. What you are going to find different here is your relationship with the cases.”

“Relationship?” Bosch asked.

“Yes, relationship. What I mean is that working fresh kills is a completely different animal. You have the body, you have the autopsy, you carry the news to the family. Here you are dealing with victims long dead. There are no autopsies, no physical crime scenes. You deal with the murder books-if you can find them-and the records. When you go to the family-and believe me you don’t go until you are good and ready-you find people who have already suffered the shock and found or not found ways to get past it. It wears on you. I hope you are prepared for that.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Bosch said.

“With fresh kills it is clinical because things move fast. With old cases it is emotional. You are going to see the toll of violence over time. Be prepared for it.”

Pratt pulled a thick blue binder from the side of his desk to the center of his calendar blotter. He started to push it across to them then stopped.

“Another thing to be prepared for is the department. Count on files being incomplete or even missing. Count on physical evidence being destroyed or disappeared. Count on starting from scratch with some of these. This unit was put together two years ago. We spent the first eight months just going through the case logs and pulling out open-unsolveds. We fed what we could into the forensics pipelines, but even when we’ve gotten a hit we have been handicapped by the lack of case integrity. It has been abysmal. It has been frustrating. Even though there is no statute of limitations on murder we are finding that evidence and even files were routinely disposed of during at least one administration.

“What I am saying is that you are going to find that your biggest obstacle on some of these cases may very well be the department itself.”

“Somebody said we have a cold hit that came out of one of our time blocks,” Bosch said.

He’d heard enough. He just wanted to get moving on something.

“Yes, you do,” Pratt said. “We’ll get to that in a second. Let me just finish up with my little speech. After all, I don’t get to make it that often. In a nutshell, what we try to do here is apply new technology and techniques to old cases. The technology is essentially threefold. You have DNA, fingerprints, and ballistics. In all three areas the advancements in comparative analysis have been phenomenal in the last ten years. The problem with this department is that it never took any of these advances and looked backward at old cases. Consequently, we have an estimated two thousand cases in which there is DNA evidence that has never been typed and compared. Since nineteen sixty we have four thousand cases with fingerprints that have never been run through a computer. Ours, the FBI’s, DOJ’s, anybody’s computer. It’s almost laughable but it’s too fucking sad to laugh about. Same with ballistics. We are finding the evidence is still there in most of these cases but it has been ignored.”

Bosch shook his head, already feeling the frustration of all the families of the victims, the cases swept away by time, indifference and incompetence.

“You will also find that techniques are different. Today’s homicide copper is just plain better than one from, say, nineteen sixty or seventy. Even nineteen eighty. So even before you get to the physical evidence and you review these cases you are going to see things that seem obvious to you now, but that weren’t obvious to anyone back at the time of the kill.”

Pratt nodded. His speech was finished.

“Now, the cold hit,” he said, pushing the faded blue murder book across the desk. “Run with that baby. It’s all yours. Close it down and put somebody in jail.”

3

AFTER LEAVING PRATT’S office they decided that Bosch would go get the next round of coffee while Rider started in on the murder book. They knew from prior experience that she was the faster reader and it didn’t make sense to split the book up. They both needed to read it front to back, to have the investigation presented to them in the linear fashion in which it occurred and was documented.

Bosch said he would give her a good head start. He told her he might drink a cup in the cafeteria just because he missed the place. The place, not the coffee.

“Then I guess that gives me a few minutes to go down the hall,” she said.

After she left the office for the restroom Bosch took the page listing the years that were assigned to them and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He left 503 and took the elevator down to the third floor. He then walked through the main RHD squad room to the captain’s office.

The captain’s office suite was broken into two rooms. One room was his actual office and the other was called the murder room. It was furnished with a long meeting table where murder investigations were discussed, and its walls on two sides were lined with shelves containing legal books and the city’s murder logs. Every homicide that had occurred in Los Angeles, going back more than one hundred years, had a listing in these leather-bound journals. The routine over the decades was to update the journals every time one of the murders was cleared. It was the easy reference in the department for determining what cases were still open or had been closed.

Bosch ran his finger along the cracked spines of the books. Each one simply said HOMICIDES followed by the listing of the years the book recorded. Several years fit into each of the early books. But by the 1980s there were so many murders committed in the city that each book contained the accounts of only one year. He then noted that the year 1988 was reported in two books, and he suddenly had a very good idea why that year had been assigned to him and Rider as the new members of the Open-Unsolved Unit. The high point for murders in the city would certainly also mean the high point for unsolved cases.

When his finger found the book containing cases from 1972 he pulled the tome out and sat down with it at the table. He leafed through it, skimming the stories, hearing the voices. He found the old lady who was drowned in her bathtub. It was never solved. He moved on, through 1973 and 1974, then he went through the book containing 1966, ’67 and ’68. He read about Charles Manson and Robert Kennedy. He read about people whose names he had never heard or known. Names that were taken away from them along with everything else they’d had or would ever have.

As he read through the catalogs of the city’s horrors, Bosch felt a familiar power begin to take hold of him and move in his veins again. Only an hour back on the job and he was already chasing a killer. It didn’t matter how long ago the blood had fallen. There was a killer in the wind and Bosch was coming. Like the prodigal son returning, he knew he was back in his place now. He was baptized again in the waters of the one true church. The church of the blue religion. And he knew that he would find his salvation in those who were long lost, that he would find it in these musty bibles where the dead lined up in columns and there were ghosts on every page.

“Harry Bosch!”

Jarred by the intrusion, Bosch slammed the book closed and looked up. Captain Gabe Norona was standing in the doorway of the inner office.

“Captain.”

“Welcome back!”

He came forward and vigorously shook Bosch’s hand.

“Good to be back.”

“I see they already have you doin’ your homework.”

Bosch nodded.

“Just sort of getting acquainted with it.”

“New hope for the dead. Harry Bosch is on the case again.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if the captain was being sarcastic or not.

“It’s the name of a book I read once,” Norona said.

“Oh.”

“Well, good luck to you. Get out there and lock ’em up.”

“That’s the plan.”

The captain shook his hand again and then disappeared back into his office and closed the door.

His sacred moment ruined by the intrusion, Bosch stood up. He started returning the heavy murder catalogs to their places on the shelves. When he was finished, he left the office for the cafeteria.

4

KIZ RIDER WAS almost halfway through the murder book when Bosch got back with the fresh round of coffees. She took her cup directly out of his hand.

“Thanks. I need something to keep me awake.”

“What, you’re going to sit there and tell me that this is boring compared to pushing paper in the chief’s office?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just all the catching up, the reading. We’ve got to know this book inside and out. We’ve got to be alert for the possibilities.”

Bosch noticed she had a legal tablet next to the murder book and the top page was almost full of notes. He couldn’t read the notes but could see that most of the lines were followed by question marks.

“Besides,” she added, “I’m using different muscles now. Muscles I didn’t use on the sixth floor.”

“I get it,” he said. “All right if I start in behind you now?”

“Be my guest.”

She popped open the rings of the binder and pulled out the two-inch-thick sheaf of documents she had already read through. She handed them across to Bosch, who had sat down at his desk.

“You got an extra pad like that?” he asked. “I just have a little notebook.”

She sighed in an exaggerated way. Bosch knew it was all an act and that she was happy they were working together again. She had spent most of the last two years evaluating policy and troubleshooting for the new chief. It wasn’t the real cop work that she was best at. This was.

She slid a pad across the desk to him.

“You need a pen, too?”

“No, I think I can handle that.”

He put the documents down in front of him and started reading. He was ready to go and he didn’t need the coffee to stay charged.

THE FIRST PAGE of the murder book was a color photograph in a plastic three-hole sleeve. The photo was a yearbook portrait of an exotically attractive young girl with almond-shaped eyes that were startling green against her mocha skin. She had tightly curled brown hair with what looked like natural blonde highlights that caught the flash of the camera. Her eyes were bright and her smile genuine. It was a grin that said she knew things nobody else did. Bosch didn’t think she was beautiful. Not yet. Her features seemed to compete with one another in an uncoordinated way. But he knew that teenage awkwardness often smoothed over and became beauty later.

But for sixteen-year-old Rebecca Verloren there would be no later. Nineteen eighty-eight would be her last year. The cold hit had come from her murder.

Becky, as she was known by family and friends, was the only child of Robert and Muriel Verloren. Muriel was a homemaker. Robert was the chef and owner of a popular Malibu restaurant called the Island House Grill. They lived on Red Mesa Way off of Santa Susana Pass Road in Chatsworth, at the northwest corner of the sprawl that made up Los Angeles. The backyard of their house was the wooded incline of Oat Mountain, which rose above Chatsworth and served as the northwest border of the city. That summer Becky was between her sophomore and junior years at Hillside Preparatory School. It was a private school in nearby Porter Ranch, where she was on the honor roll and her mother volunteered in the cafeteria and often brought jerk chicken and other specialties from her husband’s restaurant for the faculty lunchroom.

On the morning of July 6, 1988, the Verlorens discovered their daughter missing from their home. They found the back door unlocked, though they were sure it had been secured the night before. Thinking the girl might have gone for a walk they waited worriedly for two hours but she did not return. That day she was scheduled to go to the restaurant with her father to work the lunch shift as an assistant hostess and it was well past the time to leave for Malibu. While her mother called her friends hoping to locate her, her father went up the hillside behind the house looking for her. When he came back down the hill without finding a sign of her they decided it was time to call the police.

Patrol officers from the Devonshire Division were called to the home. They found no evidence of a break-in at the house. Citing this and the fact that the girl was in an age group with one of the highest runaway rates, the disappearance was viewed as a possible runaway situation and handled as a routine missing-persons case. This was against the protests of the missing girl’s parents, who did not believe she had run away or left their home of her own volition.

The parents were proved horribly correct two days later when the decomposing body of Becky Verloren was found hidden beside the fallen trunk of an oak tree about ten yards off an equestrian trail on Oat Mountain. A woman riding her Appaloosa had gone off the path to investigate a bad smell and came across the body. The rider might have ignored the odor but had earlier seen signs posted on telephone poles about the missing girl from the area.

Becky Verloren had died less than a quarter mile from her house. It was likely that her father had passed within yards or even feet of her body when he was hiking the hillside and calling out her name. But on that morning there had been no odor yet to draw his attention.

Bosch was the father of a young girl. Though she lived far away from him with her mother, she was never far from his thoughts. He thought now of a father climbing a steep hillside, calling for a daughter who would never come home.

He tried to concentrate on the murder book.

The victim had been shot once in the chest by a high-powered pistol. The weapon, a.45 caliber Colt semiautomatic, was lying in the leaves by her left ankle. As Bosch studied the crime scene photos he saw what appeared to be a burn from a contact shot on the fabric of her light blue nightgown. The bullet hole was located directly above the heart, and Bosch knew by the size of the gun and the entry wound that death was likely immediate. Her heart would have been shattered by the round as it blasted through her body.

For a long time Bosch studied the photographs of the body as it had been found. The victim’s hands were not bound. She was not gagged. Her face was turned in toward the trunk of the fallen tree. There were no indications of defensive wounds of any nature. There was no indication of sexual molestation or any other assault.

The police misinterpretation of the girl’s disappearance was initially compounded by the misinterpretation of the death scene. The assessment at the scene resulted in the death being viewed as a probable suicide. As such the case was kept by the local division’s homicide squad and the two detectives who rolled on the body call, Ron Green and Arturo Garcia. Devonshire Division was at that time and still is the LAPD’s quietest station. Representing a large bedroom community with high property values and mostly upper-middle-class residents, Devonshire always had crime tables that were among the lowest in the city. Inside the department the station was known as Club Dev. It was a highly sought-after posting by officers and detectives who had put in many years and were tired or had simply seen enough action. Devonshire Division also represented the part of the city closest to Simi Valley, a quiet, relatively crime-free community in Ventura County where hundreds of LAPD officers chose to live. A posting at Devonshire made the commute a breeze and the workload the lightest in the department.

The Club Dev pedigree played in the back of Bosch’s mind as he read the reports. He knew part of his task here was to make a judgment on Green and Garcia’s work, to determine if they had been up to the task. He did not know them and had no experience with them. He had no idea what level of skills and dedication they had brought to the case. There was the initial misinterpretation of the death as a suicide. But by the appearance of the records, the two investigators seemed to recover quickly and move on with the case. Their reports seemed to be well written, thorough and complete. They seemed to have taken the extra step wherever possible.

Still, Bosch knew that a murder book could be manipulated to give this impression. The truth would be revealed as he delved deeper and continued his own investigation. He knew there could be a vast difference between what was recorded and what was not.

According to the murder book, Green and Garcia quickly reversed investigative directions when suicide was dismissed after the autopsy was completed and the gun found with the body was analyzed. The case was reclassified as a homicide that had been disguised as a suicide.

Bosch first came to the autopsy findings in the murder book. He had read a thousand autopsy protocols and had attended several hundred of the procedures as well. He knew to skip all the weights and measurements and descriptions of the actual procedure and go right to the summary section and the attendant photographs. Unsurprisingly, he found the cause of death listed as a gunshot wound to the chest. The estimated time of death was between midnight and 2 a.m. on July 6. The summary noted that no witness reported hearing the shot, so the time of death estimate was based solely on measuring loss of body temperature.

The surprises were in the other findings. Rebecca Verloren had long, thick hair. At the right side of the base of her neck, beneath the fall of her hair, the medical examiner found a small circular burn mark that was about the size of a button off an oxford shirt. Two inches from this mark was another burn mark, much smaller than the first. High white cell counts in the blood surrounding these wounds indicated that both had been sustained close to but not at the time of death.

The report concluded that the burns were caused by a stun gun, a handheld device that emits a powerful electric charge and renders its victims unconscious or incapacitated for several minutes or longer, depending on the charge. Normally, a charge from a stun gun would leave two small and almost unnoticeable marks on the skin indicating the location of the twin contacts. But if the contact points of the device were held unevenly against the skin, the electric charge would arc and often burn the skin in the manner seen on Becky Verloren’s neck.

The autopsy summary also noted that an examination of the victim’s bare feet found no soil deposits or cuts or bruises, which would be evident had the girl walked barefoot up the mountainside in the dark.

Bosch drummed his pen on the report and thought about this. He knew this was a mistake made by Green and Garcia. The victim’s feet should have been examined at the scene and they should have made the jump right then to the idea that the suicide was a setup. Instead they missed it and they lost two days waiting for the autopsy on a weekend. Those days plus the two days lost when patrol wrote the parents’ call off as a runaway case added up to a bad number in a murder investigation. There was no doubt that the case was slow out of the blocks. Bosch was beginning to see how badly the department had let Rebecca Verloren down.

The autopsy report also contained the results of a gunshot residue test conducted on the victim’s hands. While GSR was found on Becky Verloren’s right hand, there was no indication of it on her left. Even though Verloren was right-handed Bosch knew that the GSR test was an indicator that she had not actually fired the gun that killed her. Experience-no matter how limited-and common sense would have told the investigators that the girl would have needed to use both hands to properly hold the heavy gun pointed against her own chest and to pull the trigger. The result would have been GSR on both her hands.

There was one more notable point in the autopsy summary. The examination of the body determined that the victim had been sexually active, and scarring on the walls of the uterus was indicative of a recent gynecological dilation and curettage procedure to eliminate a pregnancy. The deputy coroner who conducted the autopsy estimated that this had occurred four to six weeks prior to her death.

Bosch read the first Investigator’s Summary report, which was written and added to the book after the autopsy. Green and Garcia had now classified the death as a murder and established the theory that someone had entered the girl’s bedroom while she was sleeping, incapacitated her with a stun gun and then carried her from the room and the house. She was carried up the mountainside to the location by the fallen oak tree, where the murder was committed and clumsily disguised as a suicide in what was possibly a spur-of-the-moment decision by her killer. The report was filed Monday, July 11-five days after Rebecca Verloren had been left dead on the hillside.

Bosch moved on to the firearm analysis report. Though the autopsy had produced more than convincing evidence of staged suicide, the study of the gun and the attendant ballistics further confirmed the investigative theory.

The gun was found to be devoid of fingerprints except for those from Becky Verloren’s right hand. The fact that there were no prints from her left hand or smudges of any kind on the pistol indicated to the investigators that the weapon had been carefully wiped clean of prints before being placed and held in Becky’s hand, then turned toward her chest and fired. It was likely that the victim was unconscious-from the stun gun assault-at the time this manipulation occurred.

The bullet casing ejected from the pistol when the fatal shot was fired was recovered six feet from the body. There were no fingerprints or smudges on it, an indication that the weapon had been loaded with gloved hands.

The investigation’s single most important piece of evidence was recovered during the analysis of the gun itself. It was actually found inside the gun. The weapon was the Mark IV Series 80 model manufactured by Colt in 1986, two years before the murder. It featured a long hammer spur, which was notable because the gun had a reputation for leaving a “tattoo” injury on the shooter if the weapon was not handled properly while firing. This usually occurred when a two-handed grip on the weapon pushed the primary shooting hand up high on the grip and too close to the hammer spur. The primary hand could then receive a painful stamp when the trigger was pulled, the weapon fired and the slide automatically came backward to eject the bullet casing. As the slide returned to firing position, it would pinch the skin of the shooter’s hand-usually the webbing between the thumb and forefinger, often taking a piece of skin back with it inside the gun. All of this occurred in a fraction of a second, the novice shooter often not even knowing what had “bitten” him.

That was exactly what had happened with the gun used to kill Becky Verloren. When a firearms expert broke open the weapon he found a small piece of skin tissue and dried blood on the underside of the slide. It would not have been noticeable to someone examining the exterior of the gun or wiping it clean of blood and fingerprints.

Green and Garcia added this to their investigative theory. In the second Investigator’s Summary report they wrote that evidence indicated that the killer wrapped Becky Verloren’s hand around the gun and then pressed the muzzle to her chest. The killer used one or both of his own hands to steady the weapon and push or pull her finger over the trigger. The gun fired and the slide “tattooed” the killer, taking a piece of his skin with it inside the gun.

Bosch noted to himself that Green and Garcia made no mention of another possibility in their investigative theory. That being that the tissue and the blood found inside the weapon was already there on the night of the murder, that the weapon had tattooed someone other than the killer when it was fired at some point before the killing.

Regardless of that potential oversight, the blood and tissue was collected from the weapon and, while it was already known from the autopsy that Becky Verloren had no wounds on her hands, a routine blood comparison test was conducted. The blood collected from the gun was type O. Becky Verloren’s blood was type AB positive. The investigators concluded they had the killer’s blood on the weapon. The killer was blood type O.

But in 1988 the use of DNA comparison in criminal investigation was still years away from common and, more important, court-accepted practice in California. Databases containing the DNA profiles of criminal offenders were only on the verge of being funded and created. During the course of the 1988 investigation the detectives were left to compare blood type only to potential suspects as they arose. And no one emerged as a primary suspect in the Verloren killing. The case was worked hard and long but ultimately without an arrest ever being made. And it went cold.

“Until now,” Bosch said out loud without realizing it.

“What?” Rider asked.

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

“You want to start talking about it?”

“Not yet. I want to finish reading first. You’re done?”

“Just about.”

“You know who we have to thank for this, don’t you?” Bosch asked.

She looked at him quizzically.

“I give up.”

“Mel Gibson.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When did Lethal Weapon come out? Right around this time, right?”

“I guess. But what are you talking about? Those movies were so far-fetched.”

“That’s my point. That’s the movie that started all of this holding the gun sideways and with two hands, one over the other. We got blood on this gun because the shooter was a Lethal Weapon fan.”

Rider shook her head dismissively.

“You watch,” Bosch said. “I’m going to ask the guy when we bring him in.”

“Okay, Harry, you ask him.”

“Mel Gibson saved a lot of lives. All those sideways shooters, they couldn’t hit shit. We ought to make him like an honorary cop or something.”

“Okay, Harry, I’m going to go back to reading, okay? I want to get through this.”

“Yeah, okay. Me too.”

5

SHORTLY AFTER the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit began operation the DNA evidence from the Verloren case was forwarded to the California Department of Justice. It was delivered to the DNA lab along with evidence from dozens of other cases drawn from the unit’s initial survey of the department’s unsolved murders. The DOJ operated the state’s primary DNA database. The backlog of comparison requests to the underfunded and undermanned lab was running more than a year at the time. But thanks to the tide of requests from the new LAPD unit it took almost eighteen months before the Verloren evidence was re-typed by DOJ analysts and compared to thousands of DNA profiles in the state data bank. It produced a single match, a “cold hit” in the parlance of DNA work.

Bosch looked at the single-page DOJ report unfolded in front of him. It stated that twelve of a possible fourteen markers matched the DNA from the weapon used to murder Rebecca Verloren to a now thirty-five-year-old man named Roland Mackey. He was a native of Los Angeles whose last known address was in Panorama City. Bosch felt his blood start moving a little faster as he read the cold hit report. Panorama City was in the San Fernando Valley, not more than fifteen minutes from Chatsworth, even in bad traffic. It added a level of credibility to the match. It was not that Bosch didn’t believe the science. He did. But he also believed you needed more than the science to convince a jury beyond a doubt. You needed to bolster the scientific fact with connections of circumstantial evidence and common sense. This was one of those connections.

Bosch noticed the date on the cover letter of the DOJ report.

“You said we just got this?” he asked Rider.

“Yeah. I think it came in Friday. Why?”

“The date on it is from two Fridays ago. Ten days.”

Rider shrugged.

“Bureaucracy,” she said. “I guess it took its time getting down here from Sacramento.”

“I know the case is old but you’d think they’d move a little faster than that.”

Rider didn’t respond. Bosch dropped it and read on. Mackey’s DNA was in the DOJ computer base because all offenders convicted of any sex-related crime in California were forced under state law to submit blood and oral swabs for typing and inclusion in the DNA data bank. The offense that resulted in Mackey’s DNA going into the bank was on the far margin of the state mandate. Two years earlier Mackey was convicted of lewd behavior in Los Angeles. The DOJ report did not offer details of the crime but stated Mackey was placed on twelve months probation, an indication that his was a minor offense.

Bosch was about to write a note on his pad when he looked up and saw Rider closing the murder book on the second half of the documents.

“Done?”

“Done.”

“Now what?”

“I figured that while you were finishing the book I’d go over to the ESB and pick up the box.”

Bosch had no trouble remembering the meaning of what she said. He had slipped easily back into the world of acronyms and copspeak. The ESB was the Evidence Storage Building over at the Piper Tech compound. She would go there to pick up the physical evidence that would have been stored from the case. Items like the murder weapon, the victim’s clothing and anything else accumulated while the case was initially worked. It was usually stored in a taped cardboard box and put on a shelf. The exception to this was storage of perishable and biological evidence-such as the blood and tissue recovered from the Verloren murder weapon-which was stored in lab vaults in the Scientific Investigation Division.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Bosch said. “But first why don’t you run this guy through DMV and NCIC and see if we can get a location?”

“Already did that.”

She turned her laptop around on her desk so Bosch could see the screen. He recognized the National Crime Index Computer template on the screen. He reached across and started scrolling down the screen, his eyes scanning the information.

Rider had run Roland Mackey through NCIC and gotten his criminal record. His conviction two years earlier for lewd behavior was only the latest in a string of recorded arrests dating back to when he was eighteen-the same year as Rebecca Verloren’s murder. Anything prior would not be listed because juvenile protection laws shielded that part of his record. Most of the crimes listed were property and drug-related crimes, beginning with car theft and a burglary at eighteen and leading to two drug-possession raps, two driving under the influence arrests, another burglary charge and a receiving stolen property hit. There was also an early solicitation of prostitution arrest. Overall it was the pedigree of a small-time criminal and drug user. It appeared that Mackey never went to state prison for any of his crimes. He was often given second chances and then, through plea agreements, was sentenced to probation or to short stints in county jail. It appeared that the longest he ever stayed in stir was six months served after pleading guilty to receiving stolen property when he was twenty-eight years old. He served his time at the county-run Wayside Honor Rancho.

Bosch leaned back after he was finished scrolling through the computer records. He felt uneasy about what he had just read. Mackey had the kind of record that might be seen as a pathway to murder. But in this case the murder came first-when Mackey was only eighteen years old-and the petty crimes came after. It didn’t seem to quite fit.

“What?” Rider asked, sensing his mood.

“I don’t know. I thought there’d be more, I guess. It’s backwards. This guy goes from murder to petty crime? Doesn’t seem to hold.”

“Well, this is all he’s ever gotten popped for. Doesn’t mean it’s all he ever did.”

He nodded.

“Juvenile?” he asked.

“Maybe. Probably. But we’ll never get those records now. They’re probably long gone.”

It was true. The state went out of its way to protect the privacy of juvenile offenders. Crimes rarely tailed offenders into the adult justice system. Nevertheless, Bosch thought that there had to be childhood crimes that would fit better with the seemingly cold-blooded murder of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been incapacitated with a stun gun and abducted from her home. Bosch began to have an uneasy feeling about the cold hit they were working. He was beginning to sense that Mackey was not the target. He was a means to the target.

“Did you run him through DMV for an address?” he asked.

“Harry, that’s old-school. You only have to update your driver’s license every four years. You want to find somebody you go to AutoTrack.”

She opened the murder book and slid a loose piece of paper across to him. It was a computer printout that said AutoTrack at the top. Rider said it was a private company the police department contracted with. It provided computer searches of all public records, including DMV, public utility and cable service databases, as well as private databases such as credit reporting services, to determine an individual’s past and current addresses. Bosch saw that the printout contained a listing of Roland Mackey’s various addresses dating back to when he was eighteen. His current listing on all current data, including driver’s license and car registration, was the address in Panorama City. But on the page, Rider had circled the address ascribed to Mackey when he was eighteen through twenty years old-the years 1988 through 1990. It was an apartment on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth. This meant that at the time of the murder Mackey was living very close to Rebecca Verloren’s home. This made Bosch feel a little better about things. Proximity was a key piece to the puzzle. Bosch’s misgivings over Mackey’s criminal pedigree aside, knowing that he was in the immediate vicinity in 1988 and therefore could have seen or even known Rebecca Verloren was a large check mark in the positive column.

“Make you feel any better, Harry?”

“A little bit.”

“Good. I’m going, then.”

“I’ll be here.”

After Rider left, Bosch jumped back into his review of the murder book. The third Investigator’s Summary focused on how the intruder got into the house. The door and window locks showed no signs of having been compromised and all known keys to the home were accounted for among family members and a housekeeper who was cleared of any suspicion. The investigators theorized that the killer came in through the garage, which had been left open, and then entered the house through the connecting door, which was usually not locked until after Robert Verloren came home from work at night.

According to Robert Verloren the garage was open when he came home from his restaurant about ten-thirty on the night of July fifth. The connecting door from the garage into the house was unlocked. He entered his home, closed the garage and locked the connecting door. The investigators theorized that by then the killer was already in the house.

The Verlorens’ explanation for the open garage was that their daughter had recently received her driver’s license and was on occasion allowed to use her mother’s car. However, she had not yet acquired the habit of remembering to close the garage door upon leaving or coming home, and had been chastised by her parents on more than one occasion for this. Late in the afternoon before her abduction Rebecca was sent on an errand by her mother to pick up dry cleaning. She used her mother’s car. The investigators confirmed that she picked up the clothing at 5:15 p.m. and then returned home. It was believed by the investigators that she once again forgot to close the garage or lock the connecting door after returning. Her mother said she never checked the garage that night, assuming wrongly that it was closed.

Two residents in the neighborhood canvassed after the murder reported seeing the garage door open that evening. This left the house easily accessible until Robert Verloren came home.

Bosch thought about how many times over the years he had seen someone’s seemingly innocent mistake turn into one of the keys to their own doom. A routine chore to pick up clothes may have led to the opportunity for a killer to get inside the house. Becky Verloren may have unwittingly engineered her own death.

Bosch pushed his chair back and stood up. He had finished the review of the first half of the murder book. He decided to get another cup of coffee before taking on the second half. He asked around in the office if anybody needed anything from the cafeteria and got one order for coffee from Jean Nord. He took the stairs down to the cafeteria and filled two cups from the urn, then paid for them and went over to the condiments counter to get Nord’s cream and sugar. While he was pouring a shot of cream into one of the cups he felt a presence next to him at the counter. He made room at the station but no one reached for any condiments. He turned toward the presence and found himself looking at the smiling face of Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.

There had never been any love lost between Bosch and Deputy Chief Irving. The chief had at various times been his adversary and unwitting savior in the department. But Bosch had heard from Rider that Irving was on the outs now. He had been unceremoniously pushed out of power by the new chief and given a virtually meaningless posting and assignment outside of Parker Center.

“I thought that was you, Detective Bosch. I’d buy you a cup of coffee but I see you already have more than enough. Would you like to sit down for a minute anyway?”

Bosch held up both cups of coffee.

“I’m kind of in the middle of something, Chief. And somebody’s waiting for one of these.”

“One minute, Detective,” Irving said, a stern tone entering his voice. “The coffee will still be hot when you get to where you have to go. I promise.”

Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked to a nearby table. Bosch followed. Irving still had a shaved and gleaming skull. His muscular jaw was his most prominent feature. He took a seat and held his posture ramrod straight. He didn’t look comfortable. He didn’t speak until Bosch sat down. The pleasant tone was back in his voice.

“All I wanted to do was welcome you back to the department,” he said.

He smiled like a shark. Bosch hesitated like a man stepping across a trapdoor before answering.

“It’s good to be back, Chief.”

“The Open-Unsolved Unit. I think that is the appropriate place for someone of your skills.”

Bosch took a sip from his scalding cup of coffee. He didn’t know if Irving had just complimented or insulted him. He wanted to leave.

“Well, we’ll see,” he said. “I hope so. I think I better -”

Irving held his hands out wide, as if to show he wasn’t hiding anything.

“That’s it,” he said. “You can go. I just wanted to say welcome back. And to thank you.”

Bosch hesitated, but then bit.

“Thank me for what, Chief?”

“For resurrecting me in this department.”

Bosch shook his head and smiled as if he didn’t understand.

“I don’t get it, Chief,” he said. “How am I supposed to do that? I mean, you’re across the street in the City Hall Annex now, right? What is it, the Office of Strategic Planning or something? From what I hear, you get to leave your gun at home.”

Irving folded his arms on the table and leaned in close to Bosch. All pretense of humor, false or otherwise, evaporated. He spoke strongly but quietly.

“Yes, that is where I am. But I guarantee you that it will not be for long. Not with the likes of you being welcomed back into the department.”

He then leaned back and just as quickly adopted a casual manner for what he delivered as casual conversation.

“You know what you are, Bosch? You are a retread. This new chief likes putting retreads on the car. But you know what happens with a retread? It comes apart at the seams. The friction and the heat-they’re too much for it. It comes apart and what happens? A blowout. And then the car goes off the road.”

He nodded silently as he let Bosch think about that.

“You see, Bosch, you are my ticket. You will fuck up-if you will excuse my language. It is in your history. It is in your nature. It is guaranteed. And when you fuck up, our illustrious new chief fucks up for being the one who put a cheap retread on our car.”

He smiled. Bosch thought that all he needed was a gold earring to complete the picture. Mr. Clean all the way.

“And when he goes down my stock goes right back up. I’m a patient man. I’ve waited for over forty years in this department. I can wait longer.”

Bosch expected more but that was it. Irving nodded once and stood up. He quickly turned and headed out of the cafeteria. Bosch felt the anger rise in his throat. He looked down at the two cups of coffee in his hands and felt like an idiot for having sat there like a defenseless errand boy while Irving had verbally punched him out. He got up and threw both cups into a trash can. He decided that when he got back to room 503 he would tell Jean Nord to get her own damn coffee.

6

WITH THE UNEASE of the Irving confrontation still lingering, Bosch took the second half of the murder book over to his desk and sat down. He thought the best way to forget about the threat that Irving posed was to immerse himself in the case again. What he found left in the file was a thick sheaf of ancillary reports and updates, the things investigators always lumped into the back of the book, the reports that Bosch called the tumblers because they often seemed disparate but nevertheless could unlock a case when seen from the right angle or put together in the right pattern.

First was a lab report stating that testing was unable to determine exactly how long the blood and tissue sample taken from the murder weapon could have been in the gun. The report said that while most of the sample was preserved for comparison purposes, an examination of selected blood cells indicated decomposition was not extensive. The criminalist who wrote the report could not say the blood was deposited on the gun at the time of the killing-no one could. But he would be prepared to testify that the blood was deposited on the gun “close to or at the time of the killing.”

Bosch knew this was a key report in terms of mounting a prosecution of Roland Mackey. It might also give Mackey the opportunity to build a defense around having had possession of the gun before the murder but not at the time of the murder. It would be a risky move to admit being in possession of the murder weapon, but the DNA match dictated that it was a move he would likely have to make. With the science unable to pinpoint exactly when the deposit of blood and tissue on the gun occurred, Bosch saw a gaping hole in the prosecution’s case. The defense could clearly jump through it. Again, he felt the certainty of the cold hit DNA match slipping away. Science gives and takes at the same time. They needed more.

Next in the murder book was a report from the Firearms Unit, which had been assigned the ownership trace of the murder weapon. The serial number on the Colt had been filed down, but the number was raised in the lab with the application of an acid which accentuated the compressions in the metal where the number had been stamped during manufacture. The number was traced to a gun purchased from the manufacturer in 1987 by a Northridge gun shop. It was then traced through its sale that year to a man who lived in Chatsworth on Winnetka Avenue. The gun had then been reported stolen by the owner when his home was burglarized June 2, 1988, just a month before it was used in the murder of Rebecca Verloren.

This report helped their case somewhat because unless Mackey had a relationship with the gun’s original owner, the burglary compressed the time period during which Mackey would have had possession of the gun. It made it more likely that he had the gun on the night Becky Verloren was taken from her home and murdered.

The original burglary report was contained in the file. The victim was named Sam Weiss. He lived alone and worked as a sound technician at Warner Bros. in Burbank. Bosch scanned the report and found only one other note of interest. In the investigating officer’s comments section it was stated that the burglary victim had recently purchased the gun for protection after being harassed by anonymous phone calls in which the caller threatened him because he was Jewish. The victim reported that he did not know how his unlisted number fell into the hands of his harasser and he did not know what had brought on the threats.

Bosch quickly read through the next report from the Firearms Unit, which identified the stun gun used in the abduction. The report said the 2-1/4-inch span between contact points-as exhibited by the burn marks on the victim’s flesh-was unique to the Professional 100 model manufactured by a company called SafetyCharge in Downey. The model was sold over the counter and through mail order and there were more than twelve thousand Professional 100 models distributed at the time of the murder. Bosch knew that without the actual device in hand there was no way to connect the marks on Becky Verloren’s body with an ownership trail. That was a dead end.

He moved on, leafing through a series of 8 x 10 photos taken in the Verloren house after the body was found up on the hillside behind it. Bosch knew these were cover-your-ass photos. The case had been handled-or mishandled-as a runaway situation. The department did not go full field with it until after the body was found and an autopsy concluded the death was a homicide. Five days after the girl was reported missing, the police came back and turned the house into a crime scene. The question was what was lost in those five days.

The photos included interior and exterior shots of all three doors to the house-front, back, garage-and several close-ups of window locks. There was also a series of shots taken in Becky Verloren’s bedroom. The first thing Bosch noticed was that the bed was made. He wondered if the abductor had made it, thereby further selling the suicide, or Becky’s mother had simply made the bed at some point during the days she hoped and waited for her daughter to come home.

The bed was a four-poster with a white-and-pink spread with cats on it and a matching pink ruffle. The bedspread reminded Bosch of the one that had covered his own daughter’s bed. It seemed to be something that a child much younger than sixteen would like and he wondered if Becky Verloren had kept it for nostalgic reasons or as some sort of psychological security blanket. The bed’s ruffle did not uniformly skirt the floor. It was a couple inches too long, and so it bunched on the floor and alternately fluffed out or tucked under the bed too far.

There were photos of her bureau and bed tables. The room was festooned with stuffed animals from her younger years. There were posters on the walls from music groups that had come and gone. There was a poster of a John Travolta movie three comebacks old. The room was very neat and orderly, and again Bosch wondered if this was how it had been on the morning Rebecca Verloren was discovered missing or if her mother had straightened the room while awaiting her daughter’s return.

Bosch knew the photos had to have been taken as the first step of the crime scene investigation. Nowhere did he see any fingerprint powder or any other indication of the upset that would come with the intrusion of the criminalists.

The photos were followed in the murder book by a packet of summaries from interviews the detectives conducted with numerous students at Hillside Prep. A checklist on the top page indicated that the investigators had talked to every student in Becky Verloren’s class and every boy who attended the upper grades of the school. There were also summaries from interviews of several of the victim’s teachers and school administrators.

Included in this section was a summary of a phone interview conducted with a former boyfriend of Becky Verloren’s who had moved with his family to Hawaii the year before her murder. Attached to the summary was an alibi confirmation report stating that the teenager’s supervisor had confirmed that the boy had worked in the car wash and detail facility at a Maui rent-a-car franchise on the days of and after the murder, making it unlikely that he could have been in Los Angeles to kill her.

There was a separate packet of summaries of interviews with employees of the Island House Grill, the restaurant owned by Robert Verloren. His daughter had just started a part-time summer job at the restaurant. She was an assistant hostess during lunch. Her job was to lead customers to their tables and to put down the menus. Though Bosch knew restaurants often drew a variety of drifters to the low-level kitchen jobs, Robert Verloren avoided hiring men with criminal records, instead drawing on the population of surfers and other free spirits who flocked to the beaches of Malibu. These people would have had limited contact with Rebecca, who worked in the dining room, but they were interviewed just the same and seemingly dismissed by the investigators.

There was also a victim’s chronology in which the investigators outlined Rebecca Verloren’s movements in the days leading up to her murder. In 1988 July Fourth fell on a Monday. Rebecca spent most of the holiday weekend at home, except for a Sunday-night sleepover with three girlfriends at one of their houses. The attached summaries of interviews with these three girls were long but contained no information of investigative value.

On Monday, the holiday, she stayed home until she and her parents went to Balboa Park to watch a fireworks display. It was a rare night off for Robert Verloren and he insisted that the family stay together, much to Becky’s reported upset at missing out on a friend’s party in the Porter Ranch area.

On Tuesday the summer routine began again with Rebecca going to the restaurant with her father to work the lunch shift as a hostess. At three o’clock her father drove her home. He stayed at home through the afternoon and then headed back to the restaurant for the dinner shift at about the same time Rebecca used her mother’s car to run the errand of collecting the dry cleaning.

Bosch saw nothing in the schedule that raised suspicions, nothing that was missed by the original investigators.

He next came to a transcript of a formal interview with the parents. It was taken at Devonshire Division on July 14, more than a week after their daughter was discovered missing. By this point the detectives had accumulated a lot of case knowledge and were specific with their questions. Bosch carefully read this transcript, as much for the answers as for the insight it would give to the investigators’ view of the case at that point.

Case No. 88-641, Verloren, Rebecca (DOD 7-6-88), I/O A. Garcia, #993

7/14/88 – 2:15 p.m., Devonshire Homicide

GARCIA: Thank you for coming in. I hope you don’t mind but we are recording this so we will have a record. How are you managing?

ROBT. VERLOREN: About as well as expected. We’re devastated. We don’t know what to do.

MURIEL VERLOREN: We keep thinking, what could we have done to prevent this from happening to our little girl?

GREEN: We’re truly sorry, ma’am. But you can’t blame yourself for this. As far as we can tell it was nothing you did or didn’t do. It just happened. Don’t blame yourself. Blame the person who did this.

GARCIA: And we are going to get him. You don’t have to worry about that. Now, we have some questions we need to ask. Some of these might be painful but we need the answers if we are going to get this guy.

ROBT. VERLOREN: You keep saying “guy.” Is there a suspect? Do you know it was a man?

GARCIA: We don’t know anything for sure, sir. We’re mostly going with the percentages there. But also you have that steep hill behind your house. Becky was definitely carried up that hill. She wasn’t a big girl but we definitely think it would have to be a man.

MURIEL VERLOREN: But you said she wasn’t… that there was no sexual assault.

GARCIA: That is true, ma’am. But that does not preclude this from being a sexually motivated or related crime.

ROBT. VERLOREN: How do you mean?

GARCIA: We will get to that, sir. If you don’t mind, let us ask our questions and then we will get to your questions if you would like.

ROBT. VERLOREN: Go ahead, please. I’m sorry. It’s just that we cannot understand what has happened. It’s like we are underwater all the time.

GARCIA: That is completely understandable. As I said, you have our deepest sympathy. From the department, too. We have the upper echelon of this department watching over this case very closely.

GREEN: We would like to start by going back before her disappearance. Maybe a month before. Did your daughter go away at all during that time?

ROBT. VERLOREN: What do you mean, away?

GARCIA: Was she away from you at any time?

ROBT. VERLOREN: No. She was sixteen. She was in school. She didn’t go away on her own.

GREEN: What about a sleepover with her friends?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No, I don’t think so.

ROBT. VERLOREN: What are you looking for?

GREEN: Was she sick at all in the month or two prior to the disappearance?

MURIEL VERLOREN: Yes, she had the flu the first week after school ended. It delayed her going to work for Bob.

GREEN: Was she in bed sick?

MURIEL VERLOREN: A lot of the time. I don’t see what this has to -

GARCIA: Mrs. Verloren, did your daughter go to see a doctor at this time?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No, she just said she had to rest. To tell you the truth, we thought she just didn’t want to go to work in the restaurant. She didn’t have a fever or a cold. We just thought she was being lazy.

GREEN: She didn’t confide in you at this time that she had been pregnant?

MURIEL VERLOREN: What? No!

ROBT. VERLOREN: Look, Detective, what are you telling us?

GREEN: The autopsy revealed that Becky had had a procedure called a dilation and curettage about a month before her death. An abortion. Our guess is that she was resting and recovering from this procedure when she told you she had the flu.

GARCIA: Would you two like to take a break here?

GREEN: Why don’t we take a break? We’ll step out and get all of us some water.

[Break]

GARCIA: Okay, we’re back. I hope you understand and forgive us. We do not ask questions or attempt to shock you to hurt you. We need to follow procedure and employ methods that allow us to collect information that is unfettered by preconceived perceptions.

ROBT. VERLOREN: We understand what you are doing. It’s part of our life now. What’s left of it.

MURIEL VERLOREN: You are saying our daughter was pregnant and chose to get an abortion?

GARCIA: Yes, that’s right. And we think there is a possibility that it could have a bearing on what happened to her a month later. Do you have any idea where she would have gone for this procedure?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No. I had no idea about this. Neither of us.

GREEN: And as you said before, she did not go away overnight during that time?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No, she was home every night.

GARCIA: Any idea who the relationship could have been with? In our earlier talks you said she had no current boyfriend.

MURIEL VERLOREN: Well, obviously I guess we were wrong about that. But, no, we don’t know who she was seeing or who could have… done this.

GREEN: Have either of you ever read the journal that your daughter kept?

ROBT. VERLOREN: No, we didn’t even know there was a journal until you found it in her room.

MURIEL VERLOREN: I would like to get that back. Will I get that back?

GREEN: We will need to keep it through the investigation but you will eventually get it back.

GARCIA: There are several references in the journal to an individual referred to as MTL. This is a person we would like to identify and talk to.

MURIEL VERLOREN: I don’t know anyone with those initials offhand.

GREEN: We looked at the school’s yearbook. There is one boy named Michael Lewis. But we checked and his middle name is Charles. We think the initials were a code or an abbreviation. It could stand for My True Love.

MURIEL VERLOREN: So there was obviously someone we didn’t know about, that she kept from us.

ROBT. VERLOREN: I can’t believe this. You two are telling us we didn’t really know our little girl.

GARCIA: I’m sorry, Bob. Sometimes the damage from a case like this goes deep. But it’s our job to follow it where it goes. This is the current we are in right now.

GREEN: Basically, we need to pursue this aspect of the investigation and find out who MTL is. Which means we need to ask questions of your daughter’s friends and acquaintances. Word about this, it will get around, I’m afraid.

ROBT. VERLOREN: We understand this, Detective. We will deal with it. As we said on the day we met, do what you have to do. Find the person who did this.

GARCIA: Thank you, sir. We will.

[End of interview, 2:40 p.m.]

Bosch read the transcript a second time, this time writing down notes on his pad as he went. He then moved on to three more formal interview transcripts. These were conducted with Becky Verloren’s three closest friends, Tara Wood, Bailey Koster and Grace Tanaka. But none of the girls-girls at the time-said they had knowledge of Becky’s pregnancy or the secret relationship that produced it. All three said they did not see her the week after school got out because she was not answering her phone and when they called the house’s main number Muriel Verloren told them her daughter was sick. Tara Wood, who was splitting a work schedule as a hostess at the Island House Grill with Becky, said that her friend was moody and incommunicative in the weeks prior to her murder, but the reason for this was unknown because she rebuffed Wood’s efforts to find out what was wrong.

The last entry in the murder book was the media file. It was where Garcia and Green kept the newspaper stories that accumulated in the early stages of the case. The crime played bigger in the Daily News than in the Times. This was understandable because the News circulated primarily in the San Fernando Valley and the Times usually treated the Valley as an unwanted stepchild, relegating the news emanating from its environs to the inside pages.

There was no coverage of Becky Verloren’s initial disappearance. The newspapers had obviously viewed it in the same way as the police had. But once the body was found there were several stories on the investigation, the funeral and the impact the young girl’s death had at her school. There was even a mood piece set at the Island House Grill. This story had been in the Times and had apparently been a stab at making the case meaningful to the paper’s Westside circulation base. A restaurant in Malibu was something the Westsiders could relate to.

Both newspapers linked the murder weapon to a burglary that occurred a month before the killing but neither had the anti-Semitic angle. Neither reported on the blood evidence recovered from the weapon either. Bosch guessed that the blood and tissue recovery was the investigators’ ace in the hole, the one piece of evidence held close to the vest to give them the advantage if a prime suspect was ever identified.

Finally Bosch noticed that there were no media interviews with the grieving parents. The Verlorens apparently chose not to hold their loss out for public consumption. Bosch liked that about them. It seemed to him that increasingly the media forced the victims of tragedy to grieve in public, in front of cameras and in newspaper stories. Parents of murdered children became talking heads who appeared on the tube as experts the next time there was another child murdered and another set of parents grieving. It all didn’t sit well with Bosch. It seemed to him that the best way to honor the dead was to keep them close to the heart, not to share them with the world across the electronic spectrum.

At the back of the murder book there was a pocket containing a manila envelope with the Times’s eagle insignia and address in the corner. Bosch pulled it out and opened it and found a series of 8 x 10 color photos taken at Rebecca Verloren’s funeral one week after her murder. Apparently there had been a deal cut, the photos traded for access. Bosch remembered making such deals in the past when he was unable because of scheduling or budget to get a police photographer out to a funeral. He would promise the reporter working the story that he or she would be in line for an exclusive if the newspaper photographer wouldn’t mind running off a complete set of crowd shots of the people attending the service. You never knew when the killer might show up to get a rise out of the anguish and grief he had caused. Reporters always went for the deal. Los Angeles was one of the most competitive media markets in the world and reporters lived and died by the access they had.

Bosch studied the photos but was handicapped in looking for Roland Mackey because he didn’t know what he looked like in 1988. The photos Kiz Rider had pulled up on the computer were from his most recent arrest. They showed a balding man with a goatee and dark eyes. It was hard to trace that visage back to any of the teenaged faces that gathered to put one of their own in the ground.

For a while he studied Becky Verloren’s parents in one of the photos. They were standing at the graveside, leaning against each other as if holding each other from falling. Tears lined their faces. Robert Verloren was black and Muriel Verloren was white. Bosch now understood where their daughter had gotten her growing beauty. The mix of races in a child often rose above the attendant social difficulties to achieve such grace.

Bosch put the photos down and thought for a moment. Nowhere in the murder book had there been mention of the possibility of race playing a part in the murder. But the murder weapon’s coming from the burglary of a man being threatened because of his religion seemed to give rise to the possibility of at least a tenuous link to the murder of a girl of mixed races.

The fact that this was not mentioned in the murder book meant nothing. The aspect of race was always something held close to the vest in the LAPD. To commit something to the paperwork was to make it known within the department-investigative summaries were reviewed all the way up the line on hot cases. It could then be leaked and turned into something else, something political. So its absence was not seen by Bosch as a taint on the investigation. Not yet, at least.

He returned the photos to the envelope and closed the murder book. He guessed that there were more than three hundred pages of documents and photos in it, and nowhere on any of those pages had he seen the name Roland Mackey. Was it possible that he had escaped even peripheral notice in the investigation so many years before? If so, was it still possible he was indeed the killer?

These questions bothered Bosch. He always tried to keep faith in the murder book, meaning that he believed the answers usually lay within its plastic sides. But this time he was having difficulty believing the cold hit. Not the science. He had no doubt about Mackey being matched to the blood and tissue found inside the murder weapon. But he believed something was wrong. Something was missing.

He looked down at his pad. He had taken few notes. He had really only composed a list of people he wanted to talk to.

Green and Garcia

Mother/Father

school/friends/teachers

former boyfriend

probation agent

Mackey-school?

He knew that every note he had taken was obvious. He realized how little they had besides the DNA match, and once again he was uneasy about building a case without anything else.

Bosch was staring at his notes when Kiz Rider walked into the office. She was empty-handed and unsmiling.

“Well?” Bosch asked.

“Bad news. The murder weapon’s gone. I don’t know if you’ve read the whole book but there’s mention of a journal in there. The girl kept a journal. That’s gone, too. Everything’s gone.”

7

THEY DECIDED that the best way to deal with and discuss bad news was to eat. Besides that, nothing made Bosch hungrier than sitting in an office all morning and reading through a murder book. They went over to Chinese Friends, a small place on Broadway at the end of Chinatown where they knew they could still get a table this early. It was a place where you could eat well and to capacity and barely go over five bucks. The trouble was that it filled up fast, mostly with headquarters staff from the Fire Department, the gold badges from Parker Center and the bureaucrats from City Hall. If you didn’t get there by noon you ordered takeout and you had to sit and eat on the bus benches out front in the sun.

They left the murder book in the car so as not to disturb other patrons in the restaurant, where the tables were jammed as close as the desks in a public school. They did bring their notes, and discussed the case in an improvised shorthand designed to keep their conversation private. Rider explained that when she had said the gun and the journal were missing from the ESB what she meant was that no evidence carton from the case could be found during an hour-long search by two evidence clerks. This was not much of a surprise to Bosch. As Pratt had warned earlier, the department had taken haphazard care of evidence for decades. Evidence cartons were booked and filed on shelves in chronological order and without any sort of separation according to crime classification. Consequently, evidence from a murder might sit on a shelf next to evidence from a burglary. And when clerks came through periodically to clear out evidence from cases where the statute of limitations had expired, sometimes the wrong box got tossed. The security of the ESB was also a low priority for many years. It was not difficult for anyone with an LAPD badge to gain access to any piece of evidence in the facility. So the evidence cartons were subject to pilfering. It was not unusual for weapons to be missing, or other kinds of evidence from famous cases like the Black Dahlia, Charles Manson, and the Dollmaker crimes.

There was no indication in the Verloren case of evidence theft. It was probably more a case of carelessness, of trying to find a box that had been stored seventeen years ago in an acre-sized room crowded with matching boxes.

“They’ll find it,” Bosch said. “Maybe you can even get your buddy up on six to put the fear of God into them. Then they’ll find it for sure.”

“They better. The DNA is no good to us without that gun.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Harry, it’s the chain of evidence. You can’t go into trial with the DNA and not be able to show the jury the weapon it came from. We can’t even go into the district attorney’s office without it. They’ll throw us right out on our asses.”

“Look, all I’m saying is, right now we’re the only ones who know we don’t have the gun. We can fake it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you think that this is all going to come down to Mackey and us in a little room? I mean, even if we had the gun in evidence we can’t prove beyond a doubt that he left his blood in it during the shooting of Becky Verloren. All we can prove is that the blood is his. So if you ask me, it’s going to come down to a confession. We’re going to put him in the room, hit him with the DNA and see if he cops to it. That’s it. So all I’m saying is, we put together a few props for the interview. We go to the armory and borrow a Colt forty-five and we pull that out of the box when we’re in the room with him. We convince him we have the chain and he cops or he doesn’t.”

“I don’t like tricks.”

“Tricks are part of the trade. There’s nothing illegal about that. The courts have even said so.”

“I think we’re going to need more than the DNA to turn him anyway.”

“Me too. I was thinking we -”

Bosch stopped and waited while the waitress put down two steaming plates. Bosch had ordered shrimp fried rice. Rider ordered pork chops. Without a word he lifted his plate and pushed half of its contents onto her plate. He then used a fork to take three of her six pork chops. He almost smiled while he did this. He was back on the job with her less than a day and they had already dropped back into the easy rhythm of their prior partnership. He was happy.

“Hey, what’s Jerry Edgar up to?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while. We never really got over that thing.”

Bosch nodded. When Bosch had worked at Hollywood Division with Rider the homicide table had been divided into teams of three. Jerry Edgar had been the third partner. Then Bosch retired and soon after Rider was promoted downtown. It left Edgar still in Hollywood, feeling isolated and passed over. And now that Bosch and Rider were working again and assigned to RHD, there had been only silence from Edgar.

“What were you going to say, Harry, when the food came?”

“Just that you’re right. We’ll need more. One thing I was thinking was that I heard that since Nine-Eleven and the Patriot Act it’s easier for us to get a wiretap.”

She ate a piece of shrimp before responding.

“Yes, that’s true. It’s one of the things I was monitoring for the chief. Our request filings have gone up about three thousand percent. The approvals are way up, too. The word’s sort of gotten around that this is a tool we can use now. How is it going to work here?”

“I was thinking we put a tap on Mackey and then we plant a story in the paper. You know, it says we’re working the case again, mention the gun, maybe mention the DNA-you know, something new. Not that we have a match but that we could get a match. Then we sit back and watch him and listen to him and see what happens. We could follow up by paying him a visit, see if that stirs things up any.”

Rider thought about this while eating a pork chop with her fingers. She seemed uneasy about something and it couldn’t be the food.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“Who would he call?”

“I don’t know. Whoever he did it with or did it for.”

Rider nodded thoughtfully while chewing.

“I don’t know, Harry. You’re back on the job less than a day after three years in the fun and sun and already you are reading things into a case I don’t see. I guess you are still the teacher.”

“You’re just rusty from sitting up there behind a big desk on six.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Sort of. I think I’ve waited so long for this that I’m sort of on full alert, I guess.”

“Just tell me how you see this, Harry. You don’t have to make up excuses for your instincts.”

“I actually don’t see it yet and that’s part of the problem. Roland Mackey’s name is nowhere in that book and that’s a problem starting out the door. We know he was in the vicinity but we have nothing connecting him to the victim.”

“What are you talking about? We have the gun with his DNA in it.”

“The blood connects him to the gun, not the girl. You read the book. We can’t prove his DNA was deposited at the time of the killing. That single report could blow this whole case out of the water. It’s a big hole, Kiz. So big a jury could drive through it. All Mackey has to do at trial is get up there on the stand and say, ‘Yeah, I stole the gun during a burglary on Winnetka. I then went up into the hills and shot it a few times, and I was making like Mel Gibson and the next thing I knew the damn thing bit me, took a chunk right out of my hand. I never saw that happen to Mel before. So I got so mad I threw that damn gun into the bushes and went home to get some Band-Aids.’ The SID report-our own damn report-backs him up and that is the end of it.”

Rider didn’t smile during the story at all. He could tell she was seeing his point.

“That’s all he has to say, Kiz, and he’s got reasonable doubt and we can’t prove otherwise. We’ve got no prints at the scene, we’ve got no hair, no fiber, we’ve got nothing. But added to this we do have his profile. And if you looked at his sheet before we were on this and knew about the DNA you would have never pegged this guy as a killer. Maybe spur-of-the-moment or heat of passion. But not something like this, something planned, and certainly not at age eighteen.”

Rider shook her head in an almost wistful manner.

“A few hours ago this was given to us as a welcome-aboard present. It was supposed to be a slam dunk…”

“The DNA made everybody jump to a conclusion. It’s what’s wrong with the world. People think technology is an easy ride. They’re watching too much TV.”

“Is that your weird way of saying you don’t think he did this?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking yet.”

“So we put a tail on him, tap his phone, spook him somehow and then see who he calls and how he acts.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” he said.

“We’d need to clear it with Abel first.”

“We follow the rules. Just like the chief told me today.”

“Holy smoke-the new Harry Bosch.”

“You’re looking at him.”

“Before we go for the tap we have to finish the due diligence. We have to make sure Roland Mackey was not known to any of the players. If that turns out to be the case then I say we go see Pratt about the tap.”

“Sounds right to me. What else did you get on the read?”

He wanted to see if she picked up on the undercurrent of race before suggesting it.

“Just what was there,” Rider responded. “Was there something I missed?”

“I don’t know-nothing obvious.”

“Then what?”

“I was thinking about the girl being biracial. Even in ’eighty-eight there would have been people that didn’t like the idea of that. Then you add in the burglary the gun came from. The vic was Jewish. He said he was being harassed. That’s why he bought the gun.”

Rider nodded thoughtfully while she finished a mouthful of rice.

“It’s something to look for,” she said. “But I don’t see enough there to hang a lantern on at the moment.”

“There was nothing in the book…”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Bosch always thought Chinese Friends had the softest and sweetest shrimp he had ever tasted in fried rice. The pork chops, as thin as the plastic plates they ate off of, were also perfect. And Kiz was right, they were best eaten by hand.

“What about Green and Garcia?” Rider finally asked.

“What about them?”

“How would you grade them on this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a C if I was being charitable. They made mistakes, slowed things down. After that they seemed to cover the bases. You?”

“Same thing. They wrote a good murder book but it’s got CYA written all through it. Like they knew they were never going to break it but wanted the book to look like they turned over every stone.”

Bosch nodded and looked down at his pad on the empty chair to the side. He looked at the list of people to interview.

“We’ve got to talk to the parents and Garcia and Green. We need to get a photo of Mackey, too. From when he was eighteen.”

“I think we hold back on the parents until we talk to everybody else. They might be most important but they should be last. I want to know as much as possible before we hit them with this after seventeen years.”

“Fine. Maybe we should start at probation. He only cleared a year ago. He probably was assigned to Van Nuys.”

“Right. We could go there and then walk over to talk to Art Garcia.”

“You found him? He’s still around?”

“Didn’t have to look. He’s commander of Valley Bureau now.”

Bosch nodded. He was not surprised. Garcia had done well. The rank of commander put him just below deputy chief. It meant he was second in command over the Valley’s five police divisions, including Devonshire, where years earlier he had worked the Verloren case.

Rider continued.

“In addition to our regular projects in the chief’s office, each of the special assistants was assigned as sort of a liaison to one of the four bureaus. My assignment was the Valley. So Commander Garcia and I spoke from time to time. Most often I dealt with his staff, or Deputy Chief Vartan, that sort of thing.”

“I know what you’re saying-I have a highly connected partner. You were probably telling Vartan and Garcia how to run the Valley.”

She shook her head in false annoyance.

“Don’t give me shit about all of that. Working on six gave me a good view of the department and how it works.”

“Or doesn’t. Speaking of which, there’s something I should tell you.”

“What is it?”

“I ran into Irving when I went down to get coffee. Right after you left.”

Rider immediately looked concerned.

“What happened? What did he say?”

“Not a lot. He just called me a retread and mentioned that I was going to crash and burn and that when I did I would take the chief down with me for hiring me back. Then, of course, when the dust settles Mr. Clean would be there to step up.”

“Jesus, Harry. One day on the job and you already have Irving biting you on the ass?”

Bosch spread his hands wide, almost hitting the shoulder of a man sitting at the next table.

“I went to get coffee. He was there. He approached me, Kiz. I was just minding my own business. I swear.”

She bent her face down to look at her plate. She continued eating without talking to him. She dropped her last pork chop half eaten on the plate.

“I can’t eat any more, Harry. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m ready.”

Bosch left more than enough money on the table and Rider said she would get the next one. Outside they got into Bosch’s car, a black Mercedes SUV, and drove back through Chinatown to the entrance of the northbound 101. They made it all the way to the freeway before Rider spoke again about Irving.

“Harry, don’t take him lightly,” she said. “Be very careful.”

“I am always careful, Kiz, and I have never taken that man lightly.”

“All I’m saying is, he’s been passed over twice for the top spot. He may be getting desperate.”

“Yeah, you know what I don’t get? Why didn’t your guy get rid of him when he came in here? I mean, just clean house. Pushing Irving across the street doesn’t put an end to the threat. Anybody knows that.”

“He couldn’t push him. Irving ’s got forty-plus years on the job. He has a lot of connections that go outside the department and into City Hall. And he knows where a lot of the bodies are buried. The chief couldn’t make a move against him unless he was sure there wouldn’t be any blowback from it.”

More silence followed. The early afternoon traffic out to the Valley was light. They had KFWB, the all news and traffic channel, on the radio and there were no reports of problems ahead. Bosch checked the gas and saw he had half a tank. That was plenty.

They had decided earlier to alternate use of their personal cars. A department car had been requisitioned and approved for them to share, but they both knew that getting the R amp;A was the easy part. It would most likely be months if not longer before they would actually get the wheels. The department had neither the spare car nor the money for a new one. Getting the R amp;A had simply been a paperwork approval needed before they could charge the department for gas and mileage on their personal cars. Bosch knew that over time he would probably put so many miles on his SUV that the expense payout would likely cost the department more than the approved car.

“Look,” he finally said, “I know what you’re thinking even if you’re not saying it. It’s not just me you’re worried about. You stuck your neck out for me and you convinced the chief to take me back in. Believe me, Kiz, I know it’s not just me riding on this-on this retread. You don’t have to worry and you can tell the chief he doesn’t have to worry. I get it. There won’t be a blowout. There won’t be any blowback from me.”

“Good, Harry. I’m glad to hear that.”

He tried to think of something that he could say to convince her further. He knew words were just words.

“You know, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but after I quit I really sort of liked it at first. You know, being out of the squad and just sort of doing what I wanted. Then I started to miss it and then I started working cases again. On my own. Anyway, one thing that happened was I started walking with sort of a limp.”

“A limp?”

“Just a little thing. Like one of my heels was lower than the other. Like I was uneven.”

“Well, did you check your shoes?”

“I didn’t need to check my shoes. It wasn’t my shoes. It was my gun.”

He looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, her eyebrows set in that deep V she used so much with him. He looked back at the road ahead.

“I carried a gun for so long that when I no longer had it on me it threw off my balance. I was uneven.”

“Harry, that’s a strange story.”

They were going through the Cahuenga Pass. Bosch looked out his window and up the hillside, searching for his house nestled in among the others in the folds of the mountain. He thought he saw a glimpse of the back deck sticking out over the brown brush.

“You want to call Garcia and see if we can drop in and see him after we go by probation?” he asked.

“Yeah, I will-as soon as you get to the point of that story.”

He thought for a long moment before answering.

“The point is, I need the gun. I need the badge. Otherwise I’m out of balance. I need all of this. Okay?”

He looked over at Rider. She looked back at him but didn’t answer.

“I know what I got with this chance. So fuck Irving and his calling me a retread. I won’t fuck up.”

8

TWENTY MINUTES LATER they stepped into one of Bosch’s least favorite places in the city: the probation and parole office of the state’s Department of Corrections in Van Nuys. It was a single-story brick building crowded with people waiting to see probation and parole agents, to give urine samples, to make their court-ordered check-ins, to turn themselves in for incarceration or to plead for one more chance of freedom. It was a place where desperation, humiliation and rage were palpable in the air. It was a place where Bosch tried not to make eye contact with anyone.

Bosch and Rider had something none of the others had: badges. It helped them cut through the lines and get an immediate audience with the agent Roland Mackey had been assigned to after his arrest two years earlier for lewd and lascivious behavior. Thelma Kibble was recessed in a standard government-issue cubicle in a room crowded with many identical cubicles. Her desk and the one government-issue shelf that came with the cubicle were crowded with the files of the convicts she was charged with shepherding through probation or parole. She was of medium size and build. Her eyes were brightly set off against her dark brown skin. Bosch and Rider introduced themselves as detectives from RHD. There was only one chair in front of Kibble’s desk so they remained standing.

“Is it robbery or homicide we are talking about here?” Kibble asked.

“Homicide,” Rider said.

“Then why doesn’t one of you grab the extra chair from that cubicle over there. She’s still at lunch.”

Bosch took the chair she pointed at and brought it back. Rider and Bosch sat down and told Kibble they wanted a look at the file belonging to Roland Mackey. Bosch could tell that Kibble recognized the name but not the case.

“It was a lewd and lash probation you caught two years ago,” he said. “He cleared after twelve months.”

“Oh, he’s not current, then. Well, I need to go grab that one in archives. I don’t remem-oh, yes I do, yes I do. Roland Mackey, yeah. I rather enjoyed that one.”

“How so?” Rider asked.

Kibble smiled.

“Let’s just say he had some difficulty reporting to a woman of color. Tell you what, though, let me go grab the file so we get the details right.”

She double-checked the spelling of Mackey’s name with them and left the cubicle.

“That might help,” Bosch said.

“What?” Rider asked.

“If he had a problem with her he’ll probably have a problem with you. We might be able to use it.”

Rider nodded. Bosch saw she was looking at a newspaper article that was tacked to the fiberboard wall of the cubicle. It was yellowed with age. Bosch leaned closer to read it but he was too far away to read anything but the headline.

WOUNDED PAROLE OFFICER GETS HERO’S WELCOME

“What is it?” he asked Rider.

“I know who this is,” Rider said. “She got shot a few years ago. She went to some ex-con’s house and somebody shot her. The convict called for help but then split. Something like that. We gave her an award at the BPO. God, she’s lost a lot of weight.”

Something about the story rang a bell with Bosch, too. He noticed there were two photographs accompanying the story. One was of Thelma Kibble standing in front of the DOC building, a banner welcoming her back hanging from the roof. Rider was right. Kibble looked like she’d dropped eighty pounds since the photo. Bosch suddenly remembered seeing that banner across the front of the building a few years back while one of his cases was in trial at the courthouse across the street. He nodded. Now he remembered.

Then something about the second photo caught his eye and memory. It was a mug shot of a white woman-the ex-convict who lived in the house where Kibble had been shot.

“That’s not the shooter, right?” he asked.

“No, she’s the one who called it in, who saved her. She disappeared.”

Bosch suddenly stood up and leaned across the desk, putting his hands on stacks of files for support. He looked at the mug shot photo. It was a black-and-white shot that had darkened as the newspaper clipping had aged. But Bosch recognized the face in the photo. He was sure of it. The hair and eyes were different. The name underneath the photo was different, too. But he was sure he had encountered the woman in Las Vegas in the past year.

“Those are my files you’re messing up.”

Bosch immediately pulled himself back across the desk as Kibble came around it.

“Sorry about that. I was just trying to read the story.”

“That’s old news. Time I took that thing down. A lot of years and a lot of pounds ago.”

“I was at the Black Peace Officers meeting when you were honored,” Rider said.

“Oh, really?” Kibble said, her face breaking into a smile. “That was a really nice night for me.”

“Whatever happened to the woman?” Bosch asked.

“Cassie Black? Oh, she’s in the wind. Nobody’s seen her since.”

“She has charges?”

“The funny thing is, no. I mean, we violated her because she ran, but that’s all she’s got on her. Hell, she didn’t shoot me. All she did was save my life. I wasn’t going to have ’em charge her for it. But the parole violation I couldn’t do anything about. She split. Far as I know, the guy who shot me might’ve got her and buried her out in the desert somewhere. I hope not, though. She did me a good turn.”

Bosch was suddenly not so sure the woman he had temporarily lived next to in an airport motel while visiting his daughter in Las Vegas the year before had been Cassie Black. He sat down and didn’t say anything.

“So you found the file?” Rider said.

“Right here,” Kibble said. “You two can have at it. But if you want to ask me about the boy then do it now. My afternoon slate starts in five minutes. If I start late then I have a domino effect running through the whole damn day and I get outta here late. Can’t do that tonight. I gotta date.”

She was beaming at the prospect of her date.

“Okay, well, what do you remember about Mackey? Did you look at the file?”

“Yeah, I looked when I was coming back with it. Mackey was just a pissant weenie wagger. Small-time drug user who got racial religion somewhere along the way. He was no big thing. I rather enjoyed having him under my thumb. But that was about it.”

Rider had opened the file and Bosch was leaning toward her to look into it.

“The lewd and lash was an exposure case?” he asked.

“Actually, I think you’ll find in there that our boy got himself high on speed and alcohol-a lot of alcohol-and he decided to relieve himself in somebody’s front yard. A thirteen-year-old girl happened to live there and she happened to be out front shooting baskets. Mr. Mackey decided upon seeing the girl that since he already had his little pud out and about in the wind that he might as well go ahead and ask the girl if she wanted to partake of it. Did I mention that the girl’s father was LAPD Metro Division and happened to be off-duty and home at the time of this incident? He stepped outside and put Mr. Mackey on the ground. In fact, Mr. Mackey later complained that coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally he had been put on the ground right on top of the puddle he had just made. He was rather unhappy about that.”

Kibble smiled at the story. Bosch nodded. Her version was more colorful than the case summary in the file.

“And he just pleaded out.”

“That’s right. He got a probation deal and took it. He came to me.”

“Any problems during his twelve months?”

“Nothing other than his problem with me. He asked for another agent and it got turned down and he got stuck with me. He kept it in check but it was there. Underneath, you know? Couldn’t ever tell which bugged his ass more, me being black or me being a woman.”

She looked at Rider as she said this last part and Rider nodded.

The file contained details of Mackey’s past crimes and life. It had photos taken during earlier arrests. It would become the baseline resource on their target. There was too much in it to go through in front of Kibble.

“Can we get this copied?” Bosch asked. “We’d also like to borrow one of these early photos if we could.”

Kibble’s eyes narrowed for a moment.

“You two working an old case, huh?”

Rider nodded.

“From way back,” she said.

“Like a cold case, huh?”

“We call it open-unsolved,” Rider said.

Kibble nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, nothing surprises me in this place-I’ve seen people shoplift a frozen pizza and get popped two days before the end of a four-year tail. But from what I remember of this guy Mackey, he didn’t seem to me to have the killer instinct. Not if you ask me. He’s a follower, not a doer.”

“That’s a good read,” Bosch said. “We’re not sure he is the one. We just know he was involved.”

He stood up, ready to go.

“What about the photo?” he asked. “A photocopy won’t be clear enough to show.”

“You can borrow that one as long as I get it back. I need to keep the file complete. People like Mackey have a tendency to come back to me, know what I mean?”

“Yes, and we’ll get it back to you. Also, can I get a copy of your story there? I want to read it.”

Kibble looked at the newspaper clip tacked to the cubicle’s wall.

“Just don’t look at the picture. That’s the old me.”

After clearing the DOC office Rider and Bosch crossed the street to the Van Nuys Civic Center and walked between the two courthouses to get to the plaza in the middle. They sat down on a bench by the library. Their next appointment was with Arturo Garcia in the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division, which also was one of the buildings in the government center, but they were early and wanted to study the DOC file first.

The file contained detailed accounts of all the crimes Roland Mackey had been arrested for since his eighteenth birthday. It also contained biographical summaries used by probation and parole agents over the years in determining aspects of his supervision. Rider handed Bosch the arrest reports while she started going through the biographical details. She then immediately proceeded to interrupt his reading of a burglary case by calling out details of Mackey’s bio that she thought might be pertinent to the Verloren case.

“He got a general education degree at Chatsworth High the summer of ’eighty-eight,” she said. “So that puts him right in Chatsworth.”

“If he got a GED, then he dropped out first. Does it say from where?”

“Nothing here. Says he grew up in Chatsworth. Dysfunctional family. Poor student. He lived with his father, a welder at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Doesn’t sound like Hillside Prep material.”

“We still need to check. Parents always want their kid to do better. If he went there and knew her and then dropped out, it would explain why he was never interviewed back in ’eighty-eight.”

Rider just nodded. She was reading on.

“This guy never left the Valley,” she said. “Every address is in the Valley.”

“What’s the last known?”

“ Panorama City. Same as the AutoTrack hit. But if it’s in here, then it’s probably old.”

Bosch nodded. Anybody who had been through the system as many times as Mackey would know to move house the day after clearing a probation tail. Don’t leave an address with the man. Bosch and Rider would go to the Panorama City address to check it out but Bosch knew that Mackey would be gone. Wherever he had moved, he had not used his name on public utility applications and he had not updated his driver’s license or vehicle registration. He was flying below radar.

“Says he was in the Wayside Whities,” Rider said as she reviewed a report.

“No surprise.”

The Wayside Whities was the name of a jail gang that had existed for years in the Wayside Honor Rancho in the northern county. Gangs usually formed along racial lines in the county jails as a means of protection rather than out of racial enmity. It was not unusual to find members of the Nazi-leaning Wayside Whities to secretly be Jewish. Protection was protection. It was a way of belonging to a group and staving off assault from other groups. It was a measure of jail survival. Mackey’s membership was only a tenuous connection to Bosch’s theory that race possibly played a part in the Verloren case.

“Anything else on that?” he asked.

“Not that I see.”

“What about physical description? Any tattoos?”

Rider rifled through the paperwork and pulled out a jail intake form.

“Yeah, tattoos,” she said, reading. “He’s got his name on one bicep and I guess a girl’s name on the other. RaHoWa.”

She spelled the name and Bosch started to get the first tingling sense that his theory was coming strongly into play.

“It’s not a name,” he said. “It’s code. Means ‘racial holy war.’ First two letters of each word. The guy’s one of the believers. I think Garcia and Green missed this and it was right there.”

He could feel the adrenaline picking up.

“Look at this,” Rider said urgently. “He also has the number eighty-eight tattooed on his back. The guy’s got a reminder of what he did in ’eighty-eight.”

“Sort of,” Bosch replied. “It’s more code. I worked one of these white power cases once and I remember all the codes. To these guys eighty-eight stands for double H because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Eighty-eight equals H-H equals Heil Hitler. They also use one ninety-eight for Sieg Heil. They’re pretty clever, aren’t they?”

“I still think the year ’eighty-eight might have something to do with this.”

“Maybe it does. You got anything in there about employment?”

“Looks like he drives a tow truck. He was driving a tow truck when he stopped to take the leak that got him the lewd and lash last time. This lists three different previous employers-all tow services.”

“That’s good. That’s a start.”

“We’ll find him.”

Bosch looked back down at the arrest report in front of him. It was a burglary from 1990. Mackey had been caught by a police dog in the concessions shop of the Pacific Drive-in Theater. He had broken in after hours, setting off a silent alarm. He had pilfered the cash drawer and filled a plastic bag with two hundred candy bars. His exit was slowed because he decided to turn on the cheese warmer and make himself some nachos. He was still inside the building when a responding officer with a dog sent the animal inside the shop. The report said Mackey was treated for dog bite injuries to the left arm and upper left thigh at County-USC Medical Center before being booked.

The record indicated that Mackey pleaded guilty to breaking and entering, a lesser charge, and was sentenced to time served-sixty-seven days in the Van Nuys jail-and two years probation.

The next report was a violation of that probation for an assault arrest. Bosch was about to read the report when Rider took the sheaf of photocopies out of his hands.

“It’s time to go see Garcia,” she said. “His sergeant said if we’re late we’ll miss him.”

She stood up and Bosch followed. They headed toward the Van Nuys Division. The Valley Bureau Command offices were on the third floor.

“In nineteen ninety Mackey was popped for a burglary at the old Pacific Drive-in,” Bosch said as they walked.

“Okay.”

“It was at Winnetka and Prairie. There’s a multiplex there now. That puts it about five or six blocks from where the Verloren weapon was stolen a couple years before. The burglary.”

“What do you think?”

“Two burglaries five blocks apart. I think maybe he liked working that area. I think he stole the gun. Or he was with the person who stole it.”

Rider nodded and they went up the stairs to the police station lobby and then took the elevator the rest of the way up to Valley Bureau Command. They were on time but still were made to wait. While sitting on a couch Bosch said, “I remember that drive-in. I went there a couple times when I was a kid. The one in Van Nuys, too.”

“We had our own on the south side,” Rider said.

“They turn it into a multiplex, too?”

“No. It’s just a parking lot. They don’t put multiplex money down there.”

“What about Magic Johnson?”

Bosch knew the former Laker basketball star had invested heavily in the community, including opening movie theaters.

“He’s only one man.”

“One man is a start, I guess.”

A woman with P2 stripes on her uniform’s sleeves came up to them.

“The commander will see you now.”

9

COMMANDER ARTURO GARCIA was standing behind his desk waiting as Bosch and Rider were led into his office by the uniformed assistant. Garcia was in uniform, too, and he wore it well and proudly. He had steel gray hair and a matching bottle-brush mustache. He exuded the confidence that the department used to carry and was fighting to recover.

“Detectives, come in, come in,” he said. “Sit down here and tell an old homicide dick how it’s hanging.”

They took the chairs in front of the desk.

“Thank you for seeing us so quickly,” Rider said.

Bosch and Rider had decided that she would take the lead with Garcia since she was more familiar with him through her liaison work in the chief’s office. Bosch also wasn’t sure he would be able to disguise his distaste for Garcia and the mistakes and missteps he and his partner had made on the Verloren investigation.

“Well, when Robbery-Homicide calls, you make the time, right?”

He smiled again.

“We actually work in the Open-Unsolved Unit,” Rider said.

Garcia lost his smile and for a moment Bosch thought he saw a flash of pain enter his eyes. Rider had made the appointment through an assistant in the commander’s office and had not revealed what case they were working.

“Becky Verloren,” the commander said.

Rider nodded.

“How did you know?”

“How did I know? I was the one who called that guy down there, the OIC, and I told him there was DNA on that case and they ought to send it through.”

“Detective Pratt?”

“Yeah, Pratt. As soon as that unit was up and operational I called him and said check out Becky Verloren, nineteen eighty-eight. What have you got? You got a match, right?”

Rider nodded.

“We got a very good match.”

“Who? I’ve been waiting seventeen years for this. Somebody from the restaurant, right?”

This gave Bosch pause. In the murder book there were interview summaries from people who worked in Robert Verloren’s restaurant but nothing that rose above the routine. Nothing that indicated suspicion or follow-up. Nothing in the investigative summaries that pointed the case toward the restaurant. To now hear one of the original investigators voice a long-held suspicion that the killer had come from that direction was incongruous with what they had spent the morning reading.

“Actually, no,” Rider said. “The DNA matches a man named Roland Mackey. He was eighteen at the time of the murder. He was in Chatsworth at the time. We don’t think he worked at the restaurant.”

Garcia frowned as though he was puzzled or maybe disappointed.

“Does that name mean anything to you?” Rider asked. “We didn’t come across it anywhere in the book.”

Garcia shook his head.

“I don’t place it, but it’s been a long time. Who is he?”

“We don’t know who he is yet. We’re circling him. We’re just starting.”

“I’m sure I would have remembered the name. His blood was on the gun, right?”

“That’s what we got. He’s got a history. Burglaries, receiving, drugs. We’re thinking he might be good for the burglary when the gun was taken.”

“Absolutely,” Garcia said, as if his excitement for the idea could make it so.

“We can connect him to the gun, no doubt,” Rider said. “But we’re looking for the connection to the girl. We thought maybe you’d remember something.”

“Have you talked to the mother and father yet?”

“Not yet. You’re our first stop.”

“That poor family. That was it for them.”

“You stayed in touch with the parents?”

“Initially, yeah. As long as I had the case. But once I made lieutenant and went back to patrol I had to give up the case. I kind of lost contact with them after that. It was Muriel mostly-the mother-who I had talked to. The father… there was something going on with him. He didn’t do well. He left home, they divorced, the whole thing. Lost the restaurant. Last I heard, he was living on the street. He would show up at the house from time to time and ask Muriel for money.”

“What made you guess it was somebody from the restaurant when we came in here?”

Garcia shook his head like he was frustrated by reaching for a memory he couldn’t quite grasp.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t remember. It was more like a feeling. There was stuff wrong with the case. Something was hinky about it.”

“How so?”

“Well, you read the book, I’m sure. She wasn’t raped. She was carried up that hill and it was made to look like a suicide. It was done badly. It was really an execution. So we weren’t talking about the random intruder. Somebody she knew wanted her dead. And they either went in that house or sent somebody in that house.”

“You think it was related to the pregnancy?” Rider asked.

Garcia nodded.

“We thought that was tied in but we could never nail it down.”

“MTL-you never figured that one out.”

Garcia looked at her, confusion on his face.

“Empty L?”

“No, M-T-L. The initials Rebecca used in her journal. You mentioned it in the formal interview with the parents. ‘My true love,’ remember?”

“Oh, yeah, the initials. It was like a code. We never knew for sure. We never found out who that was. Are you looking for the journal?”

Bosch nodded and Rider spoke.

“We’re looking for everything. The journal, the gun, the whole evidence carton is lost somewhere in the ESB.”

Garcia shook his head like a man who had spent a career dealing with the department’s frustrations.

“That is not surprising. Par for the course, right?”

“Right.”

“Tell you one thing, though. If they find the carton there won’t be any journal in it.”

“Why?”

“Because I gave it back.”

“To the parents?”

“To the mother. Like I said, I made lieutenant and was shipping out, going to South Bureau. Ron Green had already retired. I was passing the case off and I knew that was going to be the end of it. Nobody was going to pay attention to it like we did. So I told Muriel I was leaving and I gave her the journal…

“That poor woman. It was like time stood still for her on that day in July. She became frozen. Couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. I remember I went to see her before I left. This was a year or so after the murder. She had me look at Becky’s bedroom. It was untouched. It was exactly the way it was on the night she was taken.”

Rider nodded somberly. Garcia said nothing else. Bosch finally cleared his throat, leaned forward and spoke, hitting Garcia with the same question again.

“When we first came in and said we got a DNA match, you guessed it was somebody from the restaurant. Why?”

Bosch looked at Rider to see if she was annoyed that he was entering the questioning. She didn’t appear to be.

“I don’t know why,” Garcia said. “Like I said, I always sort of thought that it might have come from that side of things, because I never felt we nailed everything down over there.”

“You’re talking about the father?”

Garcia nodded.

“The father was hinky. I don’t know if you even say that anymore. But back then the word was hinky.”

“How so?” Rider asked. “How was the father hinky?”

Before Garcia could answer the question one of the uniformed adjutants came into the office.

“Commander? They’re all in the conference room and ready to start.”

“Okay, Sergeant. I’ll be there shortly.”

After the sergeant left, Garcia looked back at Rider as if he had forgotten the question.

“There is nothing in the murder book that casts any suspicion on the father,” Rider said. “Why did you think he was hinky?”

“Oh, I don’t really know. Sort of a gut feeling. He never really acted like you would think a father would act, you know? He was too quiet. He never got mad, never yelled-I mean, somebody took his little girl. He never once took Ron or me aside and said, ‘I want first shot at the guy when you find him.’ I expected that.”

As far as Bosch was concerned, everybody was still a suspect, even with the cold hit tying Mackey to the murder weapon. This certainly included Robert Verloren. But he immediately dismissed Garcia’s gut instinct based on the father’s emotional responses to his daughter’s murder. He knew from working hundreds of murders that there was absolutely no way to judge such responses or to build suspicion on them. Bosch had seen every permutation of it and it all meant nothing. One of the biggest criers and screamers he had ever encountered on a case ended up being the killer.

In dismissing Garcia’s instinct and suspicion Bosch was also dismissing Garcia. He and Green had made early mistakes but recovered to conduct a by-the-numbers investigation of the murder. The murder book bore this out. But Bosch now guessed that whatever was done well was probably done by Green. He knew he should have suspected as much when he heard that Garcia had given up homicide for management.

“How long did you work homicide?” Bosch asked.

“Three years.”

“All in Devonshire Division?”

“That’s right.”

Bosch quickly did the math. Devonshire would have had a light caseload. He figured that Garcia had worked no more than a couple dozen murders at the most. It wasn’t enough experience to do it well. He decided to move on.

“What about your former partner?” he asked. “Did he feel the same way about Robert Verloren?”

“He was willing to give the guy a little more slack than me.”

“Are you still in touch with him?”

“Who, the father?”

“No. Green.”

“No, he retired way back.”

“I know, but are you still in touch?”

Garcia shook his head.

“No, he’s dead. He retired up to Humboldt County. He should’ve left his gun down here. All that time and nothing to do up there.”

“He killed himself?”

Garcia nodded.

Bosch looked down at the floor. It wasn’t Ron Green’s death that struck him. He didn’t know Green. It was the loss of the connection to the case. He knew Garcia wasn’t going to be much help.

“What about race?” Bosch asked, again stepping on Rider’s lead.

“What about it?” Garcia asked. “In this case? I don’t see it.”

“Interracial couple, biracial kid, the gun came from a burglary where the victim was being harassed on religious lines.”

“That’s a stretch. You got something with this Mackey character?”

“There might be something.”

“Well, we didn’t have the luxury of a named suspect to work with. We didn’t see any aspect of that with what we had back then.”

Garcia said it forcefully and Bosch knew he had touched a nerve. He didn’t like to be second-guessed. No detective did. Even an inexperienced one.

“I know it’s Monday-morning quarterbacking to start with the guy and go backwards,” Rider quickly said. “It’s just something we’re looking at.”

Garcia seemed placated.

“I understand,” he said. “Leave no stone unturned.”

He stood up.

“Well, Detectives, I hate to rush this. I wish we could kick this around all day. I used to put people in jail. Now I go into meetings about budget and deployment.”

That’s what you deserve, Bosch thought. He glanced at Rider, wondering if she understood that he had saved her from a similar fate when he talked her into partnering with him in the Open-Unsolved Unit.

“Do me a favor,” Garcia said. “When you hook up this guy Mackey, let me know. Maybe I’ll come down and look through the window at him. I’ve been waiting for this one.”

“No problem, sir,” Rider said, breaking her stare away from Bosch. “We’ll do that. If you think of anything else that might help us with this, give me a call. All my numbers are on this.”

She stood up, placing a business card down on the table.

“I’ll do it.”

Garcia started to go around his desk to head to his meeting.

“There’s something we might need you to do,” Bosch said.

Garcia stopped in his tracks and looked at him.

“What is it, Detective? I need to get in that meeting.”

“We might try to flush the birds out of the bushes with a newspaper story. It might be good if it came from you. You know, former homicide guy, now a commander, haunted by the old case. He calls Open-Unsolved and gets them to run the DNA through the pipeline. What do you know, they get a cold hit.”

Garcia nodded. Bosch could tell it played to his ego perfectly.

“Yeah, it might work. Whatever you want to do. Just call me and we’ll set it up. The Daily News? I’ve got connections there. It’s the Valley paper.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yeah, that’s what we were thinking,” he said.

“Good. Let me know. I’ve got to go.”

He quickly left the office. Rider and Bosch looked at each other and then followed. Out in the hallway, waiting for the elevator, Rider asked Bosch what he was doing when he asked him about planting the news story.

“He’d be perfect for the story because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“So, we don’t want that. We want to be careful.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll work.”

The elevator opened and they got on. No one else was in it. As soon as the door closed Rider was on him.

“Harry, let’s get something straight right now. We’re either partners or we’re not. You should have told me you were going to hit him with that. We should’ve talked about it first.”

Bosch nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. “We’re partners. It won’t happen again.”

“Good.”

The elevator door opened and she stepped out, leaving Bosch behind.

10

HILLSIDE PREPARATORY SCHOOL was a structure of Spanish design nestled against the hills of Porter Ranch. Its campus was marked by magnificent green lawns and the daunting rise of mountains behind it. The mountains almost seemed to cradle the school and protect it. Bosch thought it looked like a place that any parent would want their child to go. He thought about his own daughter, just a year away from starting school. He would want her to go to a school that looked like this-on the outside, at least.

He and Rider followed signs that led them to the administration offices. At a front counter Bosch showed his badge and explained that they wanted to see if a student named Roland Mackey had ever attended Hillside. The clerk disappeared into a back office and soon a man emerged. His most notable features were a basketball-sized paunch and thick glasses shaded by bushy eyebrows. Across his forehead his hair left the perfect line of a toupee.

“I’m Gordon Stoddard, principal here at Hillside. Mrs. Atkins told me you are detectives. I’m having her check that name for you. It didn’t ring a bell with me and I’ve been here almost twenty-five years. Do you know exactly when he attended? It might help her with the search.”

Bosch was surprised. Stoddard looked like he was in his mid-forties. He must have come to Hillside fresh from his own schooling and never left. Bosch didn’t know if that was a testament to what they paid teachers here or Stoddard’s own dedication to the place. But from what he knew about teachers private and public, he doubted it was the pay.

“We’d be talking about the eighties, if he went here. That’s a long time ago for you to remember.”

“Yes, but I have a memory for the students that have come through. Most of them. I haven’t been principal for twenty-five years. I was a teacher first. I taught science and then I was dean of the science department.”

“Do you remember Rebecca Verloren?” Rider asked.

Stoddard blanched.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I taught her science. Is that what this is about? Have you arrested this boy, Mackey? I mean, I guess he’d be a man now. Is he the one?”

“We don’t know that, sir,” Bosch said quickly. “We’re reviewing the case and his name came up and we need to check on it. That’s all.”

“Did you see the plaque?” Stoddard asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Outside on the wall in the main hallway. There is a plaque dedicated to Rebecca. The students in her class collected the funds for it and had it made. It is quite nice but of course it is also quite sad. But it does serve its purpose. People around here remember Rebecca Verloren.”

“We missed it. We’ll look at it on our way out.”

“A lot of people still remember her. This school might not pay that well, and most of the faculty might have to work two jobs to make ends meet, but it has a very loyal faculty nonetheless. There are several teachers still here who taught Rebecca. We have one, Mrs. Sable, who was actually a student with her and then returned here to teach. In fact, Bailey was one of her good friends, I believe.”

Bosch glanced at Rider, who raised her eyebrows. They had a plan for approaching Becky Verloren’s friends but here was an opportunity presenting itself. Bosch had recognized the name Bailey. One of the three friends Becky Verloren had spent the evening with two nights before her disappearance was named Bailey Koster.

Bosch knew that it was more than an opportunity to question a witness in the case. If they didn’t get to Sable now she would likely hear about Roland Mackey from Stoddard. Bosch didn’t want that. He wanted to control the flow of information on the case to the players involved in it.

“Is she here today?” Bosch asked. “Could we talk to her?”

Stoddard looked up at the clock on the wall next to the counter.

“Well, she is in class now but school lets out for the day in about twenty minutes. If you don’t mind waiting I am sure you could talk to her then.”

“That’s no problem.”

“Good, I will send a message to her classroom and have her come to the office after school.”

Mrs. Atkins, the counter clerk, appeared behind Stoddard.

“Actually, if you don’t mind,” Rider said, “we’d rather go to her classroom to talk to her. We don’t want to make her uncomfortable.”

Bosch nodded. Rider was on the same frequency. They didn’t want a message of any kind going to Mrs. Sable. They didn’t want her thinking about Becky Verloren until they were right there watching and listening.

“Either way,” Stoddard said. “Whatever you want to do.”

He noticed Mrs. Atkins standing behind him and asked her to report her findings.

“We have no record of a Roland Mackey as a student here,” she said.

“Did you come across anyone with that last name?” Rider asked.

“Yes, one Mackey, first name Gregory, attended for two years in nineteen ninety-six and -seven.”

There was a long-shot possibility that it was a younger brother or a cousin. It might become necessary to check the name out.

“Can you see if there is a current address or contact number for him?” Rider asked.

Mrs. Atkins looked at Stoddard for approval and he nodded. She disappeared to go get the information. Bosch checked the wall clock. They had almost twenty minutes to kill.

“Mr. Stoddard, are there yearbooks from the late eighties that we could look at while we’re waiting to see Mrs. Sable?” he asked.

“Yes, of course, I will take you to the library and get those for you.”

On the way to the library Stoddard took them by the plaque Rebecca Verloren’s classmates had put on the wall of the main hallway. It was a simple dedication with her name, the years of her birth and death and the youthful promise of WE WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER.

“She was a sweet kid,” Stoddard said. “Always involved. Her family, too. What a tragedy.”

Stoddard used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the dust off the laminated photograph of the smiling Becky Verloren on the plaque.

The library was around the corner. There were few students at the tables or browsing the shelves as the end of the day drew near. In a whisper Stoddard told them to have a seat at a table and then he went off into the stacks. Less than a minute later he came back with three yearbooks and put them down on the table. Bosch saw that each book had the title Veritas and the year on the cover. Stoddard had brought yearbooks from 1986, 1987 and 1988.

“These are the last three years,” Stoddard whispered. “I remember she went here from grade one, so if you want earlier books just let me know. They’re on the shelf.”

Bosch shook his head.

“That’s okay. This will be fine for now. We’ll come back by the office before we leave. We need to get that information from Mrs. Atkins anyway.”

“Okay, then I will leave you to it.”

“Oh, can you tell us where Mrs. Sable’s classroom is?”

Stoddard gave them the room number and told them how to get there from the library. He then excused himself, saying he was returning to the office. Before leaving he whispered a few words to a table of boys near the door. The boys then reached down to the backpacks they had dropped on the floor and pulled them underneath the table so as to not impede foot traffic. Something about the way they had haphazardly dropped their packs reminded Bosch of the way the boys of Vietnam had done it-where they stood, not caring about anything but getting the weight off their shoulders.

After Stoddard had left, the boys made faces at the door he had passed through.

Rider took the 1988 yearbook ahead of Bosch and he took the 1986 edition. He wasn’t expecting to find anything of value now that Mrs. Atkins had knocked down his theory that Roland Mackey had attended the school at one point but had dropped out before the murder. He was already resigned to the idea that the connection between Mackey and Becky Verloren-if it even existed-would be found somewhere else.

He did the math in his head and flipped through the book until he found the eighth grade photos. He quickly found Becky Verloren’s picture. She wore pigtails and braces. She was smiling but looked like she was just beginning that period of prepubescent awkwardness. He doubted she had been happy with her appearance in the book. He checked the group photos showing the class’s different clubs and organizations and was able to track her extracurricular activities. She played soccer and was seen in the photos for the science and art clubs and the homeroom representatives in student government. In all the photos she was always in the back row or off to the side. Bosch wondered if that was where she had been placed by a photographer or where she had felt comfortable.

Rider was taking her time with the 1988 edition. She was going through every page, at one point holding the book up to Bosch when she was going through the faculty section. She pointed to a photo of a young Gordon Stoddard, who had much longer hair back then and didn’t wear glasses. He was leaner and looked stronger as well.

“Look at him,” she said. “Nobody should grow old.”

“And everybody should get the chance.”

Bosch moved on to the 1987 yearbook and found that the photos of Becky Verloren showed a young girl who appeared to be blossoming. Her smile was fuller, more confident. If the braces were still there they were no longer noticeable. In the group photos she had moved to front and center. In the student government photos she was not a class officer yet, but she had her arms folded in a take-charge pose. Her posture and her unflinching stare at the camera told Bosch she was going places. Only somebody had stopped her.

Bosch flipped through a few more pages and then closed the book. He was waiting for the bell to ring so they could go interview Bailey Koster Sable.

“Nothing?” Rider asked.

“Of any value,” he said. “It’s good to look at her back then, though. In place. In her element.”

“Yes. Look at this.”

They were sitting across from each other. She turned the 1988 book around on the table so he could see it. She had finally gotten to the sophomore class photos. The top half of the page on the right showed a boy and four girls posing on a wall Bosch recognized as the entrance to the student parking lot. One of the girls was Becky Verloren. The caption above the photo said STUDENT LEADERS. Below the photo the students were identified and their positions listed. Becky Verloren was listed as student council representative. Bailey Koster was class president.

Rider tried to spin the book back toward herself but Bosch held it for a moment, studying the photograph. He could tell by her pose and her style that Becky Verloren had left her teen awkwardness behind. He would not describe the student in the photograph as a girl. She was on her way to becoming an attractive and confident young woman. He let the book go and Rider took it back.

“She was going to be a heartbreaker,” he said.

“Maybe she already was. Maybe she picked the wrong one to break.”

“Anything else in there?”

“Take a look.”

She flipped the open book around again. The two pages were spread with photos from the Art Club’s trip to France the summer before. There were photos of about twenty students, boys and girls, and several parents or teachers in front of Notre Dame, in the courtyard of the Louvre and on a tourist boat on the Seine. Rider pointed out Rebecca Verloren in one of the photos.

“She went to France,” Bosch said. “What about it?”

“She could have met someone over there. Could be an international link to this thing. We might have to go over there and check it out.”

She was trying to hold back a smile.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “You put the req in on that. Send it on up to six.”

“Boy, Harry, I guess your sense of humor stayed retired.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

The school bell rang, ending the discussion as well as classes for the day. Bosch and Rider got up, leaving the yearbooks on the table, and left the library. They followed Stoddard’s directions to Bailey Sable’s classroom, along the way dodging students hurrying to leave the school. The girls wore plaid skirts and white blouses, the boys khakis and white polo shirts.

They looked into the open door of room B-6 and saw a woman sitting at a desk at the front center of the classroom. She did not look up from the papers she was apparently grading. Bailey Sable bore almost no resemblance to the sophomore class president whose photo Bosch and Rider had just studied in the yearbook. The hair was darker and shorter now, the body wider and heavier. Like Stoddard, she wore glasses. Bosch knew she was only thirty-two or thirty-three but she looked older.

There was one last student in the room. She was a pretty blonde girl who was shoving books into a backpack. When she was finished she zipped the pack closed and headed to the door.

“See you tomorrow, Mrs. Sable.”

“Good-bye, Kaitlyn.”

The student gave Bosch and Rider a curious look as she went by them. The detectives stepped into the classroom and Bosch pulled the door closed. That made Bailey Sable look up from her papers.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Bosch took the lead.

“You might be able to,” he said. “Mr. Stoddard said it would be all right if we came to your classroom.”

He approached the desk. The teacher looked up at him warily.

“Are you parents?”

“No, we’re detectives, Mrs. Sable. My name is Harry Bosch and this is Kizmin Rider. We wanted to ask you a few questions about Becky Verloren.”

She reacted as if she had just been punched in the gut. All these years and it was still that close to the surface.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she said.

“We’re sorry to hit you with this out of the blue,” Bosch said.

“Is something happening? Did you find who…?”

She didn’t finish.

“Well, we’re working on it again,” Bosch said. “And you might be able to help us.”

“How?”

Bosch reached into his pocket and pulled out the mug shot taken from Roland Mackey’s DOC probation file. It was a portrait of Mackey as an eighteen-year-old car thief. Bosch put it down on top of the paper she had been grading. She looked down at it.

“Do you recognize the person in that photo?” Bosch asked.

“It was taken seventeen years ago,” Rider added. “About the time of Becky’s death.”

The teacher looked down at Mackey’s defiant glare into the police camera. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Bosch looked at Rider and nodded, a signal that maybe she should take over.

“Does it look like anyone you or Becky or any of your friends may have encountered back then?” Rider asked.

“Did he go to school here?” Sable asked.

“No, we don’t think so. But we know he lived in this area.”

“Is he the killer?”

“We don’t know. We’re just trying to see if there is a connection between Becky and him.”

“What is his name?”

Rider looked at Bosch and he nodded again.

“His name is Roland Mackey. Does he look familiar?”

“Not really. It is hard for me to remember back then. Remember the faces of strangers, I mean.”

“So he definitely is not someone you knew, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Do you think Becky could have known him without you being aware of it?”

She thought for a long moment before answering.

“Well, it’s possible. You know, it came out that she’d gotten pregnant. I didn’t know about that, so I guess I might not have known about him. Was he the father?”

“We don’t know.”

Unbidden, she had jumped the interview forward to Bosch’s next line of questioning.

“Mrs. Sable, you know, it’s been a lot of years since then,” he said. “If you were sort of sticking up for a friend back then, we understand that. But if there is more you know, you can tell us now. This is probably the last shot that anybody is going to take at solving this thing.”

“You mean about her being pregnant? I really didn’t know about it. I’m sorry. I was just as shocked as everybody else when the police started asking about that.”

“If Becky were going to confide in someone about that, would it have been you?”

Again, she didn’t answer right away. She gave it some thought.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We were very close but she was that way with a few other girls, too. There were four of us who had been together since first grade here. In first grade we called ourselves the Kitty Cat Club because we all had pet cats. At different times and different years one of us would be closer to one of the others. It changed all the time. But as a group we always stuck together.”

Bosch nodded.

“That summer when Becky was taken, who would you say was closest to her?”

“It was probably Tara. She took it the hardest.”

Bosch looked at Rider, trying to remember the names of the girls Becky had been with two nights before her death.

“Tara Wood?” Rider asked.

“Yes, that’s Tara. They hung out together a lot that summer because Becky’s dad owned a restaurant in Malibu and they were both working there. They were splitting a schedule there. It seemed that summer that all they did was talk about it.”

“What would they say about it?” Rider asked.

“Oh, you know, like what stars came in there. People like Sean Penn and Charlie Sheen. And sometimes they talked about what guys worked there and who was cute. Nothing too interesting to me since I didn’t work there.”

“Was there any one guy in particular they talked about?”

She thought a moment before answering.

“Not really. Not that I remember. They just liked to talk about them because they were so different. They were surfers and would-be actors. Tara and Becky were Valley girls. It was like a culture clash for them.”

“Was she dating anybody from the restaurant?” Bosch asked.

“Not that I knew of. But it’s like I said, I didn’t know about the pregnancy, so there was obviously somebody in her life I didn’t know about. She kept it a secret.”

“Were you jealous of them because they worked there?” Rider asked.

“Not at all. I didn’t have to work and I was pretty happy about that.”

Rider was going somewhere so Bosch let her continue.

“What did you guys do for fun when you got together?” she asked.

“I don’t know, the usual,” Sable said. “We went shopping and to movies, stuff like that.”

“Who had cars?”

“ Tara did and so did I. Tara had a convertible. We used to go up…”

She cut it off when she came to a memory.

“What?” Rider asked.

“I just remember driving up into Limekiln Canyon a lot after school. Tara had a cooler in the trunk and her dad never noticed if she’d taken some of his beers out of the refrigerator. One time we got pulled over up there by a police car. We hid the beers under our uniform skirts. They worked perfect for that. The policeman didn’t notice.”

She smiled at the memory.

“Of course, now that I teach here I’m on the watch for that sort of thing. We still have the same uniforms.”

“What about before she started working at the restaurant?” Bosch said, drawing the interview back to Rebecca Verloren. “She was sick for a week, right after school let out. Did you visit her or talk to her then?”

“I’m sure I did. That is when they said she probably, you know, ended the pregnancy. So she wasn’t really sick. She was just recovering. But I didn’t know. I must have just thought she was sick, that’s all. I can’t really remember if we talked that week or not.”

“Did the detectives back then ask you all of these questions?”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure they did.”

“Where would a girl from Hillside Prep go if she got pregnant?” Rider asked. “Back then, I mean.”

“You mean like a clinic or a doctor?”

“Yes.”

Bailey Sable’s neck flushed. She was embarrassed by the question. She shook her head.

“I don’t know. That was as shocking really as Becky being, you know, killed. It made us all think we didn’t really know our friend. It was really sad because I realized she hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me these things. You know, I still think about that when I remember things back then.”

“Did she have any boyfriends that you did know about?” Bosch asked.

“Not then. I mean, at the time. She had a boyfriend freshman year but he had moved away to Hawaii with his family. That was like the summer before. Then the whole school year I thought she was alone. You know, she didn’t go to any of the dances or the games with anybody. But I was wrong, I guess.”

“Because of the pregnancy,” Rider said.

“Well, yeah. That’s sort of obvious, isn’t it?”

“Who was the father?” Bosch asked, hoping the direct question might elicit a response with something to pursue.

But Sable shrugged.

“I have no idea, and don’t think I’ve ever stopped wondering.”

Bosch nodded. He had gotten nothing.

“The breakup with the boy who moved to Hawaii -how was that with her?” he asked.

“Well, I thought it broke her heart. She took it really hard. It was like Romeo and Juliet.”

“How so?”

“They were broken up by the parents.”

“You mean they didn’t want them going together?”

“No, his dad took a job or something in Hawaii. They had to move and it broke them up.”

Bosch nodded again. He didn’t know if any of the information they were getting was useful but he knew it was important to cast as wide a net as possible.

“Do you know where Tara Wood is these days?” he asked.

Sable shook her head.

“We had a ten-year reunion and she didn’t come. I lost touch with her. I still talk to Grace Tanaka from time to time. But she lives up in the Bay Area so I don’t see her too much.”

“Can you give us her number?”

“Sure, I have it here.”

She reached down and opened a desk drawer and pulled out her purse. While she was getting out an address book Bosch took the photo of Mackey off the desk and put it back into his pocket. When Sable read off a phone number Rider wrote it down in a small notebook.

“Five ten,” Rider said. “What is that, Oakland?”

“She lives in Hayward. She wants to live in San Francisco but it costs too much for what she makes.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a metal sculptor.”

“Her last name is still Tanaka?”

“Yes. She never married. She…”

“What?”

“She turned out to be gay.”

“Turned out?”

“Well, what I mean is, we never knew. She never told us. She moved up there and once about eight years ago I went up to visit and then I knew.”

“It was obvious?”

“Obvious.”

“Did she come to the ten-year high school reunion?”

“Yes, she was there. We had fun, but it was sort of sad, too, because people talked about Becky and how it was never solved. I think that’s probably why Tara didn’t come. She didn’t want to be reminded of what happened to Becky.”

“Well, maybe we’ll change that by the twentieth reunion,” Bosch said, immediately regretting the flippant remark. “Sorry, that wasn’t a nice thing to say.”

“Well, I hope you do change it. I think about her all the time. Always wondering who did it and why they have never been found. I look at her picture every day on the plaque when I come into school. It’s weird. I helped raise the money for that plaque when I was class president.”

“They?” Bosch asked.

“What?”

“You said they have never been found. Why did you say they?”

“I don’t know. He, she, whatever.”

Bosch nodded.

“Mrs. Sable, thanks for your time,” he said. “Would you do us a favor and not talk about this with anyone? We don’t want people being prepared for us, you know what I mean?”

“Like with me?”

“Exactly. And if you think of anything else, anything at all you want to talk about, my partner will give you a card with our numbers on it.”

“Okay.”

She seemed to be in a far-off reverie. The detectives said good-bye and left her there with the stack of papers to grade. Bosch thought she was probably remembering a time when four girls were the best of friends and the future sparkled in front of them like an ocean.

Before leaving the school they stopped by the office to see if the school had any current contact information for former student Tara Wood. Gordon Stoddard had Mrs. Atkins check but the answer was no. Bosch asked if they could borrow the 1988 yearbook to make copies of some of the photos and Stoddard gave his approval.

“I’m on my way out,” he said. “I’ll walk with you.”

They small-talked on the way back to the library and Stoddard gave them the yearbook, which had already been returned to the shelves. On the way out to the parking lot Stoddard stopped with them once more in front of the memorial plaque. Bosch ran his fingers over the raised letters of Becky Verloren’s name. He noticed that the edges had been worn smooth over the years by many students doing the same thing.

11

RIDER WORKED THE FILE and the phone while Bosch drove toward Panorama City, which was just on the east side of the 405 and across the Devonshire Division line.

Panorama City was a district carved off the north side of Van Nuys many years before when residents there decided they needed to distance themselves from negative connotations ascribed to Van Nuys. Nothing about the place was changed but the name and a few street signs. Still, Panorama City sounded clean and beautiful and crime free, and the residents felt better about themselves. But many years had passed and resident groups had petitioned to rename their neighborhoods again and to distance themselves, if not physically then image-wise, from negative connotations associated with Panorama City. Bosch guessed it was one of the ways Los Angeles kept reinventing itself. Like a writer or actor who keeps changing his name to leave past failings behind and start fresh, even with the same pen or face.

As expected, Roland Mackey was no longer at the auto towing company he had worked for while on his most recent stint of probation. But also as expected, the ex-con was not particularly smart when it came to covering his trail. The probation file contained his entire work history through a life that had largely been spent on probation or parole. He drove a tow truck for two other concerns during past periods of state monitoring. Posing as an acquaintance, Rider called each of them and easily located his current employer: Tampa Towing. She then called the tow service and asked if Mackey was working today. After a moment she closed the phone and looked at Bosch.

“ Tampa Towing. He comes on at four.”

Bosch checked his watch. Mackey reported for work in ten minutes.

“Let’s go by and get a look at him. We’ll check his address after. Tampa and what?”

“ Tampa and Roscoe. Must be across from the hospital.”

“The hospital is Roscoe and Reseda. I wonder why they didn’t call it Roscoe Towing.”

“Funny. Then what do we do after we get a look at him?”

“Well, we go up to him and ask him if he killed Becky Verloren seventeen years ago and then he says yes and we take him downtown.”

“Come on, Bosch.”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do next?”

“We check his address like you said, and then I think we’re ready for the parents. I’m thinking that we need to talk to them about this guy before we set up on him and make a play-especially in the newspaper. I say we go by the house and see the mother. We’re already up here. Might as well.”

“You mean if she’s still there,” he said. “Did you run an AutoTrack on her, too?”

“Didn’t have to. She’ll be there. You heard how Garcia was talking. Her baby’s ghost is in that house. I doubt she’ll ever leave it.”

Bosch guessed that she was right about that but didn’t respond. He drove east on Devonshire Boulevard to Tampa Avenue and then dropped down to Roscoe Boulevard. They got to the intersection a few minutes before four. Tampa Towing was actually a Chevron service station with two mechanics’ bays. Bosch parked in the lot of a small strip shopping plaza across the street and killed the engine.

Bosch wasn’t surprised when four o’clock came and went without any sign of Roland Mackey. He didn’t strike Bosch as somebody who would be excited to come to work to tow cars.

At four-fifteen Rider said, “What do you think? You think my call could have -”

“There he is.”

A thirty-year-old Camaro with gray primer on all four fenders pulled into the service station and parked near the air pump. Bosch had caught only a glimpse of the driver but it was enough for him to know. He reached over to the glove compartment and took out a pair of field glasses he had bought through an airline catalog he had read while on a flight to Las Vegas.

He slouched down in his seat and watched through the glasses. Mackey got out of the Camaro and walked toward the service station’s open garage. He was wearing a uniform of dark blue pants and a lighter blue shirt. There was an oval-shaped patch over the left breast pocket that said Ro. He had work gloves sticking out of one of his back pockets.

There was an old Ford Taurus up on a hydraulic lift in the garage and a man working beneath it with an air wrench. When Mackey entered, the man with the wrench nonchalantly reached out and gave him a high five. Mackey stopped while the man told him something.

“I think he’s telling him about the phone call,” Bosch said. “Mackey doesn’t look too concerned about it. He just pulled a cell out of his pocket. He’s calling the person he probably thinks called him.”

Reading Mackey’s lips, Bosch said, “Hey, did you call me?”

Mackey quickly ended the conversation.

“I guess not,” Bosch said.

Mackey put his phone back into his pocket.

“He tried one person,” Rider said. “Must not have much of a social life.”

“The name on the patch on his shirt is Ro,” Bosch said. “If his buddy told him that the caller asked for Roland, then he may have narrowed it down to the one person who calls him that. Maybe it was dear old dad, the welder.”

“So what’s he doing?”

“Can’t see him. He went into the back.”

“Maybe we should get out of here before he starts looking around.”

“Come on. One call and you think he’s going to think somebody’s onto him after seventeen years?”

“No, not for Becky. I’m worried about whatever else he’s into now. We might be stumbling right into the middle of something and not even know it.”

Bosch put down the binoculars. She was right about that. He started the car.

“Okay, we got our look,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go see Muriel Verloren.”

“What about Panorama City?”

“PC can wait. We both know he doesn’t live at that address anymore. Checking it is just a formality.”

He started backing out of the space.

“Do you think we should call Muriel first?” Rider asked.

“No. Let’s just go knock on the door.”

“We’re good at that.”

12

IN TEN MINUTES they were in front of the Verloren house. The neighborhood where Becky Verloren had lived still seemed pleasant and safe. Red Mesa Way was wide, with sidewalks on both sides and no shortage of shade trees. Most of the homes were ranch houses that sprawled across the extra-large lots. In the sixties, the larger properties were what drew people to settle the northwest corner of the city. Forty years later the trees were mature and the neighborhood had a cohesive feel to it.

The Verlorens’ house was one of the few that had a second floor. It was still the classic ranch-style home but the roof popped up over the double-slot garage. Bosch knew from the murder book that Becky’s bedroom had been upstairs over the garage and in the back.

The garage door was closed. There was no apparent sign that anyone was home. They parked in the driveway and went to the front door. When Bosch pushed a doorbell button he could hear a chime echo inside, a single tone that seemed very distant and lonely to him.

The door was answered by a woman who wore a shapeless blue pullover dress that helped hide her own shapeless body. She wore flat sandals. Her hair was dyed a color red that had too much orange in it. It looked like a home job that didn’t go as planned, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. As soon as she opened the door a gray cat shot out of the opening and into the front yard.

“Smoke, don’t get hit!” she yelled first. Then she said, “Can I help you?”

“Mrs. Verloren?” Rider asked.

“Yes, what is it?”

“We’re with the police. We’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”

As soon as Rider said the word “police” and before she got to “daughter,” Muriel Verloren brought both hands up to her mouth and reacted as though it was the moment she had learned her daughter was dead.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Tell me you caught him. Tell me you caught the bastard who took my baby away from me.”

Rider reached a comforting hand to the woman’s shoulder.

“It’s not quite that simple, ma’am,” Rider said. “Can we come in and talk?”

She stepped back and let them in. She seemed to be whispering something and Bosch thought it might be a prayer. Once they were in she closed the door after yelling a warning one more time into the front yard to the escaped cat.

The home smelled as though the cat had not escaped often enough. The living room to which they were led was neatly kept but with furniture that was old and worn. There was the distinct odor of cat urine in the place. Bosch suddenly wished they had invited Muriel Verloren down to Parker Center for the interview, but knew that would have been a mistake. They needed to see this place.

They sat side by side on the couch and Muriel rushed to one of the chairs across the glass-topped coffee table from them. Bosch noticed paw prints on the glass.

“What is it?” she asked desperately. “Is there news?”

“Well, I guess the news is that we are looking into the case again,” Rider said. “I am Detective Rider and this is Detective Bosch. We work for the Open-Unsolved Unit out of Parker Center.”

By agreement while driving to the house Bosch and Rider decided to be cautious with the information they gave members of the Verloren family. Until they knew the family situation it would be better to take rather than to give.

“Is there anything new?” Muriel asked urgently.

“Well, we are just starting out,” Rider replied. “We’re covering a lot of the old ground right now. Trying to get up to speed. We just wanted to come by and tell you we were working the case again.”

She seemed a bit crestfallen. She had apparently thought that for the police to show up after so many years there would have to be something new. Bosch felt a twinge of guilt over withholding the fact that they had a rock-solid DNA lead-a cold hit-to work with, but at the moment he felt that it was for the best.

“There are a couple things,” he said, speaking for the first time. “First, in looking through the files on the case, we came across this photo.”

He took the photo of Roland Mackey as an eighteen-year-old out of his pocket and put it down on the coffee table in front of Muriel. She immediately leaned down to look at it.

“We’re not sure what the connection is,” he continued. “We thought maybe you might recognize this man and tell us if you knew him back then.”

She continued to look without responding.

“This is a photo from nineteen eighty-eight,” Bosch said as a means of prompting her.

“Who is he?” she finally asked.

“We’re not sure. His name is Roland Mackey. He’s got a small-time record for crimes committed after your daughter’s death. We’re not sure why his photo was in the file. Do you recognize him?”

“Did you ask Art or Ron about it?”

Bosch started to ask who Art and Ron were when he realized.

“Actually, Detective Green retired and passed away a long time ago. Detective Garcia is Commander Garcia now. We talked to him but he wasn’t able to help us with Mackey. How about you? Could he have been one of your daughter’s acquaintances? Do you recognize him?”

“He could have been. There is something about him that I recognize.”

Bosch nodded.

“Do you know how you recognize him or from where?”

“No, I don’t remember. Why don’t you tell me and maybe that will help jog my memory.”

Bosch made a quick side glance at Rider. This was not totally unexpected, but it always complicated things when the parent of a victim was so eager to help that he or she simply asked what it was the police wanted them to say. Muriel Verloren had waited seventeen years for her daughter’s killer to be brought forward into the light of the justice system. It was very clear that she was going to carefully choose answers that would in no way hinder the possibility of that happening. At this point it might not even matter if it was a false light. The past years had been cruel to her and the memory of her daughter. Someone still needed to pay.

“We can’t tell you that because we don’t know, Mrs. Verloren,” Bosch said. “Think about it and let us know if you remember him.”

She nodded sadly, as if she thought it was yet another missed opportunity.

“Mrs. Verloren, what do you do for a living?” Rider asked.

It seemed to bring the woman in front of them back from her memories and desires.

“I sell things,” she said matter-of-factly. “Online.”

They waited for further explanation and didn’t get any.

“Really?” Rider asked. “What things do you sell?”

“Whatever I can find. I go to yard sales. I find things. Books, toys, clothes. People will buy anything. And they’ll pay anything. This morning I sold two napkin rings for fifty dollars. They were very old.”

“We want to ask your husband about the photo,” Bosch said then. “Do you know where we could find him?”

She shook her head.

“Somewhere down there in toyland. I haven’t heard from him in a long, long time.”

A somber moment of silence passed by. Most of the homeless missions in downtown Los Angeles were clustered at the edge of the Toy District, several blocks of toy manufacturers and wholesalers, even a few retailers. It wasn’t unusual to find homeless people sleeping in the doorways of toy stores.

What Muriel Verloren was telling them was that her husband was lost in the world of floating human debris. He had descended from restaurateur to the stars to a homeless existence on the streets. But there was a contradiction there. He still had a home here. He just couldn’t stay because of what had happened. Yet his wife would never leave.

“When were you divorced?” Rider asked.

“We never did get a divorce. I guess I always thought Robert would wake up and realize that no matter how far you run you can’t get away from what happened to us. I thought he would realize that and come home. It hasn’t happened yet.”

“Do you think you knew all of your daughter’s friends?” Bosch asked.

Muriel thought about this one for a long moment.

“Until the morning she disappeared I did. But then we learned things. She kept secrets. I think that is one of the things that bothers me most. Not that she kept secrets from us, but that she thought she had to. I think that maybe if she had come to us things would have been different.”

“You mean the pregnancy?”

Muriel nodded.

“What makes you think that played into what happened to her?”

“Just a mother’s instinct. I have no proof. I just think it started with that.”

Bosch nodded. But he couldn’t blame the daughter for her secrets. By the time he had been her age Bosch had been on his own, without real parents. He had no idea what that relationship would have been like.

“We spoke to Commander Garcia,” Rider said. “He told us that several years ago he returned your daughter’s journal to you. Do you still have that?”

Muriel looked alarmed.

“I read part of it every night. You’re not going to take that away from me are you? It’s my bible!”

“We need to borrow it and make a copy of it. Commander Garcia should have made a copy back then but he didn’t.”

“I don’t want to lose it.”

“You won’t, Mrs. Verloren. I promise. We’ll copy it and get it right back to you.”

“Do you want it now? It’s by my bed.”

“Yes, if you could get it.”

Muriel Verloren left them and disappeared down a hallway that led toward the left side of the house. Bosch looked at Rider and raised his eyebrows in a what-do-you-think sort of way. Rider shrugged, meaning that they would talk about it later.

“Once my daughter wanted to get another cat,” Bosch whispered. “My ex said no, one was enough. Now I know why.”

Rider was smiling inappropriately when Muriel came back in, carrying a small book with a flowery cover and the words My Journal embossed in gold on it. The gold was flaking off. The book had been handled a lot. She gave it to Rider, who went out of her way to handle it reverently.

“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Verloren, we’d like to look around,” Bosch said. “To sort of connect what we’ve seen and read in the book with the actual layout of the house.”

“What book?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s copspeak. All the investigative records from the case are kept in a large binder. We call it a book.”

“A murder book?”

“Yes, that’s right. Is it all right if we look around? I would like to look at the back door and look around out back, too.”

She signaled with a raised arm which way they should go. Bosch and Rider got up.

“It’s changed,” Muriel said. “It used to be there were no houses up there. You’d go out our door and walk straight up the mountain. But they terraced it. Now there are houses. Millions of dollars. They built a mansion on the spot where my baby was found. I hate it.”

There was nothing to say to that. Bosch just nodded and followed her down a short hallway and into the kitchen. There was a door with a glass window in it. It led to the backyard. Muriel unlocked the door and they all stepped out. The yard was on a steep incline that led to a grove of eucalyptus trees. Through the trees Bosch could see the Spanish-tiled roofline of a large house.

“It used to be all open up there,” Muriel said. “Just trees. Now there are houses. It’s got a gate. They don’t let me walk up there like I used to. They think I’m a bag lady or something because I liked to go up there sometimes and have a picnic at Becky’s spot.”

Bosch nodded and thought for a moment about a mother having a picnic at the spot where her daughter was murdered. He tried to drop the idea and instead study the terrain of the hillside. The autopsy had said Becky Verloren weighed ninety-six pounds. Even as light as that, it would have been a struggle taking her up that incline. He wondered about the possibility that there had been more than one killer. He thought of Bailey Sable saying they.

He looked at Muriel Verloren, who was standing still and silent, her eyes closed. She had canted her head so that the late afternoon sun warmed her face. Bosch wondered if this was some form of communion with her lost daughter. As if sensing that they were looking at her, she spoke, keeping her eyes closed.

“I love this place. I’ll never leave.”

“Can we look at your daughter’s bedroom?” Bosch asked.

She opened her eyes.

“Just wipe your feet when we go back inside.”

She led them back through the kitchen and into the hallway. The stairway up began next to the door that led to the garage. The door was open and Bosch caught a glimpse of a battered minivan surrounded by stacks of boxes and things Muriel Verloren had apparently collected on her rounds. He also noted how close the door to the garage was to the stairs. He didn’t know whether this meant anything. But he recalled the summary report in the murder book that suggested the killer had hidden somewhere in the house and waited for the family to go to sleep. The garage was the likely place.

The stairway was narrow because there were boxes of yard sale purchases lining one side all the way up. Rider went first. Muriel signaled for Bosch to go next and when he passed by her she whispered to him.

“Do you have children?”

He nodded, knowing his answer would hurt.

“A daughter.”

She nodded back.

“Never let her out of your sight.”

Bosch didn’t tell her that she lived with her mother far out of his sight. He just nodded and started up the stairs.

On the second floor there was a landing and two bedrooms with a bathroom in between them. Becky Verloren’s bedroom was to the rear, with windows that looked up the hillside.

The door was closed and Muriel opened it. When they stepped inside they stepped into a time warp. The room was unchanged from the seventeen-year-old photos Bosch had studied in the murder book. The rest of the house was crowded with junk and the detritus from a disintegrated life, but the room where Becky Verloren had slept and talked on the phone and written in her secret journal was unchanged. It had now been preserved longer than the girl had actually lived.

Bosch stepped further into the room and looked around silently. Even the cat didn’t intrude here. The air smelled clean and fresh.

“This is just how it was on the morning she was gone,” Muriel said. “Except I made the bed.”

Bosch looked at the quilt with the cats on it. It flowed over the edges and draped down to the bed skirt, which flowed neatly to the floor.

“You and your husband were sleeping on the other side of the house, right?” Bosch asked.

“Yes. Rebecca was at that age where she wanted her privacy. There are two bedrooms downstairs, on the other side of the house. Her first bedroom was down there. But when she was fourteen she moved up here.”

Bosch nodded and looked around before asking anything else.

“How often do you come up here, Mrs. Verloren?” Rider asked.

“Every single day. Sometimes when I can’t sleep-which is a lot of the time-I come in here and lie down. I don’t get under the covers, though. I want it to be her bed.”

Bosch realized he was nodding again, as if what she had said made some sort of sense to him. He stepped over to the vanity. There were photos slid into the frame of the mirror. Bosch recognized a young Bailey Sable in one of them. There was also a photo of Becky by herself in front of the Eiffel Tower. She was wearing a black beret. None of the other kids from the Art Club trip were present.

Also on the mirror was a photo of a boy with Becky. It looked like they were on a ride at Disneyland, or maybe just down at the Santa Monica pier.

“Who is this?” he asked.

Muriel came over and looked.

“The boy? That’s Danny Kotchof. Her first boyfriend.”

Bosch nodded. The boy who had moved to Hawaii.

“When he moved away it just broke her heart,” Muriel added.

“When exactly was that?”

“The summer before, in June. Right after her freshman year and his sophomore. He was a year older.”

“Why did the family move, do you know?”

“Danny’s dad worked for a rent-a-car company and he got transferred to a new franchise in Maui. It was a promotion.”

Bosch glanced at Rider to see if she picked up on the significance of the information Muriel had just given them. Rider subtly shook her head once. She didn’t get it. But Bosch wanted to pursue it.

“Did Danny go to Hillside Prep?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s where they met,” Muriel said.

Bosch looked down at the vanity and noticed a cheap souvenir snow globe with the Eiffel Tower in it. Some of the water had evaporated, leaving a bubble in the top of the globe and the tip of the tower poking from the water into the air pocket.

“Was Danny in the Art Club?” he asked. “Did he make the trip to Paris with her?”

“No, they moved away before,” Muriel said. “He left in June and the club went to Paris the last week of August.”

“Did she ever see or hear from Danny again?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, they sent letters back and forth and there were phone calls. At first they phoned back and forth, but it got too expensive. And then Danny did all the calling. Every night before bedtime. That lasted almost right up until… until she was gone.”

Bosch reached up and removed the photo from the mirror’s border. He looked closely at Danny Kotchof.

“What happened when your daughter was taken? How did Danny find out? How did he react?”

“Well… we called there and told his father so that he could sit Danny down and tell him the bad news. We were told he did not take it well. Who would?”

“The father told Danny. Did either you or your husband talk directly to Danny?”

“No, but Danny wrote me a long letter about Becky and how much she meant to him. It was very sad and very sweet. Everything was.”

“I’m sure it was. Did he come to the funeral?”

“No, no he didn’t. His, uh, his parents thought it best for him if he stayed there in the islands. The trauma, you know? Mr. Kotchof called and said he wouldn’t be coming.”

Bosch nodded. He turned from the mirror, sliding the photo into his pocket. Muriel didn’t notice.

“What about after?” he asked. “After the letter, I mean. Did he ever contact you? Maybe call and talk to you?”

“No, I don’t think we ever heard from him. Not since the letter.”

“Do you still have that letter?” Rider asked.

“Of course. I kept everything. I have a drawer full of letters we got about Rebecca. She was a well-loved girl.”

“We need to borrow that letter from you, Mrs. Verloren,” Bosch said. “We also might need to look through the whole drawer at some point.”

“Why?”

“Because you never know,” Bosch said.

“Because we want to leave no stone unturned,” Rider added. “We know this is disruptive but please remember what we are doing. We want to find the person who did this to your daughter. It has been a long time but that doesn’t mean anybody should get away with it.”

Muriel Verloren nodded. She had absentmindedly picked up a small decorative pillow off the bed and was clutching it with both hands in front of her chest. It looked like it might have been made by her daughter many years ago. It was a small blue square with a red felt heart sewn across its middle. Holding it made Muriel Verloren look like a target.

13

WHILE BOSCH DROVE, Rider read the letter Danny Kotchof had sent to the Verlorens after Becky’s murder. It was a single page, filled mostly with his fond memories of their lost daughter.

“‘All I can tell you is that I am so sorry this had to happen. I will miss her always. Love, Danny.’ And that’s it.”

“What’s the postmark on it?”

She flipped over the envelope and looked at it.

“ Maui, July twenty-ninth, nineteen eighty-eight.”

“Sure took his time writing it.”

“Maybe it was hard for him. Why are you keying on him, Harry?”

“I’m not. It’s just that Garcia and Green relied on a phone call to clear him. You remember what it said in the book? It said the kid’s supervisor said he was washing cars at the rent-a-car agency the day of and the day after. No time to fly to L.A., kill Becky, and get back home in time for work.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, now we find out from Muriel that his old man ran a rent-a-car. There was nothing about that in the murder book. Did Garcia and Green know that? How much you want to bet that dad was running the place where the son washed cars? How much you want to bet that the supervisor who alibied the son was working for the father?”

“Man, I was kidding about going to Paris. Sounds like you’re jonesing for a trip to Maui.”

“I just don’t like sloppy work. It leaves loose ends. We have to talk to Danny Kotchof and clear him ourselves. If that’s even possible after so many years.”

“AutoTrack, baby.”

“That might find him for us. It won’t clear him.”

“Even if we knock down his alibi, what are you saying, that this sixteen-year-old kid snuck over here from Hawaii, knocked off his old girlfriend and then went back without anybody seeing him?”

“Maybe it wasn’t planned like that. And he was seventeen-Muriel said he was a year older.”

“Oh, seventeen,” she said sarcastically, as if that made all the difference in the world.

“When I was eighteen I got a leave from Vietnam to Hawaii. You were not allowed to go stateside from there. Once I got there I changed clothes, bought a civilian-looking suitcase and walked right by the MPs to get on a plane to L.A. I think a seventeen-year-old could have done it.”

“Okay, Harry.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that it was sloppy work. According to the murder book, Green and Garcia cleared this guy with a phone call. There’s nothing in there about checking airlines and now it’s too late. It bugs me.”

“I understand. But just remember. We have a logic triangle we have to complete. We can connect Danny to Becky easy enough, and the gun connects Becky to Mackey. But what connects Danny to Mackey?”

Bosch nodded. It was a good point. But it didn’t make him feel any better about Danny Kotchof.

“Another thing is what he wrote in that letter,” he said. “He said he was sorry that it had to happen. Had to happen-what does that mean?”

“It’s just a figure of speech, Harry. You can’t build a case on it.”

“I’m not talking about building a case on it. I just wonder why he chose to say it that way.”

“If he’s still alive, we’ll find him and you’ll get to ask him.”

They had crossed under the 405 and were in Panorama City. Bosch dropped the discussion of Danny Kotchof and Rider brought up Muriel Verloren.

“She’s frozen solid,” Rider said.

“Yeah.”

“It’s pitiful. There was no reason for them to take the daughter up the hill. They might as well have killed everybody in the house. They did anyway.”

Bosch thought that was a harsh way of looking at it but didn’t say anything.

“Them?” he asked instead.

“What?”

“You said there was no reason for them to take the daughter up the hill. You sound like Bailey Sable.”

“I don’t know. Looking at that hill. It would have been tough for one person. It’s steep back there.”

“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. Two people.”

“Your idea about spooking Mackey is getting better. If he was there, he could lead us to the other-whether it’s Kotchof or somebody else.”

Bosch turned south on Van Nuys Boulevard and stopped in front of an aging apartment complex that covered half the block. It was called the Panorama View Suites. There was a sign that said RENTAL OFFICE to the left of the glass doors of the lobby. It also announced that units were available on a monthly and weekly basis. Bosch put the transmission into park.

“Besides Kotchof, what else were you thinking, Harry?”

“I was thinking that I want to track down and talk to the other two friends. Maybe you can take the lesbian. But the father is my priority-if we can find him.”

“Okay, you take the father and I’ll take the lesbian. Maybe I’ll get to go up to San Francisco.”

“It’s Hayward. And if you need help I know an inspector up there who will track her down and save L.A. the cost of the trip.”

“You are really no fun, Harry. I’d like to hang out with the northern sisters.”

“Did the chief know about you?”

“Not at first. When he found out he didn’t care.”

Bosch nodded. He liked the chief for that.

“What else?” Rider asked.

“Sam Weiss.”

“Who is that?”

“The burglary victim. The one whose gun was used to kill the girl.”

“Why him?”

“They didn’t have Roland Mackey back then. Might be worth running the name by him.”

“Check.”

“After that I think we’ll be ready to make the play with Mackey, see how he reacts.”

“Then let’s get this over with and then go talk to Pratt.”

They cracked the doors at the same time and got out. As Bosch came around the SUV he could feel her looking at him, studying him.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“With you. When you get that little crease on your left eyebrow I know something’s going on.”

“My ex-wife always told me I’d make a bad poker player. Too many tells.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I don’t know yet. Something about that room.”

“Back at the house? Her bedroom? You mean like it was creepy her keeping it like that?”

“No, actually, her keeping it was okay with me. I think I get that. It’s something else. Something wrong, something different. I’ll grind it out and let you know when I know.”

“Okay, Harry, that’s what you’re good at.”

They went through the glass doors into the Panorama View Suites. In ten minutes they confirmed what they knew going in; that Mackey had moved out soon after he had completed his probation.

As expected, he’d left no forwarding address.

14

ABEL PRATT WAS BEHIND his desk eating a concoction of yogurt and cornflakes out of a plastic tub. He made both a sucking and crackling sound as he ate and it was getting on Bosch’s nerves. They had been sitting with him for twenty minutes, updating him on the day’s progress on the cold hit.

“Shit, I’m still hungry,” he said after finishing the last spoonful.

“What is that, the South Beach diet?” Rider asked.

“No, just my own thing. What I need, though, is the South Bureau diet.”

“Really? And what is the South Bureau diet?”

Bosch could feel Rider tense. The South Bureau encompassed the majority of the city’s black community. She had to wonder if what Pratt had just said was some sort of backhanded racial comment. Bosch had often seen in the department the elevation of the us versus them ethic to the point that white cops would make racially tinged comments in front of black or Latino cops simply because they believed that within the rank and file, the color blue superseded skin color. Rider was about to find out if Pratt was one of these cops.

“Put down your antenna,” Pratt said. “All I’m saying is that I worked in South for ten years and I never had to worry about my weight. You’re always on the run down there. Then I got to RHD and gained fifteen pounds in two years. It’s sad.”

Rider relaxed and so did Bosch.

“Get off your ass and knock on doors,” Bosch said. “That was the rule in Hollywood.”

“Good rule,” Pratt said. “Except it’s hard when they put you in charge. I have to sit in here and hear about how you guys get to knock on doors.”

“But you get the big bucks,” Rider said.

“Oh, yeah.”

This was a joke because as a supervisor Pratt could not pull overtime. But those on his squad could, thereby setting up the possibility that some of his detectives would make more than him, even though he was the unit boss.

Pratt turned in his chair and opened a cooler on the floor beside him. He took out another tub of yogurt.

“Fuck it,” he said as he straightened up and opened it.

He didn’t add cornflakes this time. Bosch only had to put up with the slurping as he started spooning the white gunk into his mouth.

“Okay, back to this,” Pratt said, his mouth full of it. “What you are telling me is that at the end of the day you can tie the gun to this mope Mackey. He fired this weapon. But you’ve got nobody who ties him to the victim yet and therefore you cannot tie him to the fatal shot.”

“That and other things,” Rider said.

“So if I was a defense lawyer,” Pratt continued, “I would have Mackey cop to the burglary because the statute of limitations has long expired. He would say the gun bit him when he tried it out so he got rid of the damn thing-long before any murder. He’d say, ‘No sir I didn’t kill that little girl with it and you can’t prove I did. You can’t prove I ever laid eyes on her.’”

Rider and Bosch nodded.

“So you got nothing.”

They nodded again.

“Not bad for a day’s work. What do you want to do about it?”

“We want a wiretap,” Bosch said. “Two, maybe three locations. One on his cell, one on the phone at the gas station. And then one on his home once we find it and if he’s got a line there. We plant a story in the paper that says we’re working the case again and make sure he sees it. Then we see if he talks about it with anybody.”

“And what makes you think he would talk to someone else about a murder he may or may not have committed seventeen years ago?”

“Because, like we said, so far we can’t connect this guy to the girl in any way. So we’re thinking there is somebody in the middle in this thing. Mackey either did this for somebody or he got the gun for that somebody to do it himself.”

“There is a third possibility,” Rider added. “That he helped. That girl was carried up a steep hillside. It was either somebody big or somebody with help.”

Pratt took two spoonfuls of yogurt, frowning as he looked down into the tub, before responding.

“Okay, what about the newspaper? You going to be able to make a plant?”

“We think so,” Rider said. “We’re going to use Commander Garcia of Valley Bureau. He was on the case originally. Haunted by the one that got away, that sort of pitch. He says he’s got a connection at the Daily News.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan. Write up the warrants and give them to me. The captain has to approve them and then they go to the DA’s office for approval before going to the judge. It’s going to take some time. Once we get a judge to okay it we’ll take the other teams off what they’re doing and put them on the wire while you watch our guy.”

Bosch and Rider stood up at the same time. Bosch felt a little charge of adrenaline drop into his blood.

“There’s no chance this guy Mackey is into something right now, is there?” Pratt asked.

“What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

“It’s just that if we could make a case that he was about to commit a crime we could probably expedite the warrants.”

Bosch thought about this.

“We don’t have that now,” he said. “But we could work on it.”

“Good. That would help.”

15

RIDER WAS THE WRITER. She had an ease with the computer as well as the language of law. Bosch had seen her put these skills to use on several previous investigations. So their decision was unspoken. She would write the warrants seeking court authorization to trace and listen to calls made by or to Roland Mackey on his cell phone, the office phone at the service station where he worked, and his home if an additional phone existed there. It would be painstaking work; she had to lay out the case against Mackey, making sure the chain of logic and probable cause had no weak links. Her paper case had to first convince Pratt, then Captain Norona, then a deputy district attorney charged with making sure local law enforcement did not run roughshod over civil liberties, and finally a judge who had the same responsibilities but also answered to the electorate should he make a mistake that blew up in his face. They had one shot at this and they had to do it right. Rather, Rider had to do it right.

But all of that came after the initial hurdle of getting Mackey’s various phone numbers without tipping the suspect to the investigation taking form around him.

They started with Tampa Towing, which ran a half-page ad in the yellow pages that carried two 24-hour phone numbers. Next, a call to directory assistance established that Mackey had no hardwired phone listing private or otherwise in his name. It meant he either had no phone at his home or he was living in a place where the phone was registered to someone else. That could be dealt with later once they established Mackey’s residence.

Last and most difficult was Mackey’s cell phone number. Directory assistance did not carry cell listings. To check every cellular service provider for a listing could take days if not weeks because most required a court-ordered search warrant before revealing a customer’s private number. Instead, law enforcement investigators routinely planned ruses in order to get the numbers they needed. This often entailed leaving innocuous messages at workplaces so that the cell phone number could be captured upon callback. The most popular of these was the standard call-back-for-your-prize message, promising a television or DVD player to the first one hundred people who returned the call. However, this involved setting up a non-police line and could also result in long waiting periods with no guarantee of success if the target had masked his or her cell number. Rider and Bosch did not feel they had the luxury of time. They had put Mackey’s name out into the public. They had to move quickly toward their goal.

“Don’t worry,” Bosch told Rider. “I’ve got a plan.”

“Then I’ll just sit back and watch the master.”

Since he knew Mackey was on duty at the service station Bosch simply called the station and said he needed a tow. He was told to hold on and then a voice he believed belonged to Roland Mackey came onto the line.

“You need a tow?”

“Either a tow or a jump. I can’t get it started.”

“Where?”

“The Albertson’s parking lot on Topanga near Devonshire.”

“We’re all the way over on Tampa. You can get somebody closer.”

“I know but I live by you guys. Right off Roscoe and behind the hospital.”

“Okay, then. What are you driving?”

Bosch thought of the car they had seen Mackey in earlier. He decided to use it to pull Mackey off the fence.

“’Seventy-two Camaro.”

“Restored?”

“I’m working on it.”

“It should be about fifteen minutes before I’m there.”

“Okay, great. What’s your name?”

“Ro.”

“Ro? Like row a boat?”

“Like in Roland, man. I’m on my way.”

He hung up. Bosch and Rider waited five minutes, during which Bosch told her the rest of the plan and what part she would play in it. Her goal was to get two things: Mackey’s cell number and his service provider so that a search warrant authorizing the wiretap could be delivered to the proper company.

Following Bosch’s instructions, Rider called the Chevron station and started making a service appointment, going into great detail in describing the screeching her car’s brakes made. While she was in the middle of it, Bosch called the station on the second line listed in the phone book. As expected Rider was put on hold. Bosch’s call was answered and he said, “Do you have a number I can reach Ro on? He’s coming here to give me a jump and I got it started already.”

Mackey’s harried co-worker said, “Try him on his cell.”

He gave Bosch the number and Bosch flashed the thumbs-up across the desk to Rider. She finished her call without breaking the act and hung up.

“One down, one to go,” Bosch said.

“You got the easy one,” Rider said.

With Mackey’s number in hand, Rider took over while Bosch listened on an extension. Putting a disinterested bureaucratic glaze over her voice she called the number and when Mackey answered-presumably while looking for a stalled ’72 Camaro in a shopping center parking lot-she announced that she was his AT amp;T Wireless provider and that she had some exciting news for savings over his current long-distance minutes plan.

“Bullshit,” Mackey said, interrupting her in the middle of her spiel.

“Excuse me, sir?” Rider replied.

“I said bullshit. This is some sort of scam to make me switch.”

“I don’t understand, sir. I have you listed as an AT amp;T Wireless customer. Is that not the case?”

“Yeah, that’s not the fucking case. I’m with Sprint and I like it and I don’t even have or want long-distance service. So fuck off. Can you hear me now?”

He hung up and Rider started laughing.

“This is an angry guy we’re dealing with,” she said.

“Well, he just drove all the way across Chatsworth for nothing,” Bosch said. “I’d be angry too.”

“He’s with Sprint,” she said. “I’m ready to rock and roll on the paper. But maybe you should call him, so he won’t be suspicious about you not calling when the guy in the shop tells him he gave out his number.”

Bosch nodded and called Mackey’s number. Thankfully it went to a message; Mackey was probably on the phone angrily telling the guy in the shop he could not find the car he was supposed to tow. Bosch left a message saying he was sorry but he was able to get his car started and was trying to get it home. He closed his phone and looked at Rider.

They talked some more about scheduling and decided that she would work exclusively on the warrant that night and the next day and then babysit it through the approval stages. She said she wanted Bosch with her when it got to the final approval. Having both members of the team in the judge’s chambers would help cement the deal. Until then, Bosch would continue to work the field, tracking the remaining names on their list of people to be interviewed and putting the newspaper story in motion. Timing was going to be the issue. They didn’t want a story about the case in the newspaper until they had taps in place on the phones Mackey used. Finessing all of this would be the key maneuver.

“I’m going home, Harry,” Rider said. “I can get this started on my laptop.”

“Have a good one.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ve got a few things I want to get done tonight. Maybe go down to the Toy District, I think.”

“By yourself?”

“They’re only homeless people.”

“Yeah, and eighty percent of them are homeless because they’ve got faulty wiring, faulty plumbing, the whole bit. You be careful. Maybe you ought to call Central Division and see if they’ll send a car with you. Maybe they can spare the U-boat tonight.”

The U-boat was a single-officer car primarily used as a gopher for the watch commander. But Bosch didn’t think he needed a chaperone. He told Rider he would be all right and that she could go as soon as she showed him how to use the AutoTrack computer.

“Well, Harry, first you have to have a computer. I did it right from my laptop.”

He came around to her side and watched as she went to the AutoTrack website, entered password information and arrived at a template for a name search.

“Who do you want to start with?” she asked.

“How about Robert Verloren?”

She typed in the name and set parameters for the search.

“How fast does this work?” Bosch asked.

“Fast.”

In a few minutes she had located an address trail for Rebecca Verloren’s father. But it stopped short at the house in Chatsworth. Robert Verloren had not updated his driver’s license, bought property, registered to vote, applied for a credit card or had a utilities account in over ten years. He was a blank. He had disappeared-at least from the electronic grid.

“He must still be on the street,” Rider said.

“If he’s even still alive.”

Rider put the names Tara Wood and Daniel Kotchof through the AutoTrack moves and came up with multiple name hits for both of them. But by using their approximate ages and focusing on Hawaii and California they narrowed the searches to two address trails they believed belonged to the correct Tara Wood and Daniel Kotchof. Wood may not have gone to her high school reunion but it wasn’t because she had moved far away. She had only moved from the Valley over the hills to Santa Monica. Meanwhile, it appeared that Daniel Kotchof had returned from Hawaii many years earlier, lived in Venice for a few years and then returned to Maui, where his current address was located.

The last name Bosch gave Rider to run through the computer was Sam Weiss, the burglary victim whose gun was used to murder Rebecca Verloren. Though there were hundreds of hits on the name, it was easy to find the right Sam Weiss. He had never left the home where the burglary had taken place. He even had the same phone number. He had stood his ground.

Rider printed everything out for Bosch and also gave him the number for Grace Tanaka, which they had gotten earlier from Bailey Sable. She then gathered what she would need to work on the search warrant at home.

“If you need me give me a page,” she said as she put her computer into a padded case.

After she was gone Bosch checked the clock over Pratt’s door and saw it was just past six. He decided he would spend an hour or so chasing names before heading down to the Toy District to look for Robert Verloren. He knew he was just procrastinating over a search through the human throwaway zone that would be certain to leave him depressed. So he checked the clock again and promised himself he would spend no more than an hour working the phone.

He decided to go with the locals first but quickly struck out. Calls to both Tara Wood and Sam Weiss went unanswered and connected him with automated message systems. He left a message for Wood identifying himself, giving his cell phone number and mentioning that the call was in regard to Becky Verloren. He hoped that mentioning her friend’s name would be enough to intrigue and draw a response from her. With Weiss he only left his name and number, not wanting to forewarn him that the call was about what might be a source of guilt for the man who had indirectly provided the weapon that killed a sixteen-year-old girl.

Next he called Grace Tanaka’s number in Hayward and she answered after six rings. From the start she seemed put out by the call, as if it had interrupted something important, but her gruff manner and voice softened as soon as Bosch said he was calling about Rebecca Verloren.

“Oh my God, is something happening?” she asked.

“The department has taken an avid interest in reinvestigating the case,” Bosch said. “A name has come up. This is an individual who may have been involved in the case in nineteen eighty-eight and we are trying to figure out if he fit in with Becky or her friends in any way.”

“What’s his name?” she asked quickly.

“Roland Mackey. He was a couple years older than Becky. Didn’t go to Hillside but he lived right there in Chatsworth. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Not really. I don’t remember it. How was he connected? Was he the father?”

“The father?”

“The police said she was pregnant. I mean, that she had been pregnant.”

“No, we don’t know if he was connected that way or not. So you don’t recognize the name?”

“No.”

“He goes by Ro for short.”

“Still don’t.”

“And you’re saying you didn’t know about the pregnancy, is that right?”

“I didn’t. None of us did. I mean, her friends.”

Bosch nodded even though he knew she couldn’t see this. He didn’t say anything, hoping that she might get uncomfortable with the silence and say something that might be of value.

“Um, do you have a picture of this man?” she finally asked.

It wasn’t what Bosch was looking for.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll have to figure out a way to get it up there for you to look at, see if it jogs anything loose.”

“Can you just scan it and e-mail it?”

Bosch knew what she was asking him to do, and while he could not do it himself he guessed that Kiz Rider probably could.

“I think we could do that. My partner’s the computer person and she’s not here at the moment, though.”

“I’ll give you my e-mail address and she can send me the picture when she comes back.”

Bosch wrote the address she recited in his small notebook. He told her she’d get the e-mail the following morning.

“Is there anything else, Detective?”

Bosch knew he could end the call and have Rider take a shot at bonding with Grace Tanaka after the photo was sent to her. But he decided not to miss the opportunity to start stirring emotions and memories. Maybe something would break loose.

“I have just a few more questions. Uh, that summer, how would you characterize your relationship with Becky?”

“What do you mean? We were friends. I’d known her since first grade.”

“Right, well, were you the closest to her, do you think?”

“No, I think that would have been Tara.”

Another confirmation that Tara Wood had been tightest with Becky at the end.

“So she didn’t confide in you when she found out she was pregnant.”

“No, I already told you, I didn’t know about it until after she was dead.”

“What about you? Did you confide in her?”

“Of course I did.”

“Everything?”

“Detective, what are you getting at?”

“Did she know you were gay?”

“What did that have to do with anything?”

“I’m just trying to get a picture of the group. The Kitty Kat Club, I think the four of you called -”

“No,” she said abruptly. “She didn’t know. None of them knew. I don’t think I even knew back then. Okay, Detective? Is that enough?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Tanaka. I’m just trying to get as full a picture as I can. I appreciate your candor. One last question. If Becky was at a clinic after going through the procedure and she needed a ride home because she didn’t think she could drive, who would she have called?”

There was a long silence before Grace Tanaka answered.

“I don’t know, Detective. I would have hoped that it would have been me. That I was that kind of friend. But obviously it was somebody else.”

“Tara Wood?”

“You’ll have to ask her. Good night, Detective Bosch.”

She hung up and Bosch pulled open the yearbook so he could look at her photo. She was a petite Asian and the photo-so many years old-didn’t match the gruff demeanor of the voice he had just heard on the phone.

Bosch wrote a note for Rider that contained the e-mail address and instructions to scan and send the photo of Mackey. He also wrote a short warning about his encountering resistance from Tanaka when he brought up her sexuality. He slid the note over to her desk so she would see it first thing in the morning.

That left one last call, this one to Daniel Kotchof, who lived, according to AutoTrack, in Maui, where it was two hours earlier.

He called the number he had gotten from the AutoTrack search and a woman answered the line. She said she was Daniel Kotchof’s wife and told Bosch that her husband was at work at the Four Seasons Hotel, where he was employed as the hospitality manager. Bosch called the work number she gave him and was put through to Daniel Kotchof. He said he could only talk for a few minutes and put Bosch on hold for five of them while he went to a more private spot in the hotel to talk. When he finally came back on the line the call started out unproductively. Like Grace Tanaka, he did not recognize the name Roland Mackey. He also seemed to treat the call as a nuisance or an intrusion. He explained that he was married and had three children and that he rarely thought about Becky Verloren anymore. He reminded Bosch that he and his family had moved from the mainland a year before her death.

“But I was led to believe that after you moved to Hawaii, you two continued to call each other quite often,” Bosch said.

“I don’t know who told you that,” Kotchof said. “I mean, we talked. Especially at first. I would have to call her ’cause she said her parents told her it was too much money for her to call me. I thought that was kind of bogus. They just wanted me out of the picture is all. So I had to call, but it was like, what’s the use? I was in Hawaii and she was in L.A. It was over, man. And pretty soon I got a girlfriend here-in fact, she’s my wife now-and I stopped calling Beck. That was it until, you know, later, when I heard about what happened and the detective called me.”

“Did you know about it before the detective called?”

“Yeah, I’d heard. Mrs. Verloren called my dad and he broke the news to me. I also got some calls on it from some of my friends out there. They knew I’d want to know about it. It was weird, man, this girl that I knew gets wiped out like that.”

“Yeah.”

Bosch thought about what else he could ask. Kotchof’s story conflicted in small ways with Muriel Verloren’s account. He knew he would need to square the stories at some point. Kotchof’s alibi also continued to bother him.

“Hey, look, Detective, I should get going,” Kotchof said. “I’m at work. Is there anything else?”

“Just a few more questions. Do you remember how long before Rebecca’s death it was that you stopped calling her?”

“Um, I don’t know. Somewhere around the end of that first summer. Something like that. It had been a while, almost a year.”

Bosch decided to try to rattle Kotchof and see what came out. It was something he would rather have attempted in person but there was no time or money for a trip to Hawaii.

“So your relationship was definitely over by the time of her death?”

“Yes, definitely.”

Bosch thought the chances of recovering phone records from back then were not very high.

“When you were still calling was it always at a certain time? You know, like an appointment.”

“Sort of. I was two hours behind so I couldn’t call too late. I usually called right after dinner and that was right before she was going to go to bed. But like I said, it didn’t last too long.”

“Okay. Now I have to ask you something pretty personal. Did you have sex with Rebecca Verloren?”

There was a pause.

“What’s that got to do with this?”

“I can’t explain that, Dan. But it is part of the investigation and it could have a bearing on the case. Do you mind answering?”

“No.”

Bosch waited but Kotchof said nothing else.

“Is that your answer?” Bosch finally asked. “You two never had sex?”

“We never did. She said she wasn’t ready and I didn’t push it. Look, I have to go.”

“Okay, Dan, just a few more. I’m sure you would like for us to catch the guy who did this, right?”

“Yes, right, it’s just that I’m at work.”

“Yes, you said that. Let me ask you, when was the last time you saw Rebecca?”

“I don’t remember the exact date but it was like the day we left. When we said good-bye. That morning.”

“So you never came back from Hawaii once your family moved?”

“No, not at first. I mean, I’ve been back since. I lived in Venice for a couple years after I finished school, but then I came back here.”

“But not between the time your family moved and the time of Rebecca’s murder. Is that what you are saying?”

“Yes, right.”

“So if another witness I have spoken to said she saw you in town that weekend of July Fourth, right before Rebecca disappeared, then she would be wrong about that?”

“Yeah, she’d be wrong. Look, what is this? I told you. I never went back. I had a new girlfriend. I mean, I didn’t even go back for the funeral. Who told you they saw me? Was it Grace? She never liked me-that dyke. She was always trying to get me in trouble with Beck.”

“I can’t tell you who it is, Dan. Just like if you want to tell me something in confidence then I will respect that.”

“Whoever it is, she’s a fucking liar,” Kotchof said, his voice turning shrill. “That is a goddamn lie! Check your records, man! I had an alibi. I was working on the day she was taken, and I was working the next day, too. How could I have gotten there and back? Whoever told you that is totally fucking bogus!”

“It’s your alibi that is bogus, Dan. Your old man could have put your supervisor up to it. That was easy.”

A moment of silence passed before there was a response.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. My father didn’t put anybody up to anything and that’s a goddamn fact. We had the time cards and my boss talked to the cops and that was it. Now you come along seventeen years later with this shit? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Okay, Dan, take it easy. Sometimes people make mistakes. Especially when you are going back all those years.”

“This is all I need, to be dragged into this. Man, I’ve got a family over here.”

“I said take it easy. You aren’t dragged into anything. This is just a phone call. Just a conversation, okay? Now, is there anything else you can tell me or want to tell me to help with this thing?”

“No. I told you all I know, which is nothing. And I have to go. I mean it this time.”

“So were you upset when Rebecca told you she was pregnant and it was obvious to you that it was with another guy?”

There was no answer at first so Bosch tried to turn the screw a bit.

“Especially since she would never have relations with you when you two were together.”

Bosch realized he had gone too far and tipped his hand. Kotchof realized that Bosch was playing good cop and bad cop with him all at once. When he responded, his voice was calm and modulated.

“She never told me that,” he said. “I never knew until it came out after.”

“Really? Who told you?”

“I can’t remember. One of my friends, I guess.”

“Really? Because Rebecca kept a journal. And you’re all over it, man. And she says she told you and you weren’t too happy about it.”

Now Kotchof laughed and Bosch knew he had really blown it.

“Detective, you are full of shit. You’re the one who’s lying. This is really weak, man. I mean, I watch Law and Order, you know.”

“Do you watch CSI?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, we got the killer’s DNA. If we match it to somebody they’re going to take a fall. DNA is the ultimate closer.”

“Good. Check mine and maybe this can all be over for me.”

Bosch knew he was the one backpedaling now. He had to end the call.

“Okay then, Dan, we’ll let you know about that. Meantime, thank you for your help. One last question. What’s a hospitality manager?”

“You mean here at the hotel? I take care of large parties and conferences and weddings and things like that. I make sure it all runs smoothly when these big groups come in here.”

“Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to it. Have a good day.”

Bosch hung up and sat at the desk thinking about the call. He was embarrassed by how he had let the upper hand slip across the line to Kotchof. He knew his interviewing skills had largely been dormant for three years but that did not salve the burn. He knew he had to get better and it had to be soon.

Aside from that, there was a lot of content from the call to consider. He didn’t read much into Kotchof’s angry reaction to supposedly being seen in L.A. right before the murder. After all, Bosch had fabricated the witness and Kotchof’s angry response would certainly be justified. But what was notable was how Kotchof’s anger zeroed in on Grace Tanaka. Their relationship might be worth exploring further, maybe through Kiz Rider.

He also considered Kotchof’s statement about not knowing about Rebecca Verloren’s pregnancy. Bosch instinctively believed him. All in all it didn’t drop Kotchof from the suspect list, but it at least pushed him to a back burner. He would discuss all of Kotchof’s answers with Rider and see if she agreed.

The most interesting information gleaned from the call was in the conflicts between Kotchof’s memories and those of Muriel Verloren, the victim’s mother. Muriel Verloren had said Kotchof had called her daughter religiously, right up until the time of her death. Kotchof said he had done no such thing. Bosch didn’t see any reason for Kotchof to lie about it. If he hadn’t, then Muriel Verloren’s memory was wrong. Or it was her daughter who had lied about who called her every night before bed. Since the girl was hiding a relationship and the pregnancy that came from it, it seemed likely that the phone calls did come in every night but they were not from Kotchof. They were from someone else, someone Bosch started thinking of as Mr. X.

After looking up Muriel Verloren’s number in the murder book Bosch called the house. He apologized for intruding and said he had a few follow-up questions. Muriel said she was not bothered by the call.

“What are your questions?”

“I saw the phone on the table next to your daughter’s bed. Was that an extension of the house phone or did she have her own phone number?”

“She had her own number. A private line.”

“So when Daniel Kotchof called her at night she would be the one who answered the phone, right?”

“Yes, in her room. It was the only extension.”

“So the only way you know that Danny was calling was because she told you.”

“No, I heard the phone ring sometimes. He called.”

“What I mean, Mrs. Verloren, is that you never answered those calls and you never talked to Danny Kotchof, right?”

“That’s right. It was her private line.”

“So when that phone rang and she talked to somebody, the only way you would know who it was on the line was if she told you. Is that correct?”

“Uh, yes, I guess that is right. Are you saying it wasn’t Danny who called all of those times?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I talked to Danny in Hawaii and he said he stopped calling your daughter long before she was taken. He had a new girlfriend, you see. In Hawaii.”

This information was treated with a long pause. Finally, Bosch spoke into the void.

“Do you have any idea who it could have been that she was talking to, Mrs. Verloren?”

After another pause Muriel Verloren weakly offered an answer.

“Maybe one of her girlfriends.”

“It’s possible,” Bosch said. “Anybody else you can think of?”

“I don’t like this,” she responded quickly. “It’s like I’m learning things all over again.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Verloren. I will try not to hit you with these sorts of things unless it is necessary. But I am afraid this is necessary. Did you and your husband ever come to any conclusion about the pregnancy?”

“What do you mean? We didn’t know about it until after.”

“I understand that. What I mean is, did you think it came out of a hidden relationship or was it simply a mistake she made one day with, you know, someone she was not really in a relationship with?”

“You mean like a one-night stand? Is that what you are saying about my daughter?”

“No, ma’am, I am not saying anything about your daughter. I am simply asking questions. I do not want to upset you but I want to find the person who killed Rebecca. And I need to know all there is to know.”

“We could never explain it, Detective,” she responded coldly. “She was gone and we decided not to delve into it. We left everything to the police and we just tried to remember the daughter we knew and loved. You said you have a daughter. I hope you understand.”

“I think I do. Thank you for your answers. One last question-and there is no pressure on this-but would you be willing to talk to a newspaper reporter about your daughter and the case?”

“Why would I do that? I didn’t before. I don’t believe in putting it out there for the public.”

“I admire that. But this time I want you to do it because it might help us flush out the bird.”

“You mean it might make the person who did this come out from cover?”

“Exactly.”

“Then I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Verloren. I will let you know.”

16

ABEL PRATT CAME OUT of his office with his suit jacket on. He noticed Bosch sitting at his desk in the alcove, using two fingers to type up a report on his telephone conversation with Muriel Verloren. The finished reports on the phone interviews with Grace Tanaka and Daniel Kotchof were on the desk.

“Where’s Kiz?” Pratt asked.

“She’s working on the warrant at home. She can think better there.”

“I can’t think when I get home. I can only react. I have twin boys.”

“Good luck.”

“Yeah, I need it. I’m going that way now. I’ll see you tomorrow, Harry.”

“Okay.”

But Pratt didn’t walk away. Bosch looked up from the typewriter at him. He thought maybe something was wrong. Maybe it was the typewriter.

“I found this on a desk on the other side,” Bosch said. “It didn’t look like it was being used by anybody.”

“It wasn’t. Most people use their computers now. You are definitely an old-school kind of guy, Harry.”

“I guess. Kiz usually does the reports, but I have some time to kill.”

“Working late?”

“I’ve got to go over to the Nickel.”

“ Fifth Street? What do you want over there?”

“Looking for our victim’s father.”

Pratt shook his head somberly.

“Another one of those. We’ve seen it before.”

Bosch nodded.

“Ripples,” he said.

“Yeah, ripples,” Pratt agreed.

Bosch was thinking about offering to walk out with Pratt, maybe have a conversation and get to know him better, but his cell phone started to chirp. He pulled it off his belt and saw the name Sam Weiss in the caller ID screen.

“I better take this.”

“All right, Harry. Be careful over there.”

“Thanks, Boss.”

He flipped open the phone.

“Detective Bosch,” he said.

“Detective?”

Bosch remembered he had left no information on his message to Weiss.

“Mr. Weiss, my name is Harry Bosch. I am a detective with the LAPD. I’d like to ask you a few questions about an investigation I am conducting.”

“I have all the time you need, Detective. Is this about my gun?”

The question caught Bosch off guard.

“Why would you ask that, sir?”

“Well, because I know it was used in a murder that was never solved. And that’s the only thing I can think of that the LAPD would want to ask me about.”

“Well, yes, sir, it’s about the gun. Can I talk to you about it?”

“If it means you are trying to find who killed that girl, then you can ask me anything you want.”

“Thank you. I guess the first thing I’d like is for you to tell me how and when you knew or were told that the weapon stolen from you was used in a homicide.”

“It was in the papers-the murder was-and I put two and two together. I called the detective assigned to my burglary and asked and got the answer I wish I hadn’t.”

“Why is that, Mr. Weiss?”

“Because I’ve had to live with it.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong, sir.”

“I know that, but it doesn’t make a person feel any better. I bought that gun because I was having trouble with a bunch of punks. I wanted protection. Then the gun I bought ended up being the instrument of death for that young girl. Don’t think I haven’t thought about changing history. I mean, what if I wasn’t so stubborn? What if I just pulled up stakes and moved instead of going and buying that damn thing? You see what I mean?”

“Yes, I see.”

“Now, that said, what else can I tell you, Detective?”

“I have just a few questions. Calling you was sort of a shot in the dark. I thought it might be easier than trying to find my way back through seventeen years of paperwork and department history. I have the initial report on the burglary and the investigator is listed as John McClellan. Do you remember him?”

“Sure, I remember him.”

“Did he ever clear the case?”

“Not as far as I know. At first John thought it might have been connected to the punks who had threatened me.”

“And was it?”

“John told me no. But I was never sure. The burglars really tore the place apart. It wasn’t like they were really looking for stuff to steal. They were just destroying things-my belongings. I walked in this place and, man, I could feel a lot of anger.”

“Why do you say burglars? Did the police think it was more than one?”

“John figured it had to be at least two or three. I was only gone an hour-went to the store. One guy couldn’t have done all that damage in that time.”

“The report lists the gun, a coin collection and some cash that was taken. Anything else come up missing after?”

“No, that was it. That was enough. At least I got the coins back, and that was the most valuable thing. It was my father’s collection from when he was a boy.”

“How did you get it back?”

“John McClellan. He brought them back to me a couple weeks later.”

“Did he say where he recovered them from?”

“He said a pawnshop in West Hollywood. And then, of course, we know what became of the gun. But that was not given back to me. I wouldn’t have taken it anyway.”

“I understand, sir. Did Detective McClellan ever tell you who he thought burglarized your home? Did he have any theories?”

“He thought it was just another set of punks, you know. Not the Chatsworth Eights.”

The mention of the Chatsworth Eights stirred something in Bosch, but he couldn’t place it.

“Mr. Weiss, act like I don’t know anything. Who were the Chatsworth Eights?”

“It was a gang out here in the Valley. They were all white kids. Skinheads. And back in nineteen eighty-eight they committed a number of crimes out here. They were hate crimes. That’s what they called them in the papers. Back then it was the new term for crimes motivated by race or religion.”

“And you were the target of this gang?”

“Yeah, I started getting calls. The typical kill-the-Jew stuff.”

“But then the police told you the Eights did not commit the burglary.”

“That’s right.”

“Strange, isn’t it? They didn’t see any connection.”

“That’s what I thought at the time but he was the detective, not me.”

“What made the Eights target you, Mr. Weiss? I know you are Jewish but what made them pick you out?”

“Simple. One of the little shits was a kid who lived in my neighborhood. Billy Burkhart was four houses away. I put a menorah in my window during Chanukah and that’s when it all started.”

“What happened to Burkhart?”

“He went to jail. Not for what he did to me, but to others. They got him and the others on other crimes. They burned a cross a few blocks from me. In the front lawn of a black family. And they did other things. Mean things, vandalism. They tried to burn a temple, too.”

“But not the burglary at your house.”

“That’s right. That’s what the police told me. You see, there was no graffiti or indication of religious motivation. The place was just torn apart. So they didn’t classify the burglary as a hate crime.”

Bosch hesitated, wondering if there was anything else to ask. He decided he didn’t know enough to ask smart questions.

“Okay, Mr. Weiss, I appreciate your time. And I am sorry to reawaken bad memories.”

“Don’t worry about it, Detective. Believe me, they weren’t asleep.”

Bosch closed the phone. He tried to think of whom he could call about all of this. He didn’t know John McClellan and the chances of his still being in Devonshire Division seventeen years later were slim. Then it hit him: Jerry Edgar. His old partner at Hollywood Division had previously been assigned to Devonshire detectives. He would have been there in 1988.

Bosch called the Hollywood homicide table but got the machine. Everybody had cut out early. He called the main detective bureau number and asked if Edgar was around. Bosch knew that there was a sign-out chart at the front counter. The clerk who answered the phone said Edgar had signed out for the day.

The third call was to Edgar’s cell phone. His old partner answered it promptly.

“You guys go home early in Hollywood,” Bosch said.

“Who the hell is-Harry, that you?”

“That me. How’s it hanging, Jerry?”

“I was wondering when I’d hear from you. You start again today?”

“The world’s oldest boot. And I already got a hot shot. Kiz and I are working a breaking case.”

Edgar didn’t respond and Bosch knew mentioning Rider had been a mistake. The gulf between them not only still existed but was apparently frozen over.

“Anyway, I need to tap into that big brain of yours. This is going back to Club Dev days.”

“Yeah, which day?”

“Nineteen eighty-eight. The Chatsworth Eights. You remember them?”

There was silence while Edgar thought for a moment.

“Yeah, I remember the Eights. They were a bunch of peckerwoods that thought shaved heads and tattoos made them men. They did a lot of shit, then they got stepped on. They didn’t last long.”

“You remember a guy named Roland Mackey? Would’ve been about eighteen back then.”

After a pause Edgar said he didn’t remember the name.

“Who was working the Eights?” Bosch asked.

“Not Club Dev, man. Everything with them went straight down the rabbit hole.”

“PDU?”

“You got it.”

The Public Disorder Unit. A shadowy downtown squad that gathered data and intelligence on conspiracies but made few cases. Back in 1988 the PDU would have been under the aegis of then commander Irvin Irving. The unit was not in existence anymore. When Irving rose to the level of deputy chief he promptly disbanded the PDU, with many in the department believing it was a measure taken to cover up and distance himself from its activities.

“That’s not going to help,” Bosch said.

“Sorry about that. What are you working?”

“The murder of a girl up on Oat Mountain.”

“The one taken out of her house?”

“Yeah.”

“I remember that one, too. I didn’t work it-I had just gotten to the homicide table. But I remember that one. You’re saying the Eights were in on that one?”

“No. Just that a name came up that might have a connection to the Eights. Might. So does Eights mean what I think?”

“Yeah, man, eight for H. Eighty-eight for H-H. And H-H for Heil -”

“- Hitler. Yeah, I thought so.”

Then it struck Bosch that Kiz Rider had been right when she thought the year of the crime might be significant. The murder and the rest of the crimes committed by the Chatsworth Eights had occurred in 1988. It was all part of a confluence of seemingly small things coming together. And now Irvin Irving and the PDU were mixed into the soup as well. A cold hit match of DNA to a loser who drove a tow truck for a living was blossoming into something bigger.

“Jerry, you remember a guy who worked at Devonshire named John McClellan?”

“John McClellan? No, I don’t remember. What did he work?”

“I got his name here on a burglary report.”

“No, definitely not the burglary table. I worked burglary before going over to homicide. There was no John McClellan on burglary. Who is he?”

“Like I said, just a name on a report. I’ll figure it out.”

Bosch knew that this meant McClellan was likely in the PDU at the time and the investigation of the burglary of Sam Weiss’s home was folded into the investigation of the Chatsworth Eights. He didn’t care to discuss all of this with Edgar.

“Jerry, so you were new on the homicide table back then?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you know Green and Garcia very well?”

“Not really. I just got to the table and they weren’t there that long after. Green pulled the pin and about a year after that Garcia made lieutenant.”

“From what you saw, what was your take on them?”

“How so?”

“As homicide men.”

“Well, Harry, I was pretty fresh back then. I mean, what did I know? I was still learning. But the take on them was that Green was the power. Garcia was just the housekeeper. What some people said about Garcia was that he couldn’t find shit in his own mustache with a mirror and comb.”

Bosch didn’t respond. By labeling Garcia a housekeeper Edgar was saying that Garcia rode his partner’s coattails. Green was the real homicide cop and Garcia was the guy who backed him up and kept the murder books tidy and up to date. A lot of partnerships got sanded down into such relationships. An alpha dog and his assistant.

“I guess he didn’t need to,” Edgar said.

“Didn’t need to what?”

“Find shit in his mustache. He was going places, man. He made lieutenant and was out of there. You know he’s currently second in command in the Valley, right?”

“Yeah, I know. In fact, if you see him you might not want to mention that mustache bit.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

Bosch thought some more about what this might have meant to the Verloren investigation. A small crack was moving under the surface of things.

“That it, Harry?”

“I heard Green ate his gun not too long after pulling the pin.”

“Yeah, I heard that. I don’t remember being surprised. He always looked like a guy carrying a full load of somethin’. You going to take a run at PDU, Harry? You know that was Irving ’s squad, don’t you?”

“Yeah, Jerry, I know. I doubt I’m going that way.”

“Be careful if you do, my man.”

Bosch wanted to change the subject before hanging up. Edgar had always been a department gossip. Harry didn’t want his old partner’s loose lips to spread the word that Bosch was taking a run at Irving now that he was back with a badge.

“So how’s things in Hollywood?” he asked.

“We just got back into the bureau after the earthquake retrofit. You missed all of that. We were stuck upstairs in roll call for like a year.”

“How is it?”

“It’s like an insurance office now. We have pods and sound filters between the desks. All done up in government gray. Nice but not the same.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Then they gave the D-threes double-wides-desks with two sides of drawers. The rest of us get one side.”

Bosch smiled. Little slights like that got magnified in the department and the administrators who made such decisions never learned. Like when most of Internal Affairs moved out of Parker Center and into the old Bradbury Building and the word spread through the ranks that the captain over there had a fireplace in his office.

“So what are you gonna do, Jerry?”

“Same old same old, that’s what I’m gonna do. Get off my ass and knock on doors.”

“I hear you, man.”

“Watch your six, Harry.”

“Always.”

After hanging up, Bosch sat motionless at his desk for a few moments as he thought through the conversation and the new meanings it brought to the case. If there was a connection between the case and PDU then they had a whole new ball game.

He looked down at the murder book, still open to the burglary report, and stared at the scrawled signature of John McClellan. He picked up the phone and called the Department of Operations in Parker Center and asked the duty officer for an assignment location for a detective named John McClellan. He read McClellan’s badge number off the burglary report. He was put on hold and expected that he would be told that McClellan was long retired. It had been seventeen years.

But when the duty officer came back on the line he reported that an officer named John McClellan with the badge number Bosch provided was now a lieutenant assigned to the Office of Strategic Planning. The synapse connections in Bosch’s brain started tripping. Seventeen years ago McClellan worked for Irving in the PDU. Now the assignment and rank were different but he was still working for him. And Irving just happened to run into Bosch in the Parker Center cafeteria on the day Bosch caught a case with ties to the PDU.

“High jingo,” Bosch whispered to himself as he hung up.

Like a battleship going into a turn, the case was slowly, surely and unstoppably moving in a new direction. Bosch could feel something building inside his chest. He thought about the coincidence of Irving crossing his path. If it was a coincidence. Bosch wondered if the deputy chief already knew at that moment what case they had pulled the cold hit on and where it was going to lead.

The department buried secrets every day. It was a given. But who would have thought seventeen years ago that a chemical test run one day in a DOJ lab in Sacramento might put a shovel into the greasy dirt and turn over the past, bringing this secret to light.

17

DRIVING HOME Bosch thought about the many different tendrils of the investigation that were wrapping around the body of Rebecca Verloren. He knew he had to keep his eyes on the prize. The evidence was the key. The elements of departmental politics and possible corruption and cover-up all amounted to what was known as high jingo. It could be threatening and distracting from the intended goal. He had to avoid this at the same time that he had to be wary of it.

Eventually he was able to push thoughts of Irving ’s shadow over the investigation aside and concentrate on the case. His thoughts somehow led him to Rebecca’s bedroom and how her mother had left it unchanged by time. He wondered if it was the loss of the daughter that did it or was it the circumstances of the loss? What if you lost a child by natural causes or accident or circumstances like divorce? Bosch had a daughter he rarely saw. It weighed on him. He knew that near or far his daughter left him completely vulnerable, that he could end up like the mother who preserved a daughter’s bedroom like a museum, or the father who was long lost to the world.

More so than this question, something about the bedroom bothered him. He couldn’t quite reach what it was but he knew it was there and it nagged at him. He looked from the elevated freeway out across Hollywood to his left. There was still some light in the sky but the evening was starting. Darkness had waited long enough. Searchlights that he knew could be traced down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine were crisscrossing the horizon. To him it looked nice. To him it looked like home.

When he got to his house on the hill he checked the mail and the phone for messages and then changed out of the suit he had bought for his return to the job. He carefully hung it in the closet, thinking he could wear it at least once more before having to take it in to the cleaners. He put on blue jeans, black sneakers and a black pullover shirt. He put on a sport coat that was fraying on the right shoulder from his cutting corners too close. He transferred his gun and badge and wallet. Then he got back into his car and headed downtown to the Toy District.

He decided to park in Japantown in the museum lot so he wouldn’t have to worry about the car being broken into or vandalized. From there he walked over to Fifth Street, encountering an increasing density of homeless people as he progressed. The city’s primary homeless encampments and the missions that catered to them lined a five-block stretch of Fifth Street south of Los Angeles Street. The sidewalks outside the missions and cheap residence hotels were lined with cardboard boxes and shopping carts filled with the dirty and meager belongings of lost people. It was as if some sort of social disintegration bomb had gone off and the shrapnel of damaged, disenfranchised lives had been hurled everywhere. Up and down the street there were men and women yelling, their shouts unintelligible or simply eerie non sequiturs in the night. It felt like a city with its own rule and reason, a hurt city with a wound so deep that the bandages the missions applied could not stop the bleeding.

As he walked, Bosch noted that he was not asked once for money or cigarettes or any kind of handout. The irony was not lost on him. It appeared that the place with the highest concentration of homeless people in the city was also the place where a citizen was safest from their entreaties, if nothing else.

The Los Angeles Mission and the Salvation Army had major help centers here. Bosch decided to start with them. He had a twelve-year-old driver’s license photo of Robert Verloren and an even older photograph of him at his daughter’s funeral. He showed these to the people operating the help centers and the kitchen workers who put free food on hundreds of plates every day. He got little response until a kitchen worker remembered Verloren as a “client” who came through the chow line pretty regularly a few years before.

“It’s been a while,” the man said. “Haven’t seen him.”

After spending an hour in each center Bosch started working his way down the street, stepping into the smaller missions and flop hotels and showing the photos. He got a few recognitions of Verloren but nothing fresh, nothing to lead him to the man who had completely dropped off the human radar screen so many years before. He worked it until ten-thirty and decided he would return the next day to finish canvassing the street. As he walked back toward Japantown he was depressed by what he had just immersed himself in and by the dwindling hopes of finding Robert Verloren. He walked with his head down, hands in his pockets, and therefore didn’t see the two men until they had already seen him. They stepped out of the alcoves of two side-by-side toy stores as Bosch passed. One blocked his path. The other stepped out behind him. Bosch stopped.

“Hey, missionary man,” said the one in front of him.

In the dim glow from a streetlight half a block away Bosch saw the glint of a blade down at the man’s side. He turned slightly to check the man behind him. He was smaller. Bosch wasn’t sure but it looked like he was simply holding a chunk of concrete in his hand. A piece of broken curb. Both men were dressed in layers, a common sight in this part of the city. One was black and one was white.

“The kitchens are all closed up and we’re still hungry,” said the one with the knife. “You got a few bucks for us? You know, like we could borrow.”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, not really.”

“Not really? You sure ’bout that, boy? You look like you got a nice fat wallet on you now. Don’t be holding back on us.”

A black rage grew in Bosch. In a moment of sharp focus he knew what he could and would do. He would draw his weapon and put bullets into both of these men. In that same instant he knew he would walk away from it after a cursory departmental investigation. The glint of the blade was Bosch’s ticket and he knew it. The men on either side of him didn’t know what they had just walked into. It was like being in the tunnels so many years before. Everything closed down to a tight space. Nothing but kill or be killed. There was something absolutely pure about it, no gray areas and no room for anything else.

Then suddenly the moment changed. Bosch saw the one with the knife staring intently at him, reading something in his eyes, one predator taking the measure of another. The knife man seemed to grow smaller by an almost imperceptible measure. He backed off without physically backing off.

Bosch knew there were people considered to be mind readers. The truth was they were face readers. Their skill was interpreting the myriad muscle constructions of the eyes, the mouth, the eyebrows. From this they decoded intent. Bosch had a level of skill in this. His ex-wife made a living playing poker because she had an even higher skill. The man with the knife had a measure of this skill as well. It had surely saved his life this time.

“Nah, never mind,” said the man.

He took a step back toward the store’s alcove.

“Have a good night, missionary man,” he said as he retreated into the darkness.

Bosch fully turned and looked at the other man. Without a word, he too stepped back into his crack to hide and wait for the next victim.

Bosch looked up and down the street. It seemed deserted now. He turned and headed on toward his ride. As he walked he took out his cell phone and called the Central Division patrol office. He told the watch sergeant about the two men he encountered and asked him to send a patrol car.

“That kind of stuff happens on every block down there in that hellhole,” the sergeant said. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to send a car and roust them. They’ll think twice about doing anything to anybody.”

“Well, why didn’t you do anything about it yourself?”

“Because I’m working a case, Sergeant, and I can’t get off it to do your job or your paperwork.”

“Look, buddy, don’t be telling me how to do my job. You suits are all the same. You think -”

“Look, Sergeant, I’m going to check the crime reports in the morning. If I read that somebody got hurt down here and the suspects were a black and white team, then you’re going to have more suits around you than at the Men’s Warehouse. I guarantee it.”

Bosch closed his phone, cutting off a last protest from the watch sergeant. He picked up his pace, got to his car and started back over to the 101 Freeway. He then headed back up to the Valley.

18

FINDING COVER with a visual line on Tampa Towing was difficult. Both strip shopping plazas located on the other corners were closed and their parking lots empty. Bosch would be obvious if he parked in either one. The competing service station on the third corner was still open and thus, unusable for surveillance. After considering the situation Bosch parked on Roscoe a block away and walked back to the intersection. Borrowing an idea from the would-be robbers of less than an hour before, he found a darkened alcove in one of the strip plazas from which he could watch the service station. He knew the problem with his choice of surveillance was getting back to his car fast enough to avoid losing Mackey when he went off shift.

The ad he had checked earlier in the phone book said Tampa Towing offered twenty-four-hour service. But it was coming up on midnight and Bosch was betting that Mackey, who had come on duty at 4 p.m., would be getting off soon. He would either be replaced by a midnight man or would be on call through the night.

It was at times like this that Bosch thought about smoking again. It always seemed to make the time go faster and it took the edge off the anxiety that always built through a surveillance. But it had been more than four years now and he didn’t want to break stride. Learning two years earlier that he was a father had helped him get past the occasional weaknesses. He thought that if not for his daughter he’d probably be smoking again. At best he had controlled the addiction. By no means had he broken it.

He took out his cell phone and angled the light from its screen away from view of the service station while he punched in Kiz Rider’s home number. She didn’t answer. He tried her cell and got no answer again. He assumed she had shut down the phones so she could concentrate on writing the warrant. She had worked it that way in the past. He knew she would leave her pager on for emergencies but he didn’t think the news he had gathered during the evening’s phone calls rose to the level of emergency. He decided to wait until he saw her in the morning to tell her what he had learned.

He put his phone in his pocket and raised the binoculars to his eyes. Through the glass windows of the service station office he could see Mackey sitting behind a weathered gray desk. There was another man in a similar blue on blue uniform in the office. It must have been a slow night. Both of the men had their feet propped up on the desk and were looking up at something high on the wall over the front window. Bosch could not see what they were focused on but the changing light in the room told him it was a television.

Bosch’s phone chirped and he pulled it from his pocket and answered without lowering the binoculars. He didn’t check the display because he assumed it was Kiz Rider calling after noticing that she had missed his call.

“Hey.”

“Detective Bosch?”

It wasn’t Rider. Bosch lowered the field glasses.

“Yes, this is Bosch. How can I help you?”

“This is Tara Wood. I got your message.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks for calling back.”

“It sounds like this is your cell. I’m sorry to call so late. I just got in. I thought I was just going to leave a message on your office line.”

“No problem. I’m still working.”

Bosch went through the same interview process he had employed with the others. As he mentioned the name Roland Mackey to her he checked on Mackey through the glasses. He was still at the desk, watching the tube. Like Rebecca Verloren’s other friends, Tara Wood didn’t recognize the tow truck driver’s name. Bosch added a new question, asking if she remembered the Chatsworth Eights, and her memory was vague about that as well. Lastly he asked if the next day he could continue the interview and show her a photograph of Mackey. She agreed but told him he would have to come to the CBS television studios, where she worked as a publicist. Bosch knew that CBS was next to the Farmers Market, one of his favorite places in the city. He decided he could go to the market, maybe eat a bowl of gumbo for lunch, and then go see Tara Wood to show the photo of Mackey and ask about Rebecca Verloren’s pregnancy. He made the appointment for 1 p.m. and she agreed to be in her office.

“This is such an old case,” Wood said. “Are you like on a cold case squad?”

“We actually call it the Open-Unsolved Unit.”

“You know, we have a show called Cold Case. It’s on Sunday nights. It’s one of the shows I work on. I’m thinking… maybe you could visit the set and meet some of your television counterparts. I am sure they would love to meet you.”

Bosch realized she might be working up some sort of publicity angle. He looked through the glasses at Mackey staring up at the television and thought for a moment of trying to use her interest in the wiretap play they were going to put into motion. He then quickly shelved it, concluding that it would be easier to start the play with a newspaper plant.

“Yeah, maybe, but I think that would have to wait awhile. We’re working this case pretty hard right now and I just need to talk to you tomorrow.”

“No problem. I really hope you find who you are looking for. Ever since I was assigned to this show I’ve been thinking about Rebecca. You know, wondering if there was anything happening. Then out of the blue you called. It’s weird, but in a good way. I’ll see you tomorrow, Detective.”

Bosch said good night and hung up.

A few minutes later, at midnight, the lights at the service station went out. Bosch knew that offering twenty-four-hour tow service didn’t necessarily translate into being open twenty-four hours a day. Mackey or another driver was probably on call through the night.

Bosch slipped from his hiding spot and hustled down Roscoe to the SUV. Just as he got to it he heard the deep thrumming sound of Mackey’s Camaro coming to life. He started his engine, pulled away from the curb, and headed back toward the intersection. As he got there and was stopping for the red light he saw the Camaro with the gray-painted fenders cross the intersection, heading south on Tampa. Bosch waited a few moments, checked all lanes of the intersection for other cars, and blew through the red light to follow.

Mackey’s first stop was a bar called the Side Pocket. It was on Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys near the railroad tracks. It was a small place with a blue neon sign and the barred windows painted black. Bosch had an idea what it would be like inside and what kind of men would be in there. Before leaving his car he took off his sport coat, wrapped his gun, handcuffs and extra clip in it and put it on the floor in front of the passenger seat. He got out and locked the door and headed toward the bar, pulling his shirt out of his jeans as he went.

The inside of the bar was as he expected. A couple of pool tables, a stand-up bar and a row of scarred wood booths. Even though smoking inside the place was illegal, blue smoke was heavy in the air and hanging like a ghost beneath each table light. Nobody was complaining.

Most of the men took their medicine straight up, meaning they were standing. Most had chains on their wallets and tattoos ringing their lower arms. Even with the changes to his appearance Bosch knew he would stand out, possibly even be advertising that he didn’t belong. He saw an opening in the shadows where the bar curved under the television mounted in the corner. He slipped into the spot and leaned over the bar, hoping it helped hide his appearance.

The bartender, a worn woman wearing a black leather vest over a T-shirt, ignored Bosch for a while but that was all right. He wasn’t there to drink. He watched Mackey put quarters on one of the tables and wait for his turn to play. He hadn’t ordered a drink either.

Mackey spent ten minutes going through the assortment of pool cues on the wall racks until he found one he liked the feel of. He then stood by waiting and talking to some of the men standing around the pool table. It didn’t appear to be anything more than casual conversation, as though he knew them but only from playing pool on previous nights.

While he waited and watched, nursing the beer and whisky shot the bartender had finally delivered to him, Bosch at first thought people were watching him as well, but then realized they were only staring at the television screen less than a foot above his head.

Finally Mackey got his game and he turned out to be good at it. He quickly won control of the table and defeated seven challengers, collecting money or beers from all of them. After a half hour he seemed to tire from the lack of competition and got sloppy. The eighth challenger beat him after Mackey missed a clean shot at the eight ball. Mackey took the loss well and slapped a five-dollar bill down on the green felt before stepping away. By Bosch’s count he was at least twenty-five dollars and three beers ahead for the night.

Mackey took his Rolling Rock to a space at the bar and that was Bosch’s cue to withdraw. He put a ten under his empty shot glass and turned away, never giving Mackey his face. He left the bar and went back to his car. The first thing he did was put the gun back on his right hip, grip forward. He started the engine and drove out onto Sepulveda and then a block south. He turned around and pulled to the curb in front of a hydrant. He had a good angle on the front door of the Side Pocket and was in position to follow Mackey’s car north on Sepulveda toward Panorama City. Mackey may have changed apartments after completing probation but Bosch expected that he had not moved far.

The wait this time was not long. Mackey apparently only drank free beer. He left the bar ten minutes after Bosch had, got in the Camaro and headed south on Sepulveda.

Bosch had guessed wrong. Mackey was driving away from Panorama City and the north Valley. This meant Bosch had to pull a U-turn on a largely deserted Sepulveda Boulevard in order to follow him. The move would be highly noticeable in Mackey’s rearview mirror. So he waited, watching the Camaro get smaller in his side-view mirror.

When he saw the turn signal on the Camaro start to blink he pinned the accelerator and took the SUV into a hard one-eighty. He almost lost it by overcompensating on the wheel but then righted the car and took off down Sepulveda. He turned right on Victory and caught up with the Camaro at the traffic signal at the 405 overpass. Mackey stayed off the freeway, however, and continued west on Victory.

With Bosch employing a variety of driving maneuvers to avoid detection, Mackey drove all the way into Woodland Hills. On Mariano Street, a wide street near the 101 Freeway, he finally pulled down a long driveway and parked beside a small house. Bosch drove by and parked further down, then got out and doubled back on foot. He heard the front door of the house closing and then saw the light over the porch go out.

Bosch looked around and realized it was a neighborhood of flag lots. When the neighborhood was first gridded decades before, the properties were cut into large pieces because they were meant to be horse ranches and small vegetable farms. Then the city grew out to the neighborhood and the horses and vegetables were crowded out. The lots were cut up, one property up front on the street and a narrow driveway running down the side of it to the property in the back-the flag-shaped lot.

It made observation difficult. Bosch crept down the long driveway, watching both the house on the front property and Mackey’s house on the back piece. Mackey had parked his Camaro next to a beat-up Ford 150 pickup. It meant Mackey might have a roommate.

When he got closer Bosch stopped to write down the tag number on the F150. He noticed an old bumper sticker on the pickup that said WOULD THE LAST AMERICAN TO LEAVE L.A. PLEASE BRING THE FLAG. It was just one more small brushstroke on what Bosch felt was an emerging picture.

As quietly as he could, Bosch walked down a stone pathway that ran alongside the house. The house was built on knee-high footings which put the windows too far up for him to see in. When he got to the back of the house he heard voices and then realized it was television when he saw the undulating blue glow on the shades of the back room. He started to cross the backyard when suddenly his phone started to chirp. He quickly reached for it and cut off the sound. At the same time he moved quickly back down the pathway and to the driveway. He then ran up the driveway toward the street. He listened for any sound behind him but heard none. When he made it to the street he looked back at the house but saw nothing that gave him reason to believe the chirping from his phone had been heard inside the house above the sounds of the television.

Bosch knew it had been a close call. He was out of breath. He walked back to his car, trying to gather himself and recover from the near disaster. As with the badly handled interview with Daniel Kotchof, he knew he was showing signs of rust. He had forgotten to mute his phone before creeping the house. It was a mistake that could have blown everything and maybe put him into a confrontation with an investigative target. Three years ago, before he had left the job, it would never have happened. He started thinking about what Irving had said about his being a retread that would come apart at the seams, that would blow out.

Inside the car he checked the caller ID list on his phone and saw that the call had come from Kiz Rider. He called her back.

“Harry, I checked my call list and saw you had called me a little while ago. I had my phones off. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. I was checking in to see how it was going.”

“Well, it’s going. I’ve got it all structured and most of the writing done. I’ll finish tomorrow morning, then I’ll start it through the channels.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, I’m about to call it a night. What about you? Did you find Robert Verloren?”

“Not yet. But I’ve got an address for you. I followed Mackey after he left work. He’s got a little house by the freeway in Woodland Hills. There might be a phone line in there that you’ll want to add to the tap.”

“Good. Give me the address. That should be easy enough to check. But I’m not sure I want you following the suspect alone. That’s not smart, Harry.”

“We had to find his address.”

He wasn’t going to tell her about the near miss. He gave her the address and waited a moment while she wrote it down.

“I’ve got some other stuff, too,” he said. “I made some calls.”

“You’ve been busy for just a day back on the job. What’ve you got?”

He recounted the phone calls he made and received after she had left the office. Rider asked no questions and then was silent after he finished.

“That brings you up to date,” Bosch said. “What do you think, Kiz?”

“I think there might be a picture coming together, Harry.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Plus, the year, nineteen eighty-eight. I think you were onto something about that. Maybe these assholes were trying to prove a point in ’eighty-eight. The problem is, it all went under the door at PDU. Who knows where all of that stuff ended up. Irving probably dumped it in the evidence incinerator at the ESB.”

“Not all of it. When the new chief came in he wanted a full assessment of everything. He wanted to know where the bodies were buried. Anyway, I wasn’t involved in that but I knew about it and I heard that a lot of the PDU files were kept after the unit was disbanded. A lot of it Irving put in Special Archives.”

“Special Archives? What the hell is that?”

“It just means limited access. You need command approval. It’s all in the basement at Parker Center. It’s mostly in-house investigations. Political stuff. Dangerous stuff. This Chatsworth business doesn’t really seem to qualify, unless it was connected to something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like somebody in the department or somebody in the city.”

The latter meant someone powerful in city politics.

“Can you get in there and see if any files on this still exist? What about your pal on six? Maybe he’d -”

“I can try.”

“Then try.”

“First thing. What about you? I thought you were going out to find Robert Verloren tonight, and now I hear you were following our suspect.”

“I went down there. I didn’t find him.”

He proceeded to update her on his earlier swing through the Toy District, leaving out his encounter with the would-be robbers. That incident and the phone fiasco behind Mackey’s house were not things he cared to share with her.

“I’ll go back out there tomorrow morning,” he said in conclusion.

“Okay, Harry. Sounds like a plan. I should have the warrant together by the time you get in. And I’ll check on the PDU files.”

Bosch hesitated but then decided not to hold back any warnings or concerns with his partner. He looked out the windshield at the dark street. He could hear the hiss from the nearby freeway.

“Kiz, be careful.”

“How do you mean, Harry?”

“You know what it means when a case has high jingo?”

“Yeah, it means it’s got command staff’s fingers in the pie.”

“That’s right.”

“And so?”

“So be careful. This thing has Irving all over it. It’s not that obvious but it’s there.”

“You think his little visit with you at the coffee counter wasn’t coincidence?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences. Not like that.”

There was silence for a bit before Rider answered.

“Okay, Harry, I’ll watch myself. No holding back, though, right? We take it where it goes and let the chips fall. Everybody counts or nobody counts, remember?”

“Right. I remember. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Harry.”

She hung up and Bosch sat in the car for a long time before turning the key.

19

BOSCH STARTED THE ENGINE, pulled a slow U-turn on Mariano and drove by the driveway that led to Mackey’s house. It appeared to be all quiet down there. He saw no lights behind the windows.

He cut over to the freeway and took it east across the Valley and then down into the Cahuenga Pass. On the way he used his cell phone to call central dispatch and run the plate off the Ford pickup that Mackey had parked next to. It came back registered to a William Burkhart, who was thirty-seven years old and had a criminal record dating back to the late 1980s but nothing else in fifteen years. The dispatcher gave Bosch the California penal code numbers for his arrests because that’s how they were listed on the computer.

Bosch immediately recognized aggravated assault and receiving stolen property charges. But there was one charge in 1988 with a code that he didn’t recognize.

“Anybody there with a code book who can tell me what that is?” he asked, hoping things were quiet enough that the dispatcher would just do it herself. He knew that copies of the penal code were always in the dispatch center because officers often called in to get the proper citations when they were in the field.

“Hold on.”

He waited. Meantime, he exited on Barham and took Woodrow Wilson up into the hills toward his home.

“Detective?”

“Still here.”

“That was a hate crime violation.”

“Okay. Thanks for looking it up.”

“No problem.”

Bosch pulled into his carport and killed the engine. Mackey’s roommate or landlord was charged with a hate crime in 1988-the same year as the murder of Rebecca Verloren. William Burkhart was likely the same Billy Burkhart whom Sam Weiss had identified as a neighbor and one of his tormentors. Bosch didn’t know how all of this fit together but he knew it was part of the same picture. He now wished he had taken home the Department of Corrections file on Mackey. He was feeling too tired to go all the way back downtown to get it. He decided he would leave it be for the night and read it cover to cover when he got back to the office the next day. He would also get the file on William Burkhart’s hate crime arrest.

The house was quiet when he got inside. He grabbed the phone and a beer out of the box and headed out onto the deck to check on the city. On the way he turned on the CD player. There was already a disc in the machine and he soon heard the voice of Boz Scaggs on the outside speakers. He was singing “For All We Know.”

The song competed with the muted sound of the freeway down below. Bosch looked out and saw there were no searchlights cutting across the sky from Universal Studios. It was too late for that. Still, the view was captivating in the way it could only be at night. The city shimmered out there like a million dreams, not all of them good.

Bosch thought about calling Kiz Rider back and telling her about the William Burkhart connection but decided to let it wait until the morning. He looked out at the city and felt satisfied with the day’s moves and accomplishments, but he was also out of sorts. High jingo did that to you.

The man with the knife had not been too far off in calling him a missionary man. He almost had it right. Bosch knew he had a mission in life and now, after three years, he was back on the beat. But he could not bring himself to believe it was all good. He felt that there was something out there beyond the shimmering lights and dreams, something he could not see. It was waiting for him.

He clicked on the phone and listened to an uninterrupted dial tone. It meant he had no messages. He called the retrieval number anyway and replayed a message he had saved from the week before. It was his daughter’s tiny voice, left the night she and her mother went traveling far away from him.

“Hello, Daddy,” she said. “Good night, Daddy.”

That was all she had said but that was enough. Bosch saved the message for the next time he needed it and then killed the line.