Michael Connelly - A Darkness More Than Night

MICHAEL CONNELLY A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT Copyright 2000 Hieronymus, Inc. Prologue Bosch looked through the small square of glass and saw that the man was alone in the tank. He took his gun out of its holster and handed it to the watch sergeant. Standard procedure. The steel door was unlocked and slid open. Immediately the smell of sweat and vomit stung Bosch's nostrils. 'How long's he been in here?' 'About three hours,' said the sergeant. 'He blew a one-eight, so I don't know what you're going to get.' Bosch stepped into the holding tank and kept his eyes on the prone form on the floor. 'All right, you can close it.' 'Let me know.' The door slid closed with a jarring bang and jolt. The man on the floor groaned and moved only slightly. Bosch walked over and sat down on the bench nearest to him. He took the tape recorder out of his jacket pocket and put it down on the bench. Glancing up at the glass window he saw the sergeant's face move away. He used the toe of his shoe to probe the man's side. The man groaned again. 'Wake up, you piece of shit.' The man on the floor of the tank slowly rolled his head and then lifted it. Paint flecked his hair and vomit had caked on the front of his shirt and neck. He opened his eyes and immediately closed them against the harsh overhead lighting of the holding tank. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. 'You again.' Bosch nodded. 'Yeah. Me.' 'Our little dance.' A smile cut across the three-day-old whiskers on the drunk's face. Bosch saw that he was missing a tooth he hadn't been missing last time. He reached down and put his hand on the recorder but did not turn it on yet. 'Get up. It's time to talk.' 'Forget it, man. I don't want' 'You're running out of time. Talk to me.' 'Leave me the fuck alone.' Bosch looked up at the window. It was clear. He looked back down at the man on the floor. 'Your salvation is in the truth. Now more than ever. I can't help you without the truth.' 'What're you, a priest now? You here to take my confession?" 'You here to give it?' The man on the floor said nothing. After a while Bosch thought he might have fallen back asleep. He pushed the toe of his shoe into the man's side again, into the kidney. The man erupted in movement, nailing his arms and legs. 'Fuck you!' he yelled. 'I don't want you. I want a lawyer.' Bosch was silent a moment. He picked up the recorder and slid it back into his pocket. He then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together. He looked at the drunk and slowly shook his head. 'Then I guess I can't help you,' he said. He stood up and knocked on the window for the watch sergeant. He left the man lying on the floor. 'Someone's coming.' Terry McCaleb looked at his wife and then followed her eyes down to the winding road below. He could see the golf cart making its way up the steep and winding road to the house. The driver was obscured by the roof of the cart. They were sitting on the back deck of the house he and Graciela had rented up on La Mesa Avenue. The view ranged from the narrow winding road below the house to the whole of Avalon and its harbor, and then out across the Santa Monica Bay to the haze of smog that marked overtown. The view was the reason they had chosen this house to make their new home on the island. But at the moment his wife spoke, his gaze had been on the baby in his arms, not the view. He could look no farther than his daughter's wide blue and trusting eyes. McCaleb saw the rental number on the side of the golf cart passing below. It wasn't a local coming. It was somebody who had probably come from overtown on the Catalina Express. Still, he wondered how Graciela knew that the visitor was coming to their house and not any of the others on La Mesa. He didn't ask about this - she'd had premonitions before. He just waited and soon after the golf cart disappeared from sight, there was a knock at the front door. Graciela went to answer it and soon came back to the deck with a woman McCaleb had not seen in three years. Sheriff's detective Jaye Winston smiled when she saw the child in his arms. It was genuine, but at the same time it was the distracted smile of someone who wasn't there to admire a new baby. McCaleb knew the thick green binder she carried in one hand and the videocassette in the other meant Winston was there on business. Death business. 'Terry, howya been?' she asked. 'Couldn't be better. You remember Graciela?' 'Of course. And who is this?' 'This is CiCi.' McCaleb never used the baby's formal name around others. He only liked to call her Cielo when he was alone with her. 'CiCi,' Winston said, and hesitated as if waiting for an explanation of the name. When none came, she said, 'How old?' 'Almost four months. She's big.' 'Wow, yeah, I can see ... And the boy ... where's he?' 'Raymond,' Graciela said. 'He's with some friends today. Terry had a charter and so he went with friends to the park to play softball.' The conversation was halting and strange. Winston either wasn't really interested or was unused to such banal talk. 'Would you like something to drink?' McCaleb offered as he passed the baby to Graciela. 'No, I'm fine. I had a Coke on the boat.' As if on cue, or perhaps indignant about being passed from one set of hands to another, the baby started to fuss and Graciela said she would take her inside. She left them standing on the porch. McCaleb pointed to the round table and chairs where they ate most nights while the baby slept. 'Let's sit down.' He pointed Winston to the chair that would give her the best view of the harbor. She put the green binder, which McCaleb recognized as a murder book, on the table and the video on top of it. 'Beautiful,' she said. 'Yeah, she's amazing. I could watch her all' He stopped and smiled when he realized she was talking about the view, not his child. Winston smiled, too. 'She's beautiful, Terry. She really is. You look good, too, so tan and all' 'I've been going out on the boat.' 'And your health is good?' 'Can't complain about anything other than all the meds they make me take. But I'm three years in now and no problems. I think I'm in the clear, Jaye. I just have to keep taking the damn pills and it should stay that way.' He smiled and he did appear to be the picture of health. As the sun had turned his skin dark, it had worked to the opposite effect on his hair. Close cropped and neat, it was almost blond now. Working on the boat had also defined the muscles of his arms and shoulders. The only giveaway was hidden under his shirt, the ten-inch scar left by transplantation surgery. 'That's great,' Winston said. 'It looks like you have a wonderful setup here. New family, new home ... away from everything.' She was silent a moment, turning her head as if to take in all of the view and the island and McCaleb's life at once. McCaleb had always thought Jaye Winston was attractive in a tomboyish way. She had loose sandy-blond hair that she kept shoulder length. She had never worn makeup back when he worked with her. But she had sharp, knowing eyes and an easy and somewhat sad smile, as if she saw the humor and tragedy in everything at once. She wore black jeans and a white T-shirt beneath a black blazer. She looked cool and tough and McCaleb knew from experience that she was. She had a habit of hooking her hair behind her ear frequently as she spoke. He found that endearing for some unknown reason. He had always thought that if he had not connected with Graciela he might have tried to know Jaye Winston better. He also sensed that Winston intuitively knew that. 'Makes me feel guilty about why I came,' she said. 'Sort of.' McCaleb nodded at the binder and the tape. 'You came on business. You could have just called, Jaye. Saved some time, probably.' 'No, you didn't send out any change-of-address or phone cards. Like maybe you didn't want people to know where you ended up.' She hooked her hair behind her left ear and smiled again. 'Not really,' he said. 'I just didn't think people would want to know where I was. So how did you find me?' 'Asked around over at the marina on the mainland.' 'Overtown. They call it overtown here.' 'Overtown, then. They told me in the harbor master's office that you still kept a slip there but you moved the boat over here. I came over and took a water taxi around the harbor until I found it. Your friend was there. He told me how to get up here.' 'Buddy.' McCaleb looked down into the harbor and picked out The Following Sea. It was about a half mile or so away. He could see Buddy Lockridge bent over in the stern. After a few moments he could tell that Buddy was washing off the reels with the hose from the freshwater tank. 'So what's this about, Jaye?' McCaleb said without looking at Winston. 'Must be important for you to go through all of that on your day off. I assume you're off on Sundays.' 'Most of them.' She pushed the tape aside and opened the binder. Now McCaleb looked over. Although it was upside down to him, he could tell the top page was a standard homicide occurrence report, usually the first page in every murder book he had ever read. It was the starting point. His eyes went to the address box. Even upside down he could make out that it was a West Hollywood case. 'I've got a case here I was hoping you'd take a look at. In your spare time, I mean. I think it might be your sort of thing. I was hoping you'd give me a read, maybe point me someplace I haven't been yet.' He had known as soon as he saw the binder in her hands that this was what she was going to ask him. But now that it had been asked he felt a confusing rush of sensations. He felt a thrill at the possibility of having a part of his old life again. He also felt guilt over the idea of bringing death into a home so full of new life and happiness. He glanced toward the open slider to see if Graciela was looking out at them. She wasn't. 'My sort of thing?' he said. 'If it's a serial, you shouldn't waste time. Go to the bureau, call Maggie Griffin. She'll' 'I did all of that, Terry. I still need you.' 'How old is this thing?' 'Two weeks.' Her eyes looked up from the binder to his. 'New Year's Day?' She nodded. 'First murder of the year,' she said. 'For L.A. County, at least. Some people think the true millennium didn't start until this year.' 'You think this is a millennium nut?' 'Whoever did this was a nut of some order. I think. That's why I'm here.' 'What did the bureau say? Did you take this to Maggie?' 'You haven't kept up, Terry. Maggie was sent back to Quantico. Things slowed down in the last few years out here and Behavioral Sciences pulled her back. No outpost in L.A. anymore. So, yes, I talked to her. But over the phone at Quantico. She ran it through VICAP and got zilched.' McCaleb knew she meant the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program computer. 'What about a profile?' he asked. 'I'm on a waiting list. Do you know that across the country there were thirty-four millennium-inspired murders on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day? So they have their hands full at the moment and the bigger departments like us, we're at the end of the line because the bureau figures the smaller departments with less experience and expertise and manpower need their help more. She waited a moment while letting McCaleb consider all of this. He understood the bureau's philosophy. It was a form of triage. 'I don't mind waiting a month or so until Maggie or somebody else over there can work something up for me, but my gut on this one tells me time is a consideration, Terry, if it is a serial, a month may be too long to wait. That's why I thought of coming to you. I am banging my head on the wall on this one and you might be our last best hope of coming up with something to move on now. I still remember the Cemetery Man and the Code Killer. I know what you can do with a murder book and some crime scene tape.' The last few lines were gratuitous and her only false move so far, McCaleb thought. Otherwise he believed she was sincere in the expression of her belief that the killer she was looking for might strike again. 'It's been a long time for me, Jaye,' McCaleb began. 'Other than that thing with Graciela's sister, I haven't been involved in' 'Come on, Terry, don't bullshit me, okay? You can sit here with a baby in your lap every day of the week and it still won't erase what you were and what you did. I know you. We haven't seen each other or talked in a long time but I know you. And I know that not a day goes by that you don't think about cases. Not a day.' She paused and stared at him. 'When they took out your heart, they didn't take out what makes you tick, know what I mean?' McCaleb looked away from her and back down at his boat. Buddy was now sitting in the main fighting chair, his feet up on the transom. McCaleb assumed he had a beer in his hand but it was too far to see that. 'If you're so good at reading people, what do you need me for?' 'I may be good but you're the best I ever knew. Hell, even if they weren't backed up till Easter in Quantico, I'd take you over any of those profilers. I mean that. You were' 'Okay, Jaye, we don't need a sales pitch, okay? My ego is doing okay without all the' 'Then what do you need?' He looked back at her. 'Just some time. I need to think about this.' 'I'm here because my gut says I don't have much time.' McCaleb got up and walked to the railing. His gaze was out to the sea. A Catalina Express ferry was coming in. He knew it would be almost empty. The winter months brought few visitors. 'The boat's coming in,' he said. 'It's the winter schedule, Jaye. You better catch it going back or you'll be here all night.' 'I'll have dispatch send a chopper for me if I have to. Terry, all I need from you is one day at the most. One night, even. Tonight. You sit down, read the book, look at the tape and then call me in the morning, tell me what you see. Maybe it's nothing or at least nothing that's new. But maybe you'll see something we've missed or you'll get an idea we haven't come up with yet. That's all I'm asking. I don't think it's a lot.' McCaleb looked away from the incoming boat and turned so his back leaned against the rail. 'It doesn't seem like a lot to you because you're in the life. I'm not. I'm out of it, Jaye. Even going back into it for a day is going to change things. I moved out here to start over and to forget all the stuff I was good at. To get good at being something else. At being a father and a husband, for starters.' Winston got up and walked to the railing. She stood next to him but looked out at the view while he remained facing his home. She spoke in a low voice. If Graciela was listening from somewhere inside, she could not hear this. 'Remember with Graciela's sister what you told me? You told me you got a second shot at life and that there had to be a reason for it. Now you've built this life with her sister and her son and now even your own child. That's wonderful, Terry, I really think so. But that can't be the reason you were looking for. You might think it is but it's not. Deep down you know it. You were good at catching these people. Next to that, what is catching fish?' McCaleb nodded slightly and was uncomfortable with himself for doing it so readily. 'Leave the stuff,' he said. 'I'll call you when I can.' On the way to the door Winston looked about for Graciela but didn't see her. 'She's probably in with the baby,' McCaleb said. 'Well, tell her I said good-bye.' 'I will.' There was an awkward silence the rest of the way to the door. Finally, as McCaleb opened it, Winston spoke. 'So what's it like, Terry? Being a father.' 'It's the best of times, it's the worst of times.' His stock answer. He then thought a moment and added something he had thought about but never said, not even to Graciela. 'It's like having a gun to your head all the time.' Winston looked confused and maybe even a little concerned. 'How so?' 'Because I know if anything ever happens to her, anything, then my life is over.' She nodded. 'I think I can understand that.' She went through the door. She looked rather silly as she left. A seasoned homicide detective riding away in a golf cart. Sunday dinner with Graciela and Raymond was a quiet affair. They ate white sea bass McCaleb had caught with the charter that morning on the back side of the island near the isthmus. His charters always wanted to keep the fish they caught but then often changed their minds when they got back to the harbor. It was something about the killing instinct in men, McCaleb believed. It wasn't enough just to catch their quarry. They must kill it as well. It meant fish was often served at dinner at the house on La Mesa. McCaleb had grilled the fish along with corn still in the husks on the porch barbecue. Graciela had made a salad and biscuits. They both had a glass of white wine in front of them. Raymond had milk. The meal was good but the silence wasn't. McCaleb looked over at Raymond and realized the boy had picked up on the vibe passed between the adults and was going along with the tide. McCaleb remembered how he had done the same thing when he was a boy and his parents were throwing silence at each other. Raymond was the son of Graciela's sister, Gloria. His father had never been part of the picture. When Glory died - was murdered - three years before, Raymond had come to live with Graciela. McCaleb met them both when he investigated the case. 'How was softball today?' McCaleb finally asked. 'It was okay, I guess.' 'Get any hits?' 'No.' 'You will. Don't worry. Just keep trying. Keep swinging.' McCaleb nodded. The boy had wanted to go out on the charter that morning but had not been allowed. The charter was for six men from overtown. With McCaleb and Buddy, that made eight on The Following Sea and that was the limit the boat could carry under the rules of safety. McCaleb never broke those rules. 'Well, listen, our next charter isn't until Saturday. Right now it's only four people. In winter season I doubt we'll pick up anybody else. If it stays that way, you can come.' The boy's dark features seemed to lighten and he nodded vigorously as he worked his fork into the pure white meat of the fish on his plate. The fork looked big in his hand and McCaleb felt a momentary sadness for the boy. He was exceedingly small for a boy of ten. This bothered Raymond a great deal and he often asked McCaleb when he would grow. McCaleb always told him that it would happen soon, though privately he thought the boy would always be small. He knew that his mother had been of average size but Graciela had told McCaleb that Raymond's father had been a very small man - in size and integrity. He had disappeared before Raymond was born. Always picked last for the team, too small to be competitive with other boys his age, Raymond had gravitated toward pastimes other than team sports. Fishing was his passion and on off days McCaleb usually took him out into the bay to fish for halibut. When he had a charter, the boy always begged to go and when there was room he was allowed to come along as second mate. It was always McCaleb's great pleasure to put a five-dollar bill into an envelope, seal it and hand it to the boy at the end of the day. 'We'll need you in the tower,' McCaleb said. 'This party wants to go down south for marlin. It'll be a long day.' 'Cool!' McCaleb smiled. Raymond loved being the lookout in the tower, watching for black marlin sleeping or rolling on the surface. And with a pair of binoculars, he was becoming adept at it. McCaleb looked over at Graciela to share the moment but she was looking down at her plate. There was no smile on her face. In a few more minutes Raymond had finished eating and asked to be excused so he could play on the computer in his room. Graciela told him to keep the sound down so as not to wake the baby. The boy took his plate into the kitchen and then Graciela and McCaleb were alone. He understood why she was silent. She knew she could not voice her objection to his getting involved in an investigation because her own request that he investigate her sister's death was what had brought them together three years before. Her emotions were caught in this irony. 'Graciela,' McCaleb began. 'I know you don't want me to do this but' 'I didn't say that.' 'You didn't have to. I know you and I can tell by the look that's been on your face ever since Jaye was here that' 'I just don't want everything to change, that's all.' 'I understand that. I don't want anything to change either. And it won't. All I'm going to do is look at the file and the tape and tell her what I think.' 'It won't be just that. I know you. I've seen you do this. You'll get hooked. It's what you are good at.' 'I won't get hooked. I'll just do what she asked and that's it. I'm not even going to do it here. I'm going to take what she gave me and go over to the boat. So it won't even be in the house. Okay? I don't want it in the house.' He knew he was going to do it with or without her approval but he wanted it from her just the same. Their relationship was still so new that he seemed to always be seeking her approval. He had thought about this and wondered if it was something to do with his second chance. He had fought through a lot of guilt in the past three years but it still came up like a roadblock every few miles. Somehow he felt as though if he could just win this one woman's approval for his existence, then it would all be okay. His cardiologist had called it survivor's guilt. He had lived because someone else had died and must now attain some sense of redemption for it. But McCaleb thought the explanation was not as simple as that. Graciela frowned but it did not detract from his view of her as beautiful. She had copper skin and dark brown hair that framed a face with eyes so darkly brown that there was almost no demarcation between iris and pupil. Her beauty was another reason he sought her approval of all things. There was something purifying about the light of her smile when it was cast on him. 'Terry, I listened to you two on the porch. After the baby got quiet. I heard what she said about what makes you tick and how a day doesn't go by that you don't think about it, what you used to do. Just tell me this, was she right?' McCaleb was silent a moment. He looked down at his empty plate and then off across the harbor to the lights in the houses going up the opposite hillside to the inn at the top of Mount Ada. He slowly nodded and then looked back at her. 'Yes, she was right.' 'Then all of this, what we are doing here, the baby, it's all a lie?' 'No. Of course not. This is everything to me and I would protect it with everything I've got. But the answer is yes, I think about what I was and what I did. When I was with the bureau I saved lives, Graciela, plain and simple. And I took evil out of this world. Made it a little less dark out there.' He raised his hand and gestured toward the harbor. 'Now I have a wonderful life with you and Cielo and Raymond. And I ... I catch fish for rich people with nothing better to do with their money.' 'So you want both.' 'I don't know what I want. But I know that when she was here I was saying things to her because I knew you were listening. I was saying what I knew you wanted to hear but I knew in my heart it wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted to do was open that book right then and go to work. She was right about me, Gracie. She hadn't seen me in three years but she had me pegged.' Graciela stood up and came around the table to him. She sat on his lap. 'I'm just scared for you, that's all,' she said. She pulled him close. McCaleb took two tall glasses from the cabinet and put them on the counter. He filled the first with bottled water and the second with orange juice. He then began ingesting the twenty-seven pills he had lined up on the counter, intermittently taking swallows of water and orange juice to help them go down. Eating the pills - twice a day - was his ritual and he hated it. Not because of the taste - he was long past that after three years. But because the ritual was a reminder of how dependent he was on exterior concerns for his life. The pills were a leash. He could not live long without them. Much of his world now was built around ensuring that he would always have them. He planned around them. He hoarded them. Sometimes he even dreamed about taking pills. When he was done, McCaleb went into the living room, where Graciela was reading a magazine. She didn't look up at him when he stepped into the room, another sign that she was unhappy with what was suddenly happening in her home. He stood there waiting for a moment and when things didn't change he went down the hallway into the baby's room. Cielo was still asleep in her crib. The overhead light was on a dimmer switch and he raised the illumination just enough so that he could see her clearly. McCaleb went to the crib and leaned down so he could listen to her breathe and see her and smell her baby scent. Cielo had her mother's coloring - dark skin and hair - except for her eyes, which were ocean blue. Her tiny hands were balled in fists as if she were showing her readiness to fight for life. McCaleb fell most in love with her when he watched her sleep. He thought about all the preparation they had gone through, the books and classes and advice from Graciela's friends at the hospital who were pediatric nurses. All of it so that they would be ready to care for a fragile life so dependent on them. Nothing had been said or read to prepare him for the opposite: the knowledge that came the first moment he held her, that his own life was now dependent on her. He reached down to her, the spread of his hand covering her back. She didn't stir. He could feel her tiny heart bearing. It seemed quick and desperate, like a whispered prayer. Sometimes he pulled the rocking chair over next to the crib and watched over her until late into the night. This night was different. He had to go. He had work to do. Blood work. He wasn't sure if he was there to simply say good-bye for the night or to somehow gain inspiration or approval from her as well. In his mind it didn't quite make sense. He just knew that he had to watch her and touch her before he went to his work. McCaleb walked out on the pier and then down the steps to the skiff dock. He found his Zodiac among the other small boats and climbed aboard, careful to put the videotape and the murder book in the shelter of the inflatable's bow so they wouldn't get wet. He pulled the engine cord twice before it started and then headed off down the middle lane of the harbor. There were no docks in Avalon Harbor. The boats were tied to mooring buoys set in lines that followed the concave shape of the natural harbor. Because it was winter there were few boats in the harbor, but McCaleb didn't cut between the buoys. He followed the fairways, as if driving a car on the streets of a neighborhood. You didn't cut across lawns, you stayed on the roadway. It was cold on the water and McCaleb zipped up his windbreaker. As he approached The Following Sea he could see the glow of the television behind the curtains of the salon. This meant Buddy Lockridge had not finished up in time to catch the last ferry and was staying over. McCaleb and Lockridge worked the charter business together. While the boat's ownership was in Graciela's name, the marine charter license and all other documentation relating to the business were in Lockridge's name. The two had met more than three years earlier when McCaleb had docked The Following Sea at Cabrillo Marina in the Los Angeles Harbor and was living aboard it while restoring it. Buddy was a neighbor, living on a sailboat nearby. They had struck up a friendship that ultimately became a partnership. During the busy spring and summer season Lockridge stayed most nights on The Following Sea. But during the slow times he usually caught a ferry back overtown to his own boat at Cabrillo. He seemed to have greater success finding female companions in the overtown bars than in the handful of places on the island. McCaleb assumed he would be heading back in the morning since they did not have a charter for another five days. McCaleb bumped the Zodiac into the fantail of The Following Sea. He cut the engine and got out with the tape and the binder. He tied the Zodiac off on a stern cleat and headed for the salon door. Buddy was there waiting, having heard the Zodiac or felt its bump on the fantail. He slid the door open, holding a paperback novel down at his side. McCaleb glanced at the television but couldn't tell what it was he had on. 'What's up, Terror?' Lockridge asked. 'Nothing. I just need to do a little work. I'm going to be using the forward bunk, okay?' He stepped into the salon. It was warm. Lockridge had the space heater fired up. 'Sure, fine. Anything I can do to help?' 'Nah, this isn't about the business.' 'It about that lady who came by? The sheriff's lady?' McCaleb had forgotten that Winston had come to the boat first and gotten directions from Buddy. 'Yeah.' 'You working a case for her?' 'No,' McCaleb said quickly, hoping to limit Lockridge's interest and involvement. 'I just need to look at some stuff and give her a call back.' 'Very cool, dude.' 'Not really. It's just a favor. What are you watching?' 'Oh, nothing. Just a show about this task force that goes after computer hackers. Why, you seen it?' 'No, but I was wondering if I could borrow the TV for a little while.' McCaleb held up the videotape. Lockridge's eyes lit up. 'Be my guest. Pop that baby in there.' 'Um, not up here, Buddy. This is - Detective Winston asked me to do this in confidence. I'll bring the TV back up as soon as I'm done.' Lockridge's face registered his disappointment but McCaleb wasn't worried about it. He went over to the counter that separated the galley from the salon and put down the binder and tape. He unplugged the television and removed it from the locking frame that held it in place so it wouldn't fall when the boat encountered high seas. The television had a built-in videocassette player and was heavy. McCaleb lugged it down the narrow stairway and took it to the forward stateroom, which had been partially converted into an office. Two sides of the room had been lined with twin bunk beds. The bottom berth on the left had been changed into a desk and the two top bunks were used by McCaleb to store his old bureau case files -Graciela didn't want them in the house where Raymond might stumble upon them. The only problem was that McCaleb was sure that on occasion Buddy had gone through the boxes and looked at the files. And it bothered him. It was an invasion of some kind. McCaleb had thought about keeping the forward stateroom locked but knew that could be a deadly mistake. The only ceiling hatch on the lower deck was in the forward room and access to it ought not be blocked in case there was ever a need for an emergency evacuation through the bow. He put the television down on the desk and plugged it in. He turned to go back up to the salon to retrieve the binder and tape when he saw Buddy coming down the stairs, holding the tape and leafing through the binder. 'Hey, Buddy' 'Looks like a weird one, man.' McCaleb reached out and closed the binder, then took it and the tape from his fishing partner's hands. 'Just taking a peek.' 'I told you, it's confidential.' 'Yeah, but we work good together. Just like before.' It was true that by happenstance Lockridge had been a great help when McCaleb had investigated the death of Graciela's sister. But that had been an active street investigation. This was just going to be a review. He didn't need anybody looking over his shoulder. 'This is different, Buddy. This is a one-night stand. I'm just going to take a look at this stuff and then that will be it. Now let me get to work so I'm not here all night.' Lockridge didn't say anything and McCaleb didn't wait. He closed the door to the forward bunk and then turned to the desk. As he looked down at the murder book in his hands he felt a sharp thrill as well as the familiar rising of dread and guilt. McCaleb knew it was time to go back to the darkness. To explore it and know it. To find his way through it. He nodded, though he was alone now. It was in acknowledgment that he had waited a long time for this moment. The video was clear and steady, the lighting was good. The technical aspects of crime scene videotaping had vastly improved since McCaleb's days with the bureau. The content had not changed. The tape McCaleb watched showed the starkly ht tableau of murder. McCaleb finally froze the image and studied it. The cabin was silent, the gentle lapping sound of the sea against the boat's hull the only intrusion from outside. At center focus was the nude body of what appeared to be a man who had been trussed with baling wire, his arms and legs held tightly behind his torso to such an extreme that the body appeared to be in a reverse fetal position. The body was face down on an old and dirty rug. The focus was too tight on the body to determine in what sort of location it had been found. McCaleb judged that the victim was a man solely on the basis of body mass and musculature. For the head of the victim was not visible. A gray plastic mop bucket had been placed entirely over the victim's head. McCaleb could see that a length of the baling wire was stretched taut from the victim's ankles, up his back and between his arms, and beneath the lip of the bucket where it wrapped around his neck. It appeared on first measure to be a ligature strangulation in which the leverage of the legs and feet pulled the wire tight around the victim's neck, causing asphyxia. In effect, the victim had been bound in such a way that he ultimately killed himself when he could no longer hold his legs folded backward in such an extreme position. McCaleb continued studying the scene. A small amount of blood had poured onto the carpet from the bucket, indicating that some kind of head wound would be found when the vessel was removed. McCaleb leaned back in his old desk chair and thought about his initial impressions. He had not yet opened the binder, choosing instead to watch the crime scene videotape first and to study the scene as close as possible to the way the investigators had originally seen it. Already he was fascinated by what he was looking at. He felt the implication of ritual in the scene on the television screen. He also felt the trilling of adrenaline in his blood again. He pressed the button on the remote and the video continued. The focus pulled back as Jaye Winston entered the frame of the video. McCaleb could see more of the room now and noted that it appeared to be in a small, sparsely furnished house or apartment. Coincidentally, Winston was wearing the same outfit she had worn when she had come to the house with the murder book and videotape. She had on rubber gloves that she had pulled up over the cuffs of her blazer. Her detective's shield hung on a black shoelace which had been tied around her neck. She took a position on the left side of the dead man while her partner, a detective McCaleb did not recognize, moved to the right side. For the first time there was talking on the video. 'The victim has already been examined by a deputy coroner and released for crime scene investigation,' Winston said. 'The victim has been photographed in situ. We're now going to remove the bucket to make further examination.' McCaleb knew that she was carefully choosing her words and demeanor with the future in mind, a future that would include a trial for an accused killer in which the crime scene tape would be viewed by a jury. She had to appear professional and objective, completely emotionally removed from what she was encountering. Anything deviating from this could be cause for a defense attorney to seek removal of the tape from evidence. Winston reached up and hooked her hair behind her ears and then placed both hands on the victim's shoulders. With her partner's help she turned the body on its side, the dead man's back to the camera. The camera then came in over the victim's shoulder and closed in as Winston gently pulled the bucket handle from under the man's chin and proceeded to carefully lift it off the head. 'Okay,' she said. She showed the interior of the bucket to the camera -blood had coagulated inside it - and then placed it in an open cardboard box used for evidence storage. She then turned back and gazed down at the victim. Gray duct tape had been wrapped around the dead man's head to form a tight gag across the mouth. The eyes were open and distended - bugged. The cornea of each eye was rouged with hemorrhage. So was the skin around the eyes. 'CP,' the partner said, pointing to the eyes. 'Kurt,' Winston said. 'We're on sound.' 'Sorry.' She was telling her partner to keep all observations to himself. Again, she was safeguarding the future. McCaleb knew that what her partner was pointing out was the hemorrhaging, or conjunctive petechiae, which always came with ligature strangulation. However, the observation was one that should be made to a jury by a medical examiner, not a homicide detective. Blood matted the dead man's medium-length hair and had pooled inside the bucket against the left side of his face. Winston began manipulating the head and combing her fingers through the hair in search of the origin of the blood. She finally found the wound on the crown of the head. She pulled the hair back as much as possible to view it. 'Barney, come in close on this if you can,' she said. The camera moved in. McCaleb saw a small, round puncture wound that did not appear to penetrate the skull. He knew that the amount of blood evidenced was riot always in concert with the gravity of the wound. Even inconsequential wounds to the scalp could produce a lot of blood. He would get a formal and complete description of the wound in the autopsy report. 'Barn, get this,' Winston said, her voice up a notch from the previous monotone. 'We've got writing or something on the tape, on the gag.' She had noticed it while manipulating the head. The camera moved in. McCaleb could make out lightly marked letters on the tape where it crossed the dead man's mouth. The letters appeared to be written in ink but the message was obliterated by blood. He could make out what appeared to be one word of the message. 'Cave,' he read out loud. 'Cave?' He then thought maybe it was only a partial word but he couldn't think of any larger word - other than cavern -that contained those letters in that order. AlcCaleb froze the picture and just looked. He was enthralled. What he was seeing was pulling him backward in time to his days as a profiler, when almost every case he was assigned left him with the same question: What dark, tortured mind did this come from? Words from a killer were always significant and put a case on a higher plane. It most often meant that the killing was a statement, a message transmitted from killer to victim and then from the investigators to the world as well. McCaleb stood up and reached to the upper bunk. He pulled down one of the old file boxes and let it drop heavily to the floor. Quickly lifting the lid, he began combing through the files for a notebook with some unused pages in it. It had been his ritual with the bureau to start each case he was assigned with a fresh spiral notebook. He finally came across a file with only a BAR form and a notebook in it. With so little paperwork in the file he knew it was a short case and that the notebook should have plenty of blank pages. McCaleb leafed through the notebook and found it largely unused. He then took out the Bureau Assistance Request form and quickly read the top sheet to see what case it was. He immediately remembered it because he had handled it with one phone call. The request had come from a detective in the small town of White Elk, Minnesota, almost ten years before, when McCaleb still worked out of Quantico. The detective's report said two men had gotten into a drunken brawl in the house they shared, challenged each other to a duel and proceeded to kill each other with simultaneous shots from ten yards apart in the back yard. The detective needed no help with the double homicide case because it was cut and dried. But he was puzzled by something else. In the course of searching the victims' house, investigators had come across something strange in the basement freezer. Pushed into a corner of the freezer cabinet were plastic bags containing dozens and dozens of used tampons. They were of various makes and brands, and preliminary tests on a sampling of the tampons had identified the menstrual blood on them as having come from several different women. The case detective didn't know what he had but feared the worst. What he wanted from the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit was an idea about what these bloody tampons could mean and how to proceed. More specifically, he wanted to know if the tampons could possibly be souvenirs kept by a serial killer or killers who had gone undiscovered until they happened to kill each other. McCaleb smiled as he remembered the case. He had come across tampons in a freezer before. He called the detective and asked him three questions. What did the two men do for a living? In addition to the firearms used during the duel, were there any long weapons or a hunting license found in the apartment? And, lastly, when did bear hunting season begin in the woods of northern Minnesota? The detective's answers quickly solved the tampon mystery. Both men worked at the airport in Minneapolis for a subcontractor that provided clean-out crews who prepared commercial airliners for flights. Several hunting rifles were found in the house but no hunting license. And, lastly, bear season was three weeks away. McCaleb told the detective that it appeared that the men were not serial killers but had probably been collecting the contents from the tampon disposal receptacles in lavatories of the planes they cleaned. They were taking the tampons home and freezing them. When hunting season began they would most likely thaw the tampons and use them to bait bear, which can pick up the scent of blood at a great distance. Most hunters use garbage as bait but nothing is better than blood. McCaleb remembered that the detective had actually seemed disappointed that he had no serial killer or killers at hand. He had either been embarrassed that an FBI agent sitting at a desk in Quantico had so quickly solved his mystery or he was simply annoyed that there would be no national media ride from his case. He abruptly hung up and McCaleb never heard from him again. McCaleb tore the few pages of notes from the case out of the notebook, put them in the file with the BAR form and returned the file to its spot. He then put the lid on the box and hoisted it back up onto the shelf that had been the top bunk. He shoved the box back into place and it banged hard on the bulkhead. Sitting back down, McCaleb glanced at the frozen image on the television screen and then considered the blank page in the notebook. Finally, he took the pen out of his shirt pocket and was about to begin writing when the door to the room suddenly opened and Buddy Lockridge stood there. 'You okay?' 'What?' 'I heard all this banging. The whole boat moved.' 'I'm fine, Buddy, I just' 'Oh, shit, what the hell is that?' He was staring at the TV screen. McCaleb immediately raised the remote and killed the picture. 'Buddy, look, I told you this is confidential and I can't' 'Okay, okay, I know. I was just checking to make sure you didn't keel over or something.' 'Okay, thanks, but I'm fine.' 'I'll be up for a little while if you need something.' 'I won't, but thanks.' 'You know, you're using a lot of juice. You're going to have to run the generator tomorrow after I split.' 'No problem. I'll do it. I'll see you later, Buddy.' Buddy pointed at the now empty television screen. 'That's a weird one.' 'Good-bye, Buddy,' McCaleb said impatiently. He got up and closed the door while Lockridge was still standing there. This time he locked it. He returned to the seat and the notebook. He started writing and in a few moments he had constructed a list. SCENE 1. Ligature 2. Nude 3. Head Wound 4. Tape/Gag - 'Cave'? 5. Bucket? He studied the list for a few moments, waiting for an idea, but nothing came through. It was too early. Instinctively, he knew the wording on the tape was a key that he wouldn't be able to turn until he had the complete message. He fought the urge to open the murder book and get to it. Instead, he turned the television back on and began running the tape from the spot he had left off. The camera was in and tight on the dead man's mouth and the tape stretched tightly across it. 'We'll leave this for the coroner,' Winston said. 'You got what you can of this, Barn?' 'I got it,' said the unseen videographer. 'Okay, let's pull back and look at these bindings.' The camera traced the baling wire from the neck to the feet. The wire looped around the neck and passed through a slip knot. It then went down the spine to where it had been wrapped several times around the ankles, which had been pulled so far back that the victim's heels now rested on his buttocks. The wrists were bound with a separate length of wire that had been wrapped six times around and then pulled into a knot. The bindings had caused deep furrow marks in the skin of the wrists and ankles, indicating that the victim had struggled for a period before finally succumbing. When the videography of the body was completed, Winston told the unseen man with the camera to make a video inventory of every room in the apartment. The camera panned away from the body and took in the rest of the living-room/dining-room space. The home seemed to have been furnished out of a secondhand store. There was no uniformity, none of the pieces of furniture matched. The few framed pictures on the walls looked as though they could have come out of a room at a Howard Johnson's ten years before - all orange and aqua pastels. At the far end of the room was a tall china cabinet with no china in it. There were some books on a few of the shelves but most were barren. On top of the cabinet was something McCaleb found curious. It was a two-foot-high owl that looked hand painted. McCaleb had seen many of these before, especially in Avalon Harbor and Cabrillo Marina. Most often the owls were made of hollow plastic and placed at the tops of masts or on the bridges of power boats in a usually unsuccessful attempt to scare gulls and other birds away from the boats. The theory was that the owl would be seen by the other birds as a predator and they would stay clear, thereby leaving the boats unfouled by their droppings. McCaleb had also seen the owls used on the exteriors of public buildings where pigeons were a nuisance. But what interested him about the plastic owl here was that he had never seen or heard of one being used inside a private home as ornamentation or otherwise. He knew that people collected all manner of things, including owls, but he had so far seen none in the apartment other than the one positioned at center on the cabinet. He quickly opened the binder and found the victim identification report. It listed the victim's occupation as house painter. McCaleb closed the binder and considered for a moment that perhaps the victim had taken the owl from a job or removed it from a structure while prepping it to be painted.. He backed the tape up and watched again as the videographer panned from the body to the cabinet atop which the owl was perched. It appeared to McCaleb that the videographer had made a 180-degree turn, meaning the owl would have been directly facing the victim, looking down upon the scene of the murder. While there were other possibilities, McCaleb's instinct told him the plastic owl was somehow part of the crime scene. He took up the notebook and made the owl the sixth entry on his list. The rest of the crime scene videotape fostered little interest in McCaleb. It documented the remaining rooms of the victim's apartment - the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. He saw no more owls and took no more notes. When he got to the end of the tape he rewound it and watched it all the way through once more. Nothing new caught his attention. He ejected the tape and slid it back into its cardboard slipcase. He then carried the television back up to the salon, where he locked it into its frame on the counter. Buddy was sprawled on the couch reading his paperback. He didn't say anything and McCaleb could tell he was hurt that McCaleb had closed and locked the door to the office on him. He thought about apologizing but decided to let it go. Buddy was too nosy about McCaleb, past and present. Maybe this rejection would let him know that. 'What are you reading?' he asked instead. 'A book,' Lockridge answered without looking up. McCaleb smiled to himself. Now he was sure that he had gotten to Buddy. 'Well, there's the TV if you want to watch the news or something.' 'The news is over.' McCaleb looked at his watch. It was midnight. He had not realized how much time had gone by. This had often been the case with him - while at the bureau it was routine for him to work through lunch or late into the night without realizing it when he became fully engaged in a case. He left Buddy to sulk and went back down to the office. He closed the door again, loudly, and locked it. After turning to a fresh page in his notebook, McCaleb opened the murder book. He snapped open the rings and pulled the documents out and stacked them neatly on the desk. It was a little quirk but he never liked reviewing cases by turning pages in a book. He liked to hold the individual reports in his hands. He liked squaring off the corners of the whole stack. He put the binder aside and began carefully reading through the investigative summaries in chronological order. Soon he was fully immersed in the investigation. The homicide report had come in anonymously to the front desk of the West Hollywood substation of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department at noon on Monday, January 1. The male caller said there was a man dead in apartment 2B in the Grand Royale Apartments on Sweetzer near Melrose. The caller hung up without giving his name or any other message. Because the call came in on one of the non-emergency lines at the front desk it was not recorded, and there was no caller ID function on the phone. A pair of patrol deputies were dispatched to the apartment and found the front door slightly ajar. After receiving no answer to their knocks and calls, the deputies entered the apartment and quickly determined that the anonymous caller had given correct information. A man was dead inside. The deputies backed out of the apartment and the homicide squad was called. The case was assigned to partners Jaye Winston and Kurt Mintz, with Winston as lead detective. The victim was identified in the reports as Edward Gunn, a forty-four-year-old itinerant house painter. He had lived alone in the Sweetzer Avenue apartment for nine years. A computer search for criminal records or known criminal activity determined that Gunn had a history of convictions for small-time crimes ranging from soliciting for prostitution and loitering to repeated arrests for public intoxication and drunk driving. He had been arrested twice for drunk driving in the three months prior to his death, including the night of December 30. He posted bail on the 31st and was released. Less than twenty-four hours later he was dead. The records also showed an arrest for a serious crime without subsequent conviction. Six years earlier Gunn had been taken into custody by the Los Angeles Police Department and questioned in a homicide. He was later released and no charges were ever filed. According to the investigative reports Winston and her partner had put into the murder book, there was no apparent robbery of Gunn or his apartment, leaving the motive for his slaying unknown. Other residents in the eight-unit apartment building said that they had heard no disturbances in Gunn's apartment on New Year's Eve. Any sounds that might have emanated from the apartment during the murder were likely camouflaged by the sounds of a party being held by a tenant in the apartment directly below Gunn's. The party had lasted well into the morning of January 1. Gunn, according to several partygoers who were interviewed, had not attended the party or been invited. A canvass of the neighborhood, which was primarily lined with small apartment buildings similar to the Grand Royale, found no witnesses who remembered seeing Gunn in the days leading up to his death. All indications were that the murderer had come to Gunn. The lack of damage to doors and windows of the apartment indicated that there had been no break-in and that Gunn might very well have known his killer. To that end, Winston and Mintz interviewed all known coworkers and associates, as well as every tenant and every person who had attended the party at the complex, in an effort to draw out a suspect. They got nothing for their effort. They also checked all of the victim's financial records for a clue to a possible monetary motivation and found nothing. Gunn had no steady employment. He mostly loitered around a paint and design store on Beverly Boulevard and offered his services to customers on a day-work basis. He lived a hand-to-mouth existence, making just enough to pay for and maintain his apartment and a small pickup truck in which he carried his painting equipment. Gunn had one living relative, a sister who lived in Long Beach. At the time of his death, he had not seen her in more than a year, though he happened to call her the night before his death from the holding tank of the LAPD's Hollywood Division station. He was being held there following his DUI arrest. The sister reported that she'd told her brother she could no longer keep helping him and bailing him out. She'd hung up. And she could not offer the investigators any useful information in regard to his murder. The incident in which Gunn had been arrested six years before was fully reviewed. Gunn had killed a prostitute in a Sunset Boulevard motel room. He had stabbed her with her own knife when she attempted to stab and rob him, according to his statement in the report forwarded by the LAPD's Hollywood Division. There were minor inconsistencies between Gunn's original statement to responding patrol officers and the physical evidence but not enough for the district attorney's office to seek charges against him. Ultimately, the case was reluctantly written off as self-defense and dropped. McCaleb noticed that the lead investigator on the case had been Detective Harry Bosch. Years earlier McCaleb had worked with Bosch on a case, an investigation he still often thought about. Bosch had been abrasive and secretive at times, but still a good cop with excellent investigative skills, intuition and instincts. They had actually bonded in some way over the emotional turmoil the case had caused them both. McCaleb wrote Bosch's name down in the notebook as a reminder to call the detective to see if he had any thoughts on the Gunn case. He went back to reading the summaries. With Gunn's record of prior engagement with a prostitute in mind, Winston's and Mintz's next step was to comb through the murder victim's phone records as well as check and credit card purchases for indications that he might have continued to use prostitutes. There was nothing. They cruised Sunset Boulevard with an LAPD vice crew for three nights, stopping and interviewing street prostitutes. But none admitted knowing the man in the photos the detectives had borrowed from Gunn's sister. The detectives scanned the sex want ads in the local alternative papers for an advertisement Gunn might have placed. One more time their efforts hit a wall. Finally, the detectives took the long shot of tracking the family and associates of the dead prostitute of six years before. Although Gunn had never been charged with the killing, there was still a chance someone believed he had not acted in self-defense - someone who might have sought retribution. But this, too, was a dead end. The woman's family was from Philadelphia. They had lost contact years before. No family member had even come out to claim the body before it was cremated at county taxpayers' expense. There was no reason for them to seek vengeance for a killing six years old when they had not cared much about the killing in the first place. The case had hit one investigative dead end after another. A case not solved in the first forty-eight hours had a less than 50 percent chance of being cleared. A case unsolved after two weeks was like an unclaimed body in the morgue - it was going to sit there in the cold and the dark for a long, long time. And that was why Winston had finally come to McCaleb. He was the last resort on a hopeless case. Finished with the summaries, McCaleb decided to take a break. He checked his watch and saw it was now almost two. He opened the cabin door and went up to the salon. The lights were off. Buddy had apparently gone to bed in the master cabin without making any noise. McCaleb opened the cold box and looked in. There was a six-pack of beer left over from the charter but he didn't want that. There was a carton of orange juice and some bottled water. He took the water and went out through the salon door to the cockpit. It was always cool on the water but this night seemed crisper than usual. He folded his arms across his chest and looked across the harbor and up the hill to the house where he knew his family slept. A single light shone from the back deck. A momentary pang of guilt passed through him. He knew that despite his deep love for the woman and two children behind that light, he would rather be on the boat with the murder book than up there in the sleeping house. He tried to push away these thoughts and the questions they raised but could not completely blind himself to the essential conclusion that there was something wrong with him, something missing. It was something that prevented him from fully embracing that which most men seemed to long for. He went back inside the boat. He knew that immersing himself in the case reports would shut out the guilt. The autopsy report contained no surprises. The cause of death was as McCaleb had guessed from the video: cerebral hypoxia due to compression of the carotid arteries by ligature strangulation. The time of death was estimated to have been between midnight and 3 a.m. on January 1. The deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy noted that interior damage to the neck was minimal. Neither the hyoid bone nor the thyroid cartilage was broken. This aspect, coupled with multiple ligature furrows on the skin, led the examiner to conclude that Gunn suffocated slowly while desperately struggling to keep his feet behind his torso so that the wire noose was not pulled tight around his neck. The autopsy summation suggested that the victim could have struggled in this position for as long as two hours. McCaleb thought about this and wondered if the killer had been there in the apartment the whole time, watching the dying man struggle. Or had he set the ligature and left before his victim was dead, possibly to set some kind of alibi scheme into motion - perhaps appearing at a New Year's Eve party so that there would be multiple witnesses able to account for him at the time of the victim's death. He then remembered the bucket and decided that the killer had stayed. The covering of the victim's face was a frequent occurrence in sexually motivated and rage killings, the attacker covering his victim's face as a means of dehumanizing the victim and avoiding eye contact. McCaleb had worked dozens of cases where he had noted this phenomenon, women who had been raped and murdered with nightgowns or pillowcases covering their faces, children with their heads wrapped in towels. He could write a list of examples that would fill the entire notebook. Instead he wrote one line on the page under Bosch's name. UNSUB was there the whole time. He watched. The unknown subject, McCaleb thought. So we meet again. Before moving on, McCaleb looked through the autopsy report for two other pieces of information. First was the head wound. He found a description of the wound in the examiner's comments. The perimortem laceration was circular and superficial. Its damage was minimal and it was possibly a defensive wound. McCaleb dismissed the possibility of it being a defensive wound. The only blood on the rug at the crime scene was that spilled from the bucket after it was placed over the victim's head. Plus, the flow of blood from the wound at the point of the crown was forward and over the victim's face. This indicated the head was bowed forward. McCaleb took all of this to mean that Gunn was already bound and on the floor when the blow had been struck to his head and then the bucket placed over it. His instinct told him this might have been a blow delivered with the intention of hurrying the victim's demise; an impact to the head that would weaken the victim and shorten his struggle against the ligature. He wrote these thoughts down in the notebook and then went back into the autopsy report. He located the findings on the examination of the anus and penis. Swabs indicated no sexual activity had occurred in the time prior to death. McCaleb wrote down No Sex in the notebook. Beneath this he wrote the word Rage and circled it. McCaleb realized that many, if not all, of the suspicions and conclusions he was coming up with had probably already been reached by Jaye Winston. But this had always been his routine in analyzing murder scenes. He made his own judgments first, then looked to see how they stacked up next to the primary investigator's conclusions afterward. After the autopsy he went to the evidence analysis reports. He first looked at the recovered evidence list and noticed that the plastic owl he had seen on the videotape had not been bagged and tagged. He felt sure that it should have been and made a note of it. Also missing from the list was any mention of a weapon recovery. It appeared that whatever had been used to open up the wound on Gunn's scalp had been taken away from the scene by the killer. McCaleb made a note of this as well because it was another piece of information supportive of a profile of the killer as organized, thorough and cautious. The report on the analysis of the tape used to gag the victim was folded into a separate envelope that McCaleb found in one of the binder's pockets. In addition to a computer printout and an addendum there were several photographs that showed the full length of the tape after it had been cut and peeled away from the victim's face and head. The first set of photos documented the tape front and back as it was found, with a significant amount of coagulated blood obscuring the message written on it. The next set of photos showed the tape front and back after the blood had been removed with a solution of soapy water. McCaleb stared at the message for a long moment even though he knew he would never be able to decipher it on his own. Cave Cave Dus Videt He finally put the photos aside and picked up the accompanying reports. The tape was found to be clear of fingerprints but several hairs and microscopic fibers were collected from the underside adhesive. The hair was determined to have belonged to the victim. The fibers were held pending further orders for analysis. McCaleb knew this meant there was a time and cost constraint. The fibers would not be analyzed until the investigation reached a point where there were fibers from a suspect's possessions that also could be analyzed and compared. Otherwise, the costly and time-consuming analysis of the collected fibers would be for nothing. McCaleb had seen this sort of investigative prioritizing before. It was a routine in local law enforcement not to take expensive steps until necessary. But he was a bit surprised that it had not been deemed necessary in this case. He concluded that Gunn's background as a one-time murder suspect might have dropped him into a lower class of victim, one for which the extra step is not taken. Maybe, McCaleb thought, this was why Jaye Winston had come to him. She hadn't said anything about paying him for his time - not that he could accept a monetary payment anyway. He moved on to an addendum report that had been filed by Winston. She had taken a photograph of the tape and the message to a linguistics professor at UCLA who had identified the words as Latin. She was then referred to a retired Catholic priest who lived in the rectory at St. Catherine's in Hollywood and had taught Latin at the church's school for two decades until it was dropped from the curriculum in the early seventies. He easily translated the message for Winston. As McCaleb read the translation he felt the feathery run of adrenaline rise up his spine to his neck. His skin tightened and he felt a sensation that came close to lightheadedness. Cave Cave Dus Videt Cave Cave D(omin)us Videt Beware Beware God Sees 'Holy shit,' McCaleb said quietly to himself. It was not said as an exclamation. Rather, it was the phrase he and fellow bureau profilers had used to informally classify cases in which religious overtures were part of the evidence. When God was discovered to be part of the probable motivation for a crime, it became a 'holy shit' case when spoken of in casual conversation. It also changed things significantly, for God's work was never done. When a killer was out there using His name as part of the imprint of a crime, it often meant there would be more crimes. It was said in the bureau profiling offices that God's killers never stopped of their own volition. They had to be stopped. McCaleb now understood Jaye Winston's apprehension about letting this case gather dust. If Edward Gunn was the first known victim, then somebody else was likely in the sights of the killer right now. McCaleb scribbled down a translation of the killer's message and some other thoughts. He wrote Victim Acquisition and underlined it twice. He looked back at Winston's report and noticed that at the bottom of the page containing the translation there was a paragraph marked with an asterisk. *Father Ryan stated that the word 'Dus' as seen on the duct tape was a short form of 'Deus' or 'Dominus' primarily found in medieval Bibles as well as church carvings and other artwork. McCaleb leaned back in his chair and drank from the water bottle. He found this final paragraph the most interesting of the whole package. The information it contained could be a means by which the killer might be isolated in a small group and then found. Initially the pool of potential suspects was huge - it would essentially include anyone who had had access to Edward Gunn on New Year's Eve. But the information from Father Ryan narrowed it significantly to those who had knowledge of medieval Latin, or someone who had gotten the word Dus and possibly the whole message from something he had seen. Perhaps something in a church. McCaleb was too jazzed by what he had read and seen to think about sleep. It was four-thirty and he knew he would complete this night awake and in the office. It was probably too early in Quantico, Virginia, for anyone to be in the Behavioral Sciences Unit but he decided to make the call anyway. He went up to the salon, got the cell phone out of the charger and punched in the number from memory. When the general operator answered he asked to be transferred to Special Agent Brasilia Doran's desk. There were a lot of people he could have asked for but he had decided on Doran because they had worked well together - and often from long distances - when he had been in the bureau. Doran also specialized in icon identification and symbology. The call was picked up by a machine and while listening to Doran's outgoing message McCaleb quickly tried to decide whether to leave a message or just call back. Initially, he thought it would be better to hang up and try to catch Doran live later because a personal call is much more difficult to deflect than a taped message. But then he decided to put faith in their former camaraderie, even if he had been out of the bureau for nearly five years. 'Brass, it's Terry McCaleb. Long time no see. Uh, listen, I'm calling because I need a favor. Could you call me back as soon as you get a moment? I'd really appreciate it.' He gave the number for his cell phone, thanked her and hung up. He could take the phone with him back to the house and wait for the call there but that would mean that Graciela might overhear the conversation with Doran and he didn't want that. He went back down to the forward bunk and started through the murder book documents again. He checked every page again for something that stood out in its inclusion or exclusion. He took a few more notes and made a list of things he still needed to do and know before drawing up a profile. But primarily he was just waiting for Doran. She finally returned his call at five-thirty. 'Long time is right,' she said by way of greeting. 'Too long. How y'doin', Brass?' 'Can't complain because nobody listens.' 'I heard you guys are looking for the Drano over there.' 'You're right about that. We are clogged and flogged. You know last year we sent half the staff to Kosovo to help in the war crimes investigations. On six-week rotations. That just killed us. We are still so far behind it's getting critical.' McCaleb wondered if she was giving him the woe-is-me pitch so he might not ask the favor he had mentioned on the message. He decided to go ahead with it anyway. 'Well, then you aren't going to like hearing from me,' he said. 'Oh boy, I'm shaking in my boots. What do you need, Terry?' 'I'm doing a favor for a friend out here. Sheriff's homicide squad. Taking a look at a homicide and' 'Did he already run it through here?' 'It's a she. And, yeah, she ran it on the VICAP box and got blanked. That's all. She got the word on how backed up you guys are on profiling and came to me instead. I sort of owe her one so I said I'd take a look.' 'And now you want to cut in line, right?' McCaleb smiled and hoped she was smiling as well on the other end of the line. 'Sort of. But I think it's a quickie. It's just one thing I want.' 'Then out with it. What?' 'I need an iconography baseline. I'm following a hunch on something.' 'Okay. Doesn't sound too involving. What's the symbol?' 'An owl' 'An owl? Just an owl?' 'More specifically, a plastic owl. But an owl just the same. I want to know if it's turned up before and what it means.' 'Well, I remember the owl on the bag of potato chips. What's that brand?' 'Wise. I remember. It's an East Coast brand.' 'Well, there you go. The owl is smart. He is wise.' 'Brass, I was hoping for something a little more' 'I know, I know. Tell you what, I'll see what I can find. The thing to remember is, symbols change. What means one thing at one time might mean something completely different at another time. You just looking for contemporary uses and examples?' McCaleb thought for a moment about the message on the duct tape. 'Can you throw in the medieval time period?' 'Sounds like you got a weird one - but ain't they all. Let me guess, a holy shit case?' 'Could be. How'd you know that?' 'Oh, all that medieval Inquisition and church stuff. Seen it before. I've got your number. I'll try to get back today.' McCaleb thought about asking her to run an analysis of the message from the duct tape but decided not to pile it on. Besides, the message must have been included on the computer run Jaye Winston completed. He thanked her and was about to disconnect when she asked about his health and he told her he was fine. 'You still living on that boat I heard about?' 'Nope. I'm living on an island now. But I still have the boat. I've got a wife and new baby daughter, too.' 'Wow! Is this the Terry "TV Dinner" McCaleb I used to know?' 'Same one, I guess.' 'Well, it sounds like you got your stuff together.' 'I think I finally do.' 'Then be careful with it. What are you doing chasing a case again?' McCaleb hesitated in his reply. 'I'm not sure.' 'Don't bullshit me. We both know why you're doing it. Tell you what, let me see what I can find out and I'll call you back.' 'Thanks, Brass. I'll be waiting.' McCaleb went into the master cabin and shook Buddy Lockridge awake. His friend startled and began swinging his arms wildly. 'It's me, it's me!' Before he calmed down, Buddy clapped McCaleb on the side of the head with a book he had fallen asleep holding. 'What are you doing?' Buddy exclaimed. 'I'm trying to wake you, man.' 'What for? What time is it?' 'It's almost six. I want to take the boat across.' 'Now?' 'Yeah, now. So get up and help me. I'll get the lines.' 'Man, now? We're going to hit the layer. Why don't you wait until it burns off?' 'Because I don't have the time.' Buddy reached up and turned on the reading lamp that was attached to the cabin wall just above the headboard. McCaleb noticed the book he was reading was called The Wire in the Blood. 'Something sure put a wire in your blood, man,' he said as he rubbed his ear where the book had hit him. 'Sorry about that. Why you in such a hurry to cross, anyway? It's that case, isn't it?' 'I'll be on top. Let's get it going.' McCaleb headed out of the cabin. Buddy called after him as he expected he would. 'You going to need a driver?' 'No, Buddy. You know I've been driving a couple years now. 'Yeah, but you might need help with the case, man.' 'I'll be all right. Hurry up, Bud, I want to get over there.' McCaleb took the key off the hook next to the salon door and went out and climbed up into the bridge. The air was still chilled and tendrils of dawn light were working their way through the morning mist. He flicked on the Raytheon radar and started the engines. They turned over immediately - Buddy had taken the boat over to Marina del Rey the week before to have them overhauled. McCaleb left them idling while he climbed back down and went to the fantail. He untied the stern line and then the Zodiac and led it around to the bow. He tied the Zodiac to the line from the mooring buoy after releasing it from the forward cleat. The boat was free now. He turned in the bow pulpit and looked up at the bridge just as Buddy, his hair a wiry nest from sleep, slid into the pilot seat. McCaleb signaled that the boat was loose. Buddy pushed the throttles forward and The Following Sea began to move. McCaleb picked the eight-foot gaff pole up off the deck and used it to keep the buoy off the bow as the boat made the turn into the fairway and slowly headed toward the mouth of the harbor. McCaleb stayed in the pulpit, leaning back against the railing and watching the island slip away behind the boat. He looked up once again toward his house and saw only the one light still on. It was too early for his family to be awake. He thought about the mistake he had knowingly just made. He should have gone up to the house and told Graciela what he was doing, tried to explain it. But he knew it would lose him a lot of time and that he would never be able to explain it to her satisfaction. He decided to just go. He would call his wife after the crossing and he would deal with the consequences of his decision later. The cool air of the shark-gray dawn had tightened the skin on his arms and neck. He turned in the bow pulpit and looked forward and across the bay to where he knew overtown lay hidden beneath the marine layer. Not being able to see what he knew to be there gave him an ominous feeling and he looked down. The water the bow cut through was flat and as blue-black as a marlin's skin. McCaleb knew he needed to get up into the bridge to help Buddy. One of them would drive while the other kept an eye on the radar screen to chart a safe course to Los Angeles Harbor. Too bad, he thought, that there would be no radar for him to use once he was on land again and trying to chart his way through the case that now gripped him. A mist of a different kind awaited him there. And these thoughts of trying to see his way through turned his mind to the thing about the case that had hooked him so deeply. Beware Beware God Sees The words turned in his head like a newfound mantra. There was someone in the cloaking mist ahead who had written those words. Someone who had acted on them in an extreme capacity at least once and who would likely act on them again. McCaleb was going to find that person. And in doing so, he wondered, whose words would he be acting on? Was there a true God sending him on this journey? He felt a touch on his shoulder and startled and turned, nearly dropping the gaff pole overboard. It was Buddy. 'Jesus, man, don't do that!' 'You all right?' 'I was till you scared the hell out of me. What are you doing? You should be driving.' McCaleb glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were clear of the harbor markers and into the open bay. 'I don't know,' Buddy said. 'You looked like Ahab standing out here with that gaff. I thought something was wrong. What are you doing?' 'I was thinking. Do you mind? Don't sneak up on me like that, man.' 'Well, I guess that makes us even then.' 'Just go drive the boat, Buddy. I'll be up in a minute. And check the generator - might as well juice the batteries.' As Buddy moved away McCaleb felt his heart even out again. He stepped off the pulpit and snapped the gaff back into its clamps on the deck. As he was bent over he felt the boat rise and fall as it went over a three- or four-foot roller. He straightened up and looked around for the origin of the wake. But he saw nothing. It had been a phantom moving across the flat surface of the bay. Harry Bosch raised his briefcase like a shield and used it to push his way through the crowd of reporters and cameras gathered outside the doors of the courtroom. 'Let me through, please, let me through.' Most of them didn't move until he used the briefcase to lever them out of the way. They were desperately crowding in and reaching tape recorders and cameras toward the center of the human knot where the defense lawyer was holding court. Bosch finally made it to the door, where a sheriff's deputy was pressed against the handle. He recognized Bosch and stepped sideways so he could open the door. 'You know,' Bosch said to the deputy, 'this is going to happen every day. This guy has more to say outside court than inside. You might want to think about setting up some rules so people can get in and out.' As Bosch went through the door, he heard the deputy tell him to talk to the judge about it. Bosch walked down the center aisle and then through the gate to the prosecution table. He was the first to arrive. He pulled the third chair out and sat down. He opened his briefcase on the table, took out the heavy blue binder and put it to the side. He then closed and snapped the briefcase locks and put it down on the floor next to his chair. Bosch was ready. He leaned forward and folded his arms on top of the binder. The courtroom was still, almost empty except for the judge's clerk and a court reporter who were getting ready for the day. Bosch liked these times. The quiet before the storm. And he knew without a doubt that a storm was surely coming. He nodded to himself. He was ready, ready to dance with the devil once more. He realized that his mission in life was all about moments like these. Moments that should be savored and remembered but that always caused a tight fisting of his guts. There was a loud metallic clacking sound and the door to the side holding cell opened. Two deputies led a man through the door. He was young and still tanned somehow despite almost three months in lockup. He wore a suit that would easily take the weekly paychecks of the men on either side of him. His hands were cuffed at his sides to a waist chain which looked incongruous with the perfect blue suit. In one hand he clasped an artist's sketch pad. The other held a black felt-tip pen, the only kind of writing instrument allowed in lockdown. The man was led to the defense table and positioned in front of the middle seat. He smiled and looked forward as the cuffs and the chain were removed. A deputy put a hand on the man's shoulder and pushed him down into the seat. The deputies then moved back and took positions in chairs to the man's rear. The man immediately leaned forward and opened the sketch pad and went to work with his pen. Bosch watched. He could hear the point of the pen scratching furiously on the paper. 'They don't allow me a charcoal, Bosch. Do you believe that? What threat could a piece of charcoal possibly be?' He hadn't looked at Bosch as he said it. Bosch didn't reply. 'It's the little things like that that bother me the most,' the man said. 'Better get used to it,' Bosch said. The man laughed but still did not look at Bosch. 'You know, somehow I knew that was exactly what you were going to say.' Bosch was quiet. 'You see, you are so predictable Bosch. All of you are.' The rear courtroom door opened and Bosch turned his eyes away from the defendant. The attorneys were coming in now. They were about to start. By the time McCaleb got to the Farmers' Market he was thirty minutes late for the meeting with Jaye Winston. He and Buddy had made the crossing in an hour and a half and McCaleb had called the sheriff's detective after they tied up at Cabrillo Marina. They arranged to meet but then he found the battery in the Cherokee dead because the car hadn't been used in two weeks. He had to get Buddy to give him a jump from his old Taurus and that had taken up the time. He walked into Dupar's, the corner restaurant in the market, but didn't see Winston at any of the tables or the counter. He hoped she hadn't come and gone. He chose an unoccupied booth that afforded the most privacy and sat down. He didn't need to look at a menu. They had chosen the Farmer's Market to meet because it was near Edward Gunn's apartment and because McCaleb wanted to eat breakfast at Dupar's. He had told Winston that more than anything else about Los Angeles, he missed the pancakes at Dupar's. Often when he and Graciela and the children made their once-a-month trip overtown to buy clothing and supplies not available on Catalina, they ate a meal at Dupar's. It didn't matter whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner, McCaleb always ordered pancakes. Raymond did, too. But he was boysenberry while McCaleb was traditional maple. McCaleb told the waitress he was waiting for another party but ordered a large orange juice and a glass of water. After she brought the two glasses he opened his leather bag and took out the plastic pill box. He kept a week's supply of his pills on the boat and another couple days' worth in the glove box of the Cherokee. He'd prepared the box after docking. Alternating gulps of orange juice and water, he downed the twenty-seven pills that made up his morning dosage. He knew their names by their shapes and colors and tastes; Prilosec, Imuran, digoxin. As he methodically went through the lineup he noticed a woman in a nearby booth watching, her eyebrows arched in wonder. He would never get rid of the pills. They were as certain for him as the proverbial death and taxes. Over the years some would be changed, some subtracted and new ones added, but he knew he would be swallowing pills and washing away their awful tastes with orange juice for the rest of his life. 'I see you ordered without me.' He looked up from the last three cyclosporine pills he was about to take as Jaye Winston slid into the opposite side of the booth. 'Sorry, I'm so late. Traffic on the ten was a complete bitch.' 'It's all right. I was late, too. Dead battery.' 'How many of those you take now?' 'Fifty-four a day.' 'Unbelievable.' 'I had to turn a hallway closet into a medicine cabinet. The whole thing.' 'Well, at least you're still here.' She smiled and McCaleb nodded. The waitress came to the table with a menu for Winston but she said they had better order. 'I'll have what he's having.' McCaleb ordered a large stack with melted butter. He told the waitress they would share one order of well-done bacon. 'Coffee?' asked the waitress. She looked as though this might have been the one-millionth pancake order she had taken. 'Yes, please,' said Winston. 'Black.' McCaleb said he was fine with the orange juice. When they were alone McCaleb looked across the table at Winston. 'So, you get ahold of the manager?' 'He's going to meet us at ten-thirty. The place is still vacant but it has been cleaned. After we released it, the vic's sister came up and went through his things, took what she wanted.' 'Yeah, I was afraid of something like that.' 'The manager didn't think it was very much - the guy didn't have much.' 'What about the owl?' 'He didn't remember the owl. Frankly, I didn't either until you mentioned it this morning.' 'It's just a hunch. I'd like to take a look at it.' 'Well, we'll see if it's there. What else do you want to do? I hope you didn't come all the way across just to look at the guy's apartment.' 'I was thinking about checking out the sister. And maybe Harry Bosch, too.' Winston was silent but he could tell by her demeanor she was waiting for an explanation. 'In order to profile an unknown subject, it's important to know the victim. His routines, personality, everything. You know the drill. The sister and, to a lesser extent, Bosch can help with that.' 'I only asked you to look at the book and the tape, Terry. You're going to make me start feeling guilty here.' McCaleb paused while the waitress brought Winston's coffee and put down two small glass pitchers containing boysenberry and maple syrup. After she went away he spoke. 'You knew I'd get hooked, Jayne. "Beware, beware, God sees?" I mean, come on. You're going to tell me you thought I'd look it all over and phone in the report? Besides, I'm not complaining. I'm here because I want to be. If you feel guilty, you can buy the pancakes.' 'What did your wife say about it?' 'Nothing. She knows it's something I have to do. I called her from the dock after I crossed. It was too late for her to really say anything by then anyway. She just told me to pick up a bag of green corn tamales at El Cholo before I headed back. They sell 'em frozen.' The pancakes came. They stopped talking and McCaleb politely waited for Winston to choose a syrup first but she was using a fork to move her pancakes around on her plate and he finally couldn't wait. He doused his stack with maple syrup and started eating. The waitress came back by and put a check down. Winston quickly grabbed it. 'The sheriff will pay for this.' 'Tell him thanks.' 'You know, I don't know what you expect from Harry Bosch. He told me he'd only had a handful of contacts with Gunn in the six years since the prostitute case.' 'When were those, when he got popped?' Winston nodded as she poured boysenberry syrup on her pancakes. 'That means he would have seen him the night before he was killed. I didn't see anything about it in the book.' 'I haven't written it up. There's not much to it. The watch sergeant called him and told him Gunn was in the drunk tank on a DUI.' McCaleb nodded. 'And?' 'And he came in to look at the guy. That was it. He said they didn't even talk because Gunn was too blitzed.' 'Well ... I still want to talk to Harry. I worked a case with him once. He's a good cop. Intuitive and observant. He might know something I could use.' 'That is, if you can get to talk to him.' 'What do you mean?' 'You don't know? He's riding the prosecution table on the David Storey murder case. Up in Van Nuys. Don't you watch the news?' 'Ah, damn, I forgot about that. I remember reading his name in the newspapers after they took Storey down. That was, what, in October? They're already in trial?' 'They sure are. No delays and they didn't need a prelim because they went through the grand jury. They started jury selection right after the first. Last I heard, they had the panel so openers will probably be this week, maybe even today.' 'Shit.' 'Yeah, good luck getting to Bosch. I'm sure this is just what he'll want to hear about.' 'Are you saying you don't want me to talk to him?' Winston shrugged her shoulders. 'No, I'm not saying that at all. Do whatever you want to do. I just didn't think you'd be doing so much legwork on this. I can talk to my captain about maybe getting a consulting fee for you but' 'Don't worry about it. The sheriff's buying breakfast. That's enough.' 'Doesn't seem like it.' He didn't tell her that he'd work the case for free, just to be back in the life for a few days. And he didn't tell her that he couldn't take any money from her anyway. If he made any 'official' income he would lose his eligibility for the state medical assistance that paid for the fifty-four pills he swallowed every day. The pills were so expensive that if he had to pay for them himself he'd be bankrupt inside six months, unless he happened to be drawing a six-figure salary. It was the ugly secret behind the medical miracle that had saved him. He got a second chance at life, just as long as he didn't use it to try to earn a living. It was the reason the charter business was in Buddy Lockridge's name. Officially, McCaleb was an unpaid deckhand. Buddy simply rented the boat for charter from Graciela, the rent being 60 percent of all charter fees after expenses. 'How are your pancakes?' he asked Winston. 'The best.' 'Damn right.' The Grand Royale was a two-story eyesore, a deteriorating stucco box whose attempt at style began and ended with the modish design of the letters of its name tacked over the entranceway. The streets of West Hollywood and elsewhere in the flats were lined with such banal designs, the high-density apartments that crowded out smaller bungalow courts in the fifties and sixties. They replaced true style with phony ornamental flourishes and names that reflected exactly what they were not. McCaleb and Winston entered the second-floor apartment that had belonged to Edward Gunn with the building manager, a man named Rohrshak - 'Like the test, only spelled different.' If he hadn't known where to look, McCaleb would have missed what was left of the bloodstain on the carpet where Gunn had died. The carpet had not been replaced. Instead it had been shampooed, leaving only a small, light brown trace stain that would probably be mistaken by the next renter as the remnant of a soda or coffee spill. The place had been cleaned and readied for renting. But the furnishings were the same. McCaleb recognized them from the crime scene video. He looked across the room at the china cabinet but it was empty. There was no plastic owl perched atop it. He looked at Winston. 'It's gone.' Winston turned to the manager. 'Mr. Rohrshak. The owl that was on top of that cabinet. We think it was important. Are you sure you don't know what happened to it?' Rohrshak spread his arms wide and then dropped them to his side. 'No, I don't know. You asked before and I thought, "I don't remember any owl." But if you say so ...' He shrugged his shoulders and jutted his chin, then nodded as if reluctantly agreeing that there had been an owl on the china cabinet. McCaleb read his body language and words as the classic mannerisms of a liar. Deny the existence of the object you have stolen and you eliminate the theft. He assumed Winston had picked up on it as well. 'Jaye, you have a phone? Can you call the sister to double-check?' 'I've been holding out until the county buys me one.' McCaleb had wanted to keep his phone free in case Brass Doran called back but put his leather bag down on an overstuffed couch and dug out his phone and handed it to her. She had to get the sister's number out of a notebook in her briefcase. While she made the call McCaleb walked slowly around the apartment, taking it all in and trying to get a vibe from the place. In the dining area he stopped in front of the round wooden table with four straight-back chairs placed around it. The crime scene analysis report said that three of the chairs had numerous smears, partials and complete latent fingerprints on them - all of them belonging to the victim, Edward Gunn. The fourth chair, the one found on the north side of the table, was completely devoid of fingerprint evidence in any condition. The chair had been wiped down. Most likely, the killer had done this after handling the chair for some reason. McCaleb checked his directions and went to the chair on the north side of the table. Careful not to touch the back of it, he hooked his hand under the seat and pulled it away from the table and over to the china cabinet. He positioned it at center and then stepped up onto the seat. He raised his arms as if placing something on top of the cabinet. The chair wobbled on its uneven legs and McCaleb instinctively reached one hand to the top edge of the china cabinet to steady himself. Before he grabbed on he realized something and stopped himself. He braced his forearm across the frame of one of the cabinet's glass doors instead. 'Steady there, Terry.' He looked down. Winston was standing next to him. His phone was folded closed in her hand. 'I am. So does she have the bird?' 'No, she didn't know what I was talking about.' McCaleb raised himself on his toes and looked over the top edge of the cabinet. 'She tell you what she did take?' 'Just some clothes and some old photos of them when they were kids. She didn't want anything else.' McCaleb nodded. He was still looking up and down the top of the cabinet. There was a thick layer of dust on top. 'You say anything about me coming down to talk to her?' 'I forgot. I can call her back.' 'You have a flashlight, Jaye?' She dug through her purse and then handed up a small penlight. McCaleb flicked it on and held it at a low angle to the top of the cabinet. The light made the surface dust more distinct and now he could clearly see an octagonal-shaped impression that had been left by something that had been put on top of the cabinet and the dust. The base of the owl. He next moved the light along the edges of the top board, then turned it off and got down off the chair. He handed Jaye the penlight. 'Thanks. You might want to think about getting a print team back out here.' 'How come? The owl's not up there, is it?' McCaleb glanced at Rohrshak for a moment. 'Nope, it's gone. But whoever put it up there used that chair. When it wobbled they grabbed a hold.' He took a pen out of his pocket and reached up and tapped the front edge of the cabinet in the area where he had seen finger impressions in the dust. 'It's pretty dusty but there might be prints.' 'What if it was whoever took the owl?' McCaleb looked pointedly at Rohrshak when he answered. 'Same thing. There might be prints.' Rohrshak looked away. 'Can I use this again?' Winston held up his phone. 'Go ahead.' As Winston called for a print team, McCaleb dragged the chair into the middle of the living room, positioning it a few feet from the bloodstain. He then sat down on it and took in the room. In this position the owl would have looked down on the killer as well as the victim. Some instinct told McCaleb that this was the configuration the killer had wanted. He looked down at the bloodstain and imagined he was looking down at Edward Gunn struggling for his life and slowly losing the battle. The bucket, he thought. Everything fit but the bucket. The killer had set the stage but then couldn't watch the play. He needed the bucket so that he wouldn't see his victim's face. It bothered McCaleb that it didn't fit. Winston came over and handed him the phone. 'There's a crew just finishing a break-in on Kings. They'll be here in fifteen minutes.' 'That's lucky.' 'Very. What are you doing?' 'Just thinking. I think he sat here and watched but then couldn't take it. He struck the victim on the head, to maybe hurry it up. Then he got the bucket and put it on so he wouldn't have to watch.' Winston nodded. 'Where'd the bucket come from? There was nothing in the' 'We think it came from under the sink in the kitchen. There's a ring, a water ring on the shelf that fits the base of the bucket. It's on a supplemental Kurt typed up. He must've forgotten to put it in the book.' McCaleb nodded and stood up. 'You're going to wait for the print crew, right?' 'Yes, it shouldn't be long.' 'I'm going to take a walk.' He headed for the open door. 'I will go with you,' Rohrshak said. McCaleb turned. 'No, Mr. Rohrshak, you need to stay here with Detective Winston. We need an independent witness to monitor what we do in the apartment.' He glanced over Rohrshak's shoulder at Winston. She winked, telling him she understood the phony story and what he was doing. 'Yes, Mr. Rohrshak. Please stay here, if you don't mind.' Rohrshak shrugged his shoulders again and raised his hands. McCaleb went down the stairs to the enclosed courtyard in the center of the apartment building. He turned in a complete circle and his eyes traveled up to the line of the flat roof. He didn't see the owl anywhere and turned and walked out through the entrance hall to the street. Across Sweetzer was the Braxton Arms, a three-story, L-shaped apartment building with exterior walkways and stairwells. McCaleb crossed and found a six-foot security gate and fence at the entrance. It was more for show than as a deterrent. He took off his windbreaker, folded it and pushed it between two of the gate's bars. He then brought his foot up onto the gate's handle, tested it with his weight, then hoisted himself up to the top of the gate. He dropped down on the other side and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He was clear. He grabbed his windbreaker and headed for the stairwell. He walked up to the third level and followed the walkway to the front of the building. His breathing was loud and labored from climbing the gate and then the stairs. When he got to the front he put his hands on the safety railing and leaned forward until he had caught his breath. He then looked across Sweetzer to the flat roof of the apartment building where Edward Gunn had lived. Again, the plastic owl wasn't there. McCaleb leaned his forearms down on the railing and continued to labor for breath. He listened to the cadence of his heart as it finally settled. He could feel sweat popping on his scalp. He knew it wasn't his heart that was weak. It was his body, weakened by all the drugs he took to keep his heart strong. It frustrated him. He knew that he would never be strong, that he would spend the rest of his life listening to his heart the way a night burglar listens to creaks in the floor. He looked down when he heard a vehicle and saw a white van with the sheriff's seal on the driver's door pull to a stop in front of the apartment building across the street. The print crew had arrived. McCaleb glanced at the roof across the street once more and then turned to head back down, defeated. He suddenly stopped. There was the owl. It was perched atop a compressor for a central air-conditioning system on the roof of the L-extension of the building he was in. He quickly went to the stairs and climbed up to the roof landing. He had to work his way around some furniture that was stacked and stored on the landing but found the door unlocked and hurried across the flat, gravel-strewn roof to the air conditioner. McCaleb first studied the owl before touching it. It matched his memory of the owl on the crime scene tape. Its base was an octagonal stump. He knew it was the missing owl. He removed the wire that had been wrapped around the base and attached to the intake grill of the air conditioner. He noticed that the grill and metal covering of the unit were covered with old bird droppings. He surmised that the droppings were a maintenance problem and Rohrshak, who apparently managed this building as well as the one across the street, had taken the owl from Gunn's apartment to use to keep the birds away. McCaleb took the wire and looped it around the owl's neck so that he could carry it without touching it, though he doubted there would be any usable fingerprint or fiber evidence remaining on it. He lifted it off the air conditioner and headed back to the stairs. When McCaleb stepped back into Edward Gunn's apartment he saw two crime scene techs getting equipment out of a toolbox. A stepladder was standing in front of the china cabinet. 'You might want to start with this,' he said. He watched Rohrshak's eyes widen as he entered the room and placed the plastic owl on the table. 'You manage the place across the street, don't you, Mr. Rohrshak?' 'Uh ...' 'It's okay. It's easy enough to find out.' 'Yes, he does,' Winston said, bending down to look at the owl. 'He was over there when we needed him on the day of the murder. He lives there.' 'Any idea how this ended up on the roof?' McCaleb asked. Rohrshak still didn't answer. 'Guess it just flew over, right?' Rohrshak couldn't take his eyes off the owl. 'Tell you what, you can go now, Mr. Rohrshak. But stay-around your place. If we get a print off the bird or the cabinet, we're going to need to take a set of yours for comparison.' Now Rohrshak looked at McCaleb and his eyes grew even wider. 'Go on, Mr. Rohrshak.' The building manager turned and slowly headed out of the apartment. 'And shut the door, please,' McCaleb called after him. After he was gone and the door was shut Winston almost burst into laughter. 'Terry, you're being so hard on him. He didn't really do anything wrong, you know. We cleared the place, he let the sister take what she wanted and then what was he supposed to do, try to rent the place with this stupid owl up there?' McCaleb shook his head. 'He lied to us. That was wrong. I almost blew a gasket climbing that building across the street. He could have just told us it was up there.' 'Well, he's properly scared now. I think he learned his lesson.' 'Whatever.' He stepped back so one of the techs could go to work on the owl while the other climbed the ladder to work on the top of the cabinet. McCaleb studied the bird as the tech brushed on black fingerprint powder. It appeared that the owl was hand painted. It was dark brown and black on its wings, head and back. Its chest was a lighter brown with some yellow highlighting. Its eyes were a shiny black. 'Has this been outside?' the tech asked. 'Unfortunately,' McCaleb answered, remembering the rains that had swept off the mainland and out to Catalina the week before. 'Well, I'm not getting anything.' 'Figures.' McCaleb looked at Winston, his eyes portraying renewed anger with Rohrshak. 'Nothing up here, either,' the other tech said. 'Too much dust.' The trial of David Storey was being held in the Van Nuys courthouse. The crime the case centered on was not remotely connected to Van Nuys or even the San Fernando Valley, but the courthouse had been chosen by schedulers in the district attorney's office because Department N was available and it was the single largest courtroom in the county - constructed out of two courtrooms several years earlier to comfortably hold the two juries as well as the attendant media crush of the Menendez brothers murder case. The Menendezes' slaying of their parents had been one of several Los Angeles court cases in the previous decade to capture the media's and, therefore, the public's attention. When it was over, the DA's office did not bother deconstructing the huge courtroom. Somebody there had the foresight to realize that in L.A. there would always be a case that could fill Department N. And at the moment it was the David Storey case. The thirty-eight-year-old film director, known for films that pushed the limits of violence and sexuality within an R rating, was charged with the murder of a young actress he had taken home from the premiere of his most recent film. The twenty-three-year-old woman's body was found the next morning in the small Nichols Canyon bungalow she shared with another would-be actress. The victim had been strangled, her nude body arranged in her bed in a pose investigators believed to be part of a careful plan by her killer to avoid discovery. The case's elements - power, celebrity, sex and money -and the added Hollywood connection served to bring the case maximum media attention. David Storey worked on the wrong side of the camera to be a fully realized celebrity himself, but his name was known and he wielded the awesome power of a man who had delivered seven box office hits in as many years. The media were drawn to the Storey trial in the way young people are drawn by the dream of Hollywood. The advance coverage clearly delineated the case as a parable on unchecked Hollywood avarice and excess. The case also had a degree of secrecy not usually seen in criminal trials. The prosecutors assigned to the case took their evidence to a grand jury in order to seek charges against Storey. The move allowed them to bypass a preliminary hearing, where most of the evidence accumulated against a defendant is usually made public. Without that fount of case information, the media were left to mine their sources in both the prosecution and defense camps. Still, little about the case was leaked to the media other than generalities. The evidence the prosecution would use to tie Storey to the murder remained cloaked, and all the more cause for the media frenzy around the trial. It was just that frenzy that had convinced the district attorney to move the trial to the large Department N courtroom in Van Nuys. The second jury box would be used to accommodate more media members in the courtroom, while the unused deliberation room would be converted into a media room where the video feed could be watched by the second- and third-tier journalists. The move, which would give all media - from the National Enquirer to the New York Times - full access to the trial and its players, guaranteed the proceedings would become the first full-blooded media circus of the new century. In the center ring of this circus, sitting at the prosecution table, was Detective Harry Bosch, the lead investigator of the case. All the pretrial media analysis came down to one conclusion: the charges against David Storey would rise and fall with Bosch. All evidence in support of the murder charge was said to be circumstantial; the foundation of the case would come from Bosch. The one solid piece of evidence that had been leaked to the media was that Bosch would testify that in a private moment, with no other witnesses or devices at hand to record the statement, Storey had smugly admitted to him that he had committed the crime and boasted that he would surely get away with it. McCaleb knew all of this as he walked into the Van Nuys courthouse shortly before noon. He stood in line to go through the metal detector and felt a reminder of all that had changed in his life. When he had been a bureau agent all he needed to do was hold his badge up and walk around the line. Now he was just a citizen. He had to wait. The fourth-floor hallway was crowded with people milling about. McCaleb noticed that many clutched stacks of eight-by-ten black-and-white glossies of the movie stars they hoped would be attending the trial - either as witnesses or as spectators in support of the defendant. He walked to the double-door entrance to Department N but one of the two sheriff's deputies posted there told him the courtroom was at full capacity. The deputy pointed to a long line of people standing behind a rope. He said it was the line for people waiting to go in. Every time one person left the courtroom another could go in. McCaleb nodded and stepped away from the doors. He saw that further down the hallway was an open door with people milling about it. He recognized one man as a reporter on a local television news program. He guessed it was the media room and headed that way. When he got to the open door he could look in and see two large televisions mounted high up in either corner above the room where there were several people crowded around a large jury table. Reporters. They were typing on laptop computers, taking notes on pads, eating sandwiches from to-go bags. The center of the table was crowded with plastic coffee and soda cups. He looked up at one of the televisions and saw that court was still in session though it was now past noon. The camera focused on a wide angle and he recognized Harry Bosch sitting with a man and a woman at the prosecution table. It did not look as though he was paying attention to the proceedings. A man McCaleb recognized stood at the lectern between the prosecution and defense tables. He was J. Reason Fowkkes, the lead defense attorney. At the table to his left sat the defendant, David Storey. McCaleb could not hear the audio feed but he knew that Fowkkes was not delivering his opening statement. He was looking up at the judge, not in the direction of the jury box. Most likely last-minute motions were being argued by the attorneys before openers began. The twin television screens switched to a new camera, this angle directly on the judge, who began speaking, apparently delivering his rulings. McCaleb noted the name plate in front of the judge's bench. It said Superior Court Judge John A. Houghton. 'Agent McCaleb?' McCaleb turned from the television to see a man he recognized but couldn't immediately place standing next to him. 'Just McCaleb. Terry McCaleb.' The man perceived his difficulty and held out his hand. 'Jack McEvoy. I interviewed you once. It was pretty brief. It was about the Poet investigation.' 'Oh, right, I remember now. That was a while back.' McCaleb shook his hand. He did remember McEvoy. He had become entwined in the Poet case and then wrote a book about it. McCaleb had had a very peripheral part in the case - when the investigation had shifted to Los Angeles. He never read McEvoy's book but was sure he had not added anything to it and likely wasn't mentioned in it. 'I thought you were from Colorado,' he said, recalling that McEvoy had worked for one of the papers in Denver. 'They sent you out to cover this?' McEvoy nodded. 'Good memory. I was from there but I live out here now. I work freelance.' McCaleb nodded, wondering what else there was to say. 'Who are you covering this for?' 'I've been writing a weekly dispatch on it for the New Times. Do you read it?' McCaleb nodded. He was familiar with the New Times. It was a weekly tabloid with an anti-authority, muckraking stance. It appeared to subsist mostly on entertainment ads, ranging from movies to the escort services that filled its back pages. It was free and Buddy always seemed to leave issues lying around the boat. McCaleb looked at it from time to time but hadn't noticed McEvoy's name before. 'I'm also doing a general wrap for Vanity Fair,' McEvoy said. 'You know, a more discursive, dark-side-of-Hollywood piece. I'm thinking about another book, too. What brings you here? Are you ... involved with this in some 'Me, no. I was in the area and I have a friend involved. I was hoping I might be able to get a chance to say hello to him.' As he told the lie McCaleb looked away from the writer and back through the door to the televisions. The full courtroom camera angle was now being shown. It looked like Bosch was gathering things into a briefcase. 'Harry Bosch?' McCaleb looked back at him. 'Yeah, Harry. We worked a case together before and ... uh, what's going on in there now, anyway?' 'Final motions before they start. They started with a closed session and they're just doing some housekeeping. Not worth being in there. Everybody thinks the judge will probably finish before lunch and then give the lawyers the rest of the day to work on openers. They start tomorrow at ten. You think things are crowded here now? Wait till tomorrow.' McCaleb nodded. 'Oh, well, okay then. Uh, nice seeing you again, Jack. Good luck with the story. And the book, if it comes to that.' 'You know, I would have liked to write your story. You know, with the heart and everything.' McCaleb nodded. 'Well, I owed Keisha Russell one and she did a good job with it.' McCaleb noticed people start to push their way out of the media room. Behind them he could see on the television screens that the judge had left the bench. Court was out of session. 'I better go down the hall and see if I can catch Harry. Good to see you again, Jack.' McCaleb offered his hand and McEvoy shook it. He then followed the other reporters down to the courtroom doors. The main doors to Department N were opened by the two deputies and out flowed the crowd of lucky citizens who had gotten seats during the session, which had most likely been mind-numbingly boring. Those who had not made it inside pushed up close for a glimpse of a celebrity but they were disappointed. The celebrities wouldn't start showing until the next day. Opening statements were like the opening credits of a film. That's where they would want to be seen. At the tail end of the crowd came the lawyers and staff. Storey had been returned to lockup but his attorney strode right to the semicircle of reporters and began giving his view of what had transpired inside. A tall man with jet-black hair, a deep tan and ever-shifting green eyes .took a position directly behind the lawyer to cover his back. He was striking and McCaleb thought he recognized him but he couldn't think from where. He looked like one of the actors Storey normally put in his films. The prosecutors came out and soon had their own knot of reporters to deal with. Their answers were shorter than the defense lawyer's. They often declined to comment when asked questions about the evidence they would present. McCaleb watched for Bosch and finally saw him slip out last. Bosch skirted the crowd by staying close to the wall and headed toward the elevators. One reporter moved in on him but he held up his hand and waved her away. She stopped and moved back like a loose molecule to the pack standing around J. Reason Fowkkes. McCaleb followed Bosch down the hall and caught him when he stopped to wait for an elevator. 'Hey, Harry Bosch.' Bosch turned, already putting on his no-comment face, when he saw it was McCaleb. 'Hey ... McCaleb.' He smiled. The men shook hands. 'Looks like the world's worst eight-by-ten case,' McCaleb said. 'You're telling me. What are you doing here? Don't tell me you're writing a book on this thing.' 'What?' 'All these ex-bureau guys writing books nowadays.' 'Nah, that's not me. Actually, though, I was hoping I could maybe buy you lunch. There's something I wanted to talk to you about.' Bosch looked at his watch and was deciding something. 'Edward Gunn.' Bosch looked up at him. 'Jaye Winston?' McCaleb nodded. 'She asked me to take a look.' The elevator came and they stepped onto it with a crowd of people who had been in the courtroom. They all seemed to be looking at Bosch while trying not to show it. McCaleb decided not to continue until they were off. On the first floor they headed toward the exit. 'I told her I'd profile it. A quick one. To do it I need to get a handle on Gunn. I thought maybe you could tell me about that old case and about what kind of guy he was.' 'He was a scumbag. Look, I have about forty-five minutes max. I need to get on the road. I'm running down wits today, making sure everybody's ready to go after openers.' 'I'll take the forty-five if you can spare it. Any place to eat around here?' 'Forget the cafeteria here - it's awful. There's a Cupid's up on Victory.' 'You cops always eat at the best.' 'It's why we do what we do.' They ate their hot dogs at an outdoor table without an umbrella. Though it was a mildly warm winter day, McCaleb found himself sweating. On any given day the Valley could be counted on to be fifteen to twenty degrees warmer than Catalina and he wasn't used to the change. His internal heating and cooling systems had never been normal since the transplant and he was prone to quick chills and sweats. He began with some small talk about Bosch's current case. 'You ready to become Hollywood Harry with this case?' 'Yeah, no thanks,' Bosch said between bites of what was billed as a Chicago dog. 'I think I'd rather be on midnight shift in the Seventy-seventh.' 'Well, you think you got it together? You got him?' 'Never know. The DA's office hasn't won a big one since disco. I don't know how it will go. The lawyers all say it depends on the jury. I always thought it was the quality of the evidence but I'm just a dumb detective. John Reason brought in O. J.'s jury consultant and they're acting pretty happy with the twelve in the box. Shit, John Reason. See, I'm even calling the guy by the name the reporters use. It shows how good he is at controlling things, sculpting things.' He shook his head and took another bite of his lunch. 'Who is the big guy I saw him with?' McCaleb asked. 'The guy standing behind him like Lurch.' 'Rudy Valentino, his investigator.' 'That's his name?' 'No, it's Rudy Tafero. He's former LAPD. He worked Hollywood detectives until a few years back. People in the bureau called him Valentino 'cause of his looks. He got off on it. Anyway, he went private. Has a bail bonds license. Don't ask me how but he started getting security contracts with a lot of Hollywood people. He showed up on this one right after we popped Storey. In fact, Rudy brought Storey to Fowkkes. Probably got a nice finder's fee for that.' 'And how about the judge? How's he going to be?' Bosch nodded as if he had found something good in the conversation. 'Shootin' Houghton. He's no Second Chance Lance. He's no bullshit. He'll slap Fowkkes down if he needs to. At least we have that going for us.' 'Shootin' Houghton?' 'Under that black robe he's usually strapped - or at least most people think so. About five years ago he had a Mexican Mafia case, and when the jury came in guilty a bunch of the defendants' buddies and family in the audience got mad and nearly started a riot in the courtroom. Houghton pulled his Glock and put a round into the ceiling. It quieted things down pretty quick. Ever since he's been reelected by the highest percentage of any incumbent judge in the county. Go in his courtroom and check the ceiling. The bullet hole's still there. He won't let anybody fix it.' Bosch took another bite and looked at his watch. He changed the subject, talking with his mouth full. 'Nothing personal but I take it they've hit the wall on Gunn if they're going to outside help already.' McCaleb nodded. 'Something like that.' He looked down at the chili dog in front of him and wished he had a knife and fork. 'What's wrong? We didn't have to come here.' 'Nothing. I was just thinking. Between pancakes at Dupar's this morning and this, I might need another heart by dinner.' 'You want to stop your heart, next time you go to Dupar's top it off with a stop at Bob's Donuts. Right there in the Farmers' Market. Raised glaze. A couple of those and you'll feel your arteries harden and snap like icicles hanging off a house. They never came up with suspect one, right?' 'Right. Nothing.' 'So what makes you so interested?' 'Same as Jaye. Something about this one. We think whoever it was might be just starting.' Bosch just nodded. His mouth was full. McCaleb appraised him. His hair was shorter than McCaleb had remembered it. More gray but that was to be expected. He still had the mustache and the eyes. They reminded him of Graciela's, so dark there was almost no delineation between iris and pupil. But Bosch's eyes were weary and slightly hooded by wrinkles at the corners. Still, they were always moving, observing. He sat leaning slightly forward, as if ready to move. McCaleb remembered that there had always been a spring-loaded feel to Bosch. He felt as though at any moment or for any reason Bosch could put the needle into the red zone. Bosch reached inside his suit coat and took out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. McCaleb wondered if that had been in response to realizing that McCaleb had been studying him. He bent down, raised up his chili dog and finally took a bite. It tasted delicious and deadly at the same time. He put the dripping mess back on the paper plate and wiped his hand on a napkin. 'So tell me about Gunn. You said he was a scumbag. What else?' 'What else? That's about it. He was a predator. Used women, bought women. He murdered that girl in that motel room, no doubt in my mind.' 'But the DA kicked the case.' 'Yeah. Gunn claimed self-defense. He said some things that didn't add up but not enough to add up to charges. He claimed self-defense and there wasn't going to be enough to go against that in a trial. So they no-billed it, end of story, on to the next case.' 'Did he ever know you didn't believe him?' 'Oh, sure. He knew.' 'Did you try to sweat him at all?' Bosch gave him a look that McCaleb could read through the sunglasses. The last question went to Bosch's credibility as an investigator. 'I mean,' McCaleb said quickly, 'what happened when you tried to sweat him?' 'Actually, the truth is we never really got the chance. There was a problem. See, we did set it up. We brought him in and put him in one of the rooms. My partner and I were planning to leave him there a while, let him percolate a little and think about things. We were going to do all the paper, put it in the book and then take a run at him, try to break his story. We never got the chance. I mean, to do it right.' 'What happened?' 'Me and Edgar - that's my partner, Jerry Edgar - we went down the hall to get a cup of coffee and talk about how we were going to play it. While we were down there the squad lieutenant sees Gunn sitting in the interview room and doesn't know what the fuck he's doing there. He takes it upon himself to go in and make sure the guy's been properly advised of his rights.' McCaleb could see the anger working its way into Bosch's face, even six years after the fact. 'You see, Gunn had come in as a witness and ostensibly as the victim of a crime. He said she came at him with the knife and he turned it on her. So we didn't need to advise him. The plan was to go in there, shake his story down and get him to make a mistake. Once we had that, then we were going to advise him. But this dipshit lieutenant didn't know any of this and he just went in and advised the guy. After that, we were dead. He knew we were coming after him. He asked for a lawyer as soon as we walked into the room.' Bosch shook his head and looked out onto the street. McCaleb followed his eyes. Across Victory Boulevard was a used-car lot with red, white and blue pennants flapping in the wind. To McCaleb, Van Nuys was always synonymous with car lots. They were all over, new and used. 'So what did you say to the lieutenant?' he asked. 'Say? I didn't say anything. I just shoved him through the window of his office. I got a suspension out of it -involuntary stress leave. Jerry Edgar eventually took the case in to the DA and they sat on it a while and then finally kicked it.' Bosch nodded. His eyes rested on his empty paper plate. 'I sort of blew it,' he said. 'Yeah, I blew it.' McCaleb waited a moment before speaking. A gust of wind blew Bosch's plate off the table and the detective watched it skitter across the picnic area. He made no move to chase it down. 'You still working for that lieutenant?' 'Nope. He's no longer with us. Not too long after that he went out one night and didn't come home. They found him in his car up in the tunnel in Griffith Park near the Observatory.' 'What, he killed himself?' 'No. Somebody did it for him. It's still open. Technically.' Bosch looked back at him. McCaleb dropped his eyes and noticed that Bosch's tie tack was a tiny pair of silver handcuffs. 'What else can I tell you?' Bosch said. 'None of this had anything to do with Gunn. He was just a fly in the ointment - the ointment being the bullshit they call the justice system.' 'Doesn't sound like you had time to do much background on him.' 'None, actually. All that I told you took place in the span of eight or nine hours. Afterward, with what happened, I was off the case and the guy walked out the door.' 'But you didn't give up. Jaye told me you visited him in the drunk tank the night before he got himself killed.' 'Yeah, he got popped on a duice while cruising whores on Sunset. He was in the tank and I got a call. I went in to take a look, maybe jerk his chain a little, see if he was ready to talk. But the guy was piss drunk, just lying there on the floor in the puke. So that was it. You could say that we didn't communicate.' Bosch looked at McCaleb's unfinished chili dog and then his watch. 'Sorry, but that's all I got. You going to eat that or can we go?' 'Couple more bites, couple more questions. Don't you want to have a smoke?' 'I quit a couple years ago. I only smoke on special occasions.' 'Don't tell me, it was the Marlboro-man-gone-impotent sign on Sunset.' 'No, my wife wanted us both to quit. We did.' 'Your wife? Harry, you're full of surprises.' 'Don't get excited. She's come and gone. But at least I don't smoke anymore. I don't know about her.' McCaleb just nodded, feeling he had stepped too far into the other man's personal world. He got back to the case. 'So any theories on who killed him?' McCaleb took another bite while Bosch answered. 'My guess is he probably met up with somebody just like himself. Somebody who crossed a line somewhere. Don't get me wrong, I hope you and Jaye get the guy. But so far, whoever he or she is hasn't done anything I'm too upset about. Know what I mean?' 'It's funny you mentioned a "she." You think it could have been a woman?' 'I don't know enough about it. But like I said, he preyed on women. Maybe one of them put a stop to it.' McCaleb just nodded. He couldn't think of anything else to ask. Bosch had been a long shot anyway. Maybe he'd known it would come to this and he just wanted to reconnect with Bosch for other reasons. He spoke with his eyes down on his paper plate. 'You still think about the girl on the hill, Harry?' He didn't want to say out loud the name Bosch had given her. Bosch nodded. 'From time to time I do. It sticks with me. They all do, I guess.' McCaleb nodded. 'Yeah. So nothing ... nobody ever made a claim on her?' 'Nope. And I tried with Seguin one last time, went up to see him at Q last year, about a week before he got the juice. Tried one more time to find out from him but he just smiled at me. It was like he knew it was the last thing he could hold over me or something. He enjoyed it, I could tell. So I got up to leave and I told him to enjoy himself in hell and know what he said to me? He said, "I hear it's a dry heat." Bosch shook his head. 'Fucker. I drove up and back on my day off. Twelve hours in the car and the air conditioner didn't work.' He looked directly at McCaleb and even through the shades McCaleb again felt the bond he had known so long ago with this man. Before he could say anything he heard his phone begin to chirp from the pocket of his windbreaker, which was folded on the bench next to him. He struggled with the jacket to find the pocket and got to the phone before the caller hung up. It was Brass Doran. 'I have some stuff for you. Not a lot, but maybe a start.' 'You someplace I can call you back in a few minutes?' 'Actually, I'm in the central conference room. We're about to brainstorm a case and I'm the leader. It could be a couple hours before I'm free. You could call me at home tonight if you' 'No, hold on.' He held the phone down and looked at Bosch. 'I better take this. I'll talk to you later if anything comes up, okay?' 'Sure.' Bosch started getting up. He was going to carry his Coke with him. 'Thanks,' McCaleb said, extending his hand. 'Good luck with the trial.' Bosch shook his hand. 'Thanks. We'll probably need it.' McCaleb watched him walk out of the picnic area and to the sidewalk leading back to the courthouse. He brought the phone back up then. 'Brass?' 'Here. Okay, you were talking about owls in general, right? You don't know the specific kind or breed, right?' 'Right. It's just a generic owl, I think.' 'What color is it?' 'Uh, it's brown mostly. Like on the back and the wings.' As he spoke he took a couple of folded pages of notebook paper and a pen out of his pockets. He shoved his half-eaten chili dog out of the way and got ready to take notes. 'Okay, modern iconography is what you'd expect. The owl is the symbol of wisdom and truth, denotes knowledge, the view of the greater picture as opposed to the small detail. The owl sees in the night. In other words, seeing through the darkness is seeing the truth. It is learning the truth, therefore, knowledge. And from knowledge comes wisdom. Okay?' McCaleb didn't need to take notes. What Doran had said was obvious. But just to keep his head in it he wrote down a line. Seeing in the dark = Wisdom He then underlined the last word. 'Okay, fine. What else?' 'That's basically what I have as far as contemporary application. But when I go backward it gets pretty interesting. Our friend the owl has totally rejuvenated his reputation. He used to be a bad guy.' 'Tell me, Brass.' 'Get your pencil out. The owl is seen repeatedly in art and religious iconography from early medieval through late Renaissance periods. It is found often depicted in religious allegorical displays - paintings, church panels and stations of the cross. The owl was' 'Okay, Brass, but what did it mean?' 'I'm getting to that. Its meaning could be different from depiction to depiction and according to species depicted. But essentially its depiction was the symbol of evil.' McCaleb wrote the word down. 'Evil. Okay.' 'I thought you'd be more excited.' 'You can't see me. I'm standing on my hands here. What else you have?' 'Let me run down the list of hits. These are taken from the extracts, the critical literature of the art of the period. References to depictions of owls come up as the symbol of - and I quote - doom, the enemy of innocence, the Devil himself, heresy, folly, death and misfortune, the bird of darkness, and finally, the torment of the human soul in its inevitable journey to eternal damnation. Nice, huh? I like that last one. I guess they didn't sell too many bags of potato chips with owls on them back in the fourteen hundreds.' McCaleb didn't answer. He was busy scribbling down the descriptions she had read to him. 'Read that last one again.' She did and he wrote it down verbatim. 'Now, there is more,' Doran said. 'There is also some interpretation of the owl as being the symbol of wrath as well as the punishment of evil. So it obviously was something that meant different things at different times and to different people.' 'The punishment of evil,' McCaleb said as he wrote it down. He looked at the list he had written. 'Anything else?' 'Isn't that enough?' 'Probably. Was there anything about books showing some of this stuff or the names of artists or writers who used the so-called "bird of darkness" in their work?' McCaleb heard some pages turning over the phone and Doran was silent for a few moments. 'I don't have a lot here. No books but I can give you the name of some of the artists mentioned and you could probably get something over the Internet or maybe the library at UCLA.' 'All right.' 'I have to do this quickly. We're about to go here.' 'Give it to me.' 'All right, I have an artist named Bruegel who painted a huge face as the gateway to hell. A brown owl was nesting in the nostril of the face.' She started laughing. 'Don't ask me,' she said. 'I'm just giving you what I found.' 'Fine,' McCaleb said, writing the description down. 'Go on.' 'Okay, two others noted for using the owl as the symbol of evil were Van Oostanen and Durer. I don't have specific paintings.' He heard more pages turning. He asked for spellings of the artists' names and wrote them down. 'Okay, here it is. This last guy's work is supposedly replete with owls all over the place. I can't pronounce his first name. It's spelled H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S. He was Netherlandish, part of the Northern Renaissance. I guess owls were big up there.' McCaleb looked at the paper in front of him. The name she had just spelled seemed familiar to him. 'You forgot his last name. What's his last name?' 'Oh, sorry. It's Bosch. Like the spark plugs.' McCaleb sat frozen. He didn't move, he didn't breathe. He stared at the name on the page, unable to write the last part that Doran had just given him. Finally, he turned his head and looked out of the picnic area to the spot on the sidewalk where he had last seen Harry Bosch walking away. 'Terry, you there?' He came out of it. 'Yeah.' 'That's really all I have. And I have to go. We're starting here.' 'Anything else on Bosch?' 'Not really. And I'm out of time.' 'Okay, Brass. Listen, thanks a lot. I owe you one for this.' 'And I'll collect one day. Let me know how it all comes out, okay?' 'You got it.' 'And send me a photo of that little girl.' 'I will' She hung up and McCaleb slowly closed his phone. He wrote a note at the bottom of the page reminding him to send Brass a photo of his daughter. It was just an exercise in avoiding the name of the painter he had written down. 'Shit,' he whispered. He sat with his thoughts for a long time. The coincidence of receiving the eerie information just minutes after eating with Harry Bosch was unsettling. He studied his notes for a few more moments but knew they did not contain the immediate information he needed. He finally reopened the phone and called 213 information. A minute later he called the personnel office of the Los Angeles Police Department. A woman answered after nine rings. 'Yes, I'm calling on behalf of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and I need to contact a particular LAPD officer. Only I don't know where he works. I only have his name. He hoped the woman wouldn't ask what he meant by on behalf of. There was what seemed to be a long silence and then he heard the sound of typing on a keyboard. 'Last name?' 'Uh, it's Bosch.' He spelled it and then looked down at his notes, ready to spell the first name. 'And the first na - never mind, there's only one. Higher - ronny - mus. Is that it? I can't pronounce it, I don't think.' 'Hieronymus. Yes, that's it.' He spelled the name and asked if it was a match. It was. 'Well, he's a detective third grade and he works in Hollywood Division. Do you need that number?' McCaleb didn't answer. 'Sir, do you need' 'No, I have it. Thank you very much.' He closed the phone, looked at his watch, and then reopened the phone. He called Jaye Winston's direct number and she picked up right away. He asked if she had gotten anything back from the lab on the examination of the plastic owl. 'Not yet. It's only been a couple hours and one of them was lunch. I'm going to give it until tomorrow before I start knocking on their door.' 'Do you have time to make a few calls and do me a favor?' 'What calls?' He told her about the icon search Brass Doran had conducted but left out any mention of Hieronymus Bosch. He said that he wanted to talk with an expert on Northern Renaissance painting but thought the arrangements could be made more quickly and cooperation would be more forthcoming if the request came from an official homicide detective. 'I'll do it,' Winston said. 'Where should I start?' 'I'd try the Getty. I'm in Van Nuys now. If somebody will see me I could be there in a half hour.' 'I'll see what I can do. You talk to Harry Bosch?' 'Yeah.' 'Anything new?' 'Not really.' 'I didn't think so. Hang tight. I'll call you back.' McCaleb dumped what was left of his lunch into one of the trash barrels and headed back toward the courthouse, where he had left the Cherokee parked on a side street by the state parole offices. As he walked he thought about how he had lied by omission to Winston. He knew he should have told her about the Bosch connection or coincidence, whichever it was. He tried to understand what it was that made him hold it back. He found no answer. His phone chirped just as he got to the Cherokee. It was Winston. 'You have an appointment at the Getty at two. Ask for Leigh Alasdair Scott. He's an associate curator of paintings.' McCaleb got out his notes and wrote the name down, using the front hood of the Cherokee, after asking Winston to spell it. 'That was quick, Jaye. Thanks.' 'We aim to please. I spoke directly to Scott and he said if he couldn't help you he would find someone who could.' 'You mention the owl?' 'No, it's your interview.' 'Right.' McCaleb knew he had another chance to tell her about Hieronymus Bosch. But again he let it pass. 'I'll call you later, okay?' 'See ya.' He closed the phone and unlocked the car. He looked over the roof at the parole offices and saw a large white banner with blue lettering hanging across the facade above the building's entrance. WELCOME BACK THELMA! He got into the car wondering whether the Thelma being welcomed back was a convict or an employee. He drove off in the direction of Victory Boulevard. He'd take it to the 405 and then head south. As the freeway rose to cross the Santa Monica Mountains in the Sepulveda Pass, McCaleb saw the Getty rise in front of him on the hilltop. The structure of the museum itself was as impressive as any of the great artworks housed within. It looked like a castle sitting atop a medieval hill. He saw one of the double trams slowly working its way up the side of the hill, delivering another group to the altar of history and art. By the time he parked at the bottom of the hill and caught his own tram ride up, McCaleb was fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Leigh Alasdair Scott. After getting directions from a museum guard, McCaleb hurried across the travertine stone plaza to a security entrance. Having checked in at the counter he waited on a bench until Scott came for him. Scott was in his early fifties and spoke with an accent McCaleb placed as originating in either Australia or New Zealand. He was friendly and happy to oblige the L.A. County sheriff's office. 'We have had occasion to offer our help and expertise to detectives in the past. Usually in regard to authenticating artwork or offering historical background to specific pieces,' he said as they walked down a long hallway to his office. 'Detective Winston indicated this would be different. You need some general information on the Northern Renaissance?' He opened a door and ushered McCaleb into a suite of offices. They stepped into the first office past the security counter. It was a small office with a view through a large window across the Sepulveda Pass to the hillside homes of Bel-Air. The office felt crowded because of the bookshelves lining two walls and the cluttered worktable. There was just room for two chairs. Scott pointed McCaleb to one while he took the other. 'Actually, things have changed a bit since Detective Winston spoke to you,' McCaleb said. 'I can be more specific about what I need now. I've been able to narrow down my questions to a specific painter of that period. If you can tell me about him and maybe show me some of his work, that would be a big help.' 'And what is his name?' 'I'll show it to you.' McCaleb took out his folded notes and showed him. Scott read the name aloud with obvious familiarity. He pronounced the first name Her-ron-i-mus. 'I thought that was how you said it.' 'Rhymes with anonymous. His work is actually quite well known. You are not familiar with it?' 'No. I never did much studying of art. Does the museum have any of his paintings?' 'None of his works are in the Getty collection but there is a descendant piece in the conservation studio. It is undergoing heavy restoration. Most of his verified works are in Europe, the most significant representations in the Prado. Others scattered about. I am not the one you should be talking to, however.' McCaleb raised his eyebrows in way of a question. 'Since you have narrowed your query to Bosch specifically, there is someone here you would be better advised to talk to. She is a curatorial assistant. She also happens to be working on a catalogue raisonne on Bosch - a rather long-term project for her. A labor of love, perhaps.' 'Is she here? Can I speak to her?' Scott reached for his phone and pushed the speaker button. He then consulted an extensions list taped to the table next to it and punched in three digits. A woman answered after three rings. 'Lola Walter, can I help you?' 'Lola, it's Mr. Scott. Is Penelope available?' 'She's working on Hell this morning.' 'Oh, I see. We'll go to her there.' Scott hit the speaker button, disconnecting the call, and headed toward the door. 'You're in luck,' he said. 'Hell?' McCaleb asked. 'It's the descendant painting. If you'll come with me please.' Scott led the way to an elevator and they went down one floor. Along the way Scott explained that the museum had one of the finest conservation studios in the world. Consequently, works of art from other museums and private collections were often shipped to the Getty for repair and restoration. At the moment a painting believed to have come from a student of Bosch's or a painter from his studio was being restored for a private collector. The painting was called Hell. The conservation studio was a huge room partitioned into two main sections. One section was a workshop where frames were restored. The other section was dedicated to the restoration of paintings and was broken into a series of work bays that ran along a glass wall with the same views Scott had in his office. McCaleb was led to the second bay, where there was a woman standing behind a man seated before a painting attached to a large easel. The man wore an apron over a dress shirt and tie and a pair of what looked like jeweler's magnifying glasses. He was leaning toward the painting and using a paintbrush with a tiny brush head to apply what looked like silver paint to the surface. Neither the man nor the woman looked at McCaleb and Scott. Scott held his hands up in a Hold here gesture while the seated man completed his paint stroke. McCaleb looked at the painting. It was about four feet high and six feet wide. It was a dark landscape depicting a village being burned to the ground in the night while its inhabitants were being tortured and executed by a variety of otherworldly creatures. The upper panels of the painting, primarily depicting the swirling night sky, were spotted with small patches of damage and missing paint. McCaleb's eyes caught on one segment of the painting below this which depicted a nude and blindfolded man being forced up a ladder to a gallows by a group of birdlike creatures with spears. The man with the brush completed his work and placed the brush on the glass top of the worktable to his left. He then leaned back toward the painting to study his work. Scott cleared his throat. Only the woman turned around. 'Penelope Fitzgerald, this is Detective McCaleb. He is involved in an investigation and needs to ask about Hieronymus Bosch.' He gestured toward the painting. 'I told him you would be the most appropriate member of staff to speak with.' McCaleb watched her eyes register surprise and concern, a normal response to a sudden introduction to the police. The seated man did not even turn around. This was not a normal response. Instead he picked up his brush and went back to work on the painting. McCaleb held his hand out to the woman. 'Actually, I'm not officially a detective. I've been asked by the sheriff's department to help out with an investigation.' They shook hands. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'Has a Bosch painting been stolen?' 'No, nothing like that. This is a Bosch?' He gestured toward the painting. 'Not quite. It may be a copy of one of his pieces. If so, then the original is lost and this is all we have. The style and design are his. But it's generally agreed to be the work of a student from his workshop. It was probably painted after Bosch was dead.' As she spoke her eyes never left the painting. They were sharp and friendly eyes that easily betrayed her passion for Bosch. He guessed that she was about sixty and had probably dedicated her life to the study and love of art. She had surprised him. Scott's brief description of her as an assistant working on a catalog of Bosch's work had made McCaleb think she would be a young art student. He silently chastised himself for making the assumption. The seated man put his brush down again and picked up a clean white cloth off the worktable to wipe his hands. He swiveled in his chair and looked up when he noticed McCaleb and Scott. It was then that McCaleb knew he had made a second error of assumption. The man had not been ignoring them. He just hadn't heard them. The man nipped the magnifiers up to the top of his head while reaching beneath the apron to his chest and adjusted a hearing aid control. 'I am sorry,' he said. 'I didn't know we had visitors.' He spoke with a hard German accent. 'Dr. Derek Vosskuhler, this is Mr. McCaleb,' Scott said. 'He's an investigator and he needs to steal Mrs. Fitzgerald away from you for a short while.' 'I understand. This is fine.' 'Dr. Vosskuhler is one of our restoration experts,' Scott volunteered. Vosskuhler nodded and looked up at McCaleb and studied him in the way he might study a painting. He made no move to extend his hand. 'An investigation? In regard to Hieronymus Bosch, is it?' 'In a peripheral way. I just want to learn what I can about him. I'm told Mrs. Fitzgerald is the expert.' McCaleb smiled. 'No one is an expert on Bosch,' Vosskuhler said without a smile. 'Tortured soul, tormented genius... how will we ever know what is truly in a man's heart?' McCaleb just nodded. Vosskuhler turned and appraised the painting. 'What do you see, Mr. McCaleb?' McCaleb looked at the painting and didn't answer for a long moment. 'A lot of pain.' Vosskuhler nodded approvingly. Then he stood and looked closely at the painting, flipping the glasses down and leaning close to the upper quarter panel, his lenses just inches from the night sky above the burning village. 'Bosch knew all of the demons,' he said without turning from the painting. 'The darkness ...' A long moment went by. 'A darkness more than night.' There was another long moment of silence until Scott abruptly punctuated it by saying he needed to get back to his office. He left then. And after another moment Vosskuhler finally turned from the painting. He didn't bother flipping up the glasses when he looked at McCaleb. He slowly reached into his apron and switched off sound to his ears. 'I, too, must go back to work. Good luck with your investigation, Mr. McCaleb.' McCaleb nodded as Vosskuhler sat back in his swivel chair and picked up his tiny brush again. 'We can go to my office,' Fitzgerald said. 'I have all the plate books from our library there. I can show you Bosch's work.' 'That would be fine. Thank you.' She headed toward the door. McCaleb delayed a moment and took one last look at the painting. His eyes were drawn to the upper panels, toward the swirling darkness above the flames. Penelope Fitzgerald's office was a six-by-six pod in a room shared by several curatorial assistants. She pulled a chair into the tight space from a nearby pod where no one was working and told McCaleb to sit down. Her desk was L-shaped, with a laptop computer set up on the left side and a cluttered work space on the right. There were several books stacked on the desk. McCaleb noticed that behind one stack was a color print of a painting very much in the same style as the painting Vosskuhler was working on. He pushed the books a half foot to the side and bent down to look at the print. It was in three panels, the largest being the centerpiece. Again it was a ramble. Dozens and dozens of figures spread across the panels. Scenes of debauchery and torture. 'Do you recognize it?' Fitzgerald said. 'I don't think so. But it's Bosch, right?' 'His signature piece. The triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights. It's in the Prado in Madrid. I once stood in front of it for four hours. It wasn't enough time to take it all in. Would you like some coffee or some water or anything, Mr. McCaleb?' 'No, I'm fine. Thank you. You can call me Terry if you want.' 'And you can call me Nep.' McCaleb put a quizzical look on his face. 'Childhood nickname.' He nodded. 'Now,' she said. 'In these books I can show you every piece of Bosch's identified work. Is it an important investigation?' McCaleb nodded. 'I think so. It's a homicide.' 'And you are some kind of consultant?' 'I used to work for the FBI here in L.A. The sheriff's detective assigned to the case asked me to look at it and see what I think. It led me here. To Bosch. I am sorry but I can't get into the details of the case and I know that will probably be frustrating to you. I want to ask questions but I can't really answer any from you.' 'Darn.' She smiled. 'It sounds really interesting.' 'Tell you what, if there is ever a point I can tell you about it, I will.' 'Fair enough.' McCaleb nodded. 'From what Dr. Vosskuhler said, I take it that there isn't a lot known about the man behind the paintings.' Fitzgerald nodded. 'Hieronymus Bosch is certainly considered an enigma and he probably always will be.' McCaleb unfolded his notepaper on the table in front of him and started taking notes as she spoke. 'He had one of the most unconventional imaginations of his time. Or any time for that matter. His work is quite extraordinary and still subject these five centuries later to restudy and reinterpretation. However, I think you will find that the majority of the critical analysis to date holds that he was a doomsayer. His work is informed with the portents of doom and hellfire, of warnings of the wages of sin. To put it more succinctly, his paintings primarily carried variations on the same theme: that the folly of humankind leads us all to hell as our ultimate destiny.' McCaleb was writing quickly, trying to keep up. He wished he had brought a tape recorder. 'Nice guy, huh?' Fitzgerald said. 'Sounds like it.' He nodded to the print of the triptych. 'Must've been fun on a Saturday night.' She smiled. 'Exactly what I thought when I was in the Prado.' 'Any redeeming qualities? He took in orphans, was nice to dogs, changed flat tires for old ladies, anything?' 'You have to remember his time and place to fully understand what he was doing with his art. While his work is punctuated with violent scenes and depictions of torture and anguish, this was a time when those sorts of things were not unusual. He lived in a violent time; his work clearly reflects that. The paintings also reflect the medieval belief in the existence of demons everywhere. Evil lurks in all of the paintings.' 'The owl?' She stared blankly at him for a moment. 'Yes, the owl is one symbol he used. I thought you said you were unfamiliar with his work.' 'I am unfamiliar with it. It was an owl that brought me here. But I shouldn't go into that and I shouldn't have interrupted you. Please go on.' 'I was just going to add that it is telling when you consider that Bosch was a contemporary of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Yet if you were to look at their works side by side you would have to believe Bosch - with all the medieval symbols and doom - was a century behind.' 'But he wasn't.' She shook her head as though she felt sorry for Bosch. 'He and Leonardo da Vinci were born within a year or two of each other. By the end of the fifteenth century, da Vinci was creating pieces that were full of hope and celebration of human values and spirituality while Bosch was all gloom and doom.' 'That makes you feel sad, doesn't it?' She put her hands on the top book in the stack but didn't open it. It was simply labeled BOSCH on the spine and there was no illustration on the black leather binding. 'I can't help but think about what could have been if Bosch had worked side by side with da Vinci or Michelangelo, what could have happened if he had used his skill and imagination in celebration rather than damnation of the world.' She looked down at the book and then back up at him. 'But that is the beauty of art and why we study and celebrate it. Each painting is a window to the artist's soul and imagination. No matter how dark and disturbing, his vision is what sets him apart and makes his paintings unique. What happens to me with Bosch is that the paintings serve to carry me into the artist's soul and I sense the torment.' He nodded and she looked down and opened the book. The world of Hieronymus Bosch was as striking to McCaleb as it was disturbing. The landscapes of misery that unfolded in the pages Penelope Fitzgerald turned were not unlike some of the most horrible crime scenes he had witnessed, but in these painted scenes the players were still alive and in pain. The gnashing of teeth and the ripping of flesh were active and real. His canvases were crowded with the damned, humans being tormented for their sins by visible demons and creatures given image by the hand of a horrible imagination. At first he studied the color reproductions of the paintings in silence, taking it all in the way he would first observe a crime scene photograph. But then a page was turned and he looked at a painting that depicted three people gathered around a sitting man. One of those standing used what looked like a primitive scalpel to probe a wound on the crown of the sitting man's head. The image was depicted in a circle. There were words painted above and below the circle. 'What is this one?' he asked. 'It's called The Stone Operation,' Fitzgerald said. 'It was a common belief at the time that stupidity and deceit could be cured by the removal of a stone from the head of the one suffering the malady.' McCaleb leaned over her shoulder and looked closely at the painting, specifically at the location of the surgery wound. It was in a location comparable to the wound on Edward Gunn's head. 'Okay, you can go on.' Owls were everywhere. Fitzgerald did not have to point them out most of the time, their positions were that obvious. She did explain some of the attendant imagery. Most often in the paintings when the owl was depicted in a tree, the branch upon which the symbol of evil perched was leafless and gray - dead. She turned the page to a three-panel painting. 'This is called The Last Judgment, with the left panel subtitled The Fall of Mankind and the right panel simply and obviously called Hell.' 'He liked painting hell.' But Nep Fitzgerald didn't smile. Her eyes studied the book. The left panel of the painting was a Garden of Eden scene with Adam and Eve at center taking the fruit from the serpent in the apple tree. On a dead branch of a nearby tree an owl watched the transaction. On the opposite panel Hell was depicted as a dark place where birdlike creatures disemboweled the damned, cut their bodies up and placed them in frying pans to be slid into fiery ovens. 'All of this came from this guy's head,' McCaleb said. 'I don't He didn't finish because he was unsure what he was trying to say. 'A tormented soul,' Fitzgerald said and turned the page. The next painting was another circular image with seven separate scenes depicted along the outer rim and a portrait of God at center. In a circle of gold surrounding the portrait of God and separating him from the other scenes were four Latin words McCaleb immediately recognized. 'Beware, beware, God sees.' Fitzgerald looked up at him. 'You obviously have seen this before. Or you just happen to know fifteenth-century Latin. This must be one strange case you are working on.' 'It's getting that way. But I only know the words, not the painting. What is it?' 'It's actually a tabletop, probably created for a church rectory or a holy person's house. It's the eye of God. He is at center and what he sees as he looks down are these images, the seven deadly sins.' McCaleb nodded. By looking at the distinct scenes he could pick out some of the more obvious of the sins; gluttony, lust and pride. 'And now his masterpiece,' his tour guide said as she turned the page. She came to the same triptych she had pinned to the wall of the pod. The Garden of Earthly Delights. McCaleb studied it closely now. The left panel was a bucolic scene of Adam and Eve being placed in the garden by the creator. An apple tree stood nearby. The center panel, the largest, showed dozens of nudes coupling and dancing in uninhibited lust, riding horses and beautiful birds and wholly imagined creatures from the lake in the foreground. And then the last panel, the dark one, was the payoff. Hell, a place of torment and anguish administered by monster birds and other ugly creatures. The painting was so detailed and enthralling that McCaleb understood how someone might stand before it - the original - for four hours and still not see everything. 'I am sure you are grasping the ideas of Bosch's often repeated themes by now,' Fitzgerald said. 'But this is considered the most coherent of his works as well as the most beautifully imagined and realized.' McCaleb nodded and pointed to the three panels as he spoke. 'You have Adam and Eve here, the good life until they eat that apple. Then in the center you have what happens after the fall from grace: life without rules. Freedom of choice leads to lust and sin. And where does all of this go? Hell.' 'Very good. And if I could just point out a few specifics that might interest you.' 'Please.' She started with the first panel. 'The earthly paradise. You are correct in that it depicts Adam and Eve before the Fall. This pool and fountain at center represent the promise of eternal life. You already noted the fruit tree at left center.' Her finger moved across the plate to the fountain structure, a tower of what looked like flower petals that somehow delivered water in four distinct trickles to the pool below. Then he saw it. Her finger stopped below a small dark entrance at the center of the fountain structure. The face of an owl peered from the darkness. 'You mentioned the owl before. Its image is here. You see all is not right in this paradise. Evil lurks and, as we know, will ultimately win the day. According to Bosch. Then, going to the next panel we see the imagery again and again.' She pointed out two distinct representations of owls and two other depictions of owl-like creatures. McCaleb's eyes held on one of the images. It showed a large brown owl with shiny black eyes being embraced by a nude man. The owl's coloring and eyes matched that of the plastic bird found in Edward Gunn's apartment. 'Do you see something, Terry?' He pointed to the owl. 'This one. I can't really go into it with you but this one, it matches up with the reason I am here.' 'A lot of symbols are at work in this panel. That is one of the obvious ones. After the Fall, man's freedom of choice leads him to debauchery, gluttony, folly and avarice, the worst sin of all in Bosch's world being lust. Man wraps his arms around the owl; he embraces evil.' McCaleb nodded. 'And then he pays for it.' 'Then he pays for it. As you notice in the last panel, this is a depiction of hell without fire. Rather, it is a place of myriad torments and endless pain. Of darkness.' McCaleb stared silently for a long time, his eyes moving across the landscape of the painting. He remembered what Dr. Vosskuhler had said. A darkness more than night. Bosch cupped his hands and held them against the window next to the front door of the apartment. He was looking into the kitchen. The counters were spotless. No mess, no coffee maker, not even a toaster. He started to get a bad feeling. He stepped over to the door and knocked once more. He then paced back and forth waiting. Looking down he saw an outline on the pavement of where a welcome mat had once been. 'Damn,' he said. He reached into his pocket and took out a small leather pouch. He unzipped it and removed two small steel picks he had made from hacksaw blades. Glancing around he saw no one. He was in a shielded alcove of a large apartment complex in Westwood. Most residents were probably still at work. He stepped up to the door and went to work with the picks on the deadbolt. Ninety seconds later he had the door open and he went inside. He knew the apartment was vacant as soon as he stepped in but he covered every room anyway. All of them were empty. Hoping for an empty prescription bottle he even checked the bathroom medicine cabinet. There was a used razor made of pink plastic on a shelf, nothing else. He walked back into the living room and took out his cell phone. He had just put Janis Langwiser's cell phone on the speed dial the day before. She was co-prosecutor on the case and they had worked on Bosch's testimony throughout the weekend. His call found her still in the trial team's temporary office in the Van Nuys courthouse. 'Listen, I don't want to rain on the parade but Annabelle Crowe is gone.' 'What do you mean, gone?' 'I mean gone, baby, gone. I'm standing in what was her apartment. It's empty.' 'Shit! We really need her, Harry. When did she move out?' 'I don't know. I just discovered she was gone.' 'Did you talk to the apartment manager?' 'Not yet. But he's not going to know much more than how long ago she split. If she's running from the trial she wouldn't be leaving any forwarding addresses with the management.' 'Well, when did you talk to her last?' 'Thursday. I called her here. But that line is disconnected today. No forwarding number.' 'Shit!' 'I know. You said that.' 'She got the subpoena, right?' 'Yeah, she got it Thursday. That's why I called. To make sure.' 'Okay, then maybe she'll be here tomorrow.' Bosch looked around the empty apartment. 'I wouldn't count on it.' He looked at his watch. It was after five. Because he had been so sure about Annabelle Crowe, she had been the last witness he was going to check on. There had been no hint that she was going to split. Now he knew he would be spending the night trying to run her down. 'What can you do?' Langwiser asked. 'I've got some information on her I can run down. She's got to be in town. She's an actress, where else is she going to go?' 'New York?' 'That's where real actors go. She's a face. She'll stay here.' 'Find her, Harry. We'll need her by next week.' 'I'll try.' There was a moment of silence while they both considered things. 'You think Storey got to her?' Langwiser finally asked. 'I'm wondering. He could've gotten to her with what she needs - a job, a part, a paycheck. When I find her I'll be asking that.' 'Okay, Harry. Good luck. If you get her tonight, let me know. Otherwise, I'll see you in the morning.' 'Right' Bosch closed the phone and put it down on the kitchen counter. From his jacket pocket he took out a thin stack of three-by-five cards. Each card had the name of one of the witnesses he was responsible for vetting and preparing for trial. Home and work addresses as well as phone numbers and pager numbers were noted on the cards. He checked the card assigned to Annabelle Crowe and then punched her pager number into his phone. A recorded message said the pager was no longer in service. He clapped the phone closed and looked at the card again. The name and number of Annabelle Crowe's agent were listed at the bottom. He decided that the agent might be the one tie she wouldn't sever. He put the phone and cards back into his pockets. This was one inquiry he was going to make in person. McCaleb made the crossing by himself, The Following Sea arriving at Avalon Harbor just as darkness did. Buddy Lockridge had stayed behind at Cabrillo Marina because no new charters had come up and he wouldn't be needed until Saturday. As he arrived at the island McCaleb radioed the harbor master's boat on channel 16 and got help mooring the boat. The added weight of the two heavy books he had found in the used-books section at Dutton's bookstore in Brentwood plus the smaller cooler filled with frozen tamales made the walk up the hill to his house exhausting. He had to stop twice on the side of the road to rest. Each time he sat down on the cooler and took one of the books out of his leather bag so that he could once more study the dark work of Hieronymus Bosch - even in the shadows of evening. Since his visit to the Getty, the images in the Bosch paintings were never far from his thoughts. Nep Fitzgerald had said something at the end of the meeting in her office. Just before closing the book on the plates reproducing The Garden of Earthly Delights she looked at him with a small smile, as if she had something to say but was hesitant. 'What?' he said. 'Nothing really, just an observation.' 'Go ahead and make it. I'd like to hear it.' 'I was just going to mention that a lot of the critics and scholars who view Bosch's work see corollaries to contemporary times. That's the mark of a great artist - if his work stands the test of time. If it has the power to connect to people and ... and maybe influence them.' McCaleb nodded. He knew she wanted him to tell her what he was working on. 'I understand what you are saying. I'm sorry but at the moment I can't tell you about this. Maybe someday I will, or someday you will just know what it was. But thank you. You have helped a lot, I think. I don't know for sure yet.' Sitting on the cooler now, McCaleb remembered the conversation. Corollaries to contemporary times, he thought. And crimes. He opened the larger of the two books he had bought and opened it to a color illustration of Bosch's masterpiece. He studied the owl with black eyes and all of his instincts told him he was on to something significant. Something very dark and dangerous. When he got home Graciela took the cooler from him and opened it on the kitchen counter. She took three of the green corn tamales out and put them on a plate for defrosting in the microwave. 'I'm making chili relenos, too,' she said. 'It's a good thing you called from the boat or we would've gone ahead and eaten without you.' McCaleb let her vent. He knew she was angry about what he was doing. He walked over to the table where Cielo was propped in a bouncing chair. She was staring up at the ceiling fan and moving her hands in front of her, getting used to them. McCaleb bent down and kissed both of them and then her forehead. 'Where's Raymond?' 'In his room. On the computer. Why did you only get ten?' He looked over at her as he slid into a chair next to Cielo. She was putting the other tamales into a plastic Tupperware container for freezing. 'I took the cooler in and told them to fill it. That's how many fit, I guess.' She shook her head, annoyed with him. 'We'll have one extra.' 'Then throw it out or invite one of Raymond's friends over for dinner next time. Who cares, Graciela? It's a tamale.' Graciela turned and looked at him with dark, upset eyes that immediately softened. 'You're sweaty.' 'I just walked up the hill. The shuttle was closed for the night.' She opened an overhead cabinet and took out a plastic box holding a thermometer. There was a thermometer in every room in the house. She took this one out and shook it and came over to him. 'Open.' 'Let's use the electronic' 'No, I don't trust them.' She put the end of the thermometer under his tongue and then used her hand to gently bring his jaw up and close his mouth. Very professional. She had been an emergency room nurse when he met her and was now the school nurse and an office clerk at Catalina Elementary. She had just gone back to work after the Christmas holiday. McCaleb sensed that she wanted to be a full-time mother, but they couldn't afford it so he never brought it up directly. He hoped that in a couple of years the charter service would be more established and they would have the choice then. Sometimes he wished they had kept a share of the money for the book-and-movie deal but he also knew that their decision to honor Graciela's sister by not making money from what happened had been the only choice. They had given half the money to the Make a Wish Foundation and put the other half in a trust fund for Raymond. It would pay for college if he wanted that. Graciela held his wrist and checked his pulse while he sat silently watching her. 'You're high,' she said, dropping his wrist. 'Open.' He opened his mouth and she took out the thermometer and read it. She went to the sink and washed it, then returned it to its case and the cabinet. She didn't say anything and McCaleb knew that meant his temperature was normal. 'You wish I had a fever, don't you?' 'Are you crazy?' 'Yes, you do. That way you could tell me to stop this.' 'What do you mean, tell you to stop it? Last night you said it was just going to be last night. Then this morning you said it was just going to be today. What are you telling me now, Terry?' He looked over at Cielo and held out a finger for her to grasp. 'It's not over.' He now looked back at Graciela. 'Some things came up today.' 'Some things? Whatever they are, give them to Detective Winston, It's her job. It's not your job to be doing this.' 'I can't. Not yet. Not until I am sure.' Graciela turned and walked back to the counter. She put the plate with the tamales on it into the microwave and set it for defrost. 'Will you take her in and change her? It's been a while. And she'll need a bottle while I make dinner.' McCaleb carefully raised his daughter out of the bouncing seat and put her on his shoulder. She made some fussing noises and he gently patted her back to calm her. He walked over to Graciela's back, put his arm around the front of her and pulled her backward into him. He kissed the top of her head and held his face in her hair. 'It will all be over soon and we'll be back to normal.' 'I hope so.' She touched his arm, which crossed her body beneath her breasts. The touch of her fingertips was the approval he sought. It told him this was a rough spot but they were okay. He held her tighter, kissed the back of her neck and then let her go. Cielo watched the slowly moving mobile that hung over the changing table as he put a new diaper on her tiny body. Cardboard stars and half moons hung from threads. Raymond had made it with Graciela as a Christmas present. An air current from somewhere in the house gently turned it and Cielo's dark blue eyes focused on it. McCaleb bent down and kissed her forehead. After wrapping her in two baby blankets he took her out to the porch and gave her the bottle while gently moving in the rocking chair. Looking down at the harbor he noticed he had left on the instrument lights on The Following Sea's bridge. He knew he could call the harbor master on the pier and whoever was working nights could just motor over and turn them off. But he knew he'd be going back to the boat after dinner. He would get the lights then. He looked down at Cielo. Her eyes were closed but he knew she was awake. She was working the bottle forcefully. Graciela had stopped full-time breastfeeding when she had gone back to work. Bottle feedings were new and he found them to be perhaps the single most pleasurable moments of being a new father. He often whispered to his daughter during these times. Promises mostly. Promises that he would always love her and be with her. He told her never to be afraid or feel alone. Sometimes when she would suddenly open her eyes and look at him, he sensed that she was communicating the same things back to him. And he felt a kind of love he had never known before. 'Terry.' He looked up at Graciela's whisper. 'Dinner's ready.' He checked the bottle and saw it was almost empty. 'I'll be there in a minute,' he whispered. After Graciela left them he looked down at his daughter. The whispering had made her open her eyes. She stared up at him. He kissed her on the forehead and then just held her gaze. 'I have to do this, baby,' he whispered. The boat was cold inside. McCaleb turned on the salon lights and then positioned the space heater in the center of the room and turned it on low. He wanted to warm up but not too much, for then he might get sleepy. He was still tired from the exertions of the day. He was down in the front cabin going through his old files when he heard the cell phone start to chirp from his leather bag up in the salon. He closed the file he was studying and took it with him as he bounded up the stairs to the salon and grabbed the phone out of his bag. It was Jaye Winston. 'So how'd it go at the Getty? I thought you were going to call me back.' 'Oh, well it ran late and I wanted to get back to the boat and get across before dark. I forgot to call.' 'You're back on the island?' She sounded disappointed. 'Yeah, I told Graciela this morning I'd be back. But don't worry, I'm still working on a few things.' 'What happened at the Getty?' 'Nothing much,' he lied. 'I talked to a couple people and looked at some paintings.' 'You see any owls that match ours?' She laughed as she asked the question. 'A couple close ones. I got some books I want to look through tonight. I was going to call you, see if maybe we could get together tomorrow.' 'When? I've got a meeting in the morning at ten and another at eleven.' 'I was thinking the afternoon anyway. There's something I have to do in the morning myself He didn't want to tell her that he wanted to watch the opening statements in the Storey trial. He knew they'd be carried live on Court TV, which he got up at the house with the satellite dish. 'Well, I could probably get a chopper to take me out there but I'll have to check with aero first.' 'No, I'll be coming back over.' 'You will? Great! You want to come here?' 'No, I was thinking about something more quiet and private.' 'How come?' 'I'll tell you tomorrow.' 'Getting mysterious on me. This isn't a scam to get the sheriff's to pay for pancakes again, is it?' They both laughed. 'No scam. Any chance you could come out to Cabrillo and meet me at my boat?' 'I'll be there. What time?' He made the appointment for three o'clock thinking that would give him plenty of time to prepare a profile and figure out how he would tell her what he had to say. It would also give him enough time to be ready for what he hoped she would allow him to do that night. 'Anything on the owl?' he asked once they had the meeting arranged. 'Very little, none of it good. Inside there are manufacturing markings. The plastic mold was made in China. The company ships them to two distributors over here, one in Ohio and one in Tennessee. From there they probably go all over. It's a long shot and a lot of work.' 'So you're going to drop it.' 'No, I didn't say that. It's just not a priority. It's on my partner's plate. He's got calls out. We'll see what he gets from the distributors, evaluate and decide where to go from there.' McCaleb nodded. Prioritizing investigative leads and even investigations themselves was a necessary evil. But it still bothered him. He was sure the owl was a key and knowing everything about it would be useful. 'Okay, so we're all set?' she asked. 'About tomorrow? Yeah, we're set.' 'We'll see you at three.' 'We?' 'Kurt and I. My partner. You haven't met him yet.' 'Uh, look, tomorrow could it just be me and you? Nothing against your partner but I'd just like to talk to you tomorrow, Jaye.' There was a moment of silence before she responded. 'Terry, what's going on with you?' 'I just want to talk to you about this. You brought me in, I want to give what I have to you. If you want to bring your partner in on it after, that's fine.' There was another pause. 'I'm getting a bad vibe from all of this, Terry.' 'I'm sorry, but that's the way I want it. I guess you have to take it or leave it.' His ultimatum made her go silent even longer this time. He waited for her. 'All right, man,' she finally said. 'It's your show. I'll take it.' 'Thanks, Jaye. I'll see you then.' They hung up. He looked at the old case file he had pulled and still held in his hand. He put the phone down on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch and opened the file. At first they called it the Little Girl Lost case because the victim had no name. The victim was thought to be about fourteen or fifteen years old; a Latina - probably Mexican - whose body was found in the bushes and among the debris below one of the overlooks off Mulholland Drive. The case belonged to Bosch and his partner at the time, Frankie Sheehan. This was before Bosch worked homicide out of Hollywood Division. He and Sheehan were a Robbery-Homicide team and it had been Bosch who contacted McCaleb at the bureau. McCaleb was newly returned to Los Angeles from Quantico. He was setting up an outpost for the Behavioral Sciences Unit and Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The Little Girl Lost case was one of the first submitted to him. Bosch came to him, bringing the file and the crime scene photos to his tiny office on the thirteenth floor of the federal building in Westwood. He came without Sheehan because the partners had disagreed on whether to bring the bureau in on the case. Cross-agency jealousies at work. But Bosch didn't care about all of that. He cared about the case. He had haunted eyes. The case was clearly working on him as much as he worked on it. The body had been found nude and violated in many ways. The girl had been manually strangled by her killer's gloved hands. No clothes or purse were found on the hillside. Fingerprints matched no computerized records. The girl matched no description on an active missing persons case anywhere in Los Angeles County or on national crime computer systems. An artist's rendering of the victim's face put on the TV news and in the papers brought no calls from a loved one. Sketches faxed to five hundred police agencies across the Southwest and to the State Judicial Police in Mexico drew no response. The victim remained unclaimed and unidentified, her body reposing in the refrigerator at the coroner's office while Bosch and his partner worked the case. There was no physical evidence found with the body. Aside from being left without her clothes or any identifying property, the victim had apparently been washed with an industrial-strength cleaner before being dumped late at night off Mulholland. There was only one clue with the body. An impression in the skin of the left hip. Postmortem lividity indicated the blood in the body had settled on the left half, meaning the body had been lying on its left side in the time between thestilling of the heart and the dropping of the body down the hillside where it came to rest face down on a pile of empty beer cans and tequila bottles. The evidence indicated that during the time that the blood settled, the body had been lying on top of the object that left the impression on the hip. The impression consisted of the number 1, the letter J and part of a third letter that could have been the upper left stem of an H, a K or an L. It was a partial reading of a license plate. Bosch formed the theory that whoever had killed the girl with no name had hidden the body in the trunk of a car until it was time to dump it. After carefully cleaning the body the killer had put it into the trunk of his car, mistakenly putting it down on part of a license plate that had been taken off the car and also placed in the trunk. Bosch's theory was that the license plate had been removed and possibly replaced with a stolen plate as one more safety measure that would help the killer avoid detection if his car happened to be spotted by a suspicious passerby at the Mulholland overlook. Though the skin impression gave no indication of what state issued the license plate, Bosch went with the percentages. From the state Department of Motor Vehicles he obtained a list of every car registered in Los Angeles County that carried a plate beginning 1JH, 1JK and iJL. The list contained over three thousand names of car owners. He and his partner cut 40 percent of it by discounting the female owners. The remaining names were slowly fed into the National Crime Index computer and the detectives came up with a list of forty-six men with criminal records ranging from minor to the extreme. It was at this point that Bosch came to McCaleb. He wanted a profile of the killer. He wanted to know if he and Sheehan were on the right track in suspecting that the killer had a criminal history, and he wanted to know how to approach and evaluate the forty-six men on the list. McCaleb considered the case for nearly a week. He looked at each of the crime scene photos twice a day - first thing in the morning and last thing before going to sleep -and studied the reports often. He finally told Bosch that he believed they were on the right course. Using data accumulated from hundreds of similar crimes and analyzed in the bureau's VICAP program, he was able to provide a profile of a man in his late twenties with a history of having committed crimes of an escalating nature and likely including offenses of a sexual nature. The crime scene suggested the work of an exhibitionist - a killer who wanted his crime to be public and to instill horror and fear in the general population. Therefore, the location of the body dump site would have been chosen for these reasons as opposed to reasons of convenience. In comparing the profile to the list of forty-six names, Bosch narrowed the possibilities to two suspects: a Woodland Hills office building custodian who had a record of arson and public indecency and a stage builder who worked for a studio in Burbank and had been arrested for the attempted rape of a neighbor when he was a teenager. Both men were in their late twenties. Bosch and Sheehan leaned toward the custodian because of his access to industrial cleaners, like the one that had been used to wash the victim's body. However, McCaleb liked the stage builder as a suspect because the attempted rape of the neighbor in his youth indicated an impulsive action that was more in tune with the profile of the current crime's perpetrator. Bosch and Sheehan decided to informally interview both men and invited McCaleb along. The FBI agent stressed that the men should be interviewed in their own homes so that he would have the opportunity to study them in their own environment as well as look for clues in their belongings. The stage builder was first. His name was Victor Seguin. He seemed shell-shocked by seeing the three men at his door and the explanation Bosch gave for their visit. Nevertheless he invited them in. As Bosch and Sheehan calmly asked questions McCaleb sat on a couch and studied the clean and neat furnishings of the apartment. Within five minutes he knew they had the right man and nodded to Bosch - their prearranged signal. Victor Seguin was informed of his rights and arrested. He was placed in the detectives' car and his small home under the landing zone of Burbank Airport was sealed until a search warrant could be obtained. Two hours later, when they reentered with the search warrant, they found a sixteen-year-old girl bound and gagged but alive in a soundproof coffin-like crawl space constructed by the stage builder beneath a trap door hidden under his bed. Only after the excitement and adrenaline high of having broken a case and saved a life began to subside did Bosch finally ask McCaleb how he knew they had their man. McCaleb walked the detective over to the living-room bookcase, where he pointed out a well-worn copy of a book called The Collector, a novel about a man who abducts several women. Seguin was charged with the unidentified girl's murder and the kidnapping and rape of the young woman the investigators rescued. He denied any guilt in the murder and pressed for a deal by which he would plead guilty to the kidnapping and rape of the survivor only. The DA's office declined any deal and proceeded to trial with what they had - the survivor's gut-wrenching testimony and the license plate impression on the dead girl's hip. The jury convicted on all counts after less than four hours' deliberation. The DA's office then floated a possible deal to Seguin: a promise not to go for the death penalty during the second phase of the trial if the killer agreed to tell investigators who his first victim was and from where he had abducted her. To take the deal Seguin would have to drop his pose of innocence. He passed. The DA went for the death penalty and got it. Bosch never learned who the dead girl was and McCaleb knew it haunted him that no one apparently cared enough to come forward. It haunted McCaleb, too. On the day he came to the penalty phase of the trial to testify, he had lunch with Bosch and noticed that a name had been written on the tabs of his files on the case. 'What's that?' McCaleb asked excitedly. 'You ID'd her?' Bosch looked down and saw the name on the tabs and turned the files over. 'No, no ID yet.' 'Well, what's that?' 'Just a name. I sort of gave her a name, I guess.' Bosch looked embarrassed. McCaleb reached over and turned the files back over to read the name. 'Cielo Azul?' 'Yeah, she was Spanish, I gave her a Spanish name.' 'It means blue sky, right?' 'Yeah, blue sky. I, uh ...' McCaleb waited. Nothing. 'What?' 'Well... I'm not that religious, you know what I mean?' 'Yes.' 'But I sort of figured if nobody down here wanted to claim her, then hopefully ... maybe there's somebody up there that will.' Bosch shrugged his shoulders and looked away. McCaleb could see his face turning red in the upper cheeks. 'It's hard to find God's hand in what we do. What we see.' Bosch just nodded and they didn't speak about the name again. McCaleb lifted the last page of the file marked Cielo Azul and looked at the inside rear flap of the manila folder. It had become his habit over time at the bureau to jot notes on the back flap, where they would not readily be seen because of the attached file pages. These were notes he made about the investigators who submitted the cases for profiling. McCaleb had come to realize that insights about the investigator were sometimes as important as the information in the case file. For it was through the investigator's eyes that McCaleb first viewed many aspects of the crime. His case with Bosch had come up more than ten years earlier, before he began his more extensive profiling of the investigators as well as the cases. On this file he had written Bosch's name and just four words beneath it. Thorough - Smart - M. M. - A. A. He looked at the last two notations now. It had been part of his routine to use abbreviations and shorthand when making notes that needed to be kept confidential. The last two notations were his reading on what motivated Bosch. He had come to believe that homicide detectives, a breed of cop unto themselves, called upon deep inner emotions and motivations to accept and carry out the always difficult task of their job. They were usually of two kinds, those who saw their jobs as a skill or a craft, and those who saw it as a mission in life. Ten years ago he had put Bosch into the latter class. He was a man on a mission. This motivation in detectives could then be broken down even further as to what gave them this sense of purpose or mission. To some the job was seen as almost a game; they had some inner deficit that caused them to need to prove they were better, smarter and more cunning than their quarry. Their lives were a constant cycle of validating themselves by, in effect, invalidating the killers they sought by putting them behind bars. Others, while carrying a degree of that same inner deficit, also saw themselves with the additional dimension of being speakers for the dead. There was a sacred bond cast between victim and cop that formed at the crime scene and could not be severed. It was what ultimately pushed them into the chase and enabled them to overcome all obstacles in their path. McCaleb classified these cops as avenging angels. It had been his experience that these cop/angels were the best investigators he ever worked with. He also came to believe that they traveled closest to that unseen edge beneath which lies the abyss. Ten years before, he had classified Harry Bosch as an avenging angel. He now had to consider whether the detective had stepped too close to that edge. He had to consider that Bosch might have gone over. He closed the file and pulled the two art books out of his bag. Both were simply titled Bosch. The larger one, with full-color reproductions of the paintings, was by R. H. Marijnissen and P. Ruyffelaere. The second book, which appeared to carry more analysis of the paintings than the other, was written by Erik Larsen. McCaleb started with the smaller book and began scanning through the pages of analysis. He quickly learned that, as Penelope Fitzgerald had said, there were many different and even competing views of Hieronymus Bosch. The Larsen book cited scholars who called Bosch a humanist and even one who believed him to be part of a heretical group that believed the earth was a literal hell ruled over by Satan. There were disputes among the scholars about the intended meanings of some of the paintings, about whether some paintings could actually be attributed to Bosch, about whether the painter had ever traveled to Italy and viewed the work of his Renaissance contemporaries. Finally, McCaleb closed the book when he realized that, at least for his purposes, the words about Hieronymus Bosch might not be important. If the painter's work was subject to multiple interpretations, then the only interpretation that mattered would be that of the person who killed Edward Gunn. What mattered was what that person saw and took from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. He opened the larger book and began to slowly study the reproductions. His viewing of reproduction plates of the paintings at the Getty had been hurried and encumbered by his not being alone. He put his notebook on the arm of the couch with the plan to keep a tabulation of the number of owls he saw in the paintings as well as descriptions of each bird. He quickly realized that the paintings were so minutely detailed in the smaller-scale reproductions that he might be missing things of significance. He went down to the forward cabin to find the magnifying glass he had always kept in his desk at the bureau for use while examining crime scene photos. As he was bent over a box full of office supplies he had cleared out of his desk five years before, McCaleb felt a slight bump against the boat and straightened up. He had tied the Zodiac up on the fantail, so it could not have been his own skiff. He was considering this when he felt the unmistakable up-and-down movement of the boat indicating that someone had just stepped aboard. His mind focused on the salon door. He was sure he had left it unlocked. He looked down into the box he had just been sorting through and grabbed the letter opener. As he came up the steps into the galley McCaleb surveyed the salon and saw no one and nothing amiss. It was difficult seeing past the interior reflection on the sliding door but outside in the cockpit, silhouetted by the streetlights on Crescent Street, there was a man. He stood with his back to the salon as if admiring the lights of the town going up the hill. McCaleb moved quickly to the slider and pulled it open. He held the letter opener at his side but with the point of the blade up. The man standing in the cockpit turned around. McCaleb lowered his weapon as the man stared at it with wide eyes. 'Mr. McCaleb, I' 'It's all right, Charlie, I just didn't know who it was.' Charlie was the night man in the harbor office. McCaleb didn't know his last name. But he knew that he often visited Buddy Lockridge on nights Buddy stayed over. McCaleb guessed that Buddy was a soft touch for a quick beer every now and then on the long nights. That was probably why Charlie had rowed his skiff over from the pier. 'I saw the lights and thought maybe Buddy was here,' he said. 'I was just paying a visit.' 'No, Buddy's overtown tonight. He probably won't be back till Friday.' 'Okay, then. I'll just be going. Everything all right with you? The missus isn't making you sleep on the boat, is she?' 'No, Charlie, everything's fine. Just doing a little work.' He held up the letter opener as if that explained what he was doing. 'All right then, I'll be heading back.' 'Good night, Charlie. Thanks for checking on me.' He went back inside and down to the office. He found the magnifying glass, with a light attachment, at the bottom of the box of office supplies. For the. next two hours he went through the paintings. The eerie landscapes of phantasmic demons surrounding human prey enthralled him once again. As he studied each work he marked particular findings such as the owls with yellow Post-its so that he could easily return to them. McCaleb amassed a list of sixteen direct depictions of owls in the paintings and another dozen portrayals of owl-like creatures or structures. The owls were darkly painted and lurking in all the paintings like sentinels of judgment and doom. He looked at them and couldn't help but think of the analogy of the owl as detective. Both creatures of the night, both watchers and hunters - firsthand observers of the evil and pain humans and animals inflict upon each other. The single most significant finding McCaleb made during his study of the paintings was not an owl. Rather, it was the human form. He made the discovery as he used the lighted glass to examine the center panel of a painting called The Last Judgment. Outside the depiction of hell's oven, where sinners were thrown, there were several bound victims waiting to be dismembered and burned. Among this grouping McCaleb found the image of a nude man bound with his arms and legs behind him. The sinner's extremities had been stretched into a painful reverse fetal position. The image closely reflected what he had seen at center focus in the crime scene videotape and photos of Edward Gunn. McCaleb marked the finding with a Post-it and closed die book. When the cell phone on the couch next to him chirped just then, he bolted upright with a start. He checked his watch before answering and saw it was exactly midnight. The caller was Graciela. 'I thought you were coming back tonight.' 'I am. I just finished and I'm on my way.' 'You took the cart down, right?' 'Yeah. So I'll be fine.' 'Okay, see you soon.' 'Yes, you will.' McCaleb decided to leave everything on the boat, thinking that he needed to clear his mind before the next day. Carrying the files and the heavy books would only remind him of the heavy thoughts he carried within. He locked the boat and took the Zodiac to the skiff dock. At the end of the pier he climbed into the golf cart. He rode through the deserted business district and up the hill toward home. Despite his efforts to deflect them, his thoughts were of the abyss. A place where creatures with sharp beaks and claws and knives tormented the fallen in perpetuity. He knew one thing for sure at this point. The painter Bosch would have made a good profiler. He knew his stuff. He had a handle on the nightmares that rattle around inside most people's minds. As well as those that sometimes get out. Opening statements in the trial of David Storey were delayed while the attorneys argued over final motions behind closed doors with the judge. Bosch sat at the prosecution table and waited. He tried to clear his mind of all extraneous diversions, including his fruitless search for Annabelle Crowe the night before. Finally, at ten forty-five, the attorneys came into the courtroom and moved to their respective tables. Then the defendant - today wearing a suit that looked like it would cover three deputies' paychecks - was led into court from the holding cell and, at last, Judge Houghton took the bench. It was time to begin and Bosch felt the tension in the courtroom ratchet up a considerable notch. Los Angeles had raised - or perhaps lowered - the criminal trial to the level of worldwide entertainment, but it was never seen that way by the players in the courtroom. They were playing for keeps and in this trial perhaps more than most there was a palpable sense of the enmity between the two opposing camps. The judge instructed the deputy sheriff who acted as his bailiff to bring in the jury. Bosch stood with the others and turned and watched the jurors file in silently and take their seats. He thought he could see excitement in some of their faces. They had been waiting through two weeks of jury selection and motions for things to start. Bosch's eyes rose above them to the two cameras mounted on the wall over the jury box. They gave a full view of the courtroom, except for the jury box. After everyone was seated Houghton cleared his throat and leaned forward to the bench microphone while looking at the jurors. 'Ladies and gentlemen, how are you this morning?' There was a murmured response and Houghton nodded. 'I apologize for the delay. Please remember that the justice system is in essence run by lawyers. As such it runs slowwwwwwly.' There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys - prosecution and defense -dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at. Bosch glanced to his left, past the defense table, and saw the other jury box was packed with members of the media. He recognized many of the reporters from television newscasts and press conferences in the past. He scanned the rest of the courtroom and saw the public observation benches were densely packed with citizens, except for the row directly behind the defense table. There sat several people with ample room on either side who looked as if they'd spent the morning in a makeup trailer. Bosch assumed they were celebrities of some sort, but it wasn't a realm he was familiar with and he could not identify any of them. He thought about leaning over to Janis Langwiser and asking but then thought better of it. 'We needed to clean up some last-minute details in my chambers,' the judge continued to the jury. 'But now we're ready to start. We'll begin with opening statements and I need to caution you that these are not statements of fact but rather statements about what each side thinks the facts are and what they will endeavor to prove during the course of the trial. These statements are not to be considered by you to contain evidence. All of that comes later on. So listen closely but keep an open mind because a lot is still coming down the pipe. Now we're going to start off with the prosecution and, as always, give the defendant the last word. Mr. Kretzler, you may begin.' The lead prosecutor stood and moved to the lectern positioned between the two lawyers' tables. He nodded to the jury and identified himself as Roger Kretzler, deputy district attorney assigned to the special crimes section. He was a tall and gaunt prosecutor with a reddish beard beneath short dark hair and rimless glasses. He was at least forty-five years old. Bosch thought of him as not particularly likable but nevertheless very capable at his job. And the fact that he was still in the trenches prosecuting cases when others his age had left for the higher-paying corporate or criminal defense worlds made him all the more admirable. Bosch suspected he had no home life. On nights before the trial when a question about the investigation had come up and Bosch would be paged, the callback number was always Kretzler's office line - no matter how late it was. Kretzler identified his co-prosecutor as Janis Langwiser, also of the special crimes unit, and the lead investigator as LAPD detective third grade Harry Bosch. 'I am going to make this short and sweet so all the sooner we will be able to get to the facts, as Judge Houghton has correctly pointed out. Ladies and gentlemen, the case you will hear in this courtroom certainly has the trappings of celebrity. It has event status written all over it. Yes, the defendant, David N. Storey, is a man of power and position in this community, in this celebrity-dnven age we live in. But if you strip away the trappings of power and glitter from the facts - as I promise we will do over the next few days - what you have here is something as basic as it is all too common in our society. A simple case of murder.' Kretzler paused for effect. Bosch checked the jury. All eyes were fastened on the prosecutor. 'The man you see seated at the defense table, David N. Storey, went out with a twenty-three-year-old woman named Jody Krementz on the evening of last October twelfth. And after an evening that included the premiere of his latest film and a reception, he took her to his home in the Hollywood Hills where they engaged in consensual sexual intercourse. I don't believe you will find argument from the defense table about any of this. We are not here about that. But what happened during or after the sex is what brings us here today. On the morning of October thirteenth the body of Jody Krementz was found strangled and in her own bed in the small home she shared with another actress.' Kretzler flipped up a page of the legal pad on the lectern in front of him even though it seemed clear to Bosch and probably everyone else that his statement was memorized and rehearsed. 'In the course of this trial the State of California will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was David Storey who took Jody Krementz's life in a moment of brutal sexual rage. He then moved or caused to be moved the body from his home to the victim's home. He arranged the body in such a way that the death might appear accidental. And following this, he used his power and position in an effort to thwart the investigation of the crime by the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Storey, who you will learn has a history of abusive behavior toward women, was so sure that he would walk away untouched from his crime that in a moment of' Kretzler chose this moment to turn from the lectern and look down upon the seated defendant with a disdainful look. Storey stared straight ahead unflinchingly and the prosecutor finally turned back to the jury. 'shall we say candor, he actually boasted to the lead investigator on the case, Detective Bosch, that he would do just that, walk away from his crime.' Kretzler cleared his throat, a sign he was ready to bring it all home. 'We are here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to find justice for Jody Krementz. To make it our business that her murderer not walk away from his crime. The State of California asks, and I personally ask, that you listen carefully during the trial and weigh the evidence fairly. If you do that, we can be sure that justice will be served. For Jody Krementz. For all of us.' He picked up the pad from the lectern and turned to move back to his seat. But then he stopped, as if a second thought had just occurred to him. Bosch saw it as a well-practiced move. He thought the jury would see it that way as well. 'I was just thinking that we all know it has been part of our recent history here in Los Angeles to see our police department put on trial in these high-profile cases. If you don't like the message, then by all means shoot the messenger. It is a favorite from the defense bar's bag of tricks. I want you all to promise yourselves that you will remain vigilant and keep your eyes on the prize, that prize being truth and justice. Don't be fooled. Don't be misdirected. Trust yourself on the truth and you'll find the way.' He stepped over to his seat and sat down. Bosch noticed Langwiser reaching over and gripping Kretzler's forearm in a congratulatory gesture. It, too, was part of the well-practiced play. The judge told the jurors that in light of the brevity of the prosecution's address the trial would proceed to the defense statement without a break. But the break came soon enough anyway when Fowkkes stood and moved to the lectern and proceeded to spend even less time than Kretzler addressing the jury. 'You know, ladies and gentlemen, all this talk about shoot the messenger, don't shoot the messenger, well let me tell you something about that. Those fine words you got from Mr. Kretzler there at the end, well let me tell you every prosecutor in this building says those at the start of every trial in this place. I mean they must have 'em printed up on cards they carry in their wallets, it seems to me.' Kretzler stood and objected to what he called such 'wild exaggeration' and Houghton admonished Fowkkes but then advised the prosecutor that he might make better use of his objections. Fowkkes moved on quickly. 'If I was outta line, I'm sorry. I know it's a touchy thing with prosecutors and police. But all I'm saying, folks, is that where there's smoke there's usually fire. And in the course of this trial we are going to try to find our way through the smoke. We may or may not come upon a fire but one thing I do know for sure we will come upon is the conclusion that this man' He turned and pointed strongly at his client. 'this man, David N. Storey, is without a shadow of a doubt not guilty of the crime he is charged with. Yes, he is a man of power and position but, remember, it is not a crime to be so. Yes, he knows a few celebrities but, last time I checked People magazine, this too was not yet a crime. Now I think you may find elements of Mr. Storey's personal life and appetites to be offensive to you. I know I do. But remember that these do not constitute crimes that he is charged with in these proceedings. The crime here is murder. Nothing less and nothing more. It is a crime of which David Storey is NOT guilty. And no matter what Mr. Kretzler and Ms. Langwiser and Detective Bosch and their witnesses tell you, there is absolutely no evidence of guilt in this case.' After Fowkkes bowed to the jury and sat down, Judge Houghton announced the trial would break for an early lunch before testimony began in the afternoon. Bosch watched the jury file out through the door next to the box. A few of them looked back over their shoulders at the courtroom. The juror who was last in line, a black woman of about fifty, looked directly back at Bosch. He lowered his eyes and then immediately wished he hadn't. When he looked back up she was gone. McCaleb turned off the television when the trial broke for lunch. He didn't want to hear all the analysis of the talking heads. He thought the best point had been scored by the defense. Fowkkes had made a smooth move telling the jury that he, too, found his client's personal life and habits offensive. He was telling them that if he could stand it, so could they. He was reminding them that the case was about taking a life, not about how one lived a life. He went back to preparing for his afternoon meeting with Jaye Winston. He'd gone back to the boat after breakfast and gathered up his files and books. Now, with a pair of scissors and some tape, he was putting together a presentation he hoped would not only impress Winston but convince her of something McCaleb was having a difficult time believing himself. In a way, putting together the presentation was a dress rehearsal for putting on a case. In that respect, McCaleb found the time he labored over what he would show and say to Winston very useful. It allowed him to see logic holes and prepare answers for the questions he knew Winston would ask. While he considered exactly what he would say to Winston, she called on his cell phone. 'We might have a break on the owl. Maybe, maybe not.' 'What is it?' 'The distributor in Middleton, Ohio, thinks he knows where it came from. A place right here in Carson called Bird Barrier.' 'Why does he think that?' 'Because Kurt faxed photos of our bird, and the man he was dealing with in Ohio noticed that the bottom of the mold was open.' 'Okay. What's it mean?' 'Well, apparently these are shipped with the base enclosed so it can be filled with sand to make the bird stand up in wind and rain and whatever.' 'I understand.' 'Well, they have one subdistributor who orders the owls with the bottom of the base punched out. Bird Barrier. They take them with the open base because they fit the owls on top of some kind of gizmo that shrieks.' 'What do you mean, shrieks?' 'You know, like a real owl. I guess it helps really scare birds away. You know what Bird Barrier's slogan is? "Number one when it comes to birds going number two." Cute, huh? That's how they answer the phone there.' McCaleb's mind was churning too quickly to register humor. He didn't laugh. 'This place is in Carson?' 'Right, not far from your marina. I've got to go to a meeting now but I was going to drop by before coming to see you. You want to meet there instead? Can you make it over in time?' 'That would be good. I'll be there.' She gave him the address, which was about fifteen minutes from Cabrillo Marina, and they agreed to meet there at two. She said that the company's president, a man named Cameron Riddell, had agreed to see them. 'Are you bringing the owl with you?' McCaleb asked. 'Guess what, Terry? I've been a detective going on twelve years now. And I've had a brain even longer.' 'Sorry.' 'See you at two.' After clicking off the phone, McCaleb took a leftover tamale out of the freezer, cooked it in the microwave and then wrapped it in foil and put it in his leather bag for eating while crossing the bay. He checked on his daughter, who was in the family room sleeping in the arms of their part-time nanny, Mrs. Perez. He touched the baby's cheek and left. Bird Barrier was located in a commercial and upscale warehouse district that hugged the eastern side of the 405 Freeway just below the airfield where the Goodyear blimp was tethered. The blimp was in its place and McCaleb could see the leashes that held it straining against the afternoon wind coming in from the sea. When he pulled into the Bird Barrier lot he noticed an LTD with commercial hubs that he knew had to be Jaye Winston's car. He was right. She was sitting in a small waiting room when he came in through a glass door. On the floor next to her chair were a briefcase and a cardboard box sealed at the top with red tape marked evidence. She immediately got up and went to a reception window through which McCaleb could see a seated young man wearing a telephone headset. 'Can you tell Mr. Riddell we're both here?' The young man, who was apparently on a call, nodded to her. A few minutes later they were ushered into Cameron Riddell's office. McCaleb carried the box. Winston made the introductions, calling McCaleb her colleague. It was the truth but it also concealed his badgeless status. Riddell was a pleasant-looking man in his mid-thirties who seemed anxious to help in the investigation. Winston put on a pair of latex gloves from her briefcase, then ran a key along the red tape on the box and opened it. She removed the owl and placed it on Riddell's desk. 'What can you tell us about this, Mr. Riddell?' Riddell remained standing behind his desk and leaned across to look at the owl. 'I can't touch it?' 'Tell you what, why don't you put these on.' Winston opened her briefcase and handed another pair of gloves from the cardboard dispenser to Riddell. McCaleb just watched, having decided that he would not jump in unless Winston asked him to or she made an obvious omission during the interview. Riddell struggled with the gloves, slowly pulling them on. 'Sorry,' Winston said. 'They're medium. You look like a large.' Once he had the gloves on, Riddell picked the owl up with both hands and studied the underside of the base. He looked up into the hollow plastic mold and then held the bird directly in front of him, seemingly studying the painted eyes. He then placed it on the corner of the desk and went back around to his seat. He sat down and pressed a button on an intercom. 'Monique, it's Cameron. Can you go to the back and get one of the screeching owls off the line and bring it in to me? I need it now, too.' 'On my way.' Riddell took off the gloves and flexed his fingers. He then looked at Winston, having sensed that she was the important one. He gestured to the owl. 'Yes, it's one of ours but it's been ... I don't know what the word you would use would be. It's been changed, modified. We don't sell them like this.' 'How so?' 'Well, Monique's getting us one so you can see, but essentially this one has been repainted a little bit and the screeching mechanism has been removed. Also, we have a proprietary label we attach here at the base and that's gone.' He pointed to the rear of the base. 'Let's start with the painting,' Winston said. 'What was done?' Before Riddell answered, there was a single knock on the door and a woman came in carrying another owl which was wrapped in plastic. Riddell told her to put it down on the desk and remove the plastic. McCaleb noticed that she made a face when she saw the painted black eyes of the owl Winston had brought. Riddell thanked her and she left the office. McCaleb studied the side-by-side owls. The evidence owl had been painted darker. The Bird Barrier owl had five colors on its feathers, including white and light blue, as well as plastic eyes with pupils rimmed in a reflective amber color. Also, the new owl was sitting atop a black plastic base. 'As you can see, the owl you brought has been repainted,' Riddell said. 'Especially the eyes. When you paint over them like that, you lose a lot of the effect. These are called foil-reflect eyes. The layer of foil in the plastic catches light and gives the eyes the appearance of movement.' 'So the birds think it is real.' 'Exactly. You lose that when you paint them like this.' 'We don't think the person that painted this was worried about birds. What else is different?' Riddell shook his head. 'Just that the plumage has been darkened quite a bit. You can see that.' 'Yes. Now you said the mechanism has been removed. What mechanism?' 'We get these from Ohio and then we paint them and attach one of two mechanisms. What you see here is our standard model.' Riddell picked the owl up and showed them the underside. The black plastic base swiveled as he turned it. It made a loud screeching sound. 'Hear the screech?' 'Yes, that's enough, Mr. Riddell.' 'Sorry. But you see, the owl sits on this base and reacts to the wind. As it turns, it emits the screech and sounds like a predator. Works well, as long as the wind is blowing. We also have a deluxe model with an electronic insert in the base. It contains a speaker that emits recorded sounds of predator birds like the hawk. No reliance on wind.' 'Can you get one without either one of the inserts?' 'Yes, you can purchase a replacement that fits over one of our proprietary bases. In case the owl is damaged or lost. With exposure, particularly in marine settings, the paint lasts two to three years and after that the owl might lose some of its effectiveness. You have to repaint or simply get a new owl. The reality is, the mold is the least expensive part of the ensemble.' Winston looked over at McCaleb. He had nothing to add or ask in the line of questioning she was pursuing. He simply nodded at her and she turned back to Riddell. 'Okay, then, I think we want to see if there is a method of tracing this owl from this point to its eventual owner.' Riddell looked at the owl for a long moment as if it might be able to answer the question itself. 'Well, that could be difficult. It's a commodity item. We sell several thousand a year. We ship to retail outlets as well as sell through mail-order catalogs and an internet website.' He snapped his fingers. 'There is one thing that will cut it down some, though.' 'What's that?' 'They changed the mold last year. In China. They did some research and decided the horned owl was considered a higher threat to other birds than the round head. They changed to the horns.' 'I'm not quite following you, Mr. Riddell.' He held up a finger as if to tell her to wait a moment. He then opened a desk drawer and dug through some paperwork. He came out with a catalog and quickly started turning pages. McCaleb saw that Bird Barrier's primary business was not plastic owls, but large-scale bird deterrent systems that encompassed netting and wire coils and spikes. Riddell found the page showing the plastic owls and turned the catalog so that Winston and McCaleb could view it. 'This is last year's catalog,' he said. 'You see the owl has the round head. The manufacturer changed last June, about seven months ago. Now we have these guys.' He pointed to the two owls on the table. 'The feathering turns up into the two points, or ears, on the top of the head. The sales rep said these are called horns and that these types of owls are sometimes called devil owls.' Winston glanced at McCaleb, who raised his eyebrows momentarily. 'So you're saying this owl we have was ordered or bought since June,' she said to Riddell. 'More like since August or maybe September. They changed in June but we probably didn't start receiving the new mold until late July. We also would have sold off our existing supplies of the round head first.' Winston then questioned Riddell about sales records and determined that information from mail-order and website purchases was kept complete and current on the company's computer files. But point-of-purchase sales from shipments to major hardware and home and marine products retailers would obviously not be recorded. He turned to the computer on his desk and typed in a few commands. He then pointed to the screen, though McCaleb and Winston were not at angles where they could see it. 'All right, I asked for sales of those part numbers since August one,' he said. 'Part numbers?' 'Yes, for the standard and deluxe models and then the replacement molds. We show we self-shipped four hundred and fourteen total. We also shipped six hundred even to retailers.' 'And what you're telling us is that we can only trace, through you at least, the four hundred fourteen.'