Rider nodded as she apparently got a go-ahead.

“The suspect I am documenting has a history of calling businesses and identifying himself as someone working for Visa. He then attempts to verify someone else’s employment as part of an application for a credit card. Does any of this ring a bell with you? We have information that leads us to believe that this individual was operating in the Valley yesterday. He likes to target automotive businesses.”

Rider waited while there was a response to her question. She looked at Bosch but gave no indication of anything.

“Yes, could you put her on the line, please?”

Rider went through the whole thing again with another person and asked the same question. Then she leaned forward and seemed to take a stiffer attitude in her posture. She covered the mouthpiece and looked at Bosch.

“Bingo,” she said.

She then went back to the phone call and listened some more.

“Was it a male or female?”

She wrote something down.

“And what time was this?”

She wrote another note and Bosch stood up so he could look across his desk to read it. She had written “male, 1:30 approx” on a scratch pad. While she continued the conversation Bosch consulted the pen register and saw that a call came in on the Tampa Towing line at 1:40 p.m. It was from a personal number. The name on the register was Amanda Sobek. The number’s prefix indicated it was a cell phone. Neither the name nor the number meant anything to Bosch. But that didn’t matter. He thought they were getting close to something here.

Rider finished her call by asking if the person she was talking to remembered the name the supposed Visa employee had tried to confirm. After she apparently got a negative reply, she asked, “What about the name Roland Mackey?”

She waited.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Okay, thank you for your time, Karen.”

She hung up and looked at Bosch. The excitement in her eyes wiped out everything about being left out of the morning’s fingerprints find.

“You were right,” she said. “They got a call. Same thing. She even remembered the name Roland Mackey once I gave it to her. Harry, somebody was tracking him down the whole time we were watching him.”

“And now we’re going to track them down. If they were going down the line in the phone book they would have called Tampa Towing next. The register shows a one-forty call from somebody named Amanda Sobek. I don’t recognize it but this might be the call we’re looking for.”

“Amanda Sobek,” Rider said as she opened her laptop. “Let’s see what AutoTrack has on her.”

While she was tracing the name, Bosch got a call from Robinson, who had arrived with Nord at Tampa Towing.

“Harry, the dayshift guy says that call came in between one-thirty and two o’clock. He knows because he had just come back from lunch and he was sent out on a tow at two o’clock. A Triple A run.”

“Was it a male or female caller from Visa?”

“Male.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“Yeah, once this guy confirmed that Mackey worked here, the Visa guy asked what hours he worked.”

“Okay. Can you ask the day man another question?”

“He’s right here.”

“Ask if they have a customer named Sobek. Amanda Sobek.”

Bosch waited while the question was asked.

“No customer named Sobek,” Robinson reported back. “Is that good news, Harry?”

“It’ll work.”

After closing the phone Bosch got up and walked around the desks so he could look at Rider’s computer screen. He told her what Robinson had just reported.

“Anything on Amanda Sobek?” he asked.

“Yeah, this is it. She lives in the West Valley. Farralone Avenue in Chatsworth. But there is not a lot here. No credit cards or mortgage. I think it means it’s all in her husband’s name. She might be a housewife. I’m running the address to see if I can pull him up.”

Bosch opened the yearbook to Rebecca Verloren’s class. He started flipping through the pages looking for the name Sobek or Amanda.

“Here he is,” Rider said. “Mark Sobek. Everything’s basically in his name and it looks like a lot. Four cars, two houses, lots of credit cards.”

“There was nobody named Sobek in her class,” Bosch said. “But there were two girls named Amanda. Amanda Reynolds and Amanda Riordan. Think she is one of them?”

Rider shook her head.

“I don’t think so. The age is off. This says Amanda Sobek is forty-one. That would make her eight years older than Rebecca. Something doesn’t fit. Think we should just call her?”

Bosch closed the yearbook with a bang. Rider jumped in her seat.

“No,” he said. “Let’s just go.”

“Where? To see her?”

“Yeah. Time to get off your ass and knock on doors.”

He looked down at Rider and could tell she wasn’t amused.

“I don’t mean your ass specifically. It’s a figure of speech. Let’s just go.”

She started getting up.

“You are awfully flippant for somebody who might not have a job at the end of the day.”

“It’s the only way to be, Kiz. Darkness waits. But it comes no matter what you do.”

He led the way out of the office.

37

THE FARRALONE AVENUE address AutoTrack led Bosch and Rider to belonged to a Mediterranean-style mansion that had to have been on the upper side of 6,000 square feet. It had a separate garage with four dark-stained wooden doors and windows from a guest suite above. The detectives had to view all of this through a wrought iron gate while waiting for someone to answer the intercom. Finally a voice came from the small square box on a pole next to Bosch’s open window.

“Yes, who is it?”

It was a woman. She sounded young.

“Amanda Sobek?” Bosch asked in reply.

“No, this is her assistant. Who are you two?”

Bosch looked again at the box and saw the camera lens. They were being watched as well as listened to. He pulled out his badge and held it a foot from the lens.

“Police,” he said. “We need to talk to Amanda or Mark Sobek.”

“About what?”

“About police business. Open the gate, please, ma’am.”

They waited and Bosch was just about to punch the call button again when the gate slowly started to automatically open. They drove in and parked in a turnaround circle in front of the two-story portico.

“Looks like the kind of place it might be worth killing a tow truck driver to protect,” Bosch said quietly as he cut the engine.

The door was opened before they got there by a woman in her twenties. She was wearing a skirt and a white blouse. The assistant.

“And you are?” Bosch asked.

“ Melody Lane. I work for Mrs. Sobek.”

“Is she here?” Rider asked.

“Yes, she’s getting dressed and will be right down. You can wait in the living room.”

They were led into an entrance hallway, where there was a table with several family photos on display. It looked like a husband, wife and two teenaged daughters. They followed Melody into a sumptuous living room with large windows looking out on Santa Susana State Park and Oat Mountain beyond.

Bosch checked his watch. It was almost noon. Melody noticed.

“She wasn’t sleeping. She worked out earlier and was taking a shower. She should be down -”

She didn’t need to finish. An attractive woman in white slacks and blouse left open over a pink chiffon shirt came hurrying into the room.

“What is it? Is something wrong? Are my girls all right?”

“Are you Amanda Sobek?” Bosch asked.

“Of course I am. What is wrong? Why are you here?”

Bosch pointed to the grouping of couch and chairs in the center of the room.

“Why don’t we sit down here, Mrs. Sobek.”

“Just tell me if something is wrong.”

The panic on her face looked real to Bosch. He started to think they may have made a wrong turn somewhere.

“Nothing is wrong,” he said. “This is not about your daughters. Your daughters are fine.”