He thought about the skull Golliher had held up to him that morning. A murder victim buried in tar for 9,000 years. A city of bones, and all of them waiting to come up out of the ground. For what? Maybe nobody cares anymore.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything in the long run. Suicide terrorists hit New York and three thousand people are dead before they’ve finished their first cup of coffee. What does one little set of bones buried in the past matter?”

She smiled sweetly and shook her head.

“Don’t go existential on me, Harry. The important thing is that it means something to you. And if it means something to you, then it is important to do what you can. No matter what happens in the world, there will always be the need for heroes. I hope someday I get a chance to be one.”

“Maybe.”

He nodded and kept his eyes from hers. He played some more with his glass.

“Do you remember that commercial that used to be on TV, where there’s this old lady who’s on the ground or something and she says, ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,’ and everybody used to make fun of it?”

“I remember. They sell T-shirts that say that on Venice Beach.”

“Yeah, well… sometimes I feel like that. I mean, plus twenty-five. You can’t go the distance without screwing up from time to time. You fall down, Julia, and sometimes you feel like you can’t get up.”

He nodded to himself.

“But then you get lucky and a case comes along and you say to yourself, this is the one. You just feel it. This is the one I can get back up with.”

“It’s called redemption, Harry. What’s that song say, ‘Everybody wants a shot at it’?”

“Something like that. Yeah.”

“And maybe this case is your shot?”

“Yeah, I think it is. I hope so.”

“Then here’s to redemption.”

She picked up her glass for a toast.

“Hold fast,” he said.

She banged it off of his. Some of her beer sloshed into his almost empty glass.

“Sorry. I need to practice that.”

“It’s okay. I needed a refill.”

He raised his glass and drained it. He put it back down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“So are you coming home with me tonight?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“No, not with you.”

He frowned and started to wonder if his directness had offended her.

“I’m following you home tonight,” she said. “Remember? Can’t leave the car at the division. Everything’s got to be top secret, hush-hush, eyes only from now on.”

He smiled. The beer and her smile were like magic on him.

“You got me there.”

“I hope in more ways than one.”

Chapter 29

BOSCH came in late to the meeting in Lt. Billets’s office. Edgar was already there, a rarity, as well as Medina from Media Relations. Billets pointed him to a seat with a pencil she was holding, then picked up her phone and punched in a number.

“This is Lieutenant Billets,” she said when her call was answered. “You can tell Chief Irving that we are all here now and ready to begin.”

Bosch looked at Edgar and raised his eyebrows. The deputy chief was still keeping his hand directly in the case.

Billets hung up and said, “He’s going to call back and I’ll put him on the speaker.”

“To listen or to tell?” Bosch asked.

“Who knows?”

“While we’re waiting,” Medina said, “I’ve started getting a few calls about a BOLO you guys put out. A man named John Stokes? How do you want me to handle that? Is he a new suspect?”

Bosch was annoyed. He knew the Be on the Lookout flier distributed at roll calls would eventually leak to the media. He didn’t anticipate it happening so quickly.

“No, he’s not a suspect at all,” he said to Medina. “And if the reporters screw that up like they did Trent, we’ll never find him. He’s just somebody we want to talk to. He was an acquaintance of the victim. Many years ago.”

“Then you have the victim’s ID?”

Before Bosch could answer, the phone buzzed. Billets answered and put Deputy Chief Irving on the speaker.

“Chief, we have Detectives Bosch and Edgar here, along with Officer Medina from Media Relations.”

“Very good,” Irving’s voice boomed from the phone’s speaker. “Where are we at?”

Billets started tapping a button on the phone to turn down the volume.

“Uh, Harry, why don’t you take that?” she said.

Bosch reached into his inside coat pocket and took out his notebook. He took his time about it. He liked the idea of Irving sitting behind his spotless glass desk in his office at Parker Center, waiting for voices over the phone. He opened the notebook to a page full of jottings he had made that morning while eating breakfast with Julia.

“Detective, are you there?” Irving said.

“Uh, yes, sir, I’m right here. I was just going through some notes here. Um, the main thing is we have made a positive identification of the victim. His name is Arthur Delacroix. He disappeared from his home in the Miracle Mile area on May fourth, nineteen eighty. He was twelve years old.”

He stopped there, anticipating questions. He noticed that Medina was writing the name down.

“I’m not sure we want to put that out yet,” Bosch said.

“Why is that?” Irving asked. “Are you saying the identification is not positive?”

“No, we’re positive on it, Chief. It’s just that if we put the name out, we might be telegraphing which way we’re moving here.”

“Which is?”

“Well, we are very confident that Nicholas Trent was clear on this. So we are looking elsewhere. The autopsy-the injuries to the bones-indicate chronic child abuse, dating to early childhood. The mother was out of the picture, so we are looking at the father now. We haven’t approached him yet. We’re gathering string. If we were to announce that we have an ID and the father saw it, we would be putting him on notice before we need to.”

“If he buried the kid there, then he already is on notice.”

“To a degree. But he knows if we can’t come up with a legit ID we’ll never link it to him. The lack of an ID is what keeps him safe. And it gives us time to look at him.”

“Understood,” Irving said.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Bosch expecting Irving to say something else. But he didn’t. Bosch looked at Billets and spread his hands in a what-gives gesture. She shrugged her shoulders.

“So then…,” Bosch began, “we’re not putting it out, right?”

Silence. Then:

“I think that is the prudent course to follow,” Irving said.

Medina tore the page he had written on out of his notebook, crumpled it and tossed it into a trash can in the corner.

“Is there anything we can put out?” he asked.

“Yes,” Bosch said quickly. “We can clear Trent.”

“Negative,” Irving said just as quickly. “We do that at the end. When and if you make a case, then we will clean up the rest.”

Bosch looked at Edgar and then at Billets.

“Chief,” he said. “If we do it that way, we could be hurting our case.”

“How so?”

“It’s an old case. The older the case, the longer the shot. We can’t take chances. If we don’t go out there and tell them Trent is clear, we’ll be giving the guy we eventually take down a defense. He’ll be able to point at Trent and say he was a child molester, he did it.”

“But he will be able to do that, whether we clear Trent now or later.”

Bosch nodded.

“True. But I am looking at it from the standpoint of testifying at trial. I want to be able to say we checked Trent out and quickly dismissed him. I don’t want some lawyer asking me why, if we so quickly dismissed him, we waited a week or two weeks to announce it. Chief, it will look like we were hiding something. It’s going to be subtle but it will have an impact. People on juries look for any reason not to trust cops in general and the LAPD in par-”