“How so?”

“I think the kid was alive when he got up there. That’s where he was killed. We have to figure out what or who brought him up there. We’re going to have to go back in time on that whole street. Profile the whole neighborhood. It’s going to take time.”

She shook her head.

“Well, we don’t have time to work it full-time,” she said. “You guys just sat out of the rotation for ten days. This isn’t RHD. That’s the longest I’ve been able to hold a team out since I got here.”

“So we’re back in?”

She nodded.

“And right now it’s your up-the next case is yours.”

Bosch nodded. He had assumed that was coming. In the ten days they’d been working the case, the two other Hollywood homicide teams had both caught cases. It was now their turn. It was rare to get such a long ride on a divisional case anyway. It had been a luxury. Too bad they hadn’t turned the case, he thought.

Bosch also knew that by putting them back on the rotation Billets was making a tacit acknowledgment that she wasn’t expecting the case to clear. With each day that a case stayed open, the chances of clearing it dropped markedly. It was a given in homicide and it happened to everybody. There were no closers.

“Okay,” Billets said. “Anything else anybody wants to talk about?”

She looked at Bosch with a raised eyebrow. He suddenly thought maybe she did know something about the call from the O-3. He hesitated, then shook his head along with Edgar.

“Okay, guys. Thanks.”

They went back to the table and Bosch called Jesper.

“The dummy’s safe,” he said when the criminalist picked up the phone. “I’ll bring it down later today.”

“Cool, man. But that wasn’t why I called. I just wanted to tell you I can make a little refinement on that report I sent you on the skateboard. That is, if it still matters.”

Bosch hesitated for a moment.

“Not really, but what do you want to refine, Antoine?”

Bosch opened the murder book in front of him and leafed through it until he found the SID report. He looked at it as Jesper spoke.

“Well, in there I said we could put manufacture of the board between February of ’seventy-eight and June of ’eighty-six, right?”

“Right. I’m looking at it.”

“Okay, well, I can now cut more than half of that time period. This particular board was made between ’seventy-eight and ’eighty. Two years. I don’t know if that means anything to the case or not.”

Bosch scanned the report. Jesper’s amendment to the report didn’t really matter, since they had dropped Trent as a suspect and the skateboard had never been linked to Arthur Delacroix. But Bosch was curious about it, anyway.

“How’d you cut it down? Says here the same design was manufactured until ’eighty-six.”

“It was. But this particular board has a date on it. Nineteen eighty.”

Bosch was puzzled.

“Wait a minute. Where? I didn’t see any-”

“I took the trucks off-you know, the wheels. I had some time here between things and I wanted to see if there were any manufacture markings on the hardware. You know, patent or trademark coding. There weren’t. But then I saw that somebody had scratched the date in the wood. Like carved it in on the underside of the board and then it was covered up by the truck assembly.”

“You mean like when the board was made?”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s not a professional job. In fact it was hard to read. I had to put it under glass and angled light. I just think it was the original owner’s way of marking his board in a secret way in case there was ever a dispute or something over ownership. Like if somebody stole it from him. Like I said in the report, Boney boards were the choice board for a while there. They were hard to get-might’ve been easier to steal one than find one in a store. So the kid who had this one took off the back truck-this would have been the original truck, not the current wheels-and carved in the date. Nineteen eighty A.D.”

Bosch looked over at Edgar. He was on the phone speaking with his hand cupped over the mouthpiece. A personal call.

“You said A.D.?”

“Yeah, you know, as in anno Domini or however you say it. It’s Latin. Means the year of our Lord. I looked it up.”

“No, it means Arthur Delacroix.”

“What? Who’s that?”

“That’s the vic, Antoine. Arthur Delacroix. As in A.D.”

“Damn! I didn’t have the vic’s name here, Bosch. You filed all of this evidence while he was still a John Doe and never amended it, man. I didn’t even know you had an ID.”

Bosch wasn’t listening to him. A surge of adrenaline was moving through his body. He knew his pulse was quickening.

“Antoine, don’t move. I’m coming down there.”

“I’ll be here.”

Chapter 47

THE freeway was crowded with people getting an early start on the weekend. Bosch couldn’t keep his speed as he headed downtown. He had a feeling of pulsing urgency. He knew it was because of Jesper’s discovery and the message from the O-3.

He turned his wrist on the wheel so he could see his watch and check the date. He knew that transfers usually took place at the end of a pay period. There were two pay periods a month-beginning the first and the fifteenth. If the transfer they were going to put on him was immediate, he knew that gave him only three or four days to wrap up the case. He didn’t want to be taken off it, to leave it in Edgar’s or anybody else’s hands. He wanted to finish it.

Bosch reached into his pocket and brought out the phone slip. He unfolded it, driving with the heels of his palms on the wheel. He studied it for a moment and then got out his phone. He punched in the number from the message and waited.

“Office of Operations, Lieutenant Bollenbach speaking.”

Bosch clicked the phone off. He felt his face grow hot. He wondered if Bollenbach had caller ID on his phone. He knew that delaying the call was ridiculous because what was done was done whether he called in to get the news or not.

He put the phone and the message aside and tried to concentrate on the case, particularly the latest information Antoine Jesper had provided about the skateboard found in Nicholas Trent’s house. Bosch realized that after ten days the case was wholly out of his grasp. A man he had fought with others in the department to clear was now the only suspect-with apparent physical evidence tying him to the victim. The thought that immediately poked through all of this was that maybe Irving was right. It was time for Bosch to go.

His phone chirped and he immediately thought it was Bollenbach. He was not going to answer but then decided his fate was unavoidable. He flipped open the phone. It was Edgar.

“Harry, what are you doing?”

“I told you. I had to go to SID.”

He didn’t want to tell him about Jesper’s latest discovery until he had seen it for himself.

“I could’ve gone with you.”

“Would’ve been a waste of your time.”

“Yeah, well, listen, Harry, Bullets is looking for you and, uh, there’s a rumor floatin’ around up here that you caught a transfer.”

“Don’t know anything about it.”

“Well, you’re going to let me know if something’s happening, aren’t you? We’ve been together a long time.”

“You’ll be the first, Jerry.”

When Bosch got to Parker Center he had one of the patrolmen stationed in the lobby help him lug the dummy up to SID, where he returned it to Jesper, who took it and carried it easily to its storage closet.

Jesper led Bosch into a lab where the skateboard was on an examination table. He turned on a light that was mounted on a stand next to the board, then turned off the overhead light. He swung a mounted magnifying glass over the skateboard and invited Bosch to look. The angled light created small shadows in the etchings of the wood, allowing the letters to be clearly seen.