“Yeah, for five years, until last week.”

“That helps.”

Hirsch carefully took the card from Bosch and walked over to the work counter, where he opened the card and clipped it to a board.

“I’m going to try the inside. It’s always better. Less chance of you having touched it inside. And the writer always touches the inside. Is it all right if this gets kind of ruined?”

“Do what you have to do.”

Hirsch studied the card with a magnifying glass, then lightly blew over the surface. He reached to a rack of spray bottles over the work table and took down one marked NINHYDRIN. He sprayed a light mist over the surface of the card and in a few minutes it began to turn purple around the edges. Then light shapes began to bloom like flowers on the card. Fingerprints.

“I’ve got to bring this out some,” Hirsch said, more to himself than Bosch.

Hirsch looked up at the rack and his eyes followed the row of chemical reagents until he found what he was looking for. A spray bottle marked ZINC CHLORIDE. He sprayed it on the card.

“This should bring the storm clouds in.”

The prints turned the deep purple shade of heavy rain clouds. Hirsch then took down a bottle labeled PD, which Bosch knew meant physical developer. After the card was misted with PD, the prints turned a grayish black and were more defined. Hirsch looked them over with his magnifying lamp.

“I think this is good enough. We won’t need the laser. Now, look at these here, Detective.”

Hirsch pointed to a print that appeared to have been left by a thumb on the left side of Meredith Roman’s signature and two smaller finger marks above it.

“These look like marks left by someone trying to hold the card steady while it was being written on. Any chance that you might’ve touched it this way?”

Hirsch held his fingers in place an inch over the card in the same position that the hand that left the prints would have been in. Bosch shook his head.

“All I ever did was open it and read it. I think those are the prints we want.”

“Okay. Now what?”

Bosch went to his briefcase and pulled out the print cards Hirsch had returned to him earlier in the day. He found the card containing the lifts from the belt with the sea shell buckle.

“Here,” he said. “Compare this to what you got on the Christmas card.”

“You got it.”

Hirsch pulled the magnifying glass with the ringed light attachment in front of him and once again began his tennis match eye movement as he compared the prints.

Bosch tried to envision what had happened. Marjorie Lowe was going to Las Vegas to get married to Arno Conklin. The very thought of it must have been absurdly wonderful to her. She had to go home and pack. The plan was to drive through the night. If Arno was planning to bring along a best man, perhaps Marjorie was to bring a maid of honor. Maybe she would have gone upstairs to ask Meredith to come. Or maybe she would have gone to her to borrow back the belt that her son had given her. Maybe she would have gone to say good-bye.

But something happened when she got there. And on her happiest night Meredith killed her.

Bosch thought about the interview reports that had been in the murder book. Meredith told Eno and McKittrick that Marjorie’s date on the night she died had been arranged by Johnny Fox. But she didn’t go to the party herself because she said Fox had beaten her the night before and she was not presentable. The detectives noted in the report that she had a bruise on her face and a split lip.

Why didn’t they see it then, Bosch wondered. Meredith had sustained those injuries while killing Marjorie. The drop of blood on Marjorie’s blouse had come from Meredith.

But Bosch knew why they hadn’t seen it. He knew the investigators dismissed any thought in that direction, if they ever even had any, because she was a woman. And because Fox backed her story. He admitted he beat her.

Bosch now saw what he believed was the truth. Meredith killed Marjorie and then hours later called Fox at his card game to give him the news. She asked him to help her get rid of the body and hide her involvement.

Fox must have readily agreed, even to the point of his willingness to say he beat her, because he saw the larger picture. He lost a source of income when Marjorie was killed but that would have been tempered by the increased leverage the murder would give him over Conklin and Mittel. Keeping it unsolved would make it even better. He’d always be a threat to them. He could walk into the police station at any time to tell what he knew and lay it on Conklin.

What Fox didn’t realize was that Mittel could be as cunning and vicious as he was. He learned that a year later on La Brea Boulevard.

Fox’s motivation was clear. Bosch still wasn’t sure about Meredith’s. Could she have done it for the reasons Bosch had set out in his mind? Would the abandonment of a friend have led to the rage of murder? He began to believe there was still something left out. He still didn’t know it all. The last secret was with Meredith Roman and he would have to go get it.

An odd thought pushed through these questions to Bosch. The time of death of Marjorie Lowe was about midnight. Fox didn’t get his call and leave his card game until roughly four hours later. Bosch now assumed that the murder scene was Meredith’s apartment. Now he wondered, what did she do in that place for four hours with the body of her best friend lying there?

“Detective?”

Bosch looked away from his thoughts to Hirsch, who was sitting at the desk nodding his head.

“You got something?”

“Bingo.”

Bosch just nodded.

It was confirmation of more than just the match of fingerprints. He knew it was a confirmation that all the things he had accepted as the truths of his life could be as false as Meredith Roman.

Chapter Forty-nine

THE SKY WAS the color of a ninhydrin bloom on white paper. It was cloudless and growing dark purple with the aging of dusk. Bosch thought of the sunsets he had told Jazz about and realized that even that was a lie. Everything was a lie.

He stopped the Mustang at the curb in front of Katherine Register’s home. There was another lie. The woman who lived here was Meredith Roman. Changing her name didn’t change what she had done, didn’t change her from guilty to innocent.

There were no lights on that he could see from the street, no sign of life. He was prepared to wait but didn’t want to deal with the thoughts that would intrude as he sat alone in the car. He got out, crossed the lawn to the front porch and knocked on the door.

While he waited, he got out a cigarette and was lighting it when he suddenly stopped. He realized that what he was doing was his reflex of smoking at death scenes where the bodies were old. His instincts had reacted before he had consciously registered the odor from the house. Outside the door it was barely noticeable, but it was there. He looked back out to the street and saw no one. He looked back at the door and tried the knob. It turned. As he opened it, he felt a rush of cool air and the odor came out to meet him.

The house was still, the only sound the hum of the air conditioner in the window of her bedroom. That was where he found her. He could tell right away that Meredith Roman had been dead for several days. Her body was in the bed, the covers pulled up to her head on the pillow. Only her face, what was left of it, was visible. Bosch’s eyes did not linger on the image. The deterioration had been extensive and he guessed that maybe she had been dead since the day he had visited.

On the table next to the bed were two empty glasses, a half-gone fifth of vodka and an empty bottle of prescription pills. Bosch bent down to read the label and saw the prescription was for Katherine Register, one each night before bed. Sleeping pills.