“I read that book before your name ever came up in this. It wasn’t part of the research.”

Eleanor had come out of the kitchen with two glasses of red wine. Harry smiled.

“I wasn’t going to accuse you of anything,” he said. “Besides, it isn’t about me. It’s about Kendal. The whole thing was luck, anyway. But they still made a book and TV show about it. Whatever it is in there, it smells good.”

“You like pasta?”

“I like spaghetti.”

“That’s what we’re having. I made a big pot of sauce Sunday. I love to spend an entire day in the kitchen, not thinking about anything else. I find it’s good therapy for stress. And it lasts and lasts. All I have to do is warm it up and boil some noodles.”

Bosch sipped his wine and looked around some more. He still hadn’t sat down but was feeling very comfortable with her. A smile played across his face. He gestured toward the Hopper print. “I like it. But why something so dark?”

She looked at the print and crinkled her brow as if this were the first time she had considered it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve always liked that painting. Something there grabs me. The woman is with a man. So that isn’t me. So I guess if it’s anyone, it would be the man sitting with his coffee. All alone, kind of watching the two that are together.”

“I saw it in Chicago once,” Bosch said. “The original. I was out there on an extradition and had about an hour to kill until I could pick up the body. So I went into the Art Institute and it was there. I spent the whole hour looking at it. There’s something about it-like you said. I can’t remember the case or who I was bringing back here. But I remember that painting.”

They sat at the table talking for nearly an hour after the food was gone. She told him more about her brother and her difficulty getting over the anger and loss. Eighteen years later she was still working it out, she said. Bosch told her that he was still working things out, too. He still dreamed of the tunnels from time to time, but more often he battled insomnia instead. He told her how mixed up he was when he got back, how thin the line was, the choice, between what he had done afterward and what Meadows did. It could have been different, he said, and she nodded, seeming to know that was true.

Later, she asked about the Dollmaker case and his fall from Robbery-Homicide. It was more than curiosity. He sensed that something important rode on what he told her. She was making a decision about him.

“I guess you know the basics,” he began. “Somebody was strangling women, mostly prostitutes, then painting over their faces with makeup. Pancake, red lipstick, heavy rouge on the cheeks, sharp black eyeliner. The same thing every time. The bodies were bathed, too. But we never said it looked like he was making them into dolls. Some asshole-I think it was a guy named Sakai over at the coroner’s-leaked that the makeup was the common denominator. Then this Dollmaker stuff started playing in the press. I think Channel 4 was the first to come up with that name. It took off from there. To me, it looked more like a mortician’s work. But the truth is we weren’t doing too good. We didn’t have a handle on the guy until he was into double figures.

“Not much physical evidence. The victims were all dumped in random locations, all over the Westside. We knew from fiber evidence on a couple of the bodies that the guy probably wore a rug or some kind of hair disguise, fake beard or something. The women that were taken off the stroll, we were able to isolate times and places of their last trick. We went to the hourly motels and got nothing. So we figured the guy was picking them up in a car and then taking them somewhere else, maybe to his home or some kind of safe place he used as a killing pad. We started watching the Boulevard and other hot spots the pros work, and we must’ve busted up three hundred tricks before we got the break. This whore name of Dixie McQueen calls up the task force one morning, early, and says she just escaped from the Dollmaker and is there a reward if she gives him up. Well, we were getting calls like that every week. I mean, eleven murdered women and people are coming out of the woodwork with clues that aren’t really clues. It’s panic city.”

“I remember,” Wish said.

“But Dixie was different. I was working the late shift in the task force offices that day and I caught the call. I went and talked to her. She told me that this john she’d picked up on Hollywood near Spa Row, you know, near the Scientology mansion, took her to this garage apartment in Silver Lake. She said that while the guy was getting naked she wanted to use the toilet. So she goes in and while she’s running the water she looks through the cabinet below the sink, probably to see if there is anything worth lifting. But she sees all these little bottles and compacts and all this women’s stuff. She looks at it all and she just puts it all together. Just like that. Bingo; this has to be the guy. So she gets a case of total creeps and bails out. She comes out of the bathroom and the guy’s in the bed. She just hauls ass through the front door.

“The thing is, we hadn’t put out all the stuff about the makeup. Or, actually, the asshole that was the media leak didn’t put out everything. See, we knew that the guy was keeping the victims’ stuff. They were found with their purses but there were no cosmetics-you know, lipstick, compacts, things like that. So when Dixie told me about what was in the bathroom cabinet she got my attention. I knew she was legit.

“And that is the point where I screwed up. It was 3A.M. by the time I was done talking to Dixie. Everybody on the task force had gone home and I was left there thinking that this guy might realize Dixie made him and clear out. So I went there alone. I mean, Dixie went with me to show me the place, but then she never left the car. Once we were there, I saw a light on above the garage, which was behind this rundown house off of Hyperion. I called for patrol backup, and while I’m waiting I see the guy’s shadow going back and forth across the window. Something tells me he is getting ready to bug out and take all the stuff from the cabinet with him. And we had no evidence from the eleven bodies. We needed the stuff that was in the bathroom cabinet. The other consideration was, what if he has someone up there? You know, a replacement for Dixie. So I went up. Alone. You know the rest.”

Wish said, “You went in without a warrant and shot him when he was reaching under the pillow on the bed. You later told the shooting team that you believed it was an emergency situation. There had been enough time for him to go out and get another prostitute. You said that gave you the authority to come through the door without a warrant. You said you fired because you believed the suspect was reaching for a weapon. It was one shot, upper torso from fifteen or twenty feet, if I remember the report. But the Dollmaker was alone, and under the pillow was only his toupee.”

“Only his rug,” Bosch said. He shook his head like a Monday-morning quarterback. “The shooting team cleared me. We connected him to two of the bodies through the hair from the toupee, and the makeup in the bathroom was traced to eight of the victims. There was no doubt. It was him. I was clear, but then the shooflies started in on it. A Lewis and Clarke expedition. They ran down Dixie and got her to sign a statement saying she told me beforehand that he put his hair under the pillow. I don’t know what they used against her, but I can imagine. IAD’s always had a hard-on for me. They don’t like anybody who’s not a hundred percent part of the family. Anyway, the next thing I know they are bringing departmental charges against me. They wanted to fire me and take Dixie to a grand jury to get criminal charges. It was like there was blood in the water and two fat white sharks.”