I already filed it.”

A moment later she was back.

“Yes, I have it here.”

“Could you tell me, who else has checked this binder out in the past?”

“Why would you need to know that?”

“There are pages missing from the file, Mrs. Beaupre. I’d like to know who might have them.”

“Well, you checked it out last. I mentioned that be—”

“Yes, I know. About five years ago. Is there any listing of it being taken out before that or since then? I didn’t notice when I signed the card today.”

“Well, hold the line and let me see.” He waited and she was back quickly. “Okay, I’ve got it. According to this card, the only other time that file was ever taken out was in 1972. You’re talking way back.”

“Who checked it out back then?”

“It’s scribbled here. I can’t—it looks like maybe Jack…uh, Jack McKillick.”

“Jake McKittrick.”

“Could be.”

Bosch didn’t know what to think. McKittrick had the file last but that was more than ten years after the murder. What did it mean? Bosch felt confusion ambush him. He didn’t know what he had been expecting but he’d hoped there would have been something other than a name scribbled more than twenty years ago.

“Okay, Mrs. Beaupre, thanks very much.”

“Well, if you’ve got missing pages I’m going to have to make a report and give it to Mr. Aguilar.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, ma’am. I may be wrong about the missing pages. I mean, how could there be missing pages if nobody’s looked at it since the last time I had it?”

He thanked her again and hung up, hoping his attempt at good humor would persuade her to do nothing about his call. He opened the refrigerator and looked inside while he thought about the case, then closed it and went back out to the table.

The last pages in the murder book were a due diligence report dated November 3, 1962. The department’s homicide procedures called for all unsolved cases to be reviewed after a year by a new set of detectives with an eye toward looking for something that the first set of investigators might have missed. But, in practice, it was a rubber stamp process. Detectives didn’t relish the idea of finding the mistakes of their colleagues. Additionally, they had their own case loads to worry about. When assigned DDs, as they were called, they usually did little more than read through the file, make a few calls to witnesses and then send the binder to archives.

In this case, the DD report by the new detectives, named Roberts and Jordan, drew the same conclusions as the reports by Eno and McKittrick. After two pages detailing the same evidence and interviews already conducted by the original investigators, the DD report concluded that there were no workable leads and the prognosis for “successful conclusion” of the case was hopeless. So much for due diligence.

Bosch closed the murder book. He knew that after Roberts and Jordan had filed their report, the binder had been shipped to archives as a dead case. It had gathered dust there until, according to the checkout card, McKittrick pulled it out for unknown reasons in 1972. Bosch wrote McKittrick’s name under Conklin’s on the page in the notebook. Then he wrote the names of others he thought it would be useful to interview. If they were still alive and could be found.

Bosch leaned back in his chair, realizing that the music had stopped and he hadn’t even noticed. He checked his watch. It was two-thirty. He still had most of the afternoon but he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

He went to the bedroom closet and took the shoebox off the shelf. It was his correspondence box, filled with letters and cards and photos he had wished to keep over the course of his life. It contained objects dated as far back as his time in Vietnam. He rarely looked in the box but his mind kept an almost perfect inventory of what was in it. Each piece had a reason for being saved.

On top was the latest addition to the box. A postcard from Venice. From Sylvia. It depicted a painting she had seen in the Palace of the Doges. Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Blessed and the Damned.” It showed an angel escorting one of the blessed through a tunnel to the light of heaven. They both floated skyward. The card was the last he had heard from her. He read the back.

Harry, thought you’d be interested in this piece of