of three or four.

“I’ve always had that there, Harry. Even when my husband was alive. He knew my past. I told him. It didn’t matter. We had twenty-three great years together. You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong. I’m strong, Harry. Now, tell me why you came to vist me today.”

Bosch reached for the framed photo and picked it up.

“I want…” He looked up from the photo to her. “I’m going to find out who killed her.”

An undecipherable look froze on her face for a moment and then she wordlessly took the frame out of his hands and put it back on the bureau. Then she pulled him into another deep embrace, her head against his chest. He could see himself holding her in the mirror over the bureau. When she pulled back and looked up at him he saw the tears were already down her cheeks. There was a slight tremor in her lower lip.

“Let’s go sit down,” he said.

She pulled two tissues out of a box on the bureau and he led her back to the living room and to her chair.

“Do you want me to get you some water?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll stop crying, I’m sorry.”

She wiped at her eyes with the tissues. He sat back down on the couch.

“We used to say we were the two musketeers, both for one and one for both. It was stupid, but it was because we were so young and so close.”

“I’m starting from scratch with it, Katherine. I pulled the old files on the investigation. It—”

She made a dismissing sound and shook her head.

“There was no investigation. It was a joke.”

“That’s my sense of it, too, but I don’t understand why.”

“Look, Harry, you know what your mother was.” He nodded and she continued. “She was a party girl. We both were. I’m sure you know that’s the polite way of saying it. And the cops really didn’t care that one of us ended up dead. They just wrote the whole damn thing off. I know you’re a policeman now, but that’s the way it was then. They just didn’t care about her.”

“I understand. Things probably are not too much different now, believe it or not. But there has to have been more to it than that.”

“Harry, I don’t know how much you want to know about your mother.”

He looked at her.

“The past made me strong, too. I can handle it.”

“I’m sure it did…I remember that place where they put you. McEvoy or something like—”

“McClaren.”

“That’s it, McClaren. What a depressing place. Your mother would come home from visiting you and just sit down and cry her eyes out.”

“Don’t change the subject, Katherine. What is it I should know about her?”

She nodded but hesitated for a moment before continuing.

“Mar knew some policemen. You understand?”

He nodded.

“We both did. It was the way it worked. You had to get along to go along. That’s what we called it anyway. And when you have that situation and she ends up dead, it’s usually best for the cops to just sweep it under the rug. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say. You pick the cliché. They just didn’t want anyone embarrassed.”

“Are you saying you think it was a cop?”

“No. I’m not saying that at all. I have no idea who did it, Harry. I’m sorry. I wish I did. But what I’m saying is, I think those two detectives that were assigned to investigate this knew where it could lead. And they weren’t going to go that way because they knew what was good for them in the department. They weren’t stupid in that way and like I said, she was a party girl. They didn’t care. Nobody did. She got killed and that was that.”

Bosch looked around the room, not sure what to ask next.

“Do you know who the policemen she knew were?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“You knew some of the same policemen, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I had to. That was the way it worked. You used your contacts to keep you out of jail. Everybody was for sale. Back then, at least. Different people wanted different forms of payment. Some of them, money. Some of them, other things.”

“It said in the mur—the file that you never had a record.”

“Yes, I was lucky. I was picked up a few times but never booked once. They always turned me loose once I could