you?”

“No. I would’ve recognized his voice.”

Bosch thought a moment.

“Did you ever see Fox again after that morning?”

“No. I avoided him for a week. It was easy because I think he was hiding from the cops. But after that I was gone. Whoever called me, he put the fear of God in me. I left town for Long Beach the day the cops said they were done with me. Packed one suitcase and took the bus…I remember, your mother had some of my clothes in her apartment. Things that she had borrowed. I didn’t even bother to try to get them. I just took what I had and left.”

Bosch was silent. He had nothing else to ask.

“I think about those days a lot, you know,” Katherine said. “We were in the gutter, your mother and I, but we were good friends and we had fun in spite of it all.”

“You know, all my memories…you’re in a lot of them. You were always there with her.”

“We had a lot of laughs in spite of everything,” she said wistfully. “And you, you were the highlight of it all. You know, when they took you away from her, it nearly killed her right then… She never stopped trying to get you back, Harry. I hope you know that. She loved you. I loved you.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“But after you were gone, she wasn’t the same. Sometimes I think what happened to her was sort of inevitable. Sometimes I think it was like she had been heading toward that alley for a long time beforehand.”

Bosch stood up, looking at the sorrow in her eyes.

“I better go. I’ll let you know what happens.”

“I’d like that. I’d like to stay in touch.”

“I’d like that, too.”

He headed toward the door knowing that they wouldn’t stay in touch. Time had eroded the bond between them. They were strangers who shared the same story. On the outside step he turned and looked back at her.

“The Christmas card you sent. You wanted me to look into this back then, didn’t you?”

She brought out the faraway smile again.

“I don’t know. My husband had just died and I was taking stock, you know? I thought about her. And you. I’m proud of how I turned out, Little Harry. So I think about what there could have been for her and you. I’m still mad. Whoever did this should…”

She didn’t finish but Bosch nodded.

“Good-bye, Harry.”

“You know, my mother, she had a good friend.”

“I hope so.”

Chapter Seven

BACK IN HIS car Bosch took his notebook out and looked at the list.

Conklin

McKittrick & Eno

Meredith Roman

Johnny Fox

He drew a line through Meredith Roman’s name and studied those left on it. He knew that the way he had ordered the names was not the same order in which he would attempt to interview them. He knew that before he could approach Conklin, or even McKittrick and Eno, he needed more information.

He took his phone book out of his coat pocket and his portable from his briefcase. He dialed the Department of Motor Vehicles law enforcement line in Sacramento and identified himself to the clerk as Lieutenant Harvey Pounds. He gave Pounds’s serial number and asked for a license check on Johnny Fox. After checking his notebook, he gave the appropriate date of birth. As he did this he ran the numbers and figured that Fox was now sixty-one years old.

As he continued to wait he smiled because Pounds would have some explaining to do in about a month. The department had recently begun to audit use of the DMV trace service. Because the Daily News had reported that cops all over the department were secretly doing the traces for friendly reporters and private detectives with liberal expense accounts, the new chief had cracked down by requiring all calls and computer link-ups to DMV to be documented on the newly implemented DMVT form, which required attribution of traces to a specific case or purpose. The forms were sent to Parker Center and then audited against the list of traces provided each month by the DMV. When the lieutenant’s name showed up on the DMV list in the next audit and there was no corresponding DMVT form, he’d get a call from the auditors.

Bosch had gotten the lieutenant’s serial number off his ID card one day when Pounds had left it clipped to his jacket on the coatrack outside his office. He’d written it down in his phone book on a hunch that one day it would come in handy.

The DMV