these musty bibles where the dead lined up in columns and there were ghosts on every page.
“Harry Bosch!”
Jarred by the intrusion, Bosch slammed the book closed and looked up. Captain Gabe Norona was standing in the doorway of the inner office.
“Captain.”
“Welcome back!”
He came forward and vigorously shook Bosch’s hand.
“Good to be back.”
“I see they already have you doin’ your homework.”
Bosch nodded.
“Just sort of getting acquainted with it.”
“New hope for the dead. Harry Bosch is on the case again.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if the captain was being sarcastic or not.
“It’s the name of a book I read once,” Norona said.
“Oh.”
“Well, good luck to you. Get out there and lock ’em up.”
“That’s the plan.”
The captain shook his hand again and then disappeared back into his office and closed the door.
His sacred moment ruined by the intrusion, Bosch stood up. He started returning the heavy murder catalogs to their places on the shelves. When he was finished, he left the office for the cafeteria.
4
KIZ RIDER WAS almost halfway through the murder book when Bosch got back with the fresh round of coffees. She took her cup directly out of his hand.
“Thanks. I need something to keep me awake.”
“What, you’re going to sit there and tell me that this is boring compared to pushing paper in the chief’s office?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just all the catching up, the reading. We’ve got to know this book inside and out. We’ve got to be alert for the possibilities.”
Bosch noticed she had a legal tablet next to the murder book and the top page was almost full of notes. He couldn’t read the notes but could see that most of the lines were followed by question marks.
“Besides,” she added, “I’m using different muscles now. Muscles I didn’t use on the sixth floor.”
“I get it,” he said. “All right if I start in behind you now?”
“Be my guest.”
She popped open the rings of the binder and pulled out the two-inch-thick sheaf of documents she had already read through. She handed them across to Bosch, who had sat down at his desk.
“You got an extra pad like that?” he asked. “I just have a little notebook.”
She sighed in an exaggerated way. Bosch knew it was all an act and that she was happy they were working together again. She had spent most of the last two years evaluating policy and troubleshooting for the new chief. It wasn’t the real cop work that she was best at. This was.
She slid a pad across the desk to him.
“You need a pen, too?”
“No, I think I can handle that.”
He put the documents down in front of him and started reading. He was ready to go and he didn’t need the coffee to stay charged.
THE FIRST PAGE of the murder book was a color photograph in a plastic three-hole sleeve. The photo was a yearbook portrait of an exotically attractive young girl with almond-shaped eyes that were startling green against her mocha skin. She had tightly curled brown hair with what looked like natural blonde highlights that caught the flash of the camera. Her eyes were bright and her smile genuine. It was a grin that said she knew things nobody else did. Bosch didn’t think she was beautiful. Not yet. Her features seemed to compete with one another in an uncoordinated way. But he knew that teenage awkwardness often smoothed over and became beauty later.
But for sixteen-year-old Rebecca Verloren there would be no later. Nineteen eighty-eight would be her last year. The cold hit had come from her murder.
Becky, as she was known by family and friends, was the only child of Robert and Muriel Verloren. Muriel was a homemaker. Robert was the chef and owner of a popular Malibu restaurant called the Island House Grill. They lived on Red Mesa Way off of Santa Susana Pass Road in Chatsworth, at the northwest corner of the sprawl that made up Los Angeles. The backyard of their house was the wooded incline of Oat Mountain, which rose above Chatsworth and served as the northwest border of the city. That summer Becky was between her sophomore and junior years at Hillside Preparatory School. It was a private school in nearby Porter Ranch, where she was on the honor roll and her mother volunteered in the cafeteria and often brought jerk chicken and other specialties from her husband’s restaurant for the faculty lunchroom.
On the morning of July 6, 1988, the Verlorens discovered their daughter missing from their home. They found the