
The first time I studied the list of thirty-six I knew. I felt certain that one of the names on it belonged to the killer of the woman with no name.
***
The Golden Gate lived up to its name in the afternoon sun. It was packed with cars going both ways and the tourist turnoff on the north side had the lot full sign up. I kept moving, into the rainbow-painted tunnel and through the mountain. Soon enough I could see San Quentin up on the right. A foreboding-looking place in an idyllic spot, it housed the worst criminals California had to offer. And I was going to see the worst of the worst.
***
“Harry Bosch?”
I turned from the window where I had been looking down at the white stones of the veterans cemetery across Wilshire. A man in a white shirt and maroon tie stood holding open the door to the FBI offices. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties with a lean build and healthy look about him. He was smiling.
“Terry McCaleb?”
“That’s me.”
We shook hands and he invited me back, leading me through a warren of wood-paneled hallways and offices until we came to his. It looked like it might have been a janitor’s closet at one time. It was smaller than a solitary confinement cell and had just enough room for a desk and two chairs.
“Guess it’s a good thing my partner didn’t want to come,” I said, squeezing into the room.
Frankie Sheehan alternately referred to criminal profiling as “bur-oh bullshit” and “ Quantico quackery.” When I had chosen a week earlier to contact McCaleb, the resident profiler in the bureau’s L.A. office, there had been an argument about it. But I was lead on the case; I made the call.
“Yeah, things are kind of tight here,” McCaleb said. “But at least I get a private space.”
“Most cops I know like being in a squad room. They like the camaraderie, I guess.”
