But nothing came of the effort. There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no lead on Gesto’s whereabouts-though to him there still was no doubt that she was dead-and no solid lead to her abductor. Bosch had leaned repeatedly on the one man who came closest to being a suspect and got nowhere. He was able to trace Marie Gesto from her apartment to the supermarket but no further. He had her car in the garage at the High Tower Apartments but he couldn’t get to the person who had parked it there.

Bosch had plenty of unsolved cases in his history. You can’t clear them all and any Homicide man would admit it. But the Gesto case was one that stuck with him. Each time he would work the case for a week or so, hit the wall and then return the file to Archives, thinking he had done all that could be done. But the absolution only lasted a few months and then there he was at the counter filling out the file request form again. He would not give up.

“Bosch,” one of the other detectives called out. “Miami on two.”

Bosch hadn’t even heard the phone ring in the squad room.

“I’ll take it,” Rider said. “Your head’s somewhere else.”

She picked up the phone and once more Bosch opened the Gesto file.

2

BOSCH AND RIDER WERE ten minutes late because of the backup of people waiting for elevators. He hated coming to the Criminal Courts Building because of the elevators. The wait and the jostling for position just to get on one of them put a layer of anxiety on him that he could live without.

In reception in the DA’s office on the sixteenth floor they were told to wait for an escort back to O’Shea’s office. After a couple minutes a man stepped through the doorway and pointed to the briefcase Bosch was holding.

“You got it?” he asked.

Bosch didn’t recognize him. He was a dark-complected Latino in a gray suit.