“I’ve never been.”

Edgar nodded, realizing it had been a tactic to draw Kay out, to put more alibi information on record.

“You thinking about him?” he asked.

“Not really. Just covering the bases. Besides, if it was him, why put the car in his place’s own garage? Why call it in?”

“Yeah. But then, maybe he’s smart enough to know we’d think he’d be too smart to do that. See what I mean? Maybe he’s outsmarting us, Harry. Maybe the girl came to look at the place and things went wrong. He hides the body but knows he can’t move that car because he might get pulled over by the cops. So he waits ten days and calls it in like he thinks it might be stolen.”

“Then maybe you should run his Italian alibi down, Watson.”

“Why am I Watson? Why can’t I be Holmes?”

“Because Watson is the one who talks too much. But if you want, I’ll start calling you ‘Homes.’ Maybe that would be better.”

“What’s bothering you, Harry?”

Bosch thought of the clothing neatly folded on the front seat of the Honda. He felt that pressure on his insides again. Like his body was wrapped in wire being tightened from behind.

“What’s bothering me is that I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

“What kind of bad feeling?”

“The kind that tells me we’re never going to find her. And if we never find her, then we never find him.”

“The killer?”

The elevator jerked to a hard stop, bounced once and came to a rest. Bosch pulled open the doors. At the end of the short tunnel that led to the cul-de-sac and the garages, he saw a woman holding a microphone and a man holding a television camera waiting for them.

“Yeah,” he said. “The killer.”

Part One THE KILLER

1

THE CALL CAME IN while Harry Bosch and his partner, Kiz Rider, were sitting at their desks in the Open-Unsolved Unit, finishing the paperwork on the Matarese filing.