“You’re running out of time. You’ve exhausted your appeals, you’ve got a governor who needs to show he’s tough on crime. This is it, Victor. A week from today you take the needle.”

I waited for a reaction but there was nothing. He just looked at me and waited for what he knew I would ask.

“Time to come clean. Tell me who she was. Tell me where you took her from.”

He moved closer to the bars, close enough for me to smell the decay in his breath. I didn’t back away.

“All these years, Bosch. All these years and you still need to know. Why is that?”

“I just need to.”

“You and McCaleb.”

“What about him?”

“Oh, he came to see me, too.”

I knew McCaleb was out of the life. The job had taken his heart. He got a transplant and last I’d heard he lived on a boat with a fishing line in the water.

“When did he come?”

“A few months ago. Dropped by for a chat. Said he was in the neighborhood. He wanted to know the same thing. Who was the girl, where did she come from? He told me you even gave her a name back then, during the trial. Cielo Azul. That’s really very pretty, Detective Bosch.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes, standing right where you are standing.”

“Are you going to tell me or not?”

He smiled and stepped back from the bars. He walked over to the chessboard and looked down at it as if he were considering a move.

“You know, they used to let me keep a cat in here. I miss that cat.”

He picked up one of the game pieces but then hesitated and returned it to the same spot. He turned and looked at me.

“You know what I think? I think that you two can’t stand the thought of that girl not having a name, not coming from a home with a mommy and a daddy and a little baby brother. The idea of no one caring and no one missing her, it leaves you hollow, doesn’t it?”

“I just want to close the case.”

“Oh, but it is closed. You’re not here because of any case. You are here on your own. Admit it, Detective. Just as McCaleb came on his own. The idea of that pretty little girl-and by the way, if you thought she was beautiful in death, then you should have seen her before-the idea of her lying unclaimed in an unmarked grave all this time undercuts everything you do, doesn’t it?”