Based on Pell’s record, Bosch believed the 1989 case was likely a sex-related murder. He could feel his insides beginning to tighten. He was going to go out and grab Clayton Pell and bring him to justice.

“Do you see it?” Duvall asked.

“See what?” Bosch asked. “Was this a sex killing? This guy has the classic pred—”

“The birth date,” Duvall said.

Bosch looked back down at the hit sheet as Chu leaned over farther.

“Yeah, right here,” Bosch said. “November nine, nineteen eighty-one. What’s that got—”

“He’s too young,” Chu said.

Bosch glanced at him and then back at the sheet. He suddenly got it. Clayton Pell was born in 1981. He was only eight years old at the time of the murder on the hit sheet.

“Exactly,” Duvall said. “So I want you to get the book and box from Shuler and Dolan and very quietly figure out what we have here. I’m hoping to God they didn’t get two cases mixed up.”

Bosch knew that if Shuler and Dolan had somehow sent in genetic material from the old case labeled under a more recent case, then both cases would be tainted beyond any hope of eventual prosecution.

“Like you were about to say,” Duvall continued, “this guy on the hit sheet is no doubt a predator, but I don’t think he got away with a killing when he was only eight years old. So something doesn’t fit. Find it and come back to me before you do anything. If they screwed up and we can correct it, then we won’t need to worry about IAD or anybody else. We’ll just keep it right here.”

She may have appeared to be trying to protect Shuler and Dolan from Internal Affairs, but she was also protecting herself, and Bosch knew it. There would not be much vertical movement in the department for a lieutenant who had presided over an evidence-handling scandal in her own unit.