“How long did he wait?”

“She said not long but the fax was an offer to buy. So he called the client and that started a whole back-and-forth with calls and faxes and he completely forgot about the kid. It was at least two hours, Harry. Two hours!”

Bosch could almost share his partner’s anger, but he had been on the mission a couple decades longer than Ferras and knew how to hold it in when he had to and when to let it go.

“Harry, something else, too.”

“What?”

“The baby had something wrong with him.”

“The manager saw the kid?”

“No, I mean, always. Since birth. She said it was a big tragedy. The kid was handicapped. Blind, deaf, a bunch of things wrong. Fifteen months old and he couldn’t walk or talk and never could even crawl. He just cried a lot.”

Bosch nodded as he tried to plug this information into everything else he knew and had accumulated. Just then another car came speeding into the parking lot. It pulled into the ambulance shoot in front of the ER doors. A woman leaped out and ran into the ER, leaving the car running and the door open.

“That’s probably the mother,” Bosch said. “We better get in there.”

Bosch started trotting toward the ER doors and Ferras followed. They went through the ER waiting room and down a hallway where the father had been placed in a private room to wait.

As Bosch got close he did not hear any screaming or crying or fists on flesh-things that wouldn’t have surprised him. The door was open and when he turned in he saw the parents of the dead boy embracing each other, but not a tear lined any of their cheeks. Bosch’s initial, split-second reaction was that he was seeing relief in their young faces.

They separated when they saw Bosch enter, followed by Ferras.