“Okay,” Bosch said. “What happened next?”

Helton shook his head wistfully and looked at the side wall as if gazing through a window toward the past he couldn’t change.

“I, uh, got involved in the deal,” he said. “The fax came in, I called my client and I faxed back a counter. I also did a lot of talking to the other agent. By phone. We were trying to get the deal done and we had to hand-hold both our clients through this.”

“For two hours.”

“Yes, it took that long.”

“And when was it that you remembered that you had left William in the car out in the parking lot where it was about ninety-five degrees?”

“I guess as soon-first of all, I didn’t know what the temperature was. I object to that. I left that car at about ten and it was not ninety-five degrees. Not even close. I hadn’t even used the air conditioner on the way over.”

There was a complete lack of remorse or guilt in Helton’s demeanor. He wasn’t even attempting to fake it anymore. Bosch had become convinced that this man had no love or affinity for his damaged and now lost child. William was simply a burden that had to be dealt with and therefore could easily be forgotten when things like business and selling houses and making money came up.

But where was the crime in all of this? Bosch knew he could charge him with negligence but the courts tend to view the loss of a child as enough punishment in these situations. Helton would go free with hi defree wis wife as sympathetic figures, free to continue their lives while baby William moldered in his grave.

The tells always add up. Bosch instinctively believed Helton was a liar. And he began to believe that William’s death was no accident. Unlike his partner, who had let the passions of his own fatherhood lead him down the path, Bosch had gotten here after careful observation and analysis. It was now time to press on, to bait Helton and see if he would make a mistake.