Times ten months earlier. It was about the heatstroke death of a child who had been left in a car in Lancaster while his mother ran into a store to buy milk. She ran into the middle of a robbery. She was tied up along with the store clerk and placed in a back room. The robbers ransacked the stotoucked thre and escaped. It was an hour before the victims were discovered and freed but by then the child in the car had already succumbed to heatstroke. Bosch scanned the story quickly then dropped the file closed. He looked at Helton without speaking.

“What?” Helton asked.

“Just some additional information and lab reports,” he lied. “Do you get the L.A. Times, by the way?”

“Yes, why?”

“Just curious, that’s all. Now, how many nannies do you think you’ve employed in the fifteen months that William was alive?”

Helton shook his head.

“I don’t know. At least ten. They don’t stay long. They can’t take it.”

“And then you go to Craigslist to place an ad?”

“Yes.”

“And you just lost a nanny on Friday?”

“Yes, I told you.”

“She just walked out on you?”

“No, she got another job and told us she was leaving. She made up a lie about it being closer to home and with gas prices and all of that. But we knew why she was leaving. She could not handle Willy.”

“She told you this Friday?”

“No, when she gave notice.”

“When was that?”

“She gave two weeks’ notice, so it was two weeks back from Friday.”

“And do you have a new nanny lined up?”

“No, not yet. We were still looking.”

“But you put the feelers out and ran the ad again, that sort of thing?”

“Right, but listen, what does this have to-”

“Let me ask the questions, Stephen. Your wife told us that she worried about leaving William with you, that you couldn’t handle the strain of it.”

Helton looked shocked. The statement came from left field, as Bosch had wanted it.