Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (18)

“That’s gotta hurt. You coming back later this week?”

“Not sure. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. I’ll see you when I see you.”

Rawls walked off and Ballard immediately turned back to the binder, her mind already deeply embedded in the murder of Laura Wilson.





10


BOSCH RECOGNIZED SHEILA WALSH’S house from the last time he had knocked on the door years before. She answered quickly but clearly didn’t remember him. He was older and grayer and maybe his eyes weren’t as sharp as that last time, but after a long moment, she was able to place him, if not remember his name. She smiled.

“Detective,” she said. “This is a surprise.”

“Mrs. Walsh,” Bosch said. “I was hoping you’d remember me.”

“Don’t be silly, of course I do. And it’s Sheila. Has there been a break in the case?”

“Can I come in so we can talk?”

“Yes, yes. Come in, please.”

Walsh stepped back and let Bosch enter. She looked the same as Bosch remembered her. Now pushing sixty, she had more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but she was still an attractive woman who looked like she ate about one meal a week. Her thin body, narrow shoulders, and big hair had not changed at all, confirming Bosch’s suspicions back in the day that it was a wig.

“Can I get you a coffee or a water or something?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Bosch said. “But we can sit in the kitchen if you want. I remember that was where we sat before.”

“Sure, let’s go back.”

She led him through a dining room—which was clearly being used as an office—to a kitchen that had a small round breakfast table with four chairs.

“Have a seat,” Walsh said. “Has Finbar McShane finally turned up?”

“Uh, no,” Bosch said. “In fact, that was going to be my first question to you. Have you heard any word about him recently? Anything at all?”

“Oh, no. If I had, I would have called you. But I thought you told me you were retiring the last time I saw you.”

“I was. I did. But now I’m back working cold cases and so … I’m looking into the Gallagher Family case again. And trying to find McShane.”

“Ah, I see. Well, if you ask me, he’s back in Belfast or somewhere over there.”

“Yeah, that’s the consensus, but I’m not so sure.”

Bosch looked past her and through a sliding door to the backyard. There was a deck and a small in-ground pool back there. A vegetable garden in long wooden planters had screened canopies over them to keep deer and coyotes and other animals out. The house was in Chatsworth, in the northwest corner of the Valley, and the wildlife came down out of the nearby hills at night. Beyond the planters he could see the rock outcroppings of Stony Point Park in the distance.

“I get stuck thinking about the break-in you had three years after the murders,” Bosch said. “It puzzles me. What was he looking for here?”

“Well, that’s a mystery that will last until you find him,” Walsh said. “Because I’m just as baffled as you are. I didn’t have anything of his. I didn’t know anything about the case beyond what I told the police.”

Bosch reached into the inside pocket of the sport coat he had put on after showering in the locker room at Ahmanson. He pulled out a document, unfolded it, and looked it over before speaking.

“This is the incident report,” he said. “Written before the fingerprints were identified as McShane’s. Says the burglar ate food out of the refrigerator, took a box of old record albums, then lifted money and an iPhone out of your purse.”

“That’s right,” Walsh said.

“Rifled through the desk in the home office and moved the paperweight—a glass Waterford globe—and looked through your mail.”

“Right, but not a desk. I use my dining room table as a desk. And I had the paperweight on my pile of to-do stuff. Bills and mail. At the time, I was learning to be an online travel agent. You know, after Shamrock was gone, I had to do something. So I had documents and cruise brochures in the stack, too. Stuff I needed for online training.”

“Why would McShane be interested in that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. But he would not have known what was in that pile until he checked it, right?”

Bosch nodded and looked back at the incident report. It was a question among many that had nagged him about the case. What was McShane looking for?

“It’s the only place his prints were found,” he said. “There were his, your son’s, and yours. That’s it.”

“I remember that,” Walsh said. “I remember I also had that theory I told the officers about back then.”

“Which was?”

“You know, the paperweight was Waterford glass. It’s made in Ireland. He was from Ireland. Maybe he picked it up because of that.”

Bosch nodded as he thought about that theory.

“Right, that’s in the report,” he said. “But Waterford is in Ireland and McShane was from Northern Ireland. And if he knew it was Waterford or it had some kind of nostalgic value to him, why didn’t he take it?”