Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (19)

“Well … I don’t know,” Walsh said. “Maybe only he knows.”

“Maybe. … So, how’s your son doing?”

“He’s good. He moved out to Santa Clarita, works at a golf course up there.”

“Good. Is he an instructor or—”

“No, he doesn’t even play golf. Thinks it’s too boring. But he likes the outdoors. He’s a greenskeeper at Sand Canyon. It’s a good job. Early to work and he gets off before the traffic builds up.”

Bosch nodded and decided to end the small talk.

“Mrs. Walsh, I appreciate your time, especially with me showing up out of the blue,” he said. “But I would really like to go back to the year of the murders and pick your brain again about what was happening with the business and in the office between Stephen Gallagher and Finbar McShane. Do you mind? Can you give me a few more minutes?”

“If you think it will help,” Walsh said. “But my memory of it is probably not what it was back then.”

“That’s okay. It’s sort of funny, because sometimes after a good chunk of time goes by, people remember some things they didn’t mention before and forget some of the things they said. So it helps to sift through everything again. I think that family, especially those two kids, deserves it.”

“Of course they do. That’s why I’m willing to help. I think about those kids all the time. Horrible.”

“Thank you. I want to go back to the period before the murders, when it seemed that there was a strain in the relationship between Gallagher and McShane. I remember you told me that there had been arguments between them.”

“Yes, there were. But it was always behind closed doors. You know, I could hear raised voices but not always what exactly was being said. Like that.”

“How frequent were the arguments?”

“Well, for a while it seemed like every day.”

“But the company—according to the books we looked at—was doing well, right? Before the Gallaghers disappeared, I mean.”

“It was. We were busy all the time. I know that one of the things Fin wanted was to hire more people and, you know, expand. Maybe open another yard and fill it with equipment. He said more inventory would mean more business.”

“But Stephen didn’t want to expand.”

“No, he was very conservative. He built the company from nothing. So he was cautious, and Fin always wanted to do more. They argued, but Stephen owned the business and had final say. Who would have thought it would lead to what happened? Those poor, poor kids. I mean, if it was a business dispute, why did they have to be killed like that?”

They were going over well-trod ground, but Bosch needed to walk the case again to get his footing. He questioned Walsh for another half hour, and she never complained or tried to cut it short. She also provided nothing new in terms of significant case information. But her story of the final days of Shamrock Industrial Rentals had not changed in the years since Bosch had last heard it, and there was a significance to that.

He finished the interview with questions about the months after the disappearance of the Gallagher family when she and McShane attempted to keep the business afloat while they ostensibly waited for the family and the business owner to return. She once again said she had not known that McShane was running ads on Craigslist and selling off equipment rather than renting it out. That is, until he, too, disappeared, leaving the company with a virtually empty warehouse and equipment yard.

“He tricked me like he tricked everybody,” she said. “We were used to having the scaffolding and the cranes and all the equipment gone for long periods of time because they were used in long-term projects. I had no idea the stuff was never coming back because he sold it.”

“What do you remember about the day McShane disappeared?” Bosch asked.

“It was more like days. He didn’t show up one day and then he called and said he was sick. He said he’d probably be out a couple days.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“No, a couple days went by and he was still a no-show, and I had a customer come in who was having an issue with a JLG lift he said Fin sold him. He said Fin gave him a warranty and he wanted it fixed. That’s when I found out he was selling stuff. I called his number and the line was dead. Disconnected. I got suspicious, checked the bank accounts, and found they were empty. He took everything and disappeared.”

“You called the police.”

“I called the missing persons guy that I had called when the family disappeared and he said he would look into it. And then those bodies were found up there in the desert and you took over the case. Did you ever find out where he transferred the money to?”

Bosch shook his head. He didn’t like being the one answering questions, but this one he answered.

“It was converted to cryptocurrency,” he said. “Bitcoin was pretty new back then but we couldn’t trace it after that. It was gone.”

“Too bad,” Walsh said.

“Yeah, too bad. So, I’m going to leave you alone now. Thank you for your time. If you have a piece of paper, I’ll leave you my cell number in case you think of anything else. I don’t have business cards.”

“Sure.”

“Sometimes a conversation like this can spark new memories.”