Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (83)

“Where is he, Sheila?”

“My son? You know where—”

“No, McShane. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. How would I know?”

“Are you saying you had four hundred thousand dollars in cash under your mattress and you just gave it to him and he left? There had to have been some kind of transfer.”

“It was in Bitcoin. That was how he gave it to me, and that was how I kept it. I transferred it back to him on my laptop right here. And that was when he picked up my paperweight. While he was watching me and showing me how to do it.”

Bosch knew that tracing such a transfer would be almost impossible and would never lead to a physical location.

“What business did he invest in that he lost his half?” he asked. “He had to have told you something.”

“He said, ‘Never invest in a bar,’” Sheila said. “I remember that. That was all.”

“What was the name of the bar?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Where was it?”

“Again, he didn’t say. And I wasn’t really interested in asking. I just wanted him to leave.”

Bosch knew that tracing a bankrupt bar with no name and no location six years or more after the fact would be like trying to trace Bitcoin. Impossible. He now had the fuller story but was no closer to Finbar McShane. He looked down at the old search warrant on the table and started to paper-clip it back together.

“He did say one thing that might help you,” Sheila said.

Bosch’s eyes came up to hers.

“But I want assurances that none of this can ever come back on me or my son,” she said. “And Jonathan can never know what I did.”

She was crying again, this time not trying to hide it with her hands. Bosch nodded.

“The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, Sheila,” he said. “What did McShane say that can help me?”

She nodded and used her hands to dry the tears on her cheeks.

“He looked at my pamphlets up on the wall there and said, ‘There’s only one place in the world where you can see the sunset at dawn.’”

Bosch looked up at the wall but couldn’t make the connection.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What does it mean?”

“There’s a ship called the Dawn,” she said. “Part of the Norwegian line. It moors in Tampa, Florida, and every week it sails down to Key West, stops for a day, and then navigates out to the Bahamas before turning around and coming back. It’s a popular itinerary. I’ve sold many trips on that boat and made a lot of commissions. I knew exactly what he meant when he said it, because I’d heard that line before. It’s part of the sales pitch. They get great sunsets in Key West. Especially from the deck of the Dawn.”

Bosch looked up at the pamphlets taped to the wall and saw the Norwegian Dawn.

Sheila reached over to one of the stacks of folded pamphlets she had at the side of the table, chose one, and handed it to Bosch.

“Here,” she said. “Take it.”

“Thank you,” Bosch said.

Bosch looked at the pamphlet and opened it. It showed happy people in bathing suits frolicking in the ship’s pool or in colorful boat clothes strolling on the deck. There was even a photo of people lined up at the deck rail and watching a sunset. Key West, Bosch thought. He knew now where he was going to look for Finbar McShane.





45


BALLARD CRANKED THE shelves just wide enough apart for her to slip in and move down to the 2002 cases. She ran her finger along the case numbers on the spines of the murder books and then pulled the binder she was looking for.

When she got back to her workstation, Colleen Hatteras was standing there waiting for her.

“What’s up, Colleen?”

“Not much. I was wondering if you need any help with what you’re doing.”

She gestured toward the box on Ballard’s desk. It was the one recovered from the dumpster in the alley behind Ted Rawls’s business in Santa Monica.

“I think I’ve got it,” Ballard said. “There’s not really an IGG angle on this yet.”

“I could make calls if you want me to,” Hatteras said.

“There’s no call to make yet. This is the seventh of seven possible cases. The first six didn’t match up—in my opinion.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“A case that matches a missing white nightgown, bunny slippers, and a bracelet. There is also probably going to be blunt force trauma as a cause of death.”

Ballard sat down and opened the murder book she had just retrieved. She then flipped over the table of contents to the initial incident report.

“You want me to back-read?” Hatteras said. “I’m not really doing much. The IGG stuff on Rawls has dried up. I’m just waiting on responses. I could go back to what I was working on before, but I feel bad dropping off Rawls when there are so many unanswered questions.”

“What about the souvenirs? Aren’t you working on those?”

“I was, but I hit a wall. I found no connects to open cases.”

Ballard knew that if she didn’t give Hatteras something to do, she would probably hover over her all day.