The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(14)

She knocked loudly on the door to be heard over the music. It was immediately cut off and then the door opened. It was Bosch.

“Well,” he said. “The prodigal detective.”

“What?” Ballard said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I just haven’t heard from you in a long time. Thought you forgot about me.”

“Hey, you were the one who went off to the dark side, working for that defense lawyer. I thought there was no time for me.”

“Really?”

“Really. So, you get the vaccine yet? How do you feel about having visitors inside? I’ve got antibodies and can keep my mask on.”

Bosch stepped back for her to enter.

“You can come in and you can lose the mask. I haven’t got the vax yet but I’ll risk it. And for the record, I didn’t work for Mickey Haller. I work for myself.”

Ballard crossed the threshold, ignoring the comment about Haller and keeping her mask on.

“It sounded like you were having a party in here.”

“I mighta had the volume up a bit.”

The house was unchanged. The galley kitchen was to the right of the entry area and she stepped forward toward the view, passing by the dining area into the living room. The sliders were open to the deck and the view of the Cahuenga Pass. She pointed to the open doors.

“Letting everybody in the canyon hear your beats,” she said. “Nice.”

“Is that what this is?” Bosch asked. “A noise complaint?”

She turned and looked at him.

“Actually, it’s a complaint but about something else.”

“Great way to start off the new year — with the LAPD mad at me. Might as well hit me with it.”

“Not the LAPD. So far. Just me. This morning I drove all the way out to Westchester to the new homicide library they opened out there. You know, where they keep all the murder books from open cases. They finally put them all in one central place. And I asked for a book from one of your old cases and they told me it was gone, last checked out by you.”

Bosch frowned and shook his head.

“I read about that place in the paper,” he said. “Sponsored by the Ahmanson family. But the grand opening was long after I was out the door at LAPD. I’ve never set foot in that place, let alone checked out a book.”

Ballard nodded like she anticipated his response, and had an answer.

“They moved the archives from the divisions over one at a time,” she said. “If a book was checked out, they moved the checkout card over so there would be a space on the shelf at Ahmanson. The card on your case was from 2014 — three years after the murder and before you pulled the pin.”

Bosch didn’t respond at first, like he was checking facts in his head.

“The case was 2011?” he finally asked. “What was the name?”

“Albert Lee. Killed with a Walther P-twenty-two. You recovered the casing, apparently. But that’s about all I know, because you took the damn murder book. I need it back, Harry.”

Bosch held up his hand like he was trying to stop the accusation.

“I didn’t take the book, okay?” he said. “When I left, I copied the chronos of every case I still had open. On some I copied everything. But I never took a book. And with the archives in the divisions, anybody could have taken that book and put my name on the checkout card. There was no security around the books. We supposedly didn’t need it, because they were considered safe — they were in police stations, after all.”

Ballard folded her arms across her chest, not ready to give in on the point just yet.

“So, you’re saying you might have the chrono but you don’t have the book?”

“Exactly. I kept the chronos in case they ever got cleared and I got pulled into court to testify about the initial investigation. I wanted to be able to refresh my memory, that sort of thing. I remember the Albert Lee case. It wasn’t the kind of case where I’d even want to steal the book.”

Ballard shifted her stance and looked back at the dining room table. She saw a six-inch stack of documents she had not noticed when she had entered. The top page was clearly the front page of an autopsy report. She pointed to it.

“And what’s that?” she asked. “That looks like a whole book at least.”

“It’s parts of about six books,” Bosch said. “But it isn’t Lee. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Why would I lie to you about this, Renée?”

“I don’t know. But stealing books is not cool.”

“I agree. That’s why I never did it.”

She walked over to the table and used a hand to spread the stack out over the table so she could see some of the documents. One of the documents had what looked like a surveillance photo attached to it. It showed a man getting into a car in what was clearly the parking lot of an In-N-Out restaurant. There was no time-and-date stamp, so it wasn’t an official stakeout shot.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“It’s not the Lee case,” Bosch insisted. “It’s something else entirely, okay?”

“I’m just asking. Who is it?”

“Finbar McShane.”

Ballard nodded. It explained the stack. Some cases spawn many murder books. Especially the unsolved cases.