He didn’t finish so I did.

“Your agent hadn’t committed those crimes on camera. Yeah.”

Peoples stopped in the hallway and I did, too. He waited for the other agent and Aziz to go through the door.

“I’m not comfortable with this arrangement,” he said. “I have no guarantees. You could walk out of here and get hit by a truck. Does that mean those recordings will end up on the news?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Yeah, it does. You better hope that truck misses me.”

“I don’t want to live and work under the weight of that.”

“I don’t blame you. What are you going to do about Milton?”

“What I told you. He’s out. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Well, let me know when that happens. Then we can talk about the weight again.”

He looked like he was about to say something more but then thought better of it and started walking again. He led me through the security doors to the elevator. He used his card key to summon it and then to push the button for the lobby. He held his hand on the door’s bumper.

“I’m not going down with you,” he said. “I think we’ve said enough.”

I nodded and he stepped back through the door. He stood there and watched, maybe to make sure I didn’t sneak off the elevator and try to spring the incarcerated terrorists.

Just as the door started closing I hit the bumper with the side of my hand and it slowly reopened.

“Remember, Agent Peoples, my lawyer has taken steps to secure herself and the recordings. If something happens to her it’s the same as it happening to me.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bosch. I will make no move against her or you.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.”

The door closed as we were holding each other’s eyes in a pointed stare.

“I understand,” I heard him say through the doors.

My dance with the federales was not totally for naught as I had led Peoples to believe. Yes, my chasing down of the tiny terrorist may have been a false lead but in any case there are always false leads. It is part of the mission. At the end of the day what I had was the full record of the investigation and I was happy with that. I was playing with a full deck-the murder book-and it allowed me to write off in my mind all that had occurred in the two days leading up to the point I got it, including my hours in lockdown. For I knew that if I was to find Angella Benton’s killer, the answer, or at least the key that would turn the case, would likely be sitting somewhere in the middle of that black plastic binder.

I got home from the federal building and came into the house like a man who thinks he may have won the lottery but needs to check the numbers in the newspaper to be sure. I went directly to the dining room table with my cardboard box and spread out everything I carried in it. Front and center was the murder book. The Holy Grail. I sat down and started reading from page one. I didn’t get up for coffee, water or beer. I didn’t turn on music. I concentrated fully on the pages I was turning. On occasion I jotted notes down on my notepad. But for the most part I just read and absorbed. I got in the car with Lawton Cross and Jack Dorsey and I rode through their investigation.

Four hours later I turned the last page in the binder. I had carefully read and studied every document. Nothing struck me as the key, the obvious strand to pursue, but I wasn’t discouraged. I still believed it was in there. It always was. I would just have to sift it from a different angle.

The one thing that struck me from the intense immersion into the documented part of the case was the difference in personalities of Cross and Dorsey. Dorsey was a good ten years older than Cross and had been the mentor in the relationship. But in their writing and handling of reports I sensed strong differences in their personalities. Cross was more descriptive and interpretive in his reports. Dorsey was the opposite. If three words summed up an interview or a lab report, then he went with the three words. Cross was more likely to put down the three words and then add another ten sentences of interpretation of what the lab report or the witness’s demeanor meant. I preferred Cross’s method. It had always been my philosophy to put everything in the book. Because sometimes cases go months and even years long and nuances can be lost in time if not set down as part of the record.

It also made me conclude that maybe the two partners had not been close. They were close now, inextricably linked in department mythology as keepers of the ultimate bad luck. But maybe if they had been close that moment in the bar, things would have been different.

Thinking about what could have been made me remember Danny Cross singing to her husband. I finally got up and went to the CD player and put in a disc of the collected works of Louis Armstrong. It had been put out in unison with the Ken Burns documentary on jazz. Most of it was the very early stuff but I knew it ended with “What a Wonderful World,” his last hit.

Back at the table I looked at my notepad. I had written down only three things during my first read-through.

$100K

Sandor Szatmari

The money, stupid

The company that had insured the money on the movie set, Global Underwriters, had put up a $100,000 reward for an arrest and conviction in the case. I hadn’t known about the reward and was surprised that Lawton Cross hadn’t told me. I guessed that it was just another detail that had escaped from his mind due to trauma and the passage of time.

The fact that there was a reward was of little personal consequence to me. I assumed that since I was a former cop who at one time was involved in the case, albeit before the heist that spawned the reward, I would not be eligible for it if my efforts resulted in an arrest and conviction. I also knew that it was likely that the small print on the reward proclamation said that full recovery of the $2 million was required for collection of the hundred thousand, with the amount prorated according to the amount of recovery. And four years after the crime the chances of there being anything left to recover were small. Still, the reward was good to know about. It might be useful as a tool of leverage or coercion. I might not be eligible but I might encounter someone useful who would be. I was glad I found out about it.

Next on the notepad was the name Sandor Szatmari. He or she-I didn’t know which-was listed as the case investigator for Global Underwriters. He or she was someone I needed to talk to. I opened the murder book to the first page, where investigators usually kept a page of most often called phone numbers. There was no listing for Szatmari but there was for Global. I went into the kitchen to get the phone, turned down Louis Armstrong on the CD player and made the call. I was transferred twice before I finally got a woman who answered with “Investigations.”

I had trouble with Szatmari’s name and she corrected me and then told me to hold. In less than a minute Szatmari picked up. The name belonged to a he. I explained my situation and asked if we could meet. He seemed skeptical, but that might have just been because he had an accent from Eastern Europe that made him hard to read. He declined to discuss the case over the phone with a stranger but ultimately agreed to meet me in person at ten o’clock the next morning at his office in Santa Monica. I told him I’d be there and hung up.

I looked at the last line I had written on the notepad. It was just a reminder of an old adage good for almost any investigation. Follow the money, stupid. It always leads to the truth. In this case the money was gone and the trail-other than blips on the radar in Phoenix and involving Mousouwa Aziz and Martha Gessler-had gone cold. I knew that left me one alternative. To go backwards. Trace the money backwards and see what came up.