The call was picked up by a tape announcing that the Vegas Metro's Missing Persons unit was open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The message advised anyone with an emergency to hang up and dial 911.

I closed the phone. It was late and I had an early start in the morning but I knew I wasn't going to sleep any time soon. I had the wire in the blood now and knew from long experience that sleep was not an option. Not yet. I was marooned on a boat with two flashlights to see by, but there was still work to be done. I opened my notebook and started constructing a chronological record of the dates and times of events in the weeks and months before Terry McCaleb's death. I put everything on the page, the important and not important, the real connections and imagined connections. Just as experience had taught me about sleep and the ability to go long stretches without it, I knew the details were important. The answer is always in the details. What is seemingly not important now is all-important later. What is cryptic and unconnected now becomes the magnifying glass through which things become clear later.

You can always tell who the locals are. They're the ones who sit inside and work crossword puzzles while the ferry makes the ninety-minute crossing. The tourists are usually up top or lining the bow or stern with their cameras and last glimpses of the island as it shrinks in the mist behind them. On the first boat out the next morning I was inside with the locals. But I was working a puzzle of a different kind. I sat with the file in which Terry McCaleb had made his case notations open on my lap. I also had the chronology I had worked up the night before. I studied it, hoping to commit as much of it as I could to memory. An instant command of case details is required for the successful completion of an investigation.

Jan. 7-McC reads about missing men in Nevada, calls

Vegas Metro

Jan. 9-Vegas Metro not interested Feb. 2-Hinton, Vegas Sun. Who called who? Feb. 13-half-day charter with Jordan Shandy

Feb. 19-charter with Finder

Feb. 22-GPS stolen/sheriff's report

Feb. 27-McC creates photo file

March 1?-McC on mainland for three-day period

March 28-Last charter. McC on The Following Sea

with meds March 31-McC dies

I now added what I had learned an hour earlier from Graciela. The same credit-card records I had asked her to gather in regard to her husband's movements contained her purchases as well. There was a Visa charge attributed to a Nordstrom department store on February 21. When I asked about it she said she had made the purchase at the Promenade. I asked if she had been back since then and she said no.

As I added the date into the chronology I noted that it was the day before the GPS device was reported stolen from The Following Sea. This meant it was likely the same day it was stolen. The photo stalker had been on the ferry with Graciela on the way back to the island. Could he have been the one who snuck onboard The Following Sea that night and took the GPS device? If so, why? And if so, could this also have been the night that Terry McCaleb's medicine was tampered with, real capsules exchanged for dummies?

I circled the letters GPS on the chronology. What was the significance of this device and this theft? I wondered if I was putting too much emphasis on this. Perhaps Buddy Lockridge's theory was the correct one, the de- vice had simply been stolen by Finder, a competitor. Perhaps that was all it was, but the proximity to the mall stalking of Graciela made me think otherwise. My instincts told me there was a connection. I just didn't have it yet.

Despite that, I felt as though I was getting close to something. The chronology was very helpful in allowing me to see connections and the timeliness of things. There was more still to add and I remembered I had intended to follow up with phone calls to Las Vegas this morning. I opened my cell phone and checked the battery. I had been unable to recharge it on The Following Sea. Now I was running out of juice. I had maybe one last call on it before it died. I punched in the number for the Missing Persons unit at Vegas Metro. The call went through and I asked for Detective Ritz. I was put on hold for nearly three minutes, during which time the phone started to beep every minute, warning me it was running low on power.

"This is Detective Ritz, how can I help you?" "Detective, my name is Bosch. I'm LAPD retired. Homicide mostly. I'm doing a favor for a friend. Her husband passed away last month and I'm sort of putting his things in order. I came across a file of his that had your name and number in it and a newspaper article about one of your cases."

"What case?"

"The six missing men."

"And what was your friend's husband's name?"

"Terry McCaleb. He was FBI retired. He worked-"

"Oh, him."

"You knew him?" "I talked to him on the phone once. That doesn't qualify as knowing him."

"You talked about the missing men?"

"Look, what did you say your name is?"

"Harry Bosch."

"Well, listen, Harry Bosch, I don't know you and I don't know what you are doing, but it's usually not my practice to talk about open cases over the phone with strangers."

"I could come see you."

"That wouldn't change things."

"You know he's dead, don't you?"

"McCaleb? I heard he had a heart attack and he was out on his boat and nobody could get to him in time. It sounded stupid. What's a guy with a heart transplant doing twenty-five miles out in the middle of nowhere?"

"Making a living, I guess. Look, some things have come up about that and I'm checking into what Terry was into at the time. To sort of see if he might've drawn somebody's eye, if you know what I mean. All I want-"

"Actually, I don't know what you mean. You talking voodoo? Somebody put the hex on him and gave him a heart attack? I'm kind of busy here, Bosch. Too busy for that bullshit. You retired guys think us working stiffs have all the time in the world for you and your long-shot voodoo theories. Well, guess what, we don't."

"Is that what you said to him when he called? You didn't want to listen to his theory or his profile of the case? You called it voodoo?"

"Look, man, what good is a profile? Those things don't narrow down shit. They're bullshit and that's what I told him and that was-"

His last word was cut off by my phone's warning beep.

"What was that?" he asked. "Are you recording this?"

"No, it's my phone's low-battery warning. Terry didn't come over there to talk to you about this?"

"Nope. I think he ran to the newspaper with it instead. Typical fed move."

"There was a story about his take on this in the SunT'

"I wouldn't call it that. I think they pretty much thought he was full of shit, too."

That line revealed an untruth. If Ritz thought McCaleb and his theory were full of shit, he had to have listened to it in order to make such a determination. I believed that it revealed that Ritz had discussed the case with McCaleb, possibly at length.

"Let me ask you one last thing and then I'll leave you alone. Did Terry mention something about a triangle theory? Something about one point giving three? Does any of that make sense?"

The laugh I heard over the phone wasn't pleasant. It wasn't even good-natured.

"That was three questions, Bosch. Three questions, three sides of a triangle and three strikes and you're-"

The phone went dead, its battery drained.

"Out," I said, completing Ritz's line.

I knew it meant he was not going to answer my question. I closed the phone and dropped it back into my pocket. I had a charger in my car. I'd have the phone back up and running as soon as we got across the Santa Monica Bay. There was still the reporter at the Sun to talk to but I doubted I'd be having further conversations with Ritz. I got up and walked out onto the stern to have the cool morning air refresh me. Catalina was far in the distance, just a jagged gray rock sticking up in the mist. We were more than halfway across. I heard a little girl exclaim, "There!" very loudly to her mother and I followed her pointed finger out to the water where a school of porpoises were breaking the surface in the boat's wake. There must have been twenty of them and soon the stern became crowded with people and their cameras. I think maybe some of the locals even came out to look. The porpoises were beautiful, their gray skin shining like plastic in the morning light. I wondered if they were just having fun or had mistaken the ferry for a fishing boat and were hoping to feed on the debris of the day's catch.