"Well, McCaleb was running a fishing charter out of Catalina. I don't know how plugged in he was to that community but there is a possibility that he knew some of the guides in those poker games."

"I see. It's a stretch but it is there. Ed, keep that in mind."

"Got it."

There was a knock on the door but Alpert ignored it. Cherie Dei got up and answered it. Rachel could see it was Agent Cates. He whispered something to Dei.

"Anything else, Brass?" Alpert asked.

"Not at the moment. I think we need to shift emphasis toL.A. and find-"

"Excuse me," Dei said, bringing Cates back into the room. "Listen to this."

Cates flicked his hands up like he was signaling that this was no big deal.

"Uh, I just got a call from the checkpoint out at the site. They're holding a man there who just drove up. He's a private detective from L.A. His name is Huhromibus Bosch. He-"

"You mean Hieronymus Bosch?" Rachel asked. "Like the painter?"

"Yeah, that's it. I don't know about any painter but that is how my guy said it. Anyway, this is the deal. They put him in one of the RVs and took a look in his car without him knowing. He had a file on the front seat. There are notes and stuff but there also are photos. One of the photos is of the boat."

"You mean the boat from out there?" Alpert asked.

"Yeah, the one that marked the first grave. There also was a news article on the six missing men."

Alpert looked at the others in the room for a moment before speaking.

"Cherie and Tom, call Nellis and have them get ready with a chopper," he finally said. "Get out there and get going. And take Agent Walling with you."

They put me in an RV and told me to make myself at home. There was a kitchen and a table and a sitting area. There was a window but the view was of the side of another RV. The air-conditioning was on and that kept the smell out for the most part. When I asked questions they hadn't answered them. They told me that other agents were coming soon to speak to me.

An hour went by and it gave me time to think about what I had stumbled into. There was no doubt that this was a body recovery site. The smell, that unmistakable smell, was in the air. Besides that, I had seen two unmarked vans with no windows on the sides or back. That told me something right there. Body movers. And there was more than one body to be moved.

At the ninety-minute mark I was sitting on the couch reading a month-old FBI Bulletin I had picked up off the coffee table. I heard a helicopter fly over the RV and then its turbines rev down and quit after it landed. Five minutes later the RV's door opened and the agents I had been waiting for came in. Two women and a man. One of the women I recognized right off but I couldn't place from where. She was late thirties, tall and pretty with dark hair. There was a deadness in her eyes that I had seen before, too. She was an agent and that meant there could have been a lot of places where our paths had crossed.

"Mr. Bosch?" said the other woman, the one in charge. "I'm Special Agent Cherie Dei. This is my partner, Tom Zigo, and this is Agent Walling. Thank you for waiting for us."

"Oh, I had a choice? I didn't realize that."

"Of course. I hope they didn't tell you that you had to stay."

She smiled disingenuously. I decided not to argue the point and get things off to a bad start.

"Do you mind if we move into the kitchen and sit at the table?" Dei asked. "I think it will be best to talk there."

I shrugged like it didn't matter but I knew it did. They were going to sit me down and then corner me, one sitting across from me and then one on either side. I got up and took the seat I knew they'd want me in, the one where my back would be to the wall.

"So," Dei said after sitting down across the table from me. "What brings you out to the desert, Mr. Bosch?"

I made the shrug again. I was getting good practice at it.

"I was just on my way to Vegas and pulled off to look for a place to take care of some business."

"What kind of business?" I smiled.

"I had to take a leak, Agent Dei."

Now she smiled.

"Oh, and then you just happened to stumble onto our little outpost here."

"Something like that."

"Something like that."

"It is hard to miss. How many bodies you got out there?"

"What makes you ask that? Who said anything about bodies?"

I smiled and shook my head. She was going to play it hard all the way.

"Do you mind if we take a look inside your car, Mr. Bosch?" she asked.

"I think you probably already have."

"And what makes you think that?"

"I was a cop in L.A. I worked with the FBI before."

"And so you know it all."

"Put it this way, I know what a body dig smells like and I know you've looked in my car. You just want to get my permission now to cover your ass. I'm not giving it to you. Stay out of my car."

I looked at Zigo and then over at Walling. It was then that I placed her and a whole profusion of questions came up out of the depths.

"I remember you now," I said. "It's Rachel, right?"

"Excuse me?" Walling asked.

"We actually met once. A long time ago in L.A. In Hollywood Division. You were out from Quantico. You were chasing the Poet and you thought one of the guys on the table was the next target. All the time you were right there with the Poet."

"You worked homicides?"

"That's right."

"How is Ed Thomas?"

"Like me, he retired. But Ed went and opened a bookstore down in Orange. Sells mystery novels, if you can believe it."

"lean."

"You're the one who shot Backus, right? In the house on the hill."

She didn't answer. Her eyes went from mine to Agent Dei's. There was something I didn't get. Walling was playing the lesser role here, but she obviously should have had seniority on Dei and her partner, Zigo. Then I put it together. She had probably been knocked down a notch or two in the scandal that came in the aftermath of the Poet investigation.

That leap led to another. I took a shot in the dark.

"That was a long time ago," I said. "Even before Amsterdam." •

Waiting's eyes flared for a split second and I knew I had hit something solid.

"How do you know about Amsterdam?" Dei asked quickly.

I looked back over at her. I pulled out the shrug again and gave it to her.

"I just know, I guess. Is that what this is about? Is that the Poet's work out there? He's back, isn't he?"

Dei looked at Zigo and signaled him to the door. He got up and left the RV. Dei then leaned forward so that I would not misunderstand the severity of the situation and her words.

"We want to know what you are doing here, Mr. Bosch. And you are not going anywhere until we get what we want."

I mirrored her posture by leaning forward. Our faces were two feet apart.

"Your guy at the checkpoint took my license. I'm sure you took a look at it and know what I do. I'm working a case. And it's confidential."

Zigo came back in. He was short and squat, must've just made it in over bureau regs. His hair was cut short like a military man's. He carried Terry McCaleb's file on the missing men in his hand. I knew inside it were the photos I had printed from Terry's computer. Zigo put the file down in front of Dei and she opened it The photo of the old boat was on top. She lifted it and slid it across to me.

"Where did you get this?"

"That's confidential."

"Who are you working for?"

"That's confidential."

She flipped through the photos and came to the surreptitious shot Terry had taken of Shandy. She held it up tome.

"Who is this?"

"I don't know for sure but I'm thinking it's the long lost Robert Backus."

"What?" Walling exclaimed.