"Sure."

"It's a tortoise-and-hare race. We're the tortoise, you're the hare."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're moving faster than us, Harry. Something tells me you figured out the triangle theory and are taking a shot at the missing point. The point of prey."

I nodded. Whether I was being used or not didn't matter. They were allowing me to stay in the hunt and that was what was important to me.

"You start with the airport and you end with Zzyzx. That leaves one more point-the intersection of predator and prey-and I think I've got it. We're going there."

"Then tell me."

"First tell me one more thing about McCaleb's notes."

"I think I already told you everything. They're still being analyzed."

"William Bing, who is that?"

She hesitated but only for a moment.

"That's a no-go, a dead end."

"How so?"

"William Bing is a heart transplant patient who was in Vegas Memorial getting a checkup and some tests. We think Terry knew him and when he was over here he visited him in the hospital."

"Did you people talk to Bing yet?"

"Not yet. We're trying to track him."

"Seems odd."

"What, that he would visit a guy?"

"No, not that. I mean that he would write that on the file if it wasn't connected to the case."

"Terry wrote stuff down. It's pretty obvious from all his files and notebooks that he wrote stuff down. If he was coming over here to work on this, then maybe he wrote Bing's name and the hospital number down on the file so he wouldn't forget to visit or call him. Could be a lot of reasons."

I didn't respond. I still had trouble seeing it.

"How did he know the guy?"

"We don't know. Maybe the movie. Terry got hundreds of letters from transplant people after that movie came out. He was sort of a hero to a lot of people in the same boat as he was."

As we headed north on Blue Diamond I saw a sign for the Travel America truck stop and remembered the receipt I had found in Terry McCaleb's car. I pulled in, even though I had gassed up the Mercedes after leaving Eleanor's house that morning. I stopped the car and just looked at the travel complex.

"What is it? You need gas?"

"No, we're fine. It's just that… McCaleb was here."

"What is this? You getting a psychic reading or something?"

"No, I found a receipt in his car. I wonder if this means he went up to Clear." 'To clear what?"

"No, the town of Clear. That's where we're going."

"Well, we might never know unless we get up there and ask some questions."

I nodded and pulled the car back onto Blue Diamond and started north again. Along the way I told Rachel my theory of the theory. That is, my take on McCaleb's triangle and how Clear fit into it. I could tell that my telling it drew her interest. She may have even been excited about it. She agreed with my take on the victims and how and why they may have been chosen. She agreed that it appeared to mirror the victimology-her word-in Amsterdam.

We brainstormed for an hour on it and then grew quiet as we started to get close. The barren, rugged landscape was giving way to outposts of humanity and we began to see billboards advertising the brothels that waited just ahead.

"Have you ever been to one of these?" Rachel asked me.

"No."

I thought about the steam-and-cream tents in Vietnam but didn't bring them up.

"I didn't mean like as a customer. But as a cop."

"Still no. But I tracked a few people through them. And by that I mean by credit cards and other means. We're not going to find the people here overly cooperative. At least I never did by phone. And calling in a local sheriff is a joke. The state collects taxes from these joints. A big chunk of it goes back to the home county."

"I get it. So how do we handle it?" Almost smiling because she had used the word we, I threw the question back at her.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess we just go in through the front door."

Meaning we play it straight and just go in and ask our questions. I wasn't sure it was the right way to go but she had a badge and I didn't.

We cleared the town of Pahrump and in another 10 miles came to an intersection where a sign with clear on it and an arrow to the left was posted. I turned and the asphalt soon gave way to a crushed rock road that kicked up a flume of dust behind my car. The town of Clear could see us coming from a mile away.

That is, if it was looking for us. But the town of Clear, Nevada, turned out to be little more than a trailer park. The gravel road led us to another intersection and another sign with an arrow. We turned north again and soon came to a clearing where an old trailer sat with rust dripping from its rivets. A sign running along the top edge of the trailer said, welcome to clear, sports bar open, rooms for rent. There were no cars parked in the clearing in front of the bar.

I drove on past the welcome wagon, and the new road curved into a neighborhood of trailer homes baking like beer cans in the sun. Few were in better shape than the welcome wagon. Eventually, we came to a permanent structure that appeared to be a town hall as well as the location of the spring the town was named for. We kept going and were rewarded by another arrow on another sign, this one reading simply brothels.

Nevada licenses over thirty brothels across die state. In these places prostitution is legal, controlled and mon- itored. We found three of those state-licensed businesses at the end of the road in Clear. The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies.

"Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "Why are these places always named after women-as if women actually own them?"

"You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys."

Rachel smiled.

"You're right. I guess it's a shrewd move. Name a place of female degradation and slavery after a female and it doesn't sound so bad, does it? It's packaging."

"Slavery? Last I heard these women were volunteers. Some of them are supposedly housewives who come up from Vegas."

"If you believe that, then you are naive, Bosch. Just because you can come and go doesn't mean you're not a slave."

I nodded thoughtfully, not wanting to get into a debate with her about this subject because I knew it would bring me back to examining and questioning things in my own past.

Rachel apparently wanted to drop it there, too.

"So which one do you want to start with?" she asked.

I pulled the car to a stop in front of Tawny's High Five Ranch. It didn't look like much of a ranch. It was a conglomeration of three or four trailers that were connected by covered walkways. I looked to my left and saw that Sheila's Front Porch was of similar design and configuration and it had no front porch. Miss Delilah's to my right was the same and I got the distinct impression that the three seemingly separate brothels were not competitors but rather branches of the same tree.

"I don't know," I said. "Looks like eenie, meenie, minie, moe to me."

Rachel cracked her door open.

"Wait a second," I said. "I've got this."

I handed her the file of photos Buddy Lockridge had brought to Vegas the day before. Rachel opened it and saw the front and side shots of the man known as Shandy but presumed to be Robert Backus.

"I'm not going to even ask where you got these."

"Fine. But you carry them. It will have more weight coming from you, since you've got the badge."

"For the moment, at least."

"Did you bring the photos of the missing men?"

"Yes, I've got them."

"Good."

She took the file and got out of the car. I did likewise. We both walked around to the front of the car, where we stopped for a moment and surveyed the three brothels again. There were a few cars parked in front of each. There were also four flat-head Harleys lined up like a row of mean chrome in front of Miss Delilah's House of Holies. Air-brushed on the gas tank of one of the bikes was a skull smoking a joint with a smoke ring forming a halo above it.