BOSCH WENT HOME to take a shower, get fresh clothes and maybe close his eyes for a while before heading back downtown for the unit meeting. Once again he drove through a city that was just waking for the day. And once more it came up ugly in his eyes, all sharp edges and harsh glare. Everything seemed ugly to him now.

Bosch didn’t look forward to the unit meeting. He knew all eyes would be on him. Everybody in Open-Unsolved understood that their actions would now be analyzed and second-guessed following Mackey’s death. They also understood that if they were looking for a reason for the potential threat to their careers, they didn’t have to look far.

Bosch threw his keys on the kitchen counter and checked the phone. No messages. He looked at his watch and determined that he had at least a couple hours before he needed to head toward the Pacific Dining Car. Checking the time reminded him of the ultimatum he had given Irving during their confrontation in the hallway outside RHD. But Bosch doubted he would hear from Irving or McClellan now. It seemed as though everybody was calling his bluffs.

He knew sleeping for a couple hours wasn’t really an option, not with everything that weighed on him. He had carried the murder book and the accumulated files into the house. He decided he would work on them. He knew that when all else went wrong there was always the murder book. He had to keep his eyes on the prize. The case.

He started the coffee brewer, took a five-minute shower and then went to work rereading the murder book while a remastered release of Kind of Blue sounded from the CD player.

The feeling that he was missing something right in front of him was grinding on him. He felt that he would be haunted by the case, that he would carry it around with him forever, unless he cracked through and found that missing thing. And he knew that if it was to be found anywhere, it would be in the book.

He decided that this time he would not read through the documents in the order they had been presented to him by the first investigators of the case. He snapped open the rings and took the documents out. He started reading them in random order, taking his time, making sure that he absorbed every name, every word, every photo.

Fifteen minutes later he was staring once again at the crime scene photos of Rebecca Verloren’s bedroom when he heard a car door close in front of his house. Curious about who would be parking out there so early he got up and went to the door. Through the peephole he saw a man approaching by himself. It was hard to clearly see him through the convex lens of the peep. Bosch opened the door anyway, before the man had a chance to knock.

It did not surprise the man that his approach had been watched. Bosch could tell by his demeanor that he was a cop.

“McClellan?”

He nodded.

“Lieutenant McClellan. And I assume you are Detective Bosch.”

“You could have called.”

Bosch stepped back to let him in. Neither man offered to shake hands. Bosch thought it was typical of Irving to send his man to the house. A standard procedure in the old I-know-where-you-live intimidation strategy.

“I thought it better that we talk face to face,” McClellan said.

“You thought? Or Chief Irving thought?”

McClellan was a big man with sandy, almost transparent hair and wide, florid cheeks. Bosch thought he could best be described as well fed. His cheeks turned a darker shade at Bosch’s question.

“Look, I’m here to cooperate with you, Detective.”

“Good. Can I get you something? I have water.”

“Water’d be fine.”

“Have a seat.”

Bosch went into the kitchen and chose the dustiest glass from the cabinet and then filled it with tap water. He flicked off the switch on the coffeemaker and warmer. He wasn’t going to let McClellan get cozy.

When he returned to the living room McClellan was looking out through the sliding glass door and across the deck. The air was clear in the pass. But it was still early.

“Nice view,” McClellan said.

“I know. I don’t see any files in your hand, Lieutenant. I hope this isn’t a social call or like one of those visits you made to Robert Verloren seventeen years ago.”

McClellan turned to Bosch and accepted the glass of water and the insult with the same blank expression.

“There are no files. If there were, they disappeared a long time ago.”

“And what? You’re here to try to convince me with your memories?”

“As a matter of fact, I have great recall of that time period. You have to understand something. I was a detective first grade assigned to the PDU. If I was given a job, I did it. You don’t question command in that situation. You do and you’re out.”

“So you were a good soldier just doing your job. I get it. What about the Chatsworth Eights and the Verloren murder? What about the alibis?”

“There were eight principal players in the Eights. I cleared them all. And don’t think I wanted to clear them and so I just did. I was told to see if any of these little pissants could have been involved. And I checked it out, but they all came up clean-on the murder at least.”

“Tell me about William Burkhart and Roland Mackey.”

McClellan sat down on a chair by the television. He put his glass of water, which he had yet to drink from, down on the coffee table. Bosch turned off Miles Davis in the middle of “Freddie Freeloader” and stood with his hands in his pockets near the sliding doors.

“Well, first of all, Burkhart was easy. We were already watching him that night.”

“Explain that.”

“He had just gotten out of Wayside a few days before. We had gotten tipped that while he was up there he was re-upping on the racial religion, so it was thought to be prudent to keep an eye on him to see if he was going to try to start things up again.”

“Who ordered that?”

McClellan just looked at him.

“ Irving, of course,” Bosch answered. “Keeping the deal safe. So PDU was watching Burkhart. Who else?”

“Burkhart got out and hooked up with two guys from the old group. A guy named Withers and another named Simmons. It looked like they might’ve been planning something, but on the night in question they were in a pool hall on Tampa drinking themselves into oblivion. It was solid. Two undercovers were in there with them the whole time. That’s what I’m here to tell you. They were all solid, Detective.”

“Yeah? Well, tell me about Mackey. The PDU wasn’t watching him, was it?”

“No, not Mackey.”

“Then how was he so solid?”

“What I remember about Mackey was that on the night the girl was taken he was getting tutored at Chatsworth High. He was going to night school, getting his high school degree.”

“Actually, his general education degree. Not exactly the same thing.”

“That’s right. A judge had ordered it as a condition of probation. Only he had to pass and he wasn’t doing too good. But he was getting tutored on the off nights-when there was no school. And the night the girl got grabbed, he was with his tutor. I confirmed it.”

Bosch shook his head. McClellan was trying to feed him a line.

“You’re telling me Mackey was getting tutored through the middle of the night? Either you’re full of shit or you believed a line of bullshit from Mackey and his tutor. Who was the tutor?”

“No, no, they were together earlier in the evening. I don’t remember the guy’s name now, but they were done by like eleven at the latest and then they went their separate ways. Mackey went home.”

Bosch looked astonished.

“That’s no alibi, Lieutenant! Time of death on the girl was two in the a.m. Didn’t you know that?”

“Of course I did. But time of death wasn’t the only alibi point. I was given the summaries put together by the guys on the case. There was no forced entry to that house. And the father had gone around and checked all the doors and locks after he got home at ten that night. That meant the killer had to have been inside the house at that point. He was in there hiding, waiting for everybody to go to sleep.”