They dropped into silence. Bosch’s mind was running the puzzle but coming up empty. The license plate clue was still as mysterious as the Mistress Regina lead. Then by joining the two mysteries he came up with something.

“Pelfry again,” he said. “We need to talk to him.”

He stood up.

“Jerry, get on the phone. See if you can run down Pelfry and set up an interview for as soon as you can get it. I’m going out back for a few minutes.”

Normally, when Bosch told his partners he was going out back it meant he was going outside the building to have a smoke. As he walked toward the rear doorway, Rider called after him.

“Harry, don’t do it.”

He waved without turning back.

“Don’t worry, I’m not.”

Out in the lot Bosch stood and looked around. He knew he had done some of his best analytical thinking while standing outside smoking. He hoped he could put something together now, without the aid of a smoke. He looked into the sand jar that the station’s smokers used and saw a half-smoked cigarette protruding from the sand. There was lipstick on it. He decided he wasn’t that desperate yet.

He thought about the mystery notes. He knew because of postmarks and the markings made on the notes by Elias that they had numbers two, three and four, but not the first note. The meaning of the fourth note — the warning Elias was carrying with him — was obvious. The third note they now had a line on, thanks to the subpoena return Edgar had come across. But the second note — dot the i humbert humbert — still made no sense to Bosch.

He looked at the cigarette protruding from the sand again but once more dismissed it. He remembered he carried no matches or lighter anyway.

It suddenly occurred to him that the one other piece of the puzzle that seemed to stand out as making no sense, at least so far, was the Mistress Regina connection — whatever that was.

Bosch turned and quickly headed back into the station. Edgar and Rider had their heads down and into the paperwork when he came to the table. Bosch immediately began looking through the stacks of files.

“Who has the Mistress Regina file?”

“Over here,” Edgar said.

He handed over the file and Bosch opened it and took out the photo printout of the dominatrix. He then put it down next to one of the mystery notes and tried to make a comparison between the printing on the note and the printing below the photo — the web page address. It was impossible for him to determine if the same hand had printed both lines. He was no expert and there were no obvious anomalies in the printing to make a comparison easy.