“It was the next day. It was our way of kicking off the summer. Lunch and the movies. It was a movie about these two guys who can’t find a mouse in their house. It was cute . . . The mouse got the better of them.”

Her eyes were on the memory, and on her daughter. They then focused on Bosch once more.

“No more school,” Bosch said. “Could she have left her books from the last day in the Volvo? Maybe in the back?”

Kate Kincaid slowly nodded.

“Yes. I remember having to tell her at one point during the summer to take the books out of the car. They kept sliding around when I drove. She didn’t do it. I finally took them out and put them in her room.”

Bosch leaned forward again and put the other photocopy down for them.

“Michael Harris worked at Hollywood Wax and Shine last summer. That’s his time card for the week including June twelve. He worked a full day on the day you brought the Volvo in.”

Sam Kincaid leaned forward again and studied the photocopy.

“You mean all this time we’ve . . . ,” Kincaid began and then stopped. “You’re saying that he — Harris — vacuumed out the Volvo and in the process touched my stepdaughter’s book? Picked it up or whatever, then the book was eventually taken to her bedroom. And after she was taken . . .”

“The police found the prints on it,” Bosch finished. “Yes, that’s now what we think.”

“Why didn’t this come out at the trial? Why — ”

“Because there was other evidence linking Harris to the murder,” Edgar said. “The girl’s — uh, Stacey — was found less than two blocks from his apartment. That was a strong tie-in. His lawyer decided the tack he had to take was to go after the cops. Taint the fingerprints by tainting the cops. He never went after the truth.”

“And neither did the cops,” Bosch said. “They had the prints and when the body was found in Harris’s neighborhood, that sealed it. You remember, the investigation was emotionally charged from the beginning. It changed at that point when they found the body and it all tied in to Harris. It changed from a search for a little girl to a prosecution of a specific target. In between it never was a search for the truth.”

Sam Kincaid seemed shell-shocked.

“All this time,” he said. “Can you imagine the hate I have built up inside of me for this man? This hate, this utter and complete contempt, has been the only real emotion I’ve had for the last nine months . . .”