“People are the worst animals,” Rider said. “They will do anything to each other. Just to indulge their fantasies.”

Bosch got up and walked over to one of the other nearby desks. It belonged to a burglary detective named McGrath. He opened the drawers and started looking through them.

“Harry,” Rider said, “what are you looking for?”

“A cigarette. I thought Paul kept his smokes in his desk.”

“He used to. I told him to start taking them home with him.”

Bosch looked over at her, his hand still holding one of the drawers.

“You told him that?”

“I didn’t want you slipping, Harry.”

Bosch shoved the drawer closed and came back to his chair.

“Thanks a lot, Kizmin. You saved me.”

There wasn’t a drop of thanks in the tone he had used.

“You’ll get through this, Harry.”

Bosch gave her a look.

“You probably haven’t smoked an entire cigarette in your entire life and you’re going to tell me about quitting and how I’ll get through it?”

“Sorry. I’m just trying to help.”

“Like I said, thanks.”

He looked over at her computer and nodded.

“What else? What are you thinking about? How does that tie in Sam and Kate Kincaid to the point we should’ve advised them?”

“They had to know about this,” Rider said, amazed that Bosch didn’t see what she saw. “The man in the photos, that’s got to be Kincaid.”

“Whoah!” Edgar said. “How can you say that? You couldn’t see the guy’s face. We were just talking to the guy and he and his wife are still righteously fucked-up over this.”

It hit Bosch then. When he had first seen the photos on the computer he had thought they were taken by the girl’s abductor.

“You’re saying these photos are old,” he said. “That she was abused before she was abducted.”

“I’m saying there probably wasn’t an abduction at all. Stacey Kincaid was an abused child. My guess is that her stepfather defiled her and then probably killed her. And that doesn’t happen without tacit knowledge, if not approval, by the mother.”

Bosch was silent. Rider had spoken with such fervor and even pain that he couldn’t help but wonder if she was talking from some kind of personal experience.

“Look,” Rider said, apparently sensing the skepticism of her partners. “There was a time that I thought I wanted to move into child sex crimes. This was before I put in for homicide. There was an opening on the endangered-child team in Pacific and the job was mine if I wanted it. They first sent me to Quantico for a two-week training program the bureau puts on once a year on child sex crimes. I lasted eight days. I realized I couldn’t hack it. I came back and put in for homicide.”