“When we moved we didn’t take a single piece of furniture,” she said. “We decided just to start over. No reminders.”

Bosch nodded and then studied her. She was dressed completely in white, with a silk blouse tucked into tailored linen pants. She looked like a ghost herself. Her large black leather purse, which was on the couch next to her, seemed to clash with her outfit and the sheets covering the furniture.

“How are you, Mrs. Kincaid?”

“Please call me Kate.”

“Kate then.”

“I am very fine, thank you. Better than I have been in a long, long time. How are you?”

“I’m just so-so today, Kate. I had a bad night. And I don’t like it when it rains.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It does look like you haven’t slept.”

“Do you mind if I look around a little bit before we start talking?”

He had a signed search warrant for the house in his briefcase but he didn’t want to bring it up yet.

“Please do,” she said. “Stacey’s room is down the hall to your left. First door on the left.”

Bosch left his briefcase on the tiled entryway floor and headed the way she had directed. The furniture in the girl’s room was not covered. The white sheets that had covered everything were in piles on the floor. It looked like someone — probably the dead girl’s mother — had visited here on occasion. The bed was unmade. The pink bedspread and matching sheets were twisted into a knot — not as if by someone sleeping, but maybe by someone who had lain on the bed and gathered the bedclothes to her chest. It made Bosch feel bad seeing it that way.

Bosch stepped to the middle of the room, keeping his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He studied the girl’s things. There were stuffed animals and dolls, a shelf of picture books. No movie posters, no photos of young television stars or pop singers. It was almost as if the room belonged to a girl much younger than Stacey Kincaid had been at the end. Bosch wondered if the design was her parents’ or her own, as if maybe she had thought by holding on to the things of her past she could somehow avoid the horror of the present. The thought made him feel worse than when he had studied the bedclothes.

He noticed a hairbrush on the bureau and saw strands of blond hair caught in it. It made him feel a little easier. He knew that the hair from the brush could be used, if it ever came to the point of connecting evidence — possibly from the trunk of a car — to the dead girl.