He then identified himself and said who she was, noted the date, time and location of the interview. He read off a constitutional rights advisement from a printed form he had taken from his briefcase.

“Do you understand these rights as I have just read them?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you wish to talk with me, Mrs. Kincaid, or do you wish to contact an attorney?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No attorney. An attorney can’t help me. I want to talk.”

This gave Bosch pause. He was thinking about how best to keep hair off the cake.

“Well, I can’t give you legal advice. But when you say, ‘An attorney can’t help me,’ I’m not sure that that is going to constitute a waiver. You see what I mean? Because it is always possible that an attorney could — ”

“Detective Bosch, I don’t want an attorney. I fully understand my rights and I don’t want an attorney.”

“Okay, then I need you to sign this paper at the bottom and then sign again where it says that you do not request an attorney.”

He put the rights form down on the coffee table and watched her sign it. He then took it back and made sure she had signed her own name. He then signed it himself as the witness and put it in one of the slots of the accordion file in the briefcase. He sat back down in the chair and looked at her. He thought for a moment about talking to her about a spousal waiver but decided that could wait. He’d let the district attorney’s office handle that — when and if the time came.

“Then I guess this is it,” he said. “You want to start, Mrs. Kincaid, or do you want me to ask you questions?”

He was using her name frequently on purpose — in case the tape was ever played before a jury there would be no misunderstanding of whom the voices belonged to.

“My husband killed my daughter. I guess that’s what you want to know first. That’s why you are here.”

Bosch froze for a moment and then slowly nodded.

“How do you know this?”

“For a long time it was a suspicion . . . then it became my belief based on things I had heard. Eventually, he actually told me. I finally confronted him and he admitted it.”

“What exactly did he tell you?”

“He said that it was an accident — but you don’t strangle people by accident. He said she threatened him, said that she was going to tell her friends what he . . . what he and his friends did to her. He said he was trying to stop her, to talk her out of doing it. He said things got out of hand.”

“This occurred where?”

“Right here. In the house.”

“When?”