“Do you believe that to be your husband on the images with Stacey?”

“No. I don’t know who that was.”

“How can you be sure?”

“My husband has a birthmark. A discoloration on his back. I said he wasn’t smart, but he was at least smart enough not to appear on that web site.”

Bosch thought about this. Though he did not doubt Kate Kincaid’s story, he also knew that hard evidence backing it up would be needed to prosecute Kincaid. For the same reason she felt she could not bring her story to the authorities, Bosch needed to be able to go into the district attorney’s office with Sam Kincaid solidly locked down by the evidence. Right now all he had was a wife saying evil things about her husband. The fact that Kincaid apparently was not the man in the web site images with his stepdaughter was a major loss of corroborative evidence. He thought about the searches. Teams were descending on Kincaid’s home and office at that moment. It was Bosch’s hope that they would find evidence that would prove his wife’s story.

“Your last note to Howard Elias,” he said. “You warned him. You said your husband knew. Did you mean your husband knew that Elias had found the secret web site?”

“At the time, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because of the way he was acting — on edge, suspicious of me. He asked me if I had been on his computer. It made me think that they must have known someone was poking around. I sent the message, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Why is that? Howard Elias is dead.”

“I’m not sure he did that. He would have told me.”

“What?”

Bosch was thoroughly confused by her logic.

“He would have told me. He told me about Stacey, why wouldn’t he tell me about Elias as well? And the fact that you know about the web site. If they thought Elias knew, wouldn’t they have closed it down or hidden it somewhere else?”

“Not if they were just going to kill the intruder instead.”

She shook her head. She didn’t see it the way Bosch obviously did.

“I still think he would’ve told me.”

Still confused, Bosch said, “Wait a minute. Are you talking about the confrontation you mentioned at the start of this interview?”

Bosch’s pager went off and he reached down and silenced it without taking his eyes off Kate Kincaid.

“Yes.”

“Well, when was this confrontation?”

“Last night.”

“Last night?”

Bosch was shocked. He had jumped to the conclusion that the confrontation she had mentioned had been weeks or even months earlier.

“Yes. After you left. I knew by the questions you asked that you had probably found my notes to Howard Elias. I knew you would find Charlotte’s Web. It was a matter of time.”