“Oh, he met her. Why else did he have this laying around? I tell you, Bosch, if Elias was into rough trade like that, there’s no telling where that could’ve led. It’s a righteous avenue of investigation and you know it.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be checking everything out.”

“You’re damn right we will.”

“Uh,” Rider said, interrupting. “There’s an audio button.”

Bosch looked at the screen. Rider had the arrow poised over the blue button.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I think we can actually hear Mistress Regina.”

She clicked the arrow on the button. The computer then downloaded an audio program and started playing it. A dark and heavy voice came from the computer’s speaker.

“This is Mistress Regina. If you come to me I will find the secret of your soul. Together, we will reveal the true subservience through which you will know your rightful identity and attain the release you can find nowhere else. I will mold you into my own. I will own you. I am waiting. Call me now.”

They were all silent for a long moment. Bosch looked at Chastain.

“Does it sound like her?”

“Like who?”

“The woman on tape at the apartment.”

Chastain suddenly realized the possibility and was silent as he thought about this.

“What tape?” Rider asked.

“Can you play it again?” Bosch asked.

Rider clicked the audio button again and asked about the tape once more. Bosch waited until the replay was over.

“A woman left a message on the phone at Elias’s apartment. It wasn’t his wife. But I don’t think it was this voice either.”

He looked at Chastain once more.

“I don’t know,” Chastain said. “Could be. We’ll be able to do a comparison in the lab if we need to.”

Bosch hesitated, studying Chastain for any indication that he knew the phone message had been erased. He saw nothing.

“What?” Chastain said, uneasy under Bosch’s stare.

“Nothing,” Bosch said.

He turned back and looked at the computer screen.

“You said this was part of a larger web site,” he said to Rider. “Can we look at that?”

Rider didn’t answer. She just went to work on the keyboard. In a few moments the screen changed and they were looking at a graphic which showed a woman’s stocking-clad leg bent at the knee and reaching across the screen. Below this it said:

WELCOME TO GIRLAWHIRL, a directory of intimate, sensual and erotic services in Southern California

Below this was a table of contents by which the user could choose listings of women offering a variety of services, from sensual massage to evening escort to female domination. Rider clicked the mouse on this last offering and a new screen was revealed featuring boxes with the names of mistresses followed by an area code prefix.