“Okay, let me call back there. If you wouldn’t mind, step back from the window so others can come forward.”

“No problem.”

Bosch stepped away from the window and posted up on its left side. He turned, looked around, and saw that there was nobody else waiting to come forward.

Five minutes went by slowly. He leaned against the wall next to the window to take weight off his knee. The pills he had ingested had yet to reduce the pain.

No one else approached the window, and the man behind it offered Bosch no information. Bosch could feel his shirt starting to stick with perspiration to his back. He took off his sport coat and held it over his arm.

Finally, there was the metal clack of a heavy door opening, and Bosch saw a man in a guayabera shirt step out but hold the door open. The shirt barely disguised that the man had a gun and badge on his belt.

“LAPD?” he said.

“That’s me,” Bosch said.

“Come on back.”

“Thank you.”

He held out his hand as Bosch approached the door.

“Kent Osborne.”

Bosch shook his hand.

“Harry Bosch,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”

“Gotta make time for the LAPD,” Osborne said. “That’s the big time.”

Bosch smiled uneasily. There had been a slightly sarcastic tone in Osborne’s voice.

Osborne led Bosch to a detective bureau, where he counted desks for sixteen detectives. There were no signs hanging from the ceiling denoting crime sections. Half the desks had men or women sitting behind them, and most of them had eyes on Bosch as he came in.

Osborne’s desk was the last in the first row. He pulled a chair from an empty desk and rolled it over in front of his.

“Have a seat. Are you hurt? You’re limping.”

“I was in an accident Sunday. Messed up my knee.”

“Looks like you messed up your ear, too.”

“Yeah.”

Both men sat down. Osborne checked something on the screen of his desktop computer and then looked at Bosch.

“So, what can I do for you, LAPD?” he asked.

“I don’t know if the guy behind the window explained anything, but I work cold case homicides,” Bosch said. “I’m working a quadruple case—four members of a family murdered with a nail gun and then buried in the desert.”

“That’s gotta hurt.”

Bosch did not acknowledge the poor attempt at gallows humor.

“The case is almost nine years old,” he said. “We recently reopened it and there’s a person of interest. We have a solid witness that puts him here, but that was at least six years ago.”

Osborne frowned.

“Six years in Key West is a long time,” he said. “This town turns over quick. People come and go. Why’d you ask for a missing persons dick?”