“Let me know how I can help. I’m not just the administrator here. I want to work cases. Especially this kind. Otherwise, I’ll just be babysitting the others.”

“Good to know.”

“I mean it.”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

They returned to the pod and each silently sat down at their respective workstations. Bosch took the stack of murder books from the Gallagher Family case and spread them out in front of him so he could see the labels on the front covers. He knew that volume 1 contained the investigative chronology, which would be the bible of the case, a multipage listing of the moves he had made during the original investigation—each entry noted by date and time with an addendum reference to any larger report written in follow-up.

He knew he would be working with the chrono now, getting his footing in the case again while also looking for any step that he had missed the first time or interpretation of the facts that bore rethinking. But what he first wanted was the 8 x 10 photo of Emma Gallagher in a plastic sleeve at the front of the book. He had put it there many years before so it would be unavoidable every time he and whoever might follow him on the case opened the first murder book to check the chrono.

He slipped the photo of the nine-year-old girl out of the sleeve. It was a school photo. She wore a green plaid jumper that announced Catholic school, and a smile that showed a second tooth just beginning to fill a gap in the bottom row. The photo made him sad. He had attended her autopsy and knew that the tooth never got the chance to come all the way in.

He pinned the photo with a tack on the half wall that separated his cubicle from the work space of Colleen Hatteras. As he leaned forward to do it, she looked over the partition.

“Detective Harry?” she asked.

“Don’t call me that,” Bosch said. “Just Harry is fine.”

“Harry, then. I just wanted to say, I didn’t want to upset you with what I said.”

“Don’t worry, you didn’t. Everything’s fine.”

“Well, then I just want to add that I don’t think you’ll find Finbar McShane. I don’t think he’s alive.”

Bosch looked at her for a long moment before responding.

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

“I can’t explain it,” Hatteras said. “I just get these feelings. Most of the time they’re true. Do you know for a fact he’s still alive?”

Bosch cut his eyes over the wall to Ballard’s station. She was sitting and looking at her computer screen, but Bosch could tell she was listening. He looked back at Hatteras.

“For a fact, no,” Bosch said. “The last confirmation that he was alive was three years after the murders.”

“What was it?” Hatteras asked.