Walsh stepped back and let Bosch enter. She looked the same as Bosch remembered her. Now pushing sixty, she had more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but she was still an attractive woman who looked like she ate about one meal a week. Her thin body, narrow shoulders, and big hair had not changed at all, confirming Bosch’s suspicions back in the day that it was a wig.

“Can I get you a coffee or a water or something?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Bosch said. “But we can sit in the kitchen if you want. I remember that was where we sat before.”

“Sure, let’s go back.”

She led him through a dining room—which was clearly being used as an office—to a kitchen that had a small round breakfast table with four chairs.

“Have a seat,” Walsh said. “Has Finbar McShane finally turned up?”

“Uh, no,” Bosch said. “In fact, that was going to be my first question to you. Have you heard any word about him recently? Anything at all?”

“Oh, no. If I had, I would have called you. But I thought you told me you were retiring the last time I saw you.”

“I was. I did. But now I’m back working cold cases and so … I’m looking into the Gallagher Family case again. And trying to find McShane.”

“Ah, I see. Well, if you ask me, he’s back in Belfast or somewhere over there.”

“Yeah, that’s the consensus, but I’m not so sure.”

Bosch looked past her and through a sliding door to the backyard. There was a deck and a small in-ground pool back there. A vegetable garden in long wooden planters had screened canopies over them to keep deer and coyotes and other animals out. The house was in Chatsworth, in the northwest corner of the Valley, and the wildlife came down out of the nearby hills at night. Beyond the planters he could see the rock outcroppings of Stony Point Park in the distance.

“I get stuck thinking about the break-in you had three years after the murders,” Bosch said. “It puzzles me. What was he looking for here?”

“Well, that’s a mystery that will last until you find him,” Walsh said. “Because I’m just as baffled as you are. I didn’t have anything of his. I didn’t know anything about the case beyond what I told the police.”

Bosch reached into the inside pocket of the sport coat he had put on after showering in the locker room at Ahmanson. He pulled out a document, unfolded it, and looked it over before speaking.

“This is the incident report,” he said. “Written before the fingerprints were identified as McShane’s. Says the burglar ate food out of the refrigerator, took a box of old record albums, then lifted money and an iPhone out of your purse.”

“That’s right,” Walsh said.