“So,” Bosch said. “You’ve had a night to sleep on it. What do you think about Beecher?”

“Well, I really don’t like being unable to confirm his story,” Ballard said. “But he wasn’t going to give up Mr. X and we had no leverage to make him.”

“What’s your gut say?”

“My gut says it’s a true story. And I have to tell you, I went down an internet rabbit hole last night, trying to check associations and crossing points between Harmon Harris and people in the business on the level that Beecher was talking about.”

“Are you going to tell me Brad Pitt is gay?”

“No, I’m going to tell you I wasted two hours that I could have used for sleep. I came up with nothing and nobody I could even hazard a guess at. What’s your gut say?”

“To quote Beecher, I think we’re barking up the wrong tree. We needed to do it, due diligence and all of that, but I don’t see Harmon Harris doing this and I think Beecher was believable.”

“Then we’re done with it. We move on.”

They got to the Ahmanson Center by eight o’clock and were the first members of the OU Unit to arrive at the pod. After a stop at the break room, they took their coffees into the interview room and closed the door so they could talk to Darcy Troy in private.

“Think Colleen’s going to come in today?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t care, as long as she keeps her hands off the property boxes.”

Ballard made the call on her cell and put it on speaker. Troy picked up right away.

“Hey, Renée,” she said.

“Darcy,” Ballard said. “Thanks for running with this. I’m here with Harry Bosch, who is one of the cold case investigators working with me.”

“Hi, Harry,” Troy said.

“Hello,” Bosch said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Troy said. “It was many years ago, when I first came on in the DNA lab.”

“Oh, okay,” Bosch said, slightly embarrassed. “Then good to meet you again.”

“So, you have an update for us?” Ballard asked.

“I do,” Troy said. “I would term this preliminary because there’s more we can do, but I knew you were moving quickly, so let me tell you what we’ve got right now. As you know, they really didn’t do much with this when the case first came in, what, seventeen years ago. But there was enough of the sample stored here to allow for further analysis.”

“We got lucky,” Ballard said.