The second section was more like a family photo album, with shots of Anneke starting from when she was a skinny little girl with white-blond hair. Bosch moved through these quickly until he came to a series of photographs that Anneke had taken herself. These were all shot in front of different mirrors over several years. Jespersen posed with her camera on a strap around her neck, holding it at chest level and shooting without looking through the viewfinder. Taken together, Bosch could see the progression of time in her face. She remained beautiful from image to image, but he could see the wisdom deepening in her eyes.

In the last photos it was as if she was staring directly and only at Bosch. He found it hard to break away from her stare.

The site had a comments section, and Bosch opened it to find that a flurry of comments beginning in 1996, when the website was constructed, tapered over the years to just one in the past year. The poster was her brother, who built and maintained the site. So that he could read the comment in English, Bosch copied his comment into the Internet translator he had been using.

Anneke, time does not erase the loss of you. We miss you as a sister, artist, friend. Always.

With those sentiments, Bosch clicked out of the website and closed his laptop. He was finished for the night, and though his efforts had brought him closer to Anneke Jespersen, they did not in the end give him insight into what had sent her to the United States a year after Desert Storm. It gave him no clue to why she had come to Los Angeles. There was no story on war crimes, nothing that appeared to warrant follow-up, let alone a trip to Los Angeles. Whatever it was that Anneke was chasing, it remained hidden from him.

Harry looked at his watch. The time had flown. It was after eleven and he had an early start in the morning. The disc had ended and the music had stopped, but he hadn’t noticed when. His daughter had fallen asleep on the couch with her book and he had to decide whether to wake her to go to bed or just cover her with a blanket and leave her undisturbed.

Bosch stood up and his hamstrings protested as he stretched. He took the pizza box off the coffee table and, limping, walked it slowly into the kitchen, where he put it on top of the trash can to take out later. He looked down at the box and silently chastised himself for once again putting his work ahead of his daughter’s proper nutrition.

When he came back out to the living room Madeline was sitting up on the couch, still half asleep, holding a hand in front of a yawn.

“Hey, it’s late,” he said. “Time for bed.”

“No, duh.”

“Come on, I’ll walk you in.”