Bosch left in darkness Monday morning. It was at least a five-hour drive to Modesto, and he didn’t want to waste the day just getting there. He had rented a Crown Victoria from Hertz at the airport in Burbank the night before because LAPD regulations didn’t allow him to use his department car while on vacation. Normally that would be one of the rules Bosch would bend, but with O’Toole checking his every move these days, he decided to play it safe. He did, however, bring the mobile strobe light from the work car and transfer his equipment boxes from trunk to trunk. There were no regulations about that, as far as he knew. With the rented Crown Vic he would look the part if he needed to.

Modesto was pretty much a straight shot north from Los Angeles. Bosch took I-5 out of the city and up over the Grapevine before splitting off on California 99, which would take him through Bakersfield and Fresno on the way. As he drove, he continued through the catalog of Art Pepper’s music that Maddie had given him. He was now up to volume five, which was a concert that happened to be recorded in Stuttgart in 1981. It contained a kick-ass version of Pepper’s signature song “Straight Life,” but it was the soulful “Over the Rainbow” that made Bosch hit the replay button on the dash.

He got to Bakersfield during the morning rush hour and dropped below sixty miles per hour for the first time. He decided to wait out the traffic and pulled over for breakfast at a place called the Knotty Pine Cafe. He knew of it because it was just a few blocks from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, where he had had business on occasion over the years.

After he ordered eggs, bacon, and coffee, he unfolded the map he had printed Saturday on two sheets of paper and then taped together. The map showed the forty-mile stretch of the Central Valley that had become important to the Anneke Jespersen case. All the points he had marked hugged CA-99, beginning with Modesto at the south end and moving north through Ripon, Manteca, then Stockton.

What was noteworthy to Bosch was that the map he had taped together stretched across two counties, Stanislaus to the south and San Joaquin to the north. Modesto and Salida were in Stanislaus County, where Sheriff Drummond held power and jurisdiction. But Manteca and Stockton fell under the jurisdiction of the sheriff of San Joaquin County. To Bosch it seemed no wonder that Reggie Banks, who lived in Manteca, preferred to do his drinking down in Modesto. Same, too, with Francis Dowler.