It seemed to Bosch that Henrik’s reference to vaction and th story was not necessarily a reference to the riots. Henrik could have been saying that his sister had come to the United States to pursue a story and had diverted from that to the riots in Los Angeles.

It was all semantics and conjecture until Bosch actually talked to Henrik directly. He looked up at the wall clock and did some calculating. It was shortly after 4 P.M. in Copenhagen. He had a good chance of catching Henrik at the hotel.

His call was answered right away by a front-desk clerk who told him that he had missed Henrik, who had just gone home for the day. Bosch left his name and number but no message. After hanging up he sent an email to Henrik asking him to call as soon as possible, day or night.

Bosch pulled the case records out of his battered briefcase and started a fresh read-through, this time with everything filtered through a new hypothesis—that Anneke Jespersen was already working a story when she came to the United States.

Soon things started to fall into place. Jespersen had packed light because she wasn’t on vacation. She was working and she brought work clothes. One backpack and that was it. So she could travel quickly and easily. So she could keep moving, chasing the story—whatever the story was.

Tilting the angle brought to light other things he had missed. Jespersen was a photographer and journalist. She shot stories. She wrote stories. But no notebook was found with the body or among the belongings from her motel room. If she was on a story, shouldn’t there be notes? Shouldn’t there be a notebook in one of the pockets of her vest or in her backpack?

“What else?” Bosch said out loud, then looked around the squad room to make sure he was still alone.

What else was missing? What should she have been carrying? Bosch carried out a mental exercise. He envisioned himself in a motel room. He was leaving, pulling the door locked behind him. What would he have in his pockets?

He thought about this for a while and then something came to him. He quickly turned pages in the file until he found the coroner’s property list. It was a handwritten list of all items found on the body or in the victim’s clothing. It listed the clothing items as well as a wallet, loose money, and jewelry consisting of a watch and a modest silver neck chain.

“No room key,” he said aloud.

This meant one of two things to Bosch. One was that she had left her room key in her rental car and it had been taken when the car was broken into. The other, more likely conclusion was that someone had murdered Jespersen and taken her motel room key from her pocket.

He double-checked the list and then went to the plastic sleeves containing the Polaroid photos he had taken himself twenty years before. The faded photos showed various angles of the crime scene, the body as it had been found. Two of the shots were close-ups of the torso and clearly showed the victim’s pants. The top of the left pocket showed the white lining. Bosch had no doubt that the pocket had been pulled out when someone had rifled the victim’s pockets and taken her motel-room key while leaving behind jewelry and cash.