Angels Flight

him to determine if the same hand had printed both lines. He was no expert and there were no obvious anomalies in the printing to make a comparison easy.
    When Bosch took his hand off the printout, its top and bottom edges rose an inch off the desk, telling him that at one time the page had been folded top and bottom, as if to be placed in an envelope.
    “I think this is the first note,” he said.
    Bosch had often found that when he made a logic breakthrough it was like clearing a clog in a drain. The pipe was open and other breaks soon came. It happened now. He saw what he could have and maybe should have seen all along.
    “Jerry, call Elias’s secretary. Right now. Ask her if he had a color printer in the office. We should have seen this – I should have seen it.”
    “Seen what?”
    “Just make the call.”
    Edgar started looking through a notebook for a phone number. Rider got up from her spot and came around next to Bosch. She looked down at the printout. She was now riding on Bosch’s wave. She saw where he was going.
    “This was the first one,” Bosch said. “Only he didn’t keep the envelope because he probably thought it was crank mail.”
    “But it probably was,” Edgar said, the phone to his ear. “We were there, the woman didn’t know the man and didn’t know what the hell we – ”
    He stopped and listened when his line was picked up.
    “Mrs. Quimby? It is Detective Edgar from yesterday? I have one quick question for you. Do you know if there was a color printer in the office? A printer that could print out stuff from one of the computers. In color.”
    He waited and listened, his eyes on Bosch and Rider.
    “Thank you, Mrs. Quimby.”
    He hung up.
    “No color printer.”
    Bosch nodded and looked down at the printout of Mistress Regina.
    “We should have picked up on this yesterday,” Rider said.
    Bosch nodded and started to ask Edgar if he had contacted Pelfry, the private investigator, when his pager went off. He cut it off and pulled it off his belt. It was his home number. Eleanor.
    “Yeah, I talked to him,” Edgar said. “He’ll meet us at noon at his office. I didn’t mention anything about receipts or this Regina. I just said we needed to talk.”
    “Okay.”
    Bosch picked up his phone and punched in his home number. Eleanor answered after three rings. She sounded either sleepy or sad.
    “Eleanor.”
    “Harry.”
    “Everything all right?”
    He slid back into his seat and Rider went back to hers.
    “I’m fine… I just…”
    “When did you get in?”
    “A little while ago.”
    “Did you win?”
    “I didn’t really play. After you called me there last night… I left.”
    Bosch leaned forward and put an elbow on the table, a hand against his forehead.
    “Well… where’d you go?”
    “A hotel… Harry, I just came back for some clothes and things. I…”
    “Eleanor?”
    There was a long silence on the phone. Bosch heard Edgar say he was going to get some coffee in the watch office. Rider said she’d go along, even though Bosch knew she didn’t drink coffee. She had an assortment of herbal teas she kept in the drawer of her desk.
    “Harry, it’s not right,” Eleanor said.
    “What are you talking about, Eleanor?”
    Another long moment of silence went by before she answered.
    “I was thinking about that movie we saw last year. About the Titanic.”
    “I remember.”
    “And the girl in that. She fell in love with that boy, that she only met right there on the boat. And it was… I mean, she loved him so much. So much that at the end she wouldn’t leave. She didn’t take the lifeboat so she would be with him.”
    “I remember, Eleanor.”
    He remembered her crying in the seat next to him and his smiling and not being able to understand how a film would affect her in such a way.
    “You cried.”
    “Yes. It’s because everybody wants that kind of love. And, Harry, you deserve that from me. I – ”
    “No, Eleanor, what you give me is more than – ”
    “She jumped from a lifeboat back onto the Titanic, Harry.” She laughed a little bit. But it sounded sad to Bosch. “I guess nobody can ever top that.”
    “You’re right. Nobody can. That’s why it was a movie. Listen… you are all I’ve ever wanted, Eleanor. You don’t have to do anything for me.”
    “Yes, I do. I do… I love you, Harry. But not enough. You deserve better.”
    “Eleanor, no… please. I…”
    “I’m going to go away for a while. Think about things.”
    “Will