The Closers

was asleep.
    Bosch got up and started pacing as he worked it through again. In the photo taken after the abduction and murder, the bed clearly showed the possibility of entrance and exit. Rebecca’s killer could have been waiting right below her as she fell asleep.
    “In and out,” Bosch said again.
    He worked it further. He knew that no readable fingerprints had been recovered at the house. But only obvious surfaces had been checked. This did not necessarily mean the killer had worn gloves. It only meant he was smart enough not to touch obvious places with his bare hands, or smudged the prints when he needed to. Even if gloves had been worn during the entry to the house, might not the killer have removed them while waiting-possibly for hours-under the bed?
    It was worth a shot. Bosch went to the kitchen and called SID and asked for Raj Patel.
    “Raj, what are you doing?”
    “I am cataloging the evidence we gathered last night on the freeway.”
    “I need your best latents man to meet me back up there in Chatsworth.”
    “Now?”
    “Right now, Raj. I might not even have a job later. We have to do this now.”
    “What is it we are to do?”
    “I want to lift a bed and look underneath it. It’s important, Raj. If we find something, it will lead us to the killer.”
    There was a short silence and then Patel replied.
    “I am my best latents man, Harry. Give me the address.”
    “Thanks, Raj.”
    He gave Patel the address and then hung up the phone. He drummed his fingers on the counter, wondering if he should call Kiz Rider. She had been so distressed and discouraged as they had walked out of Parker Center that she said all she wanted to do was go home to sleep. Should he wake her for the second day in a row? He knew that wasn’t really the question. The question was whether he should wait to see if there was anything beneath the bed before telling her and getting her hopes up.
    He decided to hold off on the call until there was something solid to tell her. Instead he picked up the phone and woke up Muriel Verloren. He told her he was on his way.

36
    BOSCH GOT TO THE SQUAD meeting at the Pacific Dining Car late because of traffic coming in from the Valley. Everyone was in a private area in the back of the restaurant. Most of them already had plates of food in front of them.
    His excitement must have showed. Pratt interrupted a report from Tim Marcia to look at Bosch and say, “You either got lucky during the time you had off or you just don’t care about the deep shit we’re in here.”
    “I got lucky,” Bosch said as he took the only empty chair and sat down. “But not in the way you mean. Raj Patel just pulled a palm print and two fingers off a wood slat that was beneath Rebecca Verloren’s bed.”
    “That’s good,” Pratt said dryly. “What’s it mean?”
    “It means that as soon as Raj runs it through the database we might have our killer.”
    “How so?” Rider asked.
    Bosch had never called her. He could already feel a hostile vibe from her.
    “I didn’t want to wake you up,” Bosch said to her. Then to the others, he said, “I was looking through the original latents report in the murder book. I realized that they went in there for prints the day after the girl’s body was found. They never went back after it became a strong possibility that the abductor had come into the house earlier in the day when the garage was left open and hid somewhere until everybody was asleep.”
    “So why the bed?” Pratt asked.
    “The crime scene photos showed the ruffle at the foot of the bed had been pushed in. Like somebody had crawled underneath. They missed it because they weren’t looking for it.”
    “Good work, Harry,” Pratt said. “If Raj gets a hit we change directions and move with it. All right, let’s get back to our reports. You can check with your partner on what you’ve missed so far.”
    Pratt then turned to Robinson and Nord at the other end of the long table and said, “What did you come up with on the call for the tow truck?”
    “Not a lot that helps,” Nord said. “Because the call was made after we had switched our monitoring to the line at the Burkhart property, we don’t have an audio recording of it. But we do have the pen registers and they show that the call came directly to Tampa Towing before being bounced over to the Triple A answering service. The call came from a pay phone outside the Seven-Eleven on Tampa by the freeway entrance. He probably made the