The Overlook

which only alarmed him further. Finally, he went out and did what the e-mail instructed him to do. But for all his efforts and following of orders, they still killed him on the overlook.
    “So, what went wrong?” he asked out loud.
    “What do you mean, Harry?”
    “Up at the overlook. I still don’t understand why they killed him. He did what they wanted. He turned over the stuff. What went wrong?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe they killed him because he saw one of their faces.”
    “The witness says the shooter was wearing a mask.”
    “Well, then maybe nothing went wrong. Maybe the plan was to kill him all along. They made that silencer, remember? And the way the guy yells out
Allah
doesn’t make it sound like something went wrong. Makes it sound like part of a plan.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Then if that was the plan, why kill him and not her? Why leave a witness?”
    “I don’t know, Harry. But don’t those hardcore Muslims have a rule about hurting women? Like it keeps them out of nirvana or heaven or whatever they call it?”
    Bosch didn’t answer the question because he didn’t know about the cultural practices his partner had crudely referred to. But the question underlined for him how out of his element he was on the case. He was used to chasing killers motivated by greed or lust or any one of the big seven sins. Religious extremism wasn’t often on the list.
    Ferras put the BlackBerry down and turned back to his computer. Like many detectives he preferred to use his own laptop because the computers provided by the department were old and slow and most of them carried more viruses than a Hollywood Boulevard hooker.
    He saved what he had been working on and opened up his e-mail screen. The e-mail forwarded from Kent ’s account was there. Ferras opened the e-mail and whistled when he saw the embedded photograph of Alicia Kent naked and tied up on the bed.
    “Yeah, that would do it,” he said.
    Meaning that he understood why Kent had turned over the cesium. Ferras had been married for less than a year and had a baby on the way. Bosch was just starting to get to know his young partner but knew already that he was deeply in love with his wife. Under the glass top of his desk Ferras had a collage of photos of his bride. Under the glass on his side of the work-station Bosch had photos of murder victims whose killers he was still looking for.
    “Make me a printout of that,” Bosch said. “Blow it up if you can. And go ahead and keep playing with that phone. See what else you can find.”
    Bosch went back to his side of the workstation and sat down. Ferras enlarged and printed out the e-mail and photo on a color printer located at the back of the squad room. He went over and retrieved it and then brought it to Bosch.
    Bosch already had his reading glasses on but from a desk drawer he pulled a rectangular magnifying glass he’d bought when he noticed that his prescription was no longer strong enough for the close-up work. He never used the magnifying glass when the squad room was crowded with detectives. He didn’t want to give the others something to ridicule him with-either in jest or not.
    He put the printout down on his desk and leaned over it with the magnifier. He first studied the bindings that held the woman’s limbs behind her torso. The intruders had used six snap ties, placing one loop around each wrist and ankle, then one to link the ankles and the last one to link the wrist loops to the loop connecting the ankles.
    It seemed like an overly complicated way to bind the woman’s extremities. It was not the way Bosch would have done it if he were trying to quickly hog-tie a perhaps struggling woman. He would have used fewer bindings and made the work easier and quicker.
    He wasn’t sure what this meant or if it meant anything at all. Perhaps Alicia Kent hadn’t struggled at all and in return for her cooperation her captors used the extra links in order to make the time she was left bound on the bed less difficult. It seemed to Bosch that the way she had been bound meant that her arms and legs were not pulled behind her as far as they could have been.
    Still, remembering the bruising on Alicia Kent’s wrists, he realized that no matter what, the time she had spent hog-tied naked on the bed had not been easy. He decided that the only thing he knew for sure from studying the photo was that he needed to talk with Alicia Kent again and go over what had happened in more exacting detail.
    On a