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keep that in mind. So tell me what you found out over there. Who’d you talk to?”
    “The office manager.”
    “And what did he say?”
    “It’s a lady. She said that he came in through the back door shortly after ten. All the sales agents park in the back and use the back door—that’s why nobody saw the kid. The father came in talking on the cell phone. Then he got off and asked if he’d gotten a fax but there was no fax. So he made another call and she heard him ask where the fax was. Then he waited for the fax.”
    “How long did he wait?”
    “She said not long but the fax was an offer to buy. So he called the client and that started a whole back-and-forth with calls and faxes and he completely forgot about the kid. It was at least two hours, Harry. Two hours!”
    Bosch could almost share his partner’s anger, but he had been on the mission a couple decades longer than Ferras and knew how to hold it in when he had to and when to let it go.
    “Harry, something else, too.”
    “What?”
    “The baby had something wrong with him.”
    “The manager saw the kid?”
    “No, I mean, always. Since birth. She said it was a big tragedy. The kid was handicapped. Blind, deaf, a bunch of things wrong. Fifteen months old and he couldn’t walk or talk and never could even crawl. He just cried a lot.”
    Bosch nodded as he tried to plug this information into everything else he knew and had accumulated. Just then another car came speeding into the parking lot. It pulled into the ambulance shoot in front of the ER doors. A woman leaped out and ran into the ER, leaving the car running and the door open.
    “That’s probably the mother,” Bosch said. “We better get in there.”
    Bosch started trotting toward the ER doors and Ferras followed. They went through the ER waiting room and down a hallway where the father had been placed in a private room to wait.
    As Bosch got close he did not hear any screaming or crying or fists on flesh—things that wouldn’t have surprised him. The door was open and when he turned in he saw the parents of the dead boy embracing each other, but not a tear lined any of their cheeks. Bosch’s initial, split-second reaction was that he was seeing relief in their young faces.
    They separated when they saw Bosch enter, followed by Ferras.
    “Mr. and Mrs. Helton?” he asked.
    They nodded in unison. But the man corrected Bosch.
    “I’m Stephen Helton and this is my wife, Arlene Haddon.”
    “I’m Detective Bosch with the Los Angeles Police Department and this is my partner, Detective Ferras. We are very sorry for the loss of your son. It is our job now to investigate William’s death and to learn exactly what happened to him.”
    Helton nodded as his wife stepped close to him and put her face into his chest. Something silent was transmitted.
    “Does this have to be done now?” Helton asked. “We’ve just lost our beautiful little—”
    “Yes, sir, it has to be done now. This is a homicide investigation.”
    “It was an accident,” Helton weakly protested. “It’s all my fault but it was an accident.”
    “It’s still a homicide investigation. We would like to speak to each of you privately, without the intrusions that will occur here. Do you mind coming down to the police station to be interviewed?”
    “We’ll leave him here?”
    “The hospital is making arrangements for your son’s body to be moved to the medical examiner’s office.”
    “They’re going to cut him open?” the mother asked in a near-hysterical voice.
    “They will examine his body and then determine if an autopsy is necessary,” Bosch said. “It is required by law that any untimely death fall under the jurisdiction of the medical examiner.”
    He waited to see if there was further protest. When there wasn’t, he stepped back and gestured for them to leave the room.
    “We’ll drive you down to Parker Center and I promise to make this as painless as possible.”
    They placed the grieving parents in