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indicates that these were women who were never found and possibly never reported missing in the first place,” O’Shea said. “Waits is willing to lead us to them but there is no prep work we can do for them.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Any other questions?” O’Shea asked, signaling that the meeting was over.
    “We’ll let you know,” Bosch said.
    “I know I am repeating myself but I feel I need to,” O’Shea said. “This investigation is all off the record. That file is a proffer that is part of a plea negotiation. Nothing in that file or anything that he tells you can ever be used to make a case against him. If this falls apart, then you will not be able to use the information to pursue him. Is that clearly understood?”
    Bosch didn’t answer.
    “It’s clear,” Rider said.
    “There is one exception that I have negotiated. If he lies, if you catch him at any time in a lie or if any piece of information he gives you during this process proves to be knowingly false, all bets are off and we can go after him for all of it. He has been made quite aware of this, too.”
    Bosch nodded. He stood up. Rider did, too.
    “Do you need me to call someone to free you two up?” O’Shea asked. “I can flex a muscle if needed.”
    Rider shook her head.
    “I don’t think so,” she said. “Harry was already working the Gesto case. The seven women might be unknown victims but there’s got to be a file in Archives on the man in the pawnshop. It all cuts Open-Unsolved in. We can handle our supervisor.”
    “Okay, then. As soon as I have the interview set up I will call. Meantime, all of my numbers are in the file. Freddy’s, too.”
    Bosch nodded to O’Shea and threw a glance at Olivas before turning to the door.
    “Detectives?” O’Shea said.
    Bosch and Rider turned back to him. He was standing now. He wanted to shake their hands.
    “I am hoping you are on my side on this,” O’Shea said.
    Bosch shook his hand, unsure whether O’Shea was talking about the case or the election.
    He said, “If Waits can help me bring Marie Gesto home to her parents, then I’m on your side.”
    It wasn’t a completely accurate summation of his feelings, but it got him out of the office.

3

    BACK AT OPEN-UNSOLVED they sat in their supervisor’s office and brought him up to date on the day’s developments. Abel Pratt was four weeks away from retirement after twenty-five years on the job. He was attentive to them but not overly so. On the side of his desk was a stack of Fodor’s guidebooks for Caribbean islands. His plan was to pull the pin, leave the city and find an island to live on with his family. It was a common retirement dream among law enforcement officers—to pull back from all the darkness witnessed for so long on the job. The reality, however, was that after about six months on the beach the island got pretty boring.
    A detective three from RHD named David Lambkin was set to be the squad’s top after Pratt split. He was a nationally recognized sex crimes expert chosen for the job because so many of the cold cases they were working in the unit were sexually motivated. Bosch was looking forward to working with him and would have liked to be briefing him instead of Pratt but the timing was off.
    They went with who they had, and one of the positive things about Pratt was that he was going to give them free rein until he was out the door. He just didn’t want any waves, no blowback in his face. He wanted a quiet, uneventful last month on the job.
    Like most cops with twenty-five years in the department, Pratt was a throwback. He was old school. He preferred working on a typewriter over a computer. Rolled halfway up in the IBM Selectric next to his desk was a letter he had been working on when Bosch and Rider stepped in. Bosch had grabbed a quick glance at it while he was sitting down and saw it was a letter to a casino in the Bahamas. Pratt was trying to line up a security gig in paradise, and that about said it all when