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of the documents.
    “Done?”
    “Done.”
    “Now what?”
    “I figured that while you were finishing the book I’d go over to the ESB and pick up the box.”
    Bosch had no trouble remembering the meaning of what she said. He had slipped easily back into the world of acronyms and copspeak. The ESB was the Evidence Storage Building over at the Piper Tech compound. She would go there to pick up the physical evidence that would have been stored from the case. Items like the murder weapon, the victim’s clothing and anything else accumulated while the case was initially worked. It was usually stored in a taped cardboard box and put on a shelf. The exception to this was storage of perishable and biological evidence-such as the blood and tissue recovered from the Verloren murder weapon-which was stored in lab vaults in the Scientific Investigation Division.
    “Sounds like a good idea,” Bosch said. “But first why don’t you run this guy through DMV and NCIC and see if we can get a location?”
    “Already did that.”
    She turned her laptop around on her desk so Bosch could see the screen. He recognized the National Crime Index Computer template on the screen. He reached across and started scrolling down the screen, his eyes scanning the information.
    Rider had run Roland Mackey through NCIC and gotten his criminal record. His conviction two years earlier for lewd behavior was only the latest in a string of recorded arrests dating back to when he was eighteen-the same year as Rebecca Verloren’s murder. Anything prior would not be listed because juvenile protection laws shielded that part of his record. Most of the crimes listed were property and drug-related crimes, beginning with car theft and a burglary at eighteen and leading to two drug-possession raps, two driving under the influence arrests, another burglary charge and a receiving stolen property hit. There was also an early solicitation of prostitution arrest. Overall it was the pedigree of a small-time criminal and drug user. It appeared that Mackey never went to state prison for any of his crimes. He was often given second chances and then, through plea agreements, was sentenced to probation or to short stints in county jail. It appeared that the longest he ever stayed in stir was six months served after pleading guilty to receiving stolen property when he was twenty-eight years old. He served his time at the county-run Wayside Honor Rancho.
    Bosch leaned back after he was finished scrolling through the computer records. He felt uneasy about what he had just read. Mackey had the kind of record that might be seen as a pathway to murder. But in this case the murder came first-when Mackey was only eighteen years old-and the petty crimes came after. It didn’t seem to quite fit.
    “What?” Rider asked, sensing his mood.
    “I don’t know. I thought there’d be more, I guess. It’s backwards. This guy goes from murder to petty crime? Doesn’t seem to hold.”
    “Well, this is all he’s ever gotten popped for. Doesn’t mean it’s all he ever did.”
    He nodded.
    “Juvenile?” he asked.
    “Maybe. Probably. But we’ll never get those records now. They’re probably long gone.”
    It was true. The state went out of its way to protect the privacy of juvenile offenders. Crimes rarely tailed offenders into the adult justice system. Nevertheless, Bosch thought that there had to be childhood crimes that would fit better with the seemingly cold-blooded murder of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been incapacitated with a stun gun and abducted from her home. Bosch began to have an uneasy feeling about the cold hit they were working. He was beginning to sense that Mackey was not the target. He was a means to the target.
    “Did you run him through DMV for an address?” he asked.
    “Harry, that’s old-school. You only have to update your driver’s license every four years. You want to find somebody you go to AutoTrack.”
    She opened the murder book and slid a