Free Switchblade: An Original Story by Michael Connelly Page B

identification of the victim had been confirmed.
    02/10/92 additional—victim ID through fingerprints
    William Ratliff—dob 7/14/73
    multiple 646(b) 92-94
    SID 94-00064 (prints, clothing, knife, tape)
    No suspects at this time
    The second entry meant that the nineteen-year-old victim had been identified through fingerprints that matched those taken during multiple arrests for prostitution and soliciting. It also mentioned that the Scientific Investigation Division was processing all evidence from the crime scene. The shorthand on the entry indicated this included all collected fingerprints, the victim’s clothing, a switchblade knife that may have been the murder weapon, and the tape that had been used to bind him.
    “What do you think?”
    Bosch looked up at Emily, who was still standing next to his cubicle.
    “Well,” he said. “I remember this case and—”
    “You were a detective in ’92?”
    There was genuine surprise in her voice.
    “It was only twenty years ago,” he said, smiling. “I actually was on the homicide table at Hollywood Division and worked with these guys, Rodgers and Quinlan. But it wasn’t my case, and that’s not why I remember it. What I meant was that I remember reviewing this case when I was transferred to this unit and ’92 became one of my years. I looked through all the open cases from that year. There were a lot. We had the riots that year. Anyway, I looked at this one and I don’t remember there being any workable leads. I don’t remember this name—Patrick Sewell—being in the file.”
    “Okay. Is there anything you can do with it?”
    Bosch shrugged.
    “I’ll follow up, see if I can find out who this guy Patrick Sewell is and go from there.”
    “Okay.”
    “Meantime, if the anonymous tipster calls you again, try to get him to me. Tell him a detective needs to talk to him.”
    “Okay, I will.”
    “Thanks, Emily. You have a good day.”
    “You too, Harry.”
    Bosch smiled because she had used his first name.
      
    The evidence box from archives took three days to get to Bosch after he formally made the request. By then he had already pulled the murder book from the Records Division and reviewed the case again. Billy Ratliff was a homeless kid who ended up on the streets of Hollywood at age fifteen. He was small in stature with blond hair and a toothy smile. He fell in with a group of fellow runaways who squatted in abandoned apartments and buildings and sometimes lived in city parks and homeless shelters. They were drug users and panhandlers and prostitutes. Billy was known to engage in all three activities and was in and out of juvenile halls and then jails after he turned eighteen. He always came back to the boulevard and the so-called “rat pack” in which he eventually served, as the oldest, in the capacity of alpha male.
    The investigative theory contained in the murder book was that Billy’s street life took a fatal turn when he crossed paths with a psychopath who took him into the kitchen of a closed restaurant for an exchange of sex for money or drugs. According to the autopsy report, Ratliff was stabbed seven times in the chest and torso with a rage and ferocity that were evidenced by indentations in the wounds made by the hilt of the killer’s knife. The murder was classified as a hate crime because a psychological profile of the killing drawn up by a department shrink concluded that it was likely motivated by homophobic rage.
    No next-of-kin notification was ever made in the case. Members of the rat pack provided little investigative help about the crime and were not even sure where Ratliff was from, though records at a youth shelter called My Friend’s Place had a file on Ratliff that said he was from Long Beach. Rodgers and Quinlan could never locate anyone from Billy Ratliff’s family. Nobody claimed his body and it was cremated at taxpayers’ expense.
    Nowhere in the murder book did Bosch find the name Patrick Sewell. It never came up in