City of Bones (18 page)

Her use of the word “irony” made Bosch flash on what Antoine Jesper had said about coupling the bones found on the hill with the bones on the skateboard. He felt his body tensing as thoughts of the case started encroaching on what had been an oasis of respite from the investigation.

She sensed his tightness.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You got all tense all of a sudden.”

“The case, I guess.”

She was quiet a moment.

“I think it’s kind of amazing,” she then said. “Those bones being up there all of these years and then coming up out of the ground. Like a ghost or something.”

“It’s a city of bones. And all of them are waiting to come up.”

He paused.

“I don’t want to talk about Irving or the bones or the case or anything else right now.”

“Then what do you want?”

He didn’t answer. She turned to face him and started pushing him down off the pillows until he was flat on his back.

“How about a mature woman to smooth off all the hard edges again?”

It was impossible for Bosch not to smile.

23

B
EFORE dawn Bosch was on the road. He left Julia Brasher sleeping in her bed and started on his way to his home, after first stopping at Abbot’s Habit for a coffee to go. Venice was like a ghost town, with the tendrils of the morning fog moving across the streets. But as he got closer to Hollywood the lights of cars on the streets multiplied and Bosch was reminded that the city of bones was a twenty-four-hour city.

At home he showered and put on fresh clothes. He then climbed back into his car and went down the hill to Hollywood Division. It was 7:30 when he got there. Surprisingly, a number of detectives were already in place, chasing paperwork and cases. Edgar wasn’t among them. Bosch put his briefcase down and walked to the watch office to get coffee and to see if any citizen had brought in doughnuts. Almost every day a John Q who still kept the faith brought in doughnuts for the division. A little way of saying there were still those out there who knew or at least understood the difficulties of the job. Every day in every division cops put on the badge and tried to do their best in a place where the populace didn’t understand them, didn’t particularly like them and in many instances outright despised them. Bosch always thought it was amazing how far a box of doughnuts could go in undoing that.

He poured a cup and dropped a dollar in the basket. He took a sugar doughnut out of a box on the counter that had already been decimated by the patrol guys. No wonder. They were from Bob’s Donuts in the farmers’ market. He noticed Mankiewicz sitting at his desk, his dark eyebrows forming a deep V as he studied what looked like a deployment chart.

“Hey, Mank, I think we pulled a grade A lead off the call-in sheets. Thought you’d want to know.”

Mankiewicz answered without looking up.

“Good. Let me know when my guys can give it a rest. We’re going to be short on the desk the next few days.”

Bosch knew this meant he was juggling personnel. When there weren’t enough uniforms to put in cars—due to vacations, court appearances or sick-outs—the watch sergeant always pulled people off the desk and put them on wheels.

“You got it.”

Edgar still wasn’t at the table when Bosch got back to the detective squad room. Bosch put his coffee and doughnut down next to one of the Selectrics and went to get a search warrant application out of a community file drawer. For the next fifteen minutes he typed out an addendum to the search warrant he had already delivered to the records custodian at Queen of Angels. It asked for all records from the care of Arthur Delacroix circa 1975 to 1985.

When he was finished he took it to the fax machine and sent it to the office of Judge John A. Houghton, who had signed all the hospital search warrants the day before. He added a note requesting that the judge review the addendum application as soon as possible because it might lead to the positive identification of the bones and therefore swing the investigation into focus.

Bosch returned to the table and from a drawer pulled out the stack of missing person reports he had gathered while fiche-ing in the archives. He started looking through them quickly, glancing only at the box reserved for the name of the missing individual. In ten minutes he was finished. There had been no report in the stack about Arthur Delacroix. He didn’t know what this meant but he planned to ask the boy’s sister about it.

It was now eight o’clock and Bosch was ready to leave to visit the sister. But still no Edgar. Bosch ate the remainder of his doughnut and decided to give his partner ten minutes to show before he would leave on his own. He had worked with Edgar for more than ten years and still was bothered by his partner’s lack of punctuality. It was one thing to be late for dinner. It was another to be late for a case. He had always taken Edgar’s tardiness as a lack of commitment to their mission as homicide investigators.

His direct line rang and Bosch answered it with an annoyed rasp, expecting it to be Edgar announcing he was running late. But it wasn’t Edgar. It was Julia Brasher.

“So, you just leave a woman high and dry in bed, huh?”

Bosch smiled and his frustration with Edgar quickly drained away.

“I got a busy day here,” he said. “I had to get going.”

“I know but you could’ve said good-bye.”

Bosch saw Edgar making his way through the squad room. He wanted to get going before Edgar started his coffee, doughnut and sports-page ritual.

“Well, I’m saying good-bye now, okay? I’m in the middle of something here and I gotta run.”

“Harry . . .”

“What?”

“I thought you were going to hang up on me or something.”

“I’m not, but I gotta go. Look, come by before you go up for roll call, okay? I’ll probably be back by then.”

“All right. I’ll see you.”

Bosch hung up and stood up just as Edgar got to the homicide table and dropped the folded sports page at his spot.

“You ready?”

“Yeah, I was just going to get—”

“Let’s go. I don’t want to keep the lady waiting. And she’ll probably have coffee there.”

On the way out Bosch checked the incoming tray on the fax machine. His search warrant addendum had been signed and returned by Judge Houghton.

“We’re in business,” Bosch said to Edgar, showing him the warrant as they walked to the car. “See? You come in early, you get stuff done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Is that a crack on me?”

“It means what it means, I guess.”

“I just want some coffee.”

24

S
HEILA Delacroix lived in a part of the city called the Miracle Mile. It was a neighborhood south of Wilshire that wasn’t quite up to the standards of nearby Hancock Park but was lined with nicely kept homes and duplexes with modest stylistic adjustments to promote individuality.

Delacroix’s home was the second floor of a duplex with pseudo–Beaux Arts styling. She invited the detectives into her home in a friendly manner, but when the first question Edgar asked was about coffee, she said it was against her religion. She offered tea, and Edgar reluctantly accepted. Bosch passed. He wondered which religion outlawed coffee.

They took seats in the living room while the woman made Edgar his tea in the kitchen. She called out to them, saying she only had an hour and then had to leave for work.

“What is it you do?” Bosch asked as she came out with a mug of hot tea, the tag from the tea bag looped over the side. She put it down on a coaster on a side table next to Edgar. She was a tall woman. She was slightly overweight with blonde hair cut short. Bosch thought she wore too much makeup.

“I’m a casting agent,” she said as she took a seat on the couch. “Mostly independent films, some episodic television. I’m actually casting a cop show this week.”

Bosch watched Edgar sip some tea and make a face. He then held the mug so he could read the tea bag tag.

“It’s a blend,” Delacroix said. “Strawberry and Darjeeling. Do you like it?”

Edgar put the mug down on its coaster.

“It’s fine.”

“Ms. Delacroix? If you’re in the entertainment business, did you by any chance know Nicholas Trent?”

“Please, just call me Sheila. Now, that name, Nicholas Trent. It sounds familiar but I can’t quite place it. Is he an actor or is he in casting?”

“Neither. He’s the man who lived up on Wonderland. He was a set designer—I mean, decorator.”

“Oh, the one on TV, the man who killed himself. Oh, no wonder it was familiar.”

“So you didn’t know him from the business, then?”

“No, not at all.”

“Okay, well I shouldn’t have asked that. We’re out of order here. Let’s just start with your brother. Tell us about Arthur. Do you have a picture we can look at?”

“Yes,” she said, as she stood up and walked behind his chair. “Here he is.”

She went to a waist-high cabinet Bosch hadn’t noticed behind him. There were framed photos on it displayed in much the same way he had seen the photos on Julia Brasher’s mantel. Delacroix chose one and turned around and handed it to Bosch.

The frame contained a photo of a boy and a girl sitting on a set of stairs Bosch recognized as the stairs they had climbed before knocking on her door. The boy was much smaller than the girl. Both were smiling at the camera and had the smiles of children who have been told to smile—a lot of teeth but not a legitimately turned-up mouth.

Bosch handed the photo to Edgar and looked at Delacroix, who had returned to the couch.

“Those stairs . . . was that taken here?”

“Yes, this is the home we grew up in.”

“When he disappeared, it was from here?”

“Yes.”

“Are any of his belongings still here in the house?”

Delacroix smiled sadly and shook her head.

“No, it’s all gone. I gave his things to the charity rummage sale at church. That was a long time ago.”

“What church is that?”

“The Wilshire Church of Nature.”

Bosch just nodded.

“They’re the ones who don’t let you have coffee?” Edgar asked.

“Nothing with caffeine.”

Edgar put the framed photo down next to his tea.

“Do you have any other photos of him?” he asked.

“Of course, I have a box of old photos.”

“Can we look at those? You know, while we talk.”

Delacroix’s eyebrows came together in confusion.

“Sheila,” Bosch said. “We found some clothing with the remains. We would like to look at the photos to see if any of it matches. It will help the investigation.”

She nodded.

“I see. Well, then I’ll be right back. I just need to go to the closet in the hallway.”

“Do you need help?”

“No, I can manage.”

After she was gone Edgar leaned over to Bosch and whispered, “This Church of Nature tea tastes like piss water.”

Bosch whispered back, “How would you know what piss water tastes like?”

The skin around Edgar’s eyes drew tight with embarrassment as he realized he had walked into that one. Before he could muster a response Sheila Delacroix came back into the room carrying an old shoe box. She put it down on the coffee table and removed the lid. The box was filled with loose photographs.

“These aren’t in any order or anything. But he should be in a lot of them.”

Bosch nodded to Edgar, who reached into the box for the first stack of photos.

“While my partner looks through these, why don’t you tell me about your brother and when he disappeared?”

Sheila nodded and composed her thoughts before beginning.

“May fourth, nineteen eighty. He didn’t come home from school. That’s it. That’s all. We thought he had run away. You said you found clothes with the remains. Well, my father looked in his drawers and said that Arthur had taken clothes. That was what made us think he had run away.”

Bosch wrote a few notes down in a notebook he had pulled from his coat pocket.

“You mentioned that he had been injured a few months before on a skateboard.”

“Yes, he hit his head and they had to operate.”

“When he disappeared, did he take his skateboard?”

She thought about this for a long moment.

“It was so long ago . . . all I know is that he loved that board. So I think he probably took it. But I just remember the clothes. My father found some of his clothes missing.”

“Did you report him missing?”

“I was sixteen years old at the time, so I didn’t do anything. My father talked to the police though. I’m sure of it.”

“I couldn’t find any record of Arthur being reported missing. Are you sure he reported him missing?”

“I drove with him to the police station.”

“Was it Wilshire Division?”

“I would assume but I don’t really remember.”

“Sheila, where is your father? Is he still alive?”

“He’s alive. He lives in the Valley. But he’s not well these days.”

“Where in the Valley?”

“Van Nuys. In the Manchester Trailer Park.”

There was silence while Bosch wrote the information down. He had been to the Manchester Trailer Park before on investigations. It wasn’t a pleasant place to live.

“He drinks . . .”

Bosch looked at her.

“Ever since Arthur . . .”

Bosch nodded that he understood. Edgar leaned forward and handed him a photograph. It was a yellowed 3 × 5. It showed a young boy, his arms raised in an effort to maintain balance, gliding on the sidewalk on a skateboard. The angle of the photograph showed little of the skateboard other than its profile. Bosch could not tell if it carried a bone design on it or not.

“Can’t see much there,” he said as he started to hand the photo back.

“No, the clothes—the shirt.”

Bosch looked at the photo again. Edgar was right. The boy in the photo wore a gray T-shirt with SOLID SURF printed across the chest.

Bosch showed the photo to Sheila.

“This is your brother, right?”

She leaned forward to look at the photo.

“Yes, definitely.”

“That shirt he is wearing, do you remember if it is one of the pieces of clothing your father found missing?”