City of Bones

by Michael Connelly

  “You think he had help? The daughter maybe?”

  “Maybe he had help and maybe he was never there. I don’t know. We talked to the daughter tonight and she won’t come across on the father. Won’t say a word. So you start to think, maybe it was the two of them. But then, no. If she was involved, why would she call us and give us the ID on the bones? Doesn’t make sense.”

  Billets didn’t respond. Bosch looked at his watch and saw it was eleven o’clock. He wanted to watch the news. He used the remote to turn off the VCR and put the TV on Channel 4.

  “You got the news on?” he asked Billets.

  “Yes. Four.”

  It was the lead story—father kills son and then buries the body, arrested twenty-some years later because of a dog. A perfect L.A. story. Bosch watched silently and so did Billets on her end. The report by Judy Surtain had no inaccuracies that Bosch picked up on. He was surprised.

  “Not bad,” he said when it was over. “They finally get it right.”

  He muted the television again just as the anchor segued to the next story. He was silent for a moment as he watched the television. The story was about the human bones found at the La Brea Tar Pits. Golliher was shown at a press conference, standing in front of a cluster of microphones.

  “Harry, come on,” Billets said. “What else is bugging you? There’s got to be more than just your feeling that he couldn’t have done it. And as far as the daughter goes, it doesn’t bug me that she made the call with the ID. She saw it on the news, right? The story about Trent. Maybe she thought she could just pin it on Trent. After twenty years of worrying, she had a way to put it on somebody else.”

  Bosch shook his head, though he knew she could not see this. He just didn’t think Sheila would call the tip line if she had been involved in her brother’s death.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t really work for me.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going through everything now. I’ll start over.”

  “When’s the arraignment, tomorrow?”

  “Yup.”

  “You don’t have enough time, Harry.”

  “I know. But I’m doing it. I already picked up a contradiction I didn’t see before.”

  “What?”

  “Delacroix said he killed Arthur in the morning after he discovered the boy hadn’t gone to school. When we interviewed the daughter the first time, she said Arthur didn’t come home from school. There’s a difference there.”

  Billets made a chortling sound in the phone.

  “Harry, that’s minor. It’s been more than twenty years and he’s a drunk. I assume you are going to check the school’s records?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Then you get it ironed out then. But how would the sister know for sure whether he went to school or not? All she knows is that he wasn’t home afterward. You’re not convincing me of anything.”

  “I know. I’m not trying to. I’m just telling you about the things I’m looking at.”

  “Did you guys find anything when you searched his trailer?”

  “We didn’t search it yet. He started talking almost as soon as we got in there. We’re going tomorrow after the arraignment.”

  “What’s the window on the warrant?”

  “Forty-eight hours. We’re all right.”

  Talking about the trailer made Bosch suddenly remember Delacroix’s cat. They had gotten so involved in the suspect’s confession that Bosch had forgotten to make arrangements for the animal.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I forgot about the guy’s cat. Delacroix has a cat. I said I’d get a neighbor to take care of it.”

  “Should’ve called Animal Control.”

  “He was on to us about that. Hey, you have cats, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not taking in this guy’s.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I just want to know, like, how long do they last without food and some water?”

  “You mean you didn’t leave any food for the cat?”

  “No, we did, but it’s probably gone by now.”

  “Well, if you fed it today it can probably last until tomorrow. But it won’t be too happy about it. Maybe tear the place up a little bit.”

  “Looked like it already had. Listen, I gotta go. I want to watch the rest of the tape and see how we sit.”

  “All right, I’ll let you go. But, Harry, don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  They hung up then and Bosch started the videotape of the confession again. But almost immediately he turned it back off. The cat was bugging him. He should have made arrangements for it to be taken care of. He decided to go back out.

  42

  AS Bosch approached Delacroix’s trailer he saw light behind every curtain of every window. There had been no lights on when they left with Delacroix twelve hours earlier. He drove on by and pulled into the open parking space of a lot several trailers away. He left the box of cat food in the car, walked back to Delacroix’s trailer and watched it from the same position where he had stood when Edgar had hit the door with his warrant knock. Despite the late hour the freeway’s hiss was ever present and hindered his ability to hear sounds or movement from within the trailer.

  He slipped his gun out of its holster and went to the door. He carefully and quietly stepped up onto the cinder blocks and tried the doorknob. It turned. He leaned to the door and listened but still could hear nothing from within. He waited another moment, slowly and silently turned the knob and then pulled the door open while raising his weapon.

  The living room was empty. Bosch stepped in and swept the trailer with his eyes. No one. He pulled the door closed without a sound.

  He looked through the kitchen and down the hallway to the bedroom. The door was partially closed and he could not see anyone, but he heard banging sounds, like somebody closing drawers. He started moving through the kitchen. The smell of cat urine was horrible. He noticed the plate on the floor under the table was clean, the water bowl almost empty. He moved into the hallway and was six feet from the bedroom door when it opened and a head-down figure came toward him.

  Sheila Delacroix screamed when she looked up and saw Bosch. Bosch raised his gun and then immediately lowered it when he recognized who it was. Sheila raised her hand to her chest, her eyes growing wide.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  Bosch holstered his weapon.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “It’s my father’s place. I have a key.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head and shrugged.

  “I was . . . I was worried about the cat. I was looking for the cat. What happened to your face?”

  Bosch moved past her in the tight space and stepped into the bedroom.

  “Had an accident.”

  He looked around the room and saw no cat or anything else that drew his attention.

  “I think he’s under the bed.”

  Bosch looked back at her.

  “The cat. I couldn’t get him out.”

  Bosch came back to the door and touched her shoulder, directing her to the living room.

  “Let’s go sit down.”

  In the living room she sat down in the recliner while Bosch remained standing.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “I told you, the cat.”

  “I heard you opening and closing drawers. The cat like to hide in drawers?”

  Sheila shook her head as if to say he was bothering over nothing.

  “I was just curious about my father. While I was here I looked around, that’s all.”

  “And where’s your car?”

  “I parked it by the front office. I didn’t know if there’d be any parking here, so I parked there and walked in.”

  “And you were going to walk the cat back on a leash or something?”

&nbs
p; “No, I was going to carry him. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  Bosch studied her. He could tell she was lying but he wasn’t sure what he should or could do about it. He decided to throw her a fastball.

  “Sheila, listen to me. If you were in any way involved with what happened to your brother, now’s the time to tell me and to try to make a deal.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you help your father that night? Did you help him carry your brother up the hill and bury him?”

  She brought her hands up to her face so quickly it was as if Bosch had thrown acid in her eyes. Through her hands she yelled, “Oh my God, oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening! What are you—”

  She just as abruptly dropped her hands and stared at him with bewildered eyes.

  “You think I had something to do with it? How could you think that?”

  Bosch waited a moment for her to calm down before answering.

  “I think you’re not telling me the truth about what’s going on here. So it makes me suspicious and it means I have to consider all possibilities.”

  She abruptly stood up.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “No, Sheila, you’re not. But I would appreciate it if you’d tell me the—”

  “Then I’m leaving.”

  She stepped around the coffee table and headed for the door with a purposeful stride.

  “What about the cat?” Bosch asked.

  She didn’t stop. She was through the door and into the night. Bosch heard her answer from outside.

  “You take care of it.”

  Bosch stepped to the door and watched her walking down the trailer park’s access road, out toward the management building, where her car was parked.

  “Yeah,” he said to himself.

  He leaned against the door frame and breathed some of the untainted air from the outside. He thought about Sheila and what she might have been doing. After a while he checked his watch and looked back over his shoulder at the interior of the trailer. It was after midnight and he was tired. But he decided he was going to stay and look for whatever it was she had been looking for.

  He felt something brush up against his leg and looked down to see a black cat rubbing up against him. He gently pushed it away with his leg. He didn’t care much for cats.

  The animal came back and insisted on rubbing its head against Bosch’s leg again. Bosch stepped back into the trailer, causing the cat to make a cautionary retreat of a few feet.

  “Wait here,” Bosch said. “I’ve got some food in the car.”

  43

  DOWNTOWN arraignment court was always a zoo. When Bosch entered the courtroom at ten minutes before nine on Friday morning, he saw no judge yet on the bench but a flurry of lawyers conferring and moving about the front of the courtroom like ants on a kicked-over hill. It took a seasoned veteran to know and understand what was going on at any given time in arraignment court.

  Bosch first scanned the rows of public seating for Sheila Delacroix but didn’t see her. He next looked for his partner and Portugal, the prosecutor, but they weren’t in the courtroom either. He did notice that two cameramen were setting up equipment next to the bailiff’s desk. Their position would give them a clear view of the glass prisoner docket once court was in session.

  Bosch moved forward and pushed through the gate. He took out his badge, palmed it and showed it to the bailiff, who had been studying a computer printout of the day’s arraignment schedule.

  “You got a Samuel Delacroix on there?” he asked.

  “Arrested Wednesday or Thursday?”

  “Thursday. Yesterday.”

  The bailiff flipped the top sheet over and ran his finger down a list. He stopped at Delacroix’s name.

  “Got it.”

  “When will he come up?”

  “We’ve still got some Wednesdays to finish. When we get to Thursdays it will depend on who his lawyer is. Private or public?”

  “It’ll be a PD, I think.”

  “They go in order. You’re looking at an hour, at least. That’s if the judge starts at nine. Last I heard he wasn’t here yet.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bosch moved toward the prosecution table, having to weave around two groupings of defense lawyers telling war stories while waiting for the judge to take the bench. In the first position at the table was a woman Bosch didn’t recognize. She would be the arraignments deputy assigned to the courtroom. She would routinely handle eighty percent of the arraignments, as most of the cases were minor in nature and had not yet been assigned to prosecutors. In front of her on the table was a stack of files—the morning’s cases—half a foot high. Bosch showed her his badge, too.

  “Do you know if George Portugal is coming down for the Delacroix arraignment? It’s a Thursday.”

  “Yes, he is,” she said, without looking up. “I just talked to him.”

  She now looked up and Bosch saw her eyes go to the cut on his cheek. He’d taken the butterfly bandages off before his shower that morning but the wound was still quite noticeable.

  “It’s not going to happen for an hour or so. Delacroix has a public defender. That looks like it hurts.”

  “Only when I smile. Can I use your phone?”

  “Until the judge comes out.”

  Bosch picked up the phone and called the DA’s Office, which was three floors above. He asked for Portugal and was transferred.

  “Yeah, it’s Bosch. All right if I come up? We’ve gotta talk.”

  “I’m here until I’m called down to arraignments.”

  “See you in five.”

  On the way out Bosch told the bailiff that if a detective named Edgar checked in he should be sent up to the DA’s Office. The bailiff said no problem.

  The hallway outside the courtroom was teeming with lawyers and citizens, all with some business with the courts. Everybody seemed to be on a cell phone. The marble floor and high ceiling took all of the voices and multiplied them into a fierce cacophony of white noise. Bosch ducked into the little snack bar and had to wait more than five minutes in line just to buy a coffee. After he was out, he legged it up the fire exit stairs because he didn’t want to lose another five minutes waiting for one of the horribly slow elevators.

  When he stepped into Portugal’s small office Edgar was already there.

  “We were beginning to wonder where you were,” Portugal said.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Edgar added after seeing Bosch’s cheek.

  “It’s a long story. And I’m about to tell it.”

  He took the other chair in front of Portugal’s desk and put his coffee down on the floor next to him. He realized he should have brought cups for Portugal and Edgar, so he decided not to drink in front of them.

  He opened his briefcase on his lap and took out a folded section of the Los Angeles Times. He closed the briefcase and put it on the floor.

  “So what’s going on?” Portugal said, clearly anxious about the reason Bosch had called the meeting.

  Bosch started unfolding the newspaper.

  “What’s going on is we charged the wrong guy and we better fix it before he gets arraigned.”

  “Whoa, shit. I knew you were going to say something like that,” Portugal said. “I don’t know if I want to hear this. You are messing up a good thing, Bosch.”

  “I don’t care what I’m doing. If the guy didn’t do it, he didn’t do it.”

  “But he told us he did it. Several times.”

  “Look,” Edgar said to Portugal. “Let Harry say what he wants to say. We don’t want to fuck this up.”

  “It may be too late with Mr. Can’t-Leave-A-Good-Thing-Alone here.”

  “Harry, just go on. What’s wrong?”

  Bosch told them about taking the dummy up to Wonderland Avenue

  and re-creating Delacroix’s supposed trek up the steep hillside.

  “I made it—just barely
,” he said, gently touching his cheek. “But the point is, Del—”

  “Yeah, you made it,” Portugal said. “You made it, so Delacroix could have made it. What’s the problem with that?”