City of Bones

by Michael Connelly

  She looked at her husband and nodded. He nodded back and reached over and took her hand. He looked back at Bosch.

  “We counted it up once,” he said. “We had a total of thirty-eight kids at one time or another. But realistically, we say we raised seventeen of them. These were kids that were with us long enough for it to have an impact. You know, anywhere from two years to—one child was with us fourteen years.”

  He turned so he could see the wall over the couch and reached up and pointed to a picture of a boy in a wheelchair. He was slightly built and had thick glasses. His wrists were bent at sharp angles. His smile was crooked.

  “That’s Benny,” he said.

  “Amazing,” Bosch said.

  He took a notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open to a blank page. He took out a pen. Just then his cell phone started chirping.

  “That’s me,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Don’t you want to answer it?” Blaylock asked.

  “They can leave a message. I didn’t even think there’d be clear service this close to the mountain.”

  “Yeah, we even get TV.”

  Bosch looked at him and realized he had somehow been insulting.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything. I was wondering if you could tell me what children you had living in your home in nineteen eighty.”

  There was a moment when everyone looked at one another and said nothing.

  “Is one of our kids involved in this?” Audrey asked.

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I don’t know who was living with you. Like I said, we’re trying to put together a profile of that neighborhood. We need to know exactly who was living there. And then we’ll go from there.”

  “Well, I am sure the Division of Youth Services can help you.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Actually, they changed the name. It’s now called the Department of Children’s Services. And they’re not going to be able to help us until Monday at the earliest, Mrs. Blaylock. This is a homicide. We need this information now.”

  Again there was a pause as they all looked at one another.

  “Well,” Don Blaylock finally said, “it’s going to be kind of hard to remember exactly who was with us at any given time. There are some obvious ones. Like Benny and Jodi and Frances. But every year we’d have a few kids that, like Audrey said, would be dropped in and then taken out. They’re the tough ones. Let’s see, nineteen eighty . . .”

  He stood up and turned so he could see the breadth of the wall of photos. He pointed to one, a young black boy of about eight.

  “William there. He was nineteen eighty. He—”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Audrey said. “He came to us in ’eighty-four. Don’t you remember, the Olympics? You made him that torch out of foil.”

  “Oh, yeah, ’eighty-four.”

  Bosch leaned forward in his seat. The location near the fire was now getting too warm for him.

  “Let’s start with the three you mentioned. Benny and the two others. What were their full names?”

  He was given their names, and when he asked how they could be contacted he was given phone numbers for two of them but not Benny.

  “Benny passed away six years ago,” Audrey said. “Multiple sclerosis.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He was very dear to us.”

  Bosch nodded and waited for an appropriate silence to go by.

  “Um, who else? Didn’t you keep records of who came and for how long?”

  “We did but we don’t have them here,” Blaylock said. “They’re in storage in L.A.”

  He suddenly snapped his fingers.

  “You know, we have a list of the names of every child we tried to help or did help. It’s just not by year. We could probably cut it down a little bit, but would that help you?”

  Bosch noticed Audrey give her husband a momentary look of anger. Her husband didn’t see it but Bosch did. He knew her instincts would be to protect her children from the threat, real or not, that Bosch represented.

  “Yes, that would help a lot.”

  Blaylock left the room and Bosch looked at Audrey.

  “You don’t want him to give me that list. Why is that, Mrs. Blaylock?”

  “Because I don’t think you are being honest with us. You are looking for something. Something that will fit your needs. You don’t drive three hours in the middle of the night from Los Angeles for a ‘routine questioning,’ as you call it. You know these children come from tough backgrounds. They weren’t all angels when they came to us. And I don’t want any of them blamed for something just because of who they were or where they came from.”

  Bosch waited to make sure she was done.

  “Mrs. Blaylock, have you ever been to the McClaren Youth Hall?”

  “Of course. Several of our children came from there.”

  “I came from there, too. And an assortment of foster homes where I never lasted very long. So I know what these children were like because I was one myself, all right? And I know that some foster homes can be full of love and some can be just as bad as or worse than the place you were taken from. I know that some foster parents are committed to the children and some are committed to the subsistence checks from Children’s Services.”

  She was quiet a long moment before answering.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You still are looking to finish your puzzle with any piece that fits.”

  “You’re wrong, Mrs. Blaylock. Wrong about that, wrong about me.”

  Blaylock came back into the room with what looked like a green school folder. He placed it down on the square coffee table and opened it. Its pockets were stuffed with photos and letters. Audrey continued despite his return.

  “My husband worked for the city like you do, so he won’t want to hear me say this. But, Detective, I don’t trust you or the reasons you say you are here. You are not being honest with us.”

  “Audrey!” Blaylock yelped. “The man is just trying to do his job.”

  “And he’ll say anything to do it. And he’ll hurt any of our children to do it.”

  “Audrey, please.”

  He turned his attention back to Bosch and offered a sheet of paper. There was a list of handwritten names on it. Before Bosch could read them Blaylock took the page back and put it down on the table. He went to work on it with a pencil, putting check marks next to some of the names. He spoke as he worked.

  “We made this list just so we could sort of keep track of everybody. You’d be surprised, you can love somebody to death but when it comes time to remember twenty, thirty birthdays you always forget somebody. The ones I’m checking off here are the kids that came in more recent than nineteen eighty. Audrey will double-check when I’m done.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  The men ignored her. Bosch’s eyes moved ahead of Blaylock’s pencil and down the list. Before he was two-thirds to the bottom he reached down and put his finger on a name.

  “Tell me about him.”

  Blaylock looked up at Bosch and then over at his wife.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Johnny Stokes,” Bosch said. “You had him in your home in nineteen eighty, didn’t you?”

  Audrey stared at him for a moment.

  “There, you see?” she said to her husband while looking only at Bosch. “He already knew about Johnny when he came in here. I was right. He’s not an honest man.”

  50

  BY the time Don Blaylock went to the kitchen to brew a second pot of coffee Bosch had two pages of notes on Johnny Stokes. He had come to the Blaylock house through a DYS referral in January 1980 and was gone the following July, when he was arrested for stealing a car and going on a joyride through Hollywood. It was his second arrest for car theft. He was incarcerated at the Sylmar Juvenile Hall for six months. By the time his period of rehabilitation was completed he was returned by a judge to his parents. Though the Blaylocks heard from him on occasion and even saw him during his infr
equent visits to the neighborhood, they had other children still in their care and soon drifted from contact with the boy.

  When Blaylock went to make the coffee Bosch settled into what he thought would be an uncomfortable silence with Audrey. But then she spoke to him.

  “Twelve of our children graduated from college,” she said. “Two have military careers. One followed Don into the fire service. He works in the Valley.”

  She nodded at Bosch and he nodded back.

  “We’ve never considered ourselves to be one hundred percent successful with our children,” she continued. “We did our best with each one. Sometimes the circumstances or the courts or the youth authorities prevented us from helping a child. John was one of those cases. He made a mistake and it was as if we were to blame. He was taken from us . . . before we could help him.”

  All Bosch could do was nod.

  “You seemed to know of him already,” she said. “Have you already spoken to him?”

  “Yes. Briefly.”

  “Is he in jail now?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “What has his life been since . . . we knew him?”

  Bosch spread his hands apart.

  “He hasn’t done well. Drugs, a lot of arrests, prison.”

  She nodded sadly.

  “Do you think he killed that boy in our neighborhood? While he was living with us?”

  Bosch could tell by her face that if he were to answer truthfully he would knock down everything she had built out of what was good in what they had done. The whole wall of pictures, the graduation gowns and the good jobs would mean nothing next to this.

  “I don’t really know. But we do know he was a friend of the boy who was killed.”

  She closed her eyes. Not tightly, just as if she were resting them. She said nothing else until Blaylock came back into the room. He went past Bosch and put another log on the fire.

  “Coffee will be up in a minute.”

  “Thank you,” Bosch said.

  After Blaylock walked back to the couch, Bosch stood up.

  “I have some things I would like you to look at, if you don’t mind. They’re in my car.”

  He excused himself and went out to the slickback. He grabbed his briefcase from the front seat and then went to the trunk to get the file box containing the skateboard. He thought it might be worth a try showing it to the Blaylocks.

  His phone chirped just as he closed the trunk and this time he answered it. It was Edgar.

  “Harry, where are you?”

  “Up in Lone Pine.”

  “Lone Pine! What the fuck are you doing up there?”

  “I don’t have time to talk. Where are you?”

  “At the table. Like we agreed. I thought you—”

  “Listen, I’ll call you back in an hour. Meantime, put out a new BOLO on Stokes.”

  “What?”

  Bosch checked the house to make sure the Blaylocks weren’t listening or in sight.

  “I said put out another BOLO on Stokes. We need him picked up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he did it. He killed the kid.”

  “What the fuck, Harry?”

  “I’ll call you in an hour. Put out the BOLO.”

  He hung up and this time turned the phone off.

  Inside the house Bosch put the file box down on the floor and then opened his briefcase on his lap. He found the envelope containing the family photos borrowed from Sheila Delacroix. He opened it and slid them out. He split the stack in two and gave one-half to each of the Blaylocks.

  “Look at the boy in these pictures and tell me if you recognize him, if he ever came to your house. With Johnny or anybody else.”

  He watched as the couple looked at the photos and then exchanged stacks. When they were finished they both shook their heads and handed the photos back.

  “Don’t recognize him,” Don Blaylock said.

  “Okay,” Bosch said as he put the photos back into the envelope.

  He closed his briefcase and put it on the floor. He then opened the file box and lifted out the skateboard.

  “Has either of you—”

  “That was John’s,” Audrey said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I recognize it. When he was . . . taken from us, he left it behind. I told him we had it. I called his house but he never came for it.”

  “How do you know that this is the one that was his?”

  “I just remember. I didn’t like the skull and crossbones. I remember those.”

  Bosch put the skateboard back in the box.

  “What happened to it if he never came for it?”

  “We sold it,” Audrey said. “When Don retired after thirty years and we decided to move up here, we sold all of our junk. We had a gigantic garage sale.”

  “More like a house sale,” her husband added. “We got rid of everything.”

  “Not everything. You wouldn’t sell that stupid fire bell we have in the backyard. Anyway, that was when we sold the skateboard.”

  “Do you remember who you sold it to?”

  “Yes, the man who lived next door. Mr. Trent.”

  “When was this?”

  “Summer of ’ninety-two. Right after we sold the house. We were still in escrow, I remember.”

  “Why do you remember selling the skateboard to Mr. Trent? ’Ninety-two was a long time ago.”

  “I remember because he bought half of what we were selling. The junky half. He gathered it all up and offered us one price for everything. He needed it all for his work. He was a set designer.”

  “Set decorator,” her husband corrected. “There is a difference.”

  “Anyway, he used everything he bought from us on movie sets. I always hoped I would see something in a movie that I’d know came from our house. But I never did.”

  Bosch scribbled some notes in his pad. He had just about everything he needed from the Blaylocks. It was almost time to head south, back to the city to put the case together.

  “How did you get the skateboard?” Audrey asked him.

  Bosch looked up from his notepad.

  “Uh, it was in Mr. Trent’s possessions.”

  “He’s still on the street?” Don Blaylock asked. “He was a great neighbor. Never a problem at all with him.”

  “He was until recently,” Bosch said. “He passed away, though.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” Audrey proclaimed. “What a shame. And he wasn’t that old a man.”

  “I just have a couple more questions,” Bosch said. “Did John Stokes ever tell either of you how he came to have the skateboard?”

  “He told me that he had won it during a contest with some other boys at school,” Audrey said.

  “The Brethren School?”

  “Yes, that’s where he went. He was going when he first came to us and so we continued it.”

  Bosch nodded and looked down at his notes. He had everything. He closed the notebook, put it in his coat pocket and stood up to go.

  51

  BOSCH pulled the car into a space in front of the Lone Pine Diner. The booths by all the windows were filled and almost all of the people in them looked out at the LAPD car two hundred miles from home.

  He was starved but knew he needed to talk to Edgar before delaying any further. He took out the cell phone and made the call. Edgar answered after half a ring.

  “It’s me. Did you put the BOLO out?”

  “Yeah, it’s out. But it’s a little hard to do when you don’t know what the fuck is going on, partner.”

  He said the last word as if it was a synonym for asshole. It was their last case together and Bosch felt bad that they were going to end their time this way. He knew it was his fault. He had cut Edgar out of the case for reasons Bosch wasn’t even sure about.

  “Jerry, you’re right,” he said. “I fucked up. I just wanted to keep things moving and that meant driving through the night.”

  “I would’ve gone with you.”

  “
I know,” Bosch lied. “I just didn’t think. I just drove. I’m coming back now.”