The Burning Room

by Michael Connelly

  “Well, maybe not now,” Bosch said. “But back then. You used to visit her at the Bonnie Brae apartments where she lived. You remember that.”

  Boiko went back into his mouth-open, eyes-on-the-ceiling pose of amnesia.

  “No, her boyfriend was the security man who guarded us,” he said. “They were together, yes.”

  Bosch leaned across the table as if to speak confidentially man to man. He lowered his voice.

  “Look, Maxim, it’s in the file,” he said. “You and Ana. That’s why you opened the safe.”

  “No, please,” Boiko responded. “Take out of the file. This is not a true thing. I am married man. My wife I love.”

  He signaled toward the door as if his wife were standing on the other side of it. It made Bosch wonder if the woman who had received them and spoke in another language on the phone was his wife.

  “Look, Max,” Bosch said. “We’re not here to embarrass you or cause you any problems. So calm down a beat. But we do have the file and there are witnesses in there who say you visited Ana at the Bonnie Brae on a regular basis and you even admitted this to Detective Braley way back then.”

  “Okay,” Boiko said, his voice a whisper. “Back then, but not now.”

  “Okay, back then,” Bosch said, making the concession. “That wasn’t so hard. It was a long time ago so, so what? It happens. You said you knew about the other guy, the security guard?”

  Boiko shook his head as he realized that his admitting to the affair now opened a door to what might be a cascade of questions.

  “I did not know and then I did,” he said. “And so I stopped.”

  “You stopped going to the Bonnie Brae to see Ana?” Bosch asked.

  “Yes, this is true.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her to stop seeing the security guard? I mean, you were the boss at the store, right? Why were you the one who stopped?”

  “No, I had my wife, you see. I wanted very much to stop. She—Ana—had started the whole thing and it was very big mistake for me.”

  “You mean she came on to you first?”

  “Yes, exactly as you say.”

  Bosch nodded like he completely understood how Max had been taken advantage of.

  “Okay, how often were you at her apartment before that?”

  “Not too many.”

  “Where is Ana Acevedo right now, Maxim?”

  Boiko held his hands out in an almost pleading manner.

  “This I don’t know. I tell you. Not since her quitting time.”

  “You haven’t seen her since then? We have witnesses who—”

  “No! That is a lie. What witness? This is security guard tell this? Burrow?”

  Bosch thought it was curious that Boiko could still remember the partial name of the security guard he worked with twenty-one years before.

  “I can’t tell you who the witness is,” Bosch said. “But you’re saying you haven’t seen her since back then, correct?”

  “This is correct,” Boiko said.

  “What about talking to her on the phone? Any contact with her at all since then?”

  “Only for her taxes.”

  “What do you mean, for taxes?”

  “When she wanted to file for IRS refund, she had new address and ask me to send to her the taxes.”

  “You mean like a W-2 or a 1099 form?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “So she had moved away after the robbery and wanted you to have her new mailing address?”

  “This is what happened, yes.”

  Bosch tried to keep a calm tone in his voice. But it was difficult. Boiko’s answer gave him renewed hope of finding Ana Acevedo.

  “You have employee records here, right?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Boiko said.

  “Okay, is there still a file on Ana Acevedo? A file with that address in it?”

  “But it is twenty years ago.”

  “I know, but she was an employee and there might still be a file.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Where? Are the files in this building?”

  “Yes. I could check if you—”

  “Yes, I want you to check. Right now I want you to check. We can wait.”

  Boiko got up and left the room. Bosch looked at his watch. It was almost five. He had a feeling that these last few minutes were going to lead to something that would salvage the whole day.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked Soto.

  She pursed her lips for a moment and considered her response before giving it.

  “Probably the same thing you’re thinking,” she finally said. “Both these guys today said Ana pursued them. Seems a little out of the ordinary. Like she was a nympho or she maybe had a plan.”

  Bosch pointed a finger at her. Exactly what he had been thinking.

  “Couple that with her disappearance and what do you get?” he asked. “And I’m not talking about her just leaving town. I mean, she disappeared.”

  “You get somebody who moves to the top of the list,” Soto said.

  Bosch nodded toward the door.

  “When he comes back we have to ask him about that day,” he said. “About the suspects and the identification of them as being white. If that still holds up we have to look into her life and find the intersections. The nexus, as you call it.”

  Before Soto responded, the door opened and Boiko returned. He was holding a sheet of paper.

  “I have an address for you,” he proudly announced.

  He put the sheet of paper down on the table between Bosch and Soto and then returned to his seat. Bosch leaned over the table to look at the paper. It was a photocopy of an Internal Revenue Service W-2 form for 1993 earnings and deductions. It was made out in the name of Ana Maria Acevedo and carried an address in Calexico, California, on it.

  “Calexico?” Soto asked. “What’s in Calexico?”

  “She moved there,” Boiko said, helpfully stating the obvious.

  Soto pulled her bag up from the floor and dug out her digital tablet. Bosch looked at Boiko.

  “Do you remember her mentioning Calexico?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t remember,” Boiko said.

  “What about family? Did she have family there?”

  “No, she was born here. She told me. And she had family in Mexico.”

  “Do you remember where in Mexico?”

  “No, I don’t think—”

  “Harry,” Soto interrupted. “Take a look.”

  She passed the tablet to him and he looked at the screen. Soto had plugged the address from the W-2 into Google Street View. Bosch was looking at a photo of the street address to which the IRS form had been sent in early 1994. It was a large building of Spanish Mission–style that looked like a school. But closer reading of a sign posted near the tiled walk out front told Bosch otherwise.

  SISTERS OF THE SACRED PROMISE

  Convent established 1909

  Archdiocese of San Diego

  The facts tumbled together for Bosch. The EZBank robbery and Bonnie Brae fire occurred in October 1993. By the time Ana Acevedo filed a 1993 tax return six months later, she was apparently living in a convent in a town on the California-Mexico border.

  It was becoming obvious to Bosch why she had gone there. Redemption, salvation, and refuge were the first things that came to mind.

  34

  They now had too much momentum to stop. They made the two-hundred-mile drive that night after filling the gas tank and grabbing convenience-store food to go. Bosch took the 10 freeway east and then at Indio turned south on State Road 86. The route took them down past Borrego Springs and skirting along the Salton Sea. It was open and desolate country with the Chocolate Mountains in the far distance to the east.

  “You ever been down this way before?” Soto asked.

  “A long time ago,” Bosch said.

  “On a case?”

  He happened to have been thinking about it when she asked the question.

  “Sort o
f,” he answered. “I was looking for my partner.”

  “Your partner? What happened?”

  “It’s a long story. In fact, it would probably fill a book. He went off the reservation and he . . . well, he never came back.”

  “You mean he disappeared?”

  “No, he got killed.”

  Bosch glanced over at her.

  “You knew about me when we got assigned to each other, right?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “I was just told I was with you.”

  “Well, just so you know, I’ve lost two partners. Another one got shot but survived and then I had one who ended up killing himself, but that was a long time after we were no longer partners.”

  That filled the car with silence for a few miles. Soto eventually went back to looking at the screen on her tablet instead of taking in the pink hue of the desert air.

  “It’s a strange place down here,” Bosch said after a while. “These two towns on either side of the border. Calexico on our side, Mexicali on theirs. Hard to figure out what’s going on. I remember when I went down here—it would have been even before the case with my partner, I think. And I checked in like you’re supposed to do and I got no help from the locals. But then I go across the border and there was a guy . . . an investigator . . . and it was like he was the only guy who wasn’t corrupt and wanted to get something done . . . on either side of the border.”

  Soto didn’t respond. He figured she was probably still working out the math on all the partners he’d had who died.

  “Anyway, strange place,” he said. “Watch yourself down here.” “Copy that,” she finally said. “Are we going to check in with the locals?”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “I don’t see the need to,” he said.

  “Okay by me,” she said.

  “What have you found out on that thing?”

  “Well, not a lot. Out here I’m not getting any kind of signal—Wi-Fi or cell. But back when we were still close to the city, I started a search on the Sisters of the Sacred Promise and downloaded some stuff. They have convents in California, Arizona, and Texas. There’re five of them on the border and then they have a couple more in Mexico. Oaxaca, and Guerrero.”

  “What are they about, catechism and stuff like that? Baptisms?”

  “There’s that but it’s a little more hard-core. They take the vows, you know? All of them. Poverty, chastity, obedience, and everything else. The sacred promise is life everlasting in heaven in exchange for all the suffering and sacrifice on earth. They go on missions, taking the word of the Lord into some pretty bad areas. I’m talking about cartel areas, the poppy fields of the Montana region in Guerrero. Some of them don’t come back, Harry. Each convent has a memorial wall that lists the ones they’ve lost. Reminds me of the station memorials we have.”

  “You’d think they’d leave the nuns alone.”

  “Apparently not. Nobody’s safe down there.”

  Bosch thought about things for a few moments. His one memory involving a nun was of the one who told him that his mother was dead. He was eleven years old at the time and she was the volunteer house mother in the county youth hall where he had been placed after the state removed him from his mother’s custody. It was supposed to be a temporary stay, but everything changed in his life that day. Somehow, in all the years since, he had connected the idea and image of nuns with death.

  “What will we say to Ana?” Soto said. “I mean, if she’s there all these years later.”

  “It doesn’t matter if she’s a sister or even the mother superior,” Bosch said. “She’s a suspect and that’s how we need to treat her. Remember, there’s two people out there directly responsible for dropping that firebomb down the chute. One of them could be the pope for all I care, and we’re still going to take him down. Ana Acevedo is our link to those two. She might not have known what they were going to do—my guess is that she didn’t. Maybe that’s why she ended up in a convent.”

  “Right.”

  They drove in silence after that and Bosch kept coming back to the memory of the nun and the indoor pool they had at MacLaren Hall. After he got the news, he broke away from the nun and dove down to the bottom of the pool. He screamed his lungs out, but not a sound broke the surface.

  They got into Calexico shortly after nine. Soto had plugged the address into her phone’s GPS app and she directed Bosch into the western segment of town. The convent was located on Nosotros Street in a largely residential tract. Bosch parked at the curb right in front and opened his door.

  “Bring the photo of Ana,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “Got it,” Soto said.

  The darkness of the evening was pierced by the shrill pitch of a cicada perched somewhere in one of the trees that lined the front lawn of the convent.

  “I hate those things,” Soto said.

  “Why?” Bosch asked.

  “I don’t know. They always mean bad news in the Bible and in movies.”

  “You’re talking about locusts. That’s a cicada.”

  “Same difference. It still means bad news. You wait and see.”

  The gate surrounding the convent was unlocked. They passed through and went to the door. Through a side window it appeared all was dark inside. There was a glowing doorbell button and Bosch gave it a good ride.

  “What if she’s taken a vow of silence and can’t answer our questions?” he asked while they waited.

  “I didn’t see the vow of silence in anything I read,” Soto said.

  “I was just kidding. Somebody’s coming.”

  He could see a shadow behind the glass, coming closer. The door was opened and a startlingly young woman in a full nun’s habit opened the door. She had a pretty face and dark eyes. She opened the door only a foot.

  “Yes, can I help you?” she said.

  “Sister, we’re sorry to bother you so late at night,” Bosch began. “We are from Los Angeles and are with the police up there.”

  He showed her his badge and Soto did the same.

  “We are looking for a woman who may be here at the convent,” Bosch said. “We need to talk to her.”

  The woman seemed confused.

  “You mean today?” she asked. “We’ve had no one come—”

  “Actually, she came about twenty years ago,” Bosch said.

  The nun studied him for a long moment. Bosch guessed that she was about three years old when Ana Acevedo came to the convent—if she actually did end up there.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” the nun said.

  Bosch nodded and tried a comforting smile on her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It is a bit confusing. We need to speak to a woman about something that happened in Los Angeles a long time ago. It’s a cold case. We are cold case detectives and the last known address we have for this woman is this convent. She forwarded mail to this location in 1994. Her name is Ana Maria Acevedo. Do you know that name? Is she here?”

  Bosch could clearly see by her reaction that the name meant nothing to the nun.

  “I know this was long before you got here but maybe there is someone else here who—”

  “This is Ana,” Soto said.

  She proffered the photo from Ana Acevedo’s last driver’s license. The nun leaned forward to look at it in the dim glow from an overhead light.

  “That looks like Sister Esi,” she said. “But she’s not here.”

  Bosch and Soto couldn’t help but break pose and look at each other. Ana Acevedo had taken the name of the beloved woman who had died trying to save the children in the Bonnie Brae fire.

  “Are you sure?” Bosch asked.

  “Well, no, but it looks like her,” the nun said.

  “Is that her full name?” Soto asked. “Sister Esi?”

  “No, it’s Esther,” the nun confirmed. “Sister Esther Gonzalez, but we’re not always that formal around here.”

  “What is your name?” Bosch asked.

  “I’m Sis
ter Theresa.”

  Bosch asked her to look at the photo again and confirm the ID. She did so and nodded.

  “She’s obviously older now,” she said. “Sister Geraldine is here and she’s been here the longest. She would know for sure.”

  “Can we talk to Sister Geraldine? It could be very important.”

  “Could you please wait here? I’ll see if she is still awake.”

  “That’s fine. But before you go, can you tell me where Sister Esther went? You said she’s not here.”

  “Let me just see if Sister Geraldine is awake. I really shouldn’t be the one speaking for the convent. May I take the photo?”

  Soto gave her the photo and Sister Theresa closed the door. Bosch and Soto looked at each other. Things were falling together.

  “She took Esi’s name,” Soto said. “If that’s not a guilty conscience, I don’t know what is.”

  Bosch just nodded and tried to reserve his excitement. Sister Esther was not in the convent. Even if she was Ana Maria Acevedo, they still had to find her and hope she’d be able to lead them to the men who started the fire.

  Five minutes went by before the door was reopened. The young nun handed the photo back to Soto and announced that Sister Geraldine was waiting to speak with them.

  They were led into the building and down a hallway. On one side was the memorial to the nuns who were lost. There were nine names and photos, all of them of the women in habits. They all looked the same.

  They arrived at a sparely furnished sitting room with an old box television in the corner. Another nun was waiting for them. She was in her sixties and wore rimless glasses in front of sharp eyes that Bosch guessed had seen things that rivaled what his own had seen.

  “Detectives, please be seated,” she said. “I am Sister Geraldine Turner but around here people call me Sister G. I believe the woman in the photograph you gave Sister Theresa is our Sister Esther. Is she all right? What is this about?”

  Bosch lowered himself onto a padded bench across a coffee table from the nun. Soto sat next to him.

  “Sister G, we have no news about Sister Esther,” Bosch said. “We are looking for her because we need her help on a case we’re working on.”

  Sister G put her hand on her chest as if to calm her beating heart.

  “Thanks be to God,” she said. “I thought perhaps the worst had happened.”