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
SHEILA 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?”
Delacroix shook her head.
“I can’t remember. It’s been—I just remember that he liked that shirt a lot.”
Bosch nodded and gave the photo back to Edgar. It wasn’t the kind of solid confirmation they could get from X-rays and bone comparison but it was one more notch. Bosch was feeling more and more sure that they were about to identify the bones. He watched Edgar put the photo in a short stack of pictures he intended to borrow from Sheila’s collection.
Bosch checked his watch and looked back at Sheila.
“What about your mother?”
Sheila immediately shook her head.
“Nope, she was long gone by the time all of this happened.”
“You mean she died?”
“I mean she took a bus the minute the going got tough. You see, Arthur was a difficult child. Right from the beginning. He needed a lot of attention and it fell to my mother. After a while she couldn’t take it any longer. One night she went out to get some medicine at the drugstore and she never came back. We found little notes from her under our pillows.”
Bosch dropped his eyes to his notebook. It was hard to hear this story and keep looking at Sheila Delacroix.
“How old were you? How old was your brother?”
“I was six, so that would make Artie two.”
Bosch nodded.
“Did you keep the note from her?”
“No. There was no need. I didn’t need a reminder of how she supposedly loved us but not enough to stay with us.”
“What about Arthur? Did he keep his?”
“Well, he was only two, so my father kept it for him. He gave it to him when he was older. He may have kept it, I don’t know. Because he never really knew her, he was always very interested in what she was like. He asked me a lot of questions about her. There were no photos of her. My father had gotten rid of them all so he wouldn’t have any reminders.”
“Do you know what happened to her? Or if she’s still alive?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. And to tell you the truth, I don’t care if she is alive or not.”
“What is her name?”
“Christine Dorsett Delacroix. Dorsett was her maiden name.”
“Do you know her birth date or Social Security number?”
Sheila shook her head.
“Do you have your own birth certificate handy here?”
“It’s somewhere in my records. I could go look for it.”
She started to get up.
“No, wait, we can look for that at the end. I’d like to keep talking here.”
“Okay.”
“Um, after your mother was gone, did your father remarry?”
“No, he never did. He lives alone now.”
“Did he ever have a girlfriend, someone who might have stayed in the house?”
She looked at Bosch with eyes that seemed almost lifeless.
“No,” she said. “Never.”
Bosch decided to move on to an area of discussion that would be less difficult for her.
“What school did your brother go to?”
“At the end he was going to The Brethren.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He wrote the name of the school down on his pad and then a large letter B beneath it. He circled the letter, thinking about the backpack. Sheila continued unbidden.
“It was a private school for troubled boys. My dad paid to send him there. It’s off of Crescent Heights near Pico. It’s still there.”
“Why did he go there? I mean, why was he considered troubled?”
“Because he got kicked out of his other schools for fighting mostly.”
“Fighting?” Edgar said.
“That’s right.”
Edgar picked the top photograph off of his keeper file and studied it for a moment.
“This boy looks like he was as light as smoke. Was he the one starting these fights?”
“Most times. He had trouble getting along. All he wanted to do was be on his skateboard. I think that by today’s standards he would be diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder or something similar. He just wanted to be by himself all the time.”
“Did he get hurt in these fights?” Bosch asked.
“Sometimes. Black and blue mostly.”
“Broken bones?”
“Not that I remember. Just schoolyard fights.”
Bosch felt agitated. The information they were getting could point them in many different directions. He had hoped a clear-cut path might emerge from the interview.
“You said your father searched the drawers in your brother’s room and found clothes missing.”
“That’s right. Not a lot. Just a few things.”
“Any idea what was missing specifically?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t remember.”
“What did he take the clothes in? Like a suitcase or something?”
“I think he took his schoolbag. Took out the books and put in some clothes.”
“Do you remember what that looked like?”
“No. Just a backpack. Everybody had to use the same thing at The Brethren. I still see kids walking on Pico with them, the backpacks with the B on the back.”
Bosch glanced at Edgar and then back at Delacroix.
“Let’s go back to the skateboard. Are you sure he took it with him?”
She paused to think about this, then slowly nodded.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure he took it with him.”
Bosch decided to cut off the interview and concentrate on completing the identification. Once they confirmed the bones came from Arthur Delacroix, then they could come back to his sister.
He thought about Golliher’s take on the injuries to the bones. Chronic abuse. Could it all have been injuries from schoolyard fights and skateboarding? He knew he needed to approach the issue of child abuse but did not feel the time was appropriate. He also didn’t want to tip his hand to the daughter so that she could turn around and possibly tell the father. What Bosch wanted was to back out and come back in later when he felt he had a tighter grasp on the case and a solid investigative plan to go with.