Michael Connelly - The Wrong Side of Goodbye

While the phone was still in his hand it buzzed with a new call. The screen showed a number with an 805 area code and Bosch knew that was Ventura County. He took the call.

“This is Harry Bosch.”

“Uh, hello. This is Olivia Macdonald. You posted a message on my brother’s memorial page. You wanted to talk to me?”

Bosch nodded, noting that she had already answered one question. Dominick Santanello was her brother.

“Thank you for calling so quickly, Olivia,” Bosch said. “At the moment, I’m actually standing at Nick’s grave in Westwood. At the veterans’ cemetery.”

“Really?” she said. “I don’t understand. What is going on?”

“I need to speak to you. Could we meet? I could come to you.”

“Well, I guess so. I mean, wait a minute. No. Not until you tell me what this is about.”

Bosch thought for a long moment before responding. He didn’t want to lie to her but he couldn’t reveal his true purpose. Not yet. He was bound by confidentiality and the sheer complication of the story. She hadn’t blocked her number. He knew he could find her even if she told him to pound sand and hung up on him. But the connection he felt with Dominick Santanello extended to his sister. He didn’t want to hurt or haunt this woman, who at the moment was no more than a voice on the phone.

He decided to take a shot in the dark.

“Nick knew he was adopted, right?” he said.

There was a long silence before she answered.

“Yes, he knew,” Olivia said.

“Did he ever wonder where he came from?” Bosch asked. “Who his father was. His mother...”

“He knew his mother’s name,” Olivia said. “Vibiana. She was named after a church. But that was all our adoptive parents knew. He never pursued it past that.”

Bosch closed his eyes for a moment. It was another piece of confirmation. It told him that since Olivia had been adopted too, she might understand the need to know.

“I know more,” he said. “I’m a detective and I know the whole story.”

There was another long pause before Olivia spoke.

“Okay,” she said. “When do you want to meet?”

Bosch started Thursday morning shopping online. He studied an array of GPS detectors and jammers and chose a combo device that did both. It cost him two hundred dollars with two-day shipping.

He next went to the phone to call an NCIS investigator at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. He had Gary McIntyre’s name and number on a list of contacts he took with him when he left the LAPD. McIntyre was a cooperative straight shooter that Bosch had worked with on at least three prior cases as a homicide investigator. He was now hoping to trade on that experience and mutual trust to obtain a copy of Dominick Santanello’s service package — the file containing all records of his military service, ranging from his training history to the location of every base he was ever stationed at, medals he was awarded, his leave and disciplinary history, and the summary report on his death in combat.

The military records archive was routinely on the checklist of cold case investigation because of how frequently military service played a part in people’s lives. It was a good way to fill in details on victims, suspects, and witnesses. In this case Bosch already knew the military angle regarding Santanello but he would be able to layer it with a deeper history. His investigation was essentially at an end and he was now looking to put a full report together for Whitney Vance as well as possibly find a way to make a DNA confirmation that Dominick Santanello was his son. If nothing else, Bosch prided himself on being thorough and complete in his work.

The files were made available to family members and their representatives but Bosch was not in a position to reveal he was working for Whitney Vance. He could play the law enforcement card but didn’t want that blowing back on him should McIntyre check to see if his request was part of an official investigation by the SFPD. So instead he was up front with McIntyre. He said he was calling about a case he had as a private investigator where he was trying to confirm Santanello as the son of a client whose name he could not reveal. He told McIntyre that he had a meeting later with Santanello’s adoptive sister and he might be able to swing a permission letter from her if needed.

McIntyre told Bosch not to sweat it. He appreciated the honesty and would trust him. He said he needed a day or two to track down the file in question and then make a digital copy of it. He promised to make return contact when he was ready to send and Bosch could have until then to come up with a family permission letter. Bosch thanked him and said he looked forward to his call.

Bosch’s appointment with Olivia Macdonald was not until 1 p.m., so he had the rest of the morning to review case notes and prepare. One thing he was already charged about was that the address she had given him for her home matched the address listed for the parents of Dominick Santanello on his birth certificate. This meant she was living in the home where her adopted brother had grown up. It might be a long shot but it put the chances of finding a DNA source into the realm of possibility.

Bosch then made a call to defense attorney Mickey Haller, his half brother, to ask if he had a referral for a private lab that would be quick, discreet, and reliable in making a DNA comparison, should he come up with a source. Up until this point, Bosch had only worked DNA cases as a cop and had used his department’s lab and resources to get comparisons done.

“I’ve got a couple I use — both fast and reliable,” Haller said. “Let me guess, Maddie finally figured out she’s too smart to have been your kid. Now you’re scrambling to prove she is.”

“Funny,” Bosch said.

“Well, then, is it for a case? A private case?”

“Something like that. I can’t talk about it but I do have you to thank for it. The client wanted me because of that bit of business last year in West Hollywood.”

The case that Whitney Vance had referenced during the interview involved a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and a couple of corrupt LAPD cops. It had ended badly for them in West Hollywood but it had begun with Bosch working a case for Haller.

“Then it sounds like I’m due a commission on any funds you collect on this thing, Harry,” Haller said.

“Doesn’t sound like that to me,” Bosch said. “But if you hook me up with a DNA lab, there might be something in it for you down the line.”

“I’ll send you an e-mail, broheim.”

“Thanks, broheim.”

Bosch left the house at 11:30 so he would have time to grab something to eat on his way to Oxnard. Out on the street he checked in all directions for surveillance before hiking a block up to the spot where he had parked the rented Cherokee. He ate tacos at Poquito Más at the bottom of the hill and then jumped onto the 101 and followed it west across the Valley and into Ventura County.

Oxnard was the biggest city in Ventura County. Its unattractive name was that of a sugar beet farmer who built a processing plant in the settlement in the late nineteenth century. The city totally surrounded Port Hueneme, where there was a small U.S. Navy base. One of the questions Bosch planned to ask Olivia Macdonald was whether proximity to the base was what lured her brother into enlisting in the Navy.

Traffic was reasonable and Bosch got to Oxnard early. He used the time to drive around the port and then along Hollywood Beach, a strip of homes on the Pacific side of the port where the streets were named La Brea and Sunset and Los Feliz after the well-known boulevards of Tinseltown.

He pulled up in front of Olivia Macdonald’s house right on time. It was in an older, middle-class neighborhood of neatly kept California bungalows. She was waiting for Bosch in a chair on the front porch. He guessed that they were about the same age and he could see that, like her adoptive brother, it was likely she had both white and Latina origins. She had hair that was as white as snow and she was dressed in faded jeans and a white blouse.