Michael Connelly - The Wrong Side of Goodbye

“The only thing that’s going to matter is Vibiana’s DNA,” Haller said. “We will need to show the hereditary chain, which I think you have in hand. But it’s going to come down to her DNA and whether they match it to Vance’s as direct descendant.”

“We need to do it as a blind, right?” Bosch said. “Not tell them the swab is from Vance. Just give them the swab from Vibiana. Then see what they say.”

“Agreed. Last thing we want is for them to know whose DNA they have. I will work on that and set something up in one of the labs I gave you. Whichever one will do it the fastest. Then when you get the blood from Vibiana, we go in.”

“I’m hoping that will be tomorrow.”

“That’ll be good. What did you do with the swab from Vance?”

“My refrigerator.”

“Not sure that’s the safest place. And I don’t think refrigeration is required.”

“It’s not. I just hid it in there.”

“I like the idea of keeping it separate from the will and the pen. Don’t want everything in the same place. I’m just concerned with it being in your house. It’s probably the first place they’ll look.”

“There you go with that ‘they’ thing again.”

“I know. But it is what it is. Maybe you should think of another place.”

Bosch told Haller about his run-in with Creighton and Harry’s suspicion that there might be camera surveillance on his house.

“I’ll check it out tomorrow morning first thing,” he said. “It will be dark by the time I get there tonight. The point is, there was nobody out there this morning when I left. I checked my car for a GPS tag and yet somehow Creighton’s following me up Laurel Canyon Boulevard.”

“Maybe it was a fucking drone,” Haller said. “They’re being used all over the place now.”

“I’ll have to remember to start looking up. You too. Creighton said they knew you were on the case, too.”

“Not a surprise.”

Bosch could see the lights of downtown now through the wind-shield. He was finally getting close to home and he could feel the exhaustion from the day on the road settling on his body. He was bone tired and wanted to rest. He decided that he would skip dinner in favor of extra sleep time.

His mind wandered from the conversation when the thought of food reminded him that he needed to call or text his daughter to tell her he had driven home and wouldn’t be passing by campus the next day. Their getting together would have to wait.

Maybe that was a good thing, Bosch thought. After their last phone call it might be better to have some time and distance between them.

“Harry, you still there?” Haller said.

Bosch came out of the unrelated thoughts.

“Here,” he said. “You just cut out for second. I’m going through a bad cell area. Go ahead.”

Haller said he wanted to discuss a strategy involving where and when they should make a move in court. It was a subtle form of judge shopping but he explained that deciding in what courthouse to file the will could give them an advantage. He said he assumed that probate on Vance would be opened in Pasadena, near where he lived and died, but that did not require a claimant to file there as well. If Vibiana Veracruz was determined to establish herself as Vance’s heir, then she could file her claim at a courthouse convenient to her.

To Bosch these were decisions that were above his pay grade and he told Haller so. His job here, and his responsibility and promise to Vance, was simply to find the heir, if one existed, and gather the evidence to prove the bloodline. Legal strategies involving the subsequent claim to the Vance fortune were for Haller to decide.

Bosch added something that he had been thinking about since his conversation with Gabriela.

“What if they don’t want it?” he asked.

“What if who doesn’t want what?” Haller replied.

“The money,” Bosch said. “What if Vibiana doesn’t want it? These people are artists. What if they don’t want to be involved in running a corporation, sitting on a board of directors, being in that world? When I told Gabriela that her daughter and grandson might be in line for a lot of money, she just shrugged it off. She said she hadn’t had any money for seventy years and didn’t want any now.”

“Not going to happen,” Haller said. “This is change-the-world money. She’ll take it. What artist doesn’t want to change the world?”

“Most want to change it with their art, not their money.” Bosch got a call-waiting signal and saw that it was from one of the SFPD exchanges. He thought maybe it was Bella Lourdes calling with the results of the second search of the Sahagun house. He told Haller he needed to go and would check in with him the next day after he found Vibiana and spoke to her.

He switched over but it wasn’t Lourdes calling.

“Bosch, Chief Valdez. Where are you?”

“Uh, heading north, just passing by downtown. What’s up?”

“Are you with Bella?”

“Bella? No, why would I be with Bella?”

Valdez ignored Bosch’s question and asked another. The serious tone in his voice had Bosch’s attention.

“Have you heard from her today?”

“Not since this morning when we talked on the phone. Why? What’s going on, Chief?”

“We can’t find her and we’re not getting any answers on her cell or the radio. She signed in this morning on the board in the D bureau but never signed out. It’s not like her. Trevino was working on budgets with me today, so he was never in the D bureau. He never saw her.”

“Her car in the lot?”

“Both her personal car and her plain wrap are still in the lot and her partner called and said she hasn’t come home.”

A hollow opened up in the middle of his chest.

“Did you talk to Sisto?” he asked.

“Yeah, he hasn’t seen her either,” Valdez said. “He said she called him this morning to see if he was available to go with her into the field but he was tied up on a commercial burglary.”

Bosch pushed his foot further down on the gas pedal.

“Chief, send a car right now up to the Sahagun house. That was where she was going.”

“Why, what was—”

“Just send the car, Chief. Now. Tell them to search inside and outside the house. The backyard in particular. We can talk after. I’m on my way and will be there in thirty minutes or less. Send that car.”

“Right away.”

Bosch disconnected and called Bella’s number, though he knew it was unlikely she would answer for him if she wasn’t answering for the police chief.

It rang through to voice mail and Bosch disconnected. He felt the hollow in his chest growing wider and deeper.

Bosch broke away from the crushing evening traffic after passing by downtown. With speed and illegal use of the carpool lane, he covered the remaining distance to San Fernando in twenty minutes. He felt lucky to be in the rental, because he knew his old Cherokee wouldn’t have reached the speeds he maintained on his way.

In the station he moved quickly through the back hallway to the chief’s office but found it empty, the hanging toy helicopter moving in a circular pattern, propelled by a breeze from the overhead air-conditioning vent.

He then moved on to the detective bureau and found Valdez standing at Lourdes’s cubicle along with Trevino, Sisto, and Sergeant Rosenberg, the evening watch commander. He could tell by the concerned looks on their faces that they still hadn’t located the missing detective.

“You checked the Sahagun house?” he asked.

“We sent a car over,” Valdez said. “She’s not there, doesn’t look like she ever was.”

“Damn,” Bosch said. “Where else are you looking?”

“Never mind that,” Trevino said. “Where were you today?”