Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

“This last year,” she said. “Things… things just went haywire.”

“I know. He told me.”

She broke away from him and went back to filling the Thermos.

“Margie, I have to ask you something before I head back,” Bosch said. “They took his gun from him today to run ballistics. He used another. Do you know anything about that one?”

“No. He only had the one he wore on the job. We didn’t have other guns. Not with two little girls. When Frankie would come home he’d lock his job gun up in a little safe on the floor of the closet. And only he had the key. I just didn’t want any more guns than were required in the house.”

Bosch understood that if it was her edict that there be no more weapons than the one Sheehan was required to carry, then that left a hole. He could have taken a weapon in and hidden it from her – in a spot so obscure even the FBI didn’t find it when they searched his house. Maybe it was wrapped in plastic and buried in the yard. Sheehan also could have gotten the weapon after she and the girls moved out and up to Bakersfield. She would never have known about it.

“Okay,” he said, deciding not to pursue it.

“Why, Harry, are they saying it was your gun? Are you in trouble?”

Bosch thought a moment before answering.

“No, Margie, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

THE rain continued through Monday morning and slowed Bosch’s drive into Brentwood to a frustrating crawl. It wasn’t heavy rain, but in Los Angeles any rain at all can paralyze the city. It was one of the mysteries Bosch could never fathom. A city largely defined by the automobile yet full of drivers unable to cope with even a mild inclemency. He listened to KFWB as he drove. There were far more reports of traffic tie-ups than incidents of violence or unrest during the night. Unfortunately, the skies were expected to clear by midday.

He arrived twenty minutes late for his appointment with Kate Kincaid. The house from which Stacey Kincaid had allegedly been kidnapped was a sprawling white ranch house with black shutters and a slate-gray roof. It had a broad green lawn stretching back from the street and a driveway that cut across the front of the house, and then back around to the garage in the side yard. When Bosch pulled in there was a silver Mercedes Benz parked near the covered entryway. The front door of the house was open.

When he got to the threshold Bosch called out a hello and he heard Kate Kincaid’s voice telling him to enter. He found her in the living room, sitting on a couch that was covered in a white sheet. All the furniture was covered in this way. The room looked like a meeting of big, heavy ghosts. She noticed Bosch’s eyes taking in the room.

“When we moved we didn’t take a single piece of furniture,” she said. “We decided just to start over. No reminders.”

Bosch nodded and then studied her. She was dressed completely in white, with a silk blouse tucked into tailored linen pants. She looked like a ghost herself. Her large black leather purse, which was on the couch next to her, seemed to clash with her outfit and the sheets covering the furniture.

“How are you, Mrs. Kincaid?”

“Please call me Kate.”

“Kate then.”

“I am very fine, thank you. Better than I have been in a long, long time. How are you?”

“I’m just so-so today, Kate. I had a bad night. And I don’t like it when it rains.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It does look like you haven’t slept.”

“Do you mind if I look around a little bit before we start talking?”

He had a signed search warrant for the house in his briefcase but he didn’t want to bring it up yet.

“Please do,” she said. “Stacey’s room is down the hall to your left. First door on the left.”

Bosch left his briefcase on the tiled entryway floor and headed the way she had directed. The furniture in the girl’s room was not covered. The white sheets that had covered everything were in piles on the floor. It looked like someone – probably the dead girl’s mother – had visited here on occasion. The bed was unmade. The pink bedspread and matching sheets were twisted into a knot – not as if by someone sleeping, but maybe by someone who had lain on the bed and gathered the bedclothes to her chest. It made Bosch feel bad seeing it that way.

Bosch stepped to the middle of the room, keeping his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He studied the girl’s things. There were stuffed animals and dolls, a shelf of picture books. No movie posters, no photos of young television stars or pop singers. It was almost as if the room belonged to a girl much younger than Stacey Kincaid had been at the end. Bosch wondered if the design was her parents’ or her own, as if maybe she had thought by holding on to the things of her past she could somehow avoid the horror of the present. The thought made him feel worse than when he had studied the bedclothes.

He noticed a hairbrush on the bureau and saw strands of blond hair caught in it. It made him feel a little easier. He knew that the hair from the brush could be used, if it ever came to the point of connecting evidence – possibly from the trunk of a car – to the dead girl.

He stepped over and looked at the window. It was a slider and he saw the black smudges of fingerprint powder still on the frame. He unlocked the window and pulled it open. There were splinter marks where the latch had supposedly been jimmied with a screwdriver or similar tool.

Bosch looked out through the rain at the back yard. There was a lima bean-shaped pool that was covered with a plastic tarp. Rainwater was collecting on the tarp. Again Bosch thought of the girl. He wondered if she ever dove into the pool to escape and to swim to the bottom to scream.

Past the pool he noticed the hedge that surrounded the back yard. It was ten feet high and insured backyard privacy. Bosch recognized the hedge from the computer images he had seen on the Charlotte’s Web Site.

Bosch closed the window. Rain always made him sad. And this day he didn’t need it to feel that way. He already had the ghost of Frankie Sheehan in his head, he had a crumbled marriage he didn’t have time to think about, and he had haunting thoughts about the little girl with the lost-in-the-woods face.

He took his hand from his pocket to open the closet door. The girl’s clothes were still there. Colorful dresses on white plastic hangers. He looked through them until he found the white dress with the little semaphore flags. He remembered that from the web site, too.

He went back out into the hallway and checked the other rooms. There was what looked like a guest bedroom, which Bosch recognized as the room from the photos on the web page. This was where Stacey Kincaid had been assaulted and filmed. Bosch didn’t stay long. Further down the hall were a bathroom, the master suite and another bedroom, which had been converted into a library and office.

He went back out to the living room. It did not look as though Kate Kincaid had moved. He picked up his briefcase and walked into the room to join her.

“I’m a little damp, Mrs. Kincaid. All right if I sit down?”

“Of course. And it’s Kate.”

“I was thinking that I’d rather keep things on a formal basis for the moment, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself, Detective.”

He was angry at her, angry at what had happened in this house and how the secret had been locked away. He had seen enough during his tour of the place to confirm in his own mind what Kizmin Rider had fervently believed the night before.

He sat down on one of the covered chairs across from the couch and put his briefcase on his knees. He opened it and started going through some of the contents, which from her angle Kate Kincaid could not see.