Michael Connelly - City Of Bones

Portugal pulled his chair back to his desk. He picked up the paper and glanced at the story for a moment. His eyes then appeared to take a roving inventory of the desktop while he thought and came to a decision.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Go do it. I’m dropping the charge. For now.”

BOSCH and Edgar walked out to the elevator alcove and stood silently after Edgar pushed the down button.

Bosch looked at his blurred image reflected in the stainless steel doors of the elevator. He looked over at Edgar’s reflection and then directly at his partner.

“So,” he said. “How pissed off are you?”

“Somewhere between very and not too.”

Bosch nodded.

“You really left me with my dick in my hand in there, Harry.”

“I know. I’m sorry. You want to just take the stairs?”

“Have patience, Harry. What happened to your cell phone last night? You break it or something?”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, I just wanted to-I wasn’t sure of what I was thinking and so I wanted to check things out on my own first. Besides, I knew you had the kid on Thursday nights. Then running into Sheila at the trailer, that was out of left field.”

“What about when you started searching the place? You coulda called. My kid was back home asleep by then.”

“Yeah, I know. I should have, Jed.”

Edgar nodded and that was the end of it.

“You know this theory of yours puts us at ground zero now,” he said.

“Yeah, ground zero. We’re gonna have to start over, look at everything again.”

“You going to work it this weekend?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Then call me.”

“I will.”

Finally, Bosch’s impatience got the better of him.

“Fuck it. I’m taking the stairs. I’ll see you down there.”

He left the alcove and went to the emergency stairwell.

THROUGH an assistant in Sheila Delacroix’s office Bosch and Edgar learned that she was working out of a temporary production office on the Westside, where she was casting a television pilot called The Closers.

Bosch and Edgar parked in a reserved lot full of Jaguars and BMWs and went into a brick warehouse that had been divided into two levels of offices. There were paper signs taped on the wall that said CASTING and showed arrows pointing the way. They went down a long hallway and then up a rear staircase.

When they reached the second floor they came into another long hallway that was lined with men in dark suits that were rumpled and out of style. Some of the men wore raincoats and fedoras. Some were pacing and gesturing and talking quietly to themselves.

Bosch and Edgar followed the arrows and turned into a large room lined with chairs holding more men in bad suits. They all stared as the partners walked to a desk at the far end of the room where a young woman sat, studying the names on a clipboard. There were stacks of 8 × 10 photos on the desk and script pages. From beyond a closed door behind the woman, Bosch could hear the muffled sounds of tense voices.

They waited until the woman looked up from her clipboard.

“We need to see Sheila Delacroix,” Bosch said.

“And your names?”

“Detectives Bosch and Edgar.”

She started to smile and Bosch took out his badge and let her see it.

“You guys are good,” she said. “Did you get the sides already?”

“Excuse me?”

“The sides. And where are your head shots?”

Bosch put it together.

“We’re not actors. We’re real cops. Would you please tell her we need to see her right away?”

The woman continued to smile.

“Is that real, that cut on your cheek?” she said. “It looks real.”

Bosch looked at Edgar and nodded toward the door. Simultaneously they went around both sides of her desk and approached the door.

“Hey! She’s taking a reading! You can’t-”

Bosch opened the door and stepped into a small room where Sheila Delacroix was sitting behind a desk watching a man seated on a folding chair in the middle of the room. He was reading from a page of script. A young woman was in the corner behind a video camera on a tripod. In another corner two men sat on folding chairs watching the reading.

The man reading the script didn’t stop when Bosch and Edgar entered.

“The proof’s in your pudding, you mutt!” he said. “You left your DNA all over the scene. Now get up and get against-”

“Okay, okay,” Delacroix said. “Stop there, Frank.”

She looked up at Bosch and Edgar.

“What is this?”

The woman from the desk roughly pushed past Bosch into the room.

“I’m sorry, Sheila, these guys just bullied their way in like they’re real cops or something.”

“We need to talk to you, Sheila,” Bosch said. “Right now.”

“I’m in the middle of a reading. Can’t you see that I-”

“We’re in the middle of a murder investigation. Remember?”

She threw a pen down on the desk and pushed her hands up through her hair. She turned to the woman on the video camera, which was now focused on Bosch and Edgar.

“Okay, Jennifer, turn that off,” she said. “Everybody, I need a few minutes. Frank, I am very sorry. You were doing great. Can you stay and wait a few minutes? I promise to take you first, as soon as I am done.”

Frank stood up and smiled brilliantly.

“No problem, Sheila. I’ll be right outside.”

Everybody shuffled out of the room, leaving Bosch and Edgar alone with Sheila.

“Well,” she said after the door closed. “With an entrance like that, you really should be actors.”

She tried smiling but it didn’t work. Bosch came over to the desk. He remained standing. Edgar leaned his back against the door. They had decided on the way over that Bosch would handle her.

She said, “The show I’m casting is about two detectives called ‘the closers’ because they have a perfect record of closing cases nobody else seems able to. I guess there’s no such thing in real life, is there?”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Bosch said. “Not even close.”

“What is so important that you had to come bursting in here, embarrassing me like that?”

“Couple things. I thought you might want to know that I found what you were looking for last night and-”

“I told you, I wasn’t-”

“-your father was released from custody about an hour ago.”

“What do you mean released? You said last night he wouldn’t be able to make bail.”

“He wouldn’t have been able to. But he’s not charged with the crime anymore.”

“But he confessed. You said he-”

“Well, he de-confessed this morning. That was after we told him we were going to put him on a polygraph machine and mentioned that it was you who called us up and gave us the tip that led to the ID of your brother.”

She shook her head slightly.

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do, Sheila. Your father thought you killed Arthur. You were the one who hit him all the time, who hurt him, who put him in the hospital that time after hitting him with the bat. When he disappeared your father thought maybe you’d finally gone all the way and killed him, then hidden the body. He even went into Arthur’s room and got rid of that little bat in case you had used that again.”

Sheila put her elbows on the desk and hid her face in her hands.

“So when we showed up he started confessing. He was willing to take the fall for you to make up for what he did to you. For this.”

Bosch reached into his pocket and took out the envelope containing the photos. He dropped it onto the desk between her elbows. She slowly lowered her hands and picked it up. She didn’t open the envelope. She didn’t have to.