Michael Connelly - City Of Bones

“How’s that for a reading, Sheila?”

“You people… is this what you do? Invade people’s lives like this? I mean, their secrets, everything?”

“We’re the closers, Sheila. Sometimes we have to.”

Bosch saw a case of water bottles on the floor next to her desk. He reached down and opened a bottle for her. He looked at Edgar, who shook his head. Bosch got another bottle for himself, pulled the chair Frank had used close to her desk and sat down.

“Listen to me, Sheila. You were a victim. You were a kid. He was your father, he was strong and in control. There is no shame for you in being a victim.”

She didn’t respond.

“Whatever baggage you carry with you, now is the time to lose it. To tell us what happened. Everything. I think there is more than what you told us before. We’re back at square one and we need your help. This is your brother we’re talking about.”

He opened the bottle and took a long draw of water. For the first time he noticed how warm it was in the room. Sheila spoke while he took his second drink from the bottle.

“I understand something now…”

“What is that?”

She was staring down at her hands. When she spoke it was like she was speaking to herself. Or to nobody.

“After Arthur was gone, my father never touched me again. I never… I thought it was because I had become undesirable in some way. I was overweight, ugly. I think now maybe it was because… he was afraid of what he thought I had done or what I might be able to do.”

She put the envelope back down on the desk. Bosch leaned forward again.

“Sheila, is there anything else about that time, about that last day, that you didn’t tell us before? Anything that can help us?”

She nodded very slightly and then bowed her head, hiding her face behind her raised fists.

“I knew he was running away,” she said slowly. “And I didn’t do anything to stop him.”

Bosch moved forward on the edge of the seat. He spoke gently to her.

“How so, Sheila?”

There was a long pause before she answered.

“When I came home from school that day. He was there. In his room.”

“So he did come home?”

“Yes. For a little bit. His door was open a crack and I looked in. He didn’t see me. He was putting things into his book bag. Clothes, things like that. I knew what he was doing. He was packing and was going to run. I just… I went into my room and closed the door. I wanted him to go. I guess I hated him, I don’t know. But I wanted him gone. To me he was the cause of everything. I just wanted him to be gone. I stayed in my room until I heard the front door close.”

She raised her face and looked at Bosch. Her eyes were wet but Bosch had often before seen that in a purging of guilt and truth came a strength. He saw it in her eyes now.

“I could have stopped him but I didn’t. And that’s what I’ve had to live with. Now that I know what happened to him…”

Her eyes went off past Bosch, somewhere over his shoulder, where she could see the wave of guilt coming toward her.

“Thank you, Sheila,” Bosch said softly. “Is there anything else you know that could help us?”

She shook her head.

“We’ll leave you alone now.”

He got up and moved the chair back to the spot in the middle of the room. He then came back to the desk and picked up the envelope containing the Polaroids. He headed toward the office door and Edgar opened it.

“What will happen to him?” she asked.

They turned around and looked back. Edgar closed the door. Bosch knew she was talking about her father.

“Nothing,” he said. “What he did to you is long past any statute of limitation. He goes back to his trailer.”

She nodded without looking up at Bosch.

“Sheila, he may have been a destroyer at one time. But time has a way of changing things. It’s a circle. It takes power away and gives it to those who once had none. Right now your father is the one who is destroyed. Believe me. He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s nothing.”

“What will you do with the photographs?”

Bosch looked down at the envelope in his hand and then back up at her.

“They have to go into the file. Nobody will see them.”

“I want to burn them.”

“Burn the memories.”

She nodded. Bosch was turning to go when he heard her laugh and he looked back at her. She was shaking her head.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve got to sit here and listen to people trying to talk and sound like you all day. And I know right now nobody will come close. Nobody will get it right.”

“That’s show business,” Bosch said.

As they headed back down the hallway to the stairs Bosch and Edgar passed by all the actors again. In the stairwell the one named Frank was saying his lines out loud. He smiled at the true detectives as they passed.

“Hey, guys, you guys are for real, right? How do you think I was doing in there?”

Bosch didn’t answer.

“You were great, Frank,” Edgar said. “You’re a closer, man. The proof is in the pudding.”

AT two o’clock Friday afternoon Bosch and Edgar made their way through the squad room to the homicide table. They had driven from the Westside to Hollywood in virtual silence. It was the tenth day of the case. They were no closer to the killer of Arthur Delacroix than they had been during all the years that Arthur Delacroix’s bones had lain silently on the hillside above Wonderland Avenue. All they had to show for their ten days was a dead cop and the suicide of an apparently reformed pedophile.

As usual there was a stack of pink phone messages left for Bosch at his place. There was also an inter-office dispatch envelope. He picked up the envelope first, guessing he knew what was in it.

“About time,” he said.

He opened the envelope and slid his mini-cassette recorder out of it. He pushed the play button to check the battery. He immediately heard his own voice. He lowered the volume and turned off the device. He slipped it into his jacket pocket and dropped the envelope into the trash can by his feet.

He shuffled through the phone messages. Almost all were from reporters. Live by the media, die by the media, he thought. He would leave it to the Media Relations Office to explain to the world how a man who confessed to and was charged with a murder one day was exonerated and released the next.

“You know,” Bosch said to Edgar, “in Canada the cops don’t have to tell the media jack about a case until it’s over. It’s like a media blackout on every case.”

“Plus, they’ve got that round bacon up there,” Edgar replied. “What’re we doing here, Harry?”

There was a message from the family counselor at the medical examiner’s office telling Bosch that the remains of Arthur Delacroix had been released to his family for burial on Sunday. Bosch put it aside so he could call back to find out about the funeral arrangements and which member of the family had claimed the remains.

He went back to the messages and came upon a pink slip that immediately gave him pause. He leaned back in his chair and studied it, a tightness coming over his scalp and going down the back of his neck. The message came in at ten-thirty-five and was from a Lieutenant Bollenbach in the Office of Operations-the O-3 as it was more popularly known by the rank and file. The O-3 was where all personnel assignments and transfers were issued. A decade before when Bosch was moved to the Hollywood Division he had gotten the word after a forthwith from the O-3. Same thing with Kiz Rider going to RHD the year before.

Bosch thought about what Irving had said to him in the interview room three days earlier. He guessed that the O-3 was now about to begin an effort to achieve the deputy chief’s wish for Bosch’s retirement. He took the message as a sign he was being transferred out of Hollywood. His new assignment would likely involve some freeway therapy-a posting far from his home and requiring long drives each day to and from work. It was a frequently used management tool for convincing cops they might be better off turning in the badge and doing something else.