Michael Connelly - City Of Bones

“I don’t know, ma’am. I don’t know who was living with you. Like I said, we’re trying to put together a profile of that neighborhood. We need to know exactly who was living there. And then we’ll go from there.”

“Well, I am sure the Division of Youth Services can help you.”

Bosch nodded.

“Actually, they changed the name. It’s now called the Department of Children’s Services. And they’re not going to be able to help us until Monday at the earliest, Mrs. Blaylock. This is a homicide. We need this information now.”

Again there was a pause as they all looked at one another.

“Well,” Don Blaylock finally said, “it’s going to be kind of hard to remember exactly who was with us at any given time. There are some obvious ones. Like Benny and Jodi and Frances. But every year we’d have a few kids that, like Audrey said, would be dropped in and then taken out. They’re the tough ones. Let’s see, nineteen eighty…”

He stood up and turned so he could see the breadth of the wall of photos. He pointed to one, a young black boy of about eight.

“William there. He was nineteen eighty. He-”

“No, he wasn’t,” Audrey said. “He came to us in ’eighty-four. Don’t you remember, the Olympics? You made him that torch out of foil.”

“Oh, yeah, ’eighty-four.”

Bosch leaned forward in his seat. The location near the fire was now getting too warm for him.

“Let’s start with the three you mentioned. Benny and the two others. What were their full names?”

He was given their names, and when he asked how they could be contacted he was given phone numbers for two of them but not Benny.

“Benny passed away six years ago,” Audrey said. “Multiple sclerosis.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was very dear to us.”

Bosch nodded and waited for an appropriate silence to go by.

“Um, who else? Didn’t you keep records of who came and for how long?”

“We did but we don’t have them here,” Blaylock said. “They’re in storage in L.A.”

He suddenly snapped his fingers.

“You know, we have a list of the names of every child we tried to help or did help. It’s just not by year. We could probably cut it down a little bit, but would that help you?”

Bosch noticed Audrey give her husband a momentary look of anger. Her husband didn’t see it but Bosch did. He knew her instincts would be to protect her children from the threat, real or not, that Bosch represented.

“Yes, that would help a lot.”

Blaylock left the room and Bosch looked at Audrey.

“You don’t want him to give me that list. Why is that, Mrs. Blaylock?”

“Because I don’t think you are being honest with us. You are looking for something. Something that will fit your needs. You don’t drive three hours in the middle of the night from Los Angeles for a ‘routine questioning,’ as you call it. You know these children come from tough backgrounds. They weren’t all angels when they came to us. And I don’t want any of them blamed for something just because of who they were or where they came from.”

Bosch waited to make sure she was done.

“Mrs. Blaylock, have you ever been to the McClaren Youth Hall?”

“Of course. Several of our children came from there.”

“I came from there, too. And an assortment of foster homes where I never lasted very long. So I know what these children were like because I was one myself, all right? And I know that some foster homes can be full of love and some can be just as bad as or worse than the place you were taken from. I know that some foster parents are committed to the children and some are committed to the subsistence checks from Children’s Services.”

She was quiet a long moment before answering.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You still are looking to finish your puzzle with any piece that fits.”

“You’re wrong, Mrs. Blaylock. Wrong about that, wrong about me.”

Blaylock came back into the room with what looked like a green school folder. He placed it down on the square coffee table and opened it. Its pockets were stuffed with photos and letters. Audrey continued despite his return.

“My husband worked for the city like you do, so he won’t want to hear me say this. But, Detective, I don’t trust you or the reasons you say you are here. You are not being honest with us.”

“Audrey!” Blaylock yelped. “The man is just trying to do his job.”

“And he’ll say anything to do it. And he’ll hurt any of our children to do it.”

“Audrey, please.”

He turned his attention back to Bosch and offered a sheet of paper. There was a list of handwritten names on it. Before Bosch could read them Blaylock took the page back and put it down on the table. He went to work on it with a pencil, putting check marks next to some of the names. He spoke as he worked.

“We made this list just so we could sort of keep track of everybody. You’d be surprised, you can love somebody to death but when it comes time to remember twenty, thirty birthdays you always forget somebody. The ones I’m checking off here are the kids that came in more recent than nineteen eighty. Audrey will double-check when I’m done.”

“No, I won’t.”

The men ignored her. Bosch’s eyes moved ahead of Blaylock’s pencil and down the list. Before he was two-thirds to the bottom he reached down and put his finger on a name.

“Tell me about him.”

Blaylock looked up at Bosch and then over at his wife.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Johnny Stokes,” Bosch said. “You had him in your home in nineteen eighty, didn’t you?”

Audrey stared at him for a moment.

“There, you see?” she said to her husband while looking only at Bosch. “He already knew about Johnny when he came in here. I was right. He’s not an honest man.”

BY the time Don Blaylock went to the kitchen to brew a second pot of coffee Bosch had two pages of notes on Johnny Stokes. He had come to the Blaylock house through a DYS referral in January 1980 and was gone the following July, when he was arrested for stealing a car and going on a joyride through Hollywood. It was his second arrest for car theft. He was incarcerated at the Sylmar Juvenile Hall for six months. By the time his period of rehabilitation was completed he was returned by a judge to his parents. Though the Blaylocks heard from him on occasion and even saw him during his infrequent visits to the neighborhood, they had other children still in their care and soon drifted from contact with the boy.

When Blaylock went to make the coffee Bosch settled into what he thought would be an uncomfortable silence with Audrey. But then she spoke to him.

“Twelve of our children graduated from college,” she said. “Two have military careers. One followed Don into the fire service. He works in the Valley.”

She nodded at Bosch and he nodded back.

“We’ve never considered ourselves to be one hundred percent successful with our children,” she continued. “We did our best with each one. Sometimes the circumstances or the courts or the youth authorities prevented us from helping a child. John was one of those cases. He made a mistake and it was as if we were to blame. He was taken from us… before we could help him.”

All Bosch could do was nod.

“You seemed to know of him already,” she said. “Have you already spoken to him?”

“Yes. Briefly.”

“Is he in jail now?”

“No, he’s not.”

“What has his life been since… we knew him?”

Bosch spread his hands apart.

“He hasn’t done well. Drugs, a lot of arrests, prison.”

She nodded sadly.

“Do you think he killed that boy in our neighborhood? While he was living with us?”