Michael Connelly - City Of Bones

Bosch could tell by her face that if he were to answer truthfully he would knock down everything she had built out of what was good in what they had done. The whole wall of pictures, the graduation gowns and the good jobs would mean nothing next to this.

“I don’t really know. But we do know he was a friend of the boy who was killed.”

She closed her eyes. Not tightly, just as if she were resting them. She said nothing else until Blaylock came back into the room. He went past Bosch and put another log on the fire.

“Coffee will be up in a minute.”

“Thank you,” Bosch said.

After Blaylock walked back to the couch, Bosch stood up.

“I have some things I would like you to look at, if you don’t mind. They’re in my car.”

He excused himself and went out to the slickback. He grabbed his briefcase from the front seat and then went to the trunk to get the file box containing the skateboard. He thought it might be worth a try showing it to the Blaylocks.

His phone chirped just as he closed the trunk and this time he answered it. It was Edgar.

“Harry, where are you?”

“Up in Lone Pine.”

“Lone Pine! What the fuck are you doing up there?”

“I don’t have time to talk. Where are you?”

“At the table. Like we agreed. I thought you-”

“Listen, I’ll call you back in an hour. Meantime, put out a new BOLO on Stokes.”

“What?”

Bosch checked the house to make sure the Blaylocks weren’t listening or in sight.

“I said put out another BOLO on Stokes. We need him picked up.”

“Why?”

“Because he did it. He killed the kid.”

“What the fuck, Harry?”

“I’ll call you in an hour. Put out the BOLO.”

He hung up and this time turned the phone off.

Inside the house Bosch put the file box down on the floor and then opened his briefcase on his lap. He found the envelope containing the family photos borrowed from Sheila Delacroix. He opened it and slid them out. He split the stack in two and gave one-half to each of the Blaylocks.

“Look at the boy in these pictures and tell me if you recognize him, if he ever came to your house. With Johnny or anybody else.”

He watched as the couple looked at the photos and then exchanged stacks. When they were finished they both shook their heads and handed the photos back.

“Don’t recognize him,” Don Blaylock said.

“Okay,” Bosch said as he put the photos back into the envelope.

He closed his briefcase and put it on the floor. He then opened the file box and lifted out the skateboard.

“Has either of you-”

“That was John’s,” Audrey said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I recognize it. When he was… taken from us, he left it behind. I told him we had it. I called his house but he never came for it.”

“How do you know that this is the one that was his?”

“I just remember. I didn’t like the skull and crossbones. I remember those.”

Bosch put the skateboard back in the box.

“What happened to it if he never came for it?”

“We sold it,” Audrey said. “When Don retired after thirty years and we decided to move up here, we sold all of our junk. We had a gigantic garage sale.”

“More like a house sale,” her husband added. “We got rid of everything.”

“Not everything. You wouldn’t sell that stupid fire bell we have in the backyard. Anyway, that was when we sold the skateboard.”

“Do you remember who you sold it to?”

“Yes, the man who lived next door. Mr. Trent.”

“When was this?”

“Summer of ’ninety-two. Right after we sold the house. We were still in escrow, I remember.”

“Why do you remember selling the skateboard to Mr. Trent? ’Ninety-two was a long time ago.”

“I remember because he bought half of what we were selling. The junky half. He gathered it all up and offered us one price for everything. He needed it all for his work. He was a set designer.”

“Set decorator,” her husband corrected. “There is a difference.”

“Anyway, he used everything he bought from us on movie sets. I always hoped I would see something in a movie that I’d know came from our house. But I never did.”

Bosch scribbled some notes in his pad. He had just about everything he needed from the Blaylocks. It was almost time to head south, back to the city to put the case together.

“How did you get the skateboard?” Audrey asked him.

Bosch looked up from his notepad.

“Uh, it was in Mr. Trent’s possessions.”

“He’s still on the street?” Don Blaylock asked. “He was a great neighbor. Never a problem at all with him.”

“He was until recently,” Bosch said. “He passed away, though.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Audrey proclaimed. “What a shame. And he wasn’t that old a man.”

“I just have a couple more questions,” Bosch said. “Did John Stokes ever tell either of you how he came to have the skateboard?”

“He told me that he had won it during a contest with some other boys at school,” Audrey said.

“The Brethren School?”

“Yes, that’s where he went. He was going when he first came to us and so we continued it.”

Bosch nodded and looked down at his notes. He had everything. He closed the notebook, put it in his coat pocket and stood up to go.

BOSCH pulled the car into a space in front of the Lone Pine Diner. The booths by all the windows were filled and almost all of the people in them looked out at the LAPD car two hundred miles from home.

He was starved but knew he needed to talk to Edgar before delaying any further. He took out the cell phone and made the call. Edgar answered after half a ring.

“It’s me. Did you put the BOLO out?”

“Yeah, it’s out. But it’s a little hard to do when you don’t know what the fuck is going on, partner.”

He said the last word as if it was a synonym for asshole. It was their last case together and Bosch felt bad that they were going to end their time this way. He knew it was his fault. He had cut Edgar out of the case for reasons Bosch wasn’t even sure about.

“Jerry, you’re right,” he said. “I fucked up. I just wanted to keep things moving and that meant driving through the night.”

“I would’ve gone with you.”

“I know,” Bosch lied. “I just didn’t think. I just drove. I’m coming back now.”

“Well, start at the beginning so I know what the fuck is going on in our own case. I feel like a moron here, putting out a BOLO and not even knowing why.”

“I told you, Stokes is the guy.”

“Yeah, you told me that and you didn’t tell me anything else.”

Bosch spent the next ten minutes watching diners eat their food while he recounted his moves for Edgar and brought him up to date.

“Jesus Christ, and we had him right here,” Edgar said when Bosch was finished.

“Yeah, well, it’s too late to worry about that. We have to get him back.”

“So you’re saying that when the kid packed up and ran away, he went to Stokes. Then Stokes leads him up there into the woods and just kills him.”

“More or less.”

“Why?”

“That’s what we have to ask him. I’ve got a theory, though.”

“What, the skateboard?”

“Yeah, he wanted the skateboard.”

“He’d kill a kid over a skateboard?”

“We’ve both seen it done for less and we don’t know if he intended to kill him or not. It was a shallow grave, dug by hand. Nothing premeditated about that. Maybe he just pushed him and knocked him down. Maybe he hit him with a rock. Maybe there was something else going on between them we don’t even know about.”

Edgar didn’t say anything for a long moment and Bosch thought maybe they were finished and he could get some food.