Michael Connelly - The Closers

He shook his head tightly, that anger still sharp after all the years. Bosch asked an obvious question, obvious because he knew so well how the LAPD worked back then.

“Did they threaten you?”

Verloren snorted.

“Yes, they threatened me,” he said quietly. “They told me that they knew my daughter had been pregnant but they couldn’t find the clinic she had gone to to get it taken care of. So there was no tissue they could use to identify the father. No way to tell who it was or wasn’t. They said that all it would take was for them to ask a few questions about me and her, like with my customer on the police commission, and the rumors would start to run. They said just a few questions in the right places and pretty soon people would think it was me.”

Bosch didn’t interrupt. He felt his own anger tightening his throat.

“They said it would be hard for me to keep my business if everybody thought I had… I had done that to my daughter…”

Now more tears came down his dark face. He did nothing to stop their flow.

“And so I did what they wanted. I backed off and dropped it. Stopped stirring the pot. I told myself it didn’t matter; it wouldn’t bring Becky back to us. So I never called Detective Green again… and they never solved the case. After a while I started drinking to forget what I had lost and what I had done, that I had put myself and my pride and my reputation and my business ahead of my daughter. And pretty soon, before you knew it, I came to that black hole I was telling you about. I fell in and I’m still climbing out.”

After a moment he turned and looked at Bosch.

“How’s that for a story, Detective?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Verloren. I’m sorry that happened. All of it.”

“Is that the story you wanted to hear, Detective?”

“I just wanted to know the truth. Believe it or not, it is going to help me. It will help me speak for her. Can you describe these two men who came to you?”

Verloren shook his head.

“It’s been a long time. I probably wouldn’t recognize them if they stood in front of me. I just remember they were both white men. One of them I always thought of as Mr. Clean because his head was shaved and he stood with his arms folded like the guy on the bottle.”

Bosch nodded and he felt his anger working into the muscles of his shoulders. He knew who Mr. Clean was.

“How much of all this did your wife know?” he asked in a calm tone.

Verloren shook his head.

“Muriel didn’t know anything about this. I kept it from her. It was my water to carry.”

Verloren wiped his cheeks and seemed to have earned some relief from finally telling the story.

Bosch reached into his back pocket and came up with the old photograph of Roland Mackey. He put it down on the table in front of Verloren.

“Do you recognize this kid?”

Verloren looked for a long moment before shaking his head in the negative.

“Should I? Who is he?”

“His name is Roland Mackey. He was a couple years older than your daughter in ’eighty-eight. He didn’t go to school at Hillside but he lived in Chatsworth.”

Bosch waited for a response but didn’t get any. Verloren just stared at the photo on the table.

“That’s a mug shot. What did he do?”

“Stole a car. But he has a record of associating with white power extremists. In and outside of jail. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“I don’t know. I’m just asking. Can you remember if your daughter ever mentioned his name or maybe somebody named Ro?”

Verloren shook his head.

“What we are trying to do is figure out if they could have intersected anywhere. The Valley’s a big place. They could’ve -”

“What school did he go to?”

“He went to Chatsworth High but never finished. He got a GED.”

“Rebecca went to Chatsworth High for driver’s ed the summer before she was taken.”

“You mean ’eighty-seven?”

Verloren nodded.

“I’ll check it out.”

But Bosch didn’t think it was a good lead. Mackey had dropped out before the summer of 1987 and didn’t come back for his general education degree until 1988. Still, it was worth a thorough look.

“What about the movies? Did she like to go to movies and the mall?”

Verloren shrugged.

“She was a sixteen-year-old girl. Of course she liked movies. Most of her friends had cars. Once they hit sixteen and got mobile they were all over the place. My wife called it the three Ms-movies, malls, and Madonna.”

“Which malls? Which theaters?”

“They went to the Northridge Mall because it was close, you know. They also liked to go to the drive-in over on Winnetka. That way they could sit in the car and talk during the movie. One of the girls had a convertible and they liked going in that.”

Bosch zeroed in on the drive-in. He had forgotten about it when he had spoken about movie theaters with Rider earlier. But Roland Mackey had once been arrested burglarizing the same drive-in on Winnetka. That made it a key possibility as the point of intersection.

“How often did Rebecca and her friends go to the drive-in?”

“I think they liked to go on Friday nights, when the new movies were just out.”

“Did they meet boys there?”

“I would assume so. You see, this is all just second-guessing. There was nothing wrong or unnatural about our daughter going to the movies with her friends and meeting up with boys and whatnot. It is only after the worst-case scenario happens that people ask, ‘Why don’t you know who she was with?’ We thought everything was fine. We sent her to the best school we could find. Her friends were from nice families. We couldn’t watch her every minute of the day. Friday nights-hell, most nights-I worked late at the restaurant.”

“I understand. I am not judging you as a parent, Mr. Verloren. I see nothing wrong with that, okay? I am just dragging a net. I’m collecting as much information as I can because you never know what might become important.”

“Yeah, well, that net got snagged and ripped on the rocks a long time ago.”

“Maybe not.”

“You think this Mackey fellow is the one, then?”

“He’s connected somehow, that’s all we know for sure. We’ll know more soon enough. I promise you that.”

Verloren turned and looked directly into Bosch’s eyes for the first time during the interview.

“When you get to that point, you will speak for her, won’t you, Detective?”

Bosch nodded slowly. He thought he knew what Verloren was asking.

“Yes sir, I will.”

KIZ RIDER SAT at her desk with her arms folded, as if she had been waiting for Bosch all morning. She had a somber look on her face and Bosch knew something was up.

“You get the PDU file?” he asked.

“I got to look at it. I wasn’t allowed to take it.”

Bosch nodded. He slid into his seat across from her.

“Good stuff?” he asked.

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“Well, I got some stuff, too.”

He looked around. Abel Pratt’s door was open and Bosch could see him in there, bending over to the little cooler he kept next to his desk. Pratt was in earshot. It wasn’t that Bosch didn’t trust Pratt. He did. But he didn’t want to put him in a position of hearing something he didn’t want to or was not ready to hear. Same as Rider when they had spoken on the phone earlier.

He looked back at his partner.

“You want to take a walk?”

“Yes, I do.”

They got up and headed out. When Bosch went past the OIC’s door he leaned in. Pratt was now on the phone. Bosch caught his attention and pantomimed drinking from a cup and then pointed to Pratt. Shaking his head no to the offer of coffee, Pratt held up a tub of yogurt as if to say he had what he needed. Bosch saw little chunks of green in the gunk. He tried to think of a green fruit and only came up with kiwi. He walked away thinking that the only possible way to make yogurt taste worse was to put kiwi into it.