“Dad, it’s okay,” Deborah Irving said, defusing the situation. “I’ll be fine. Why don’t you make yourself something to eat in the kitchen?”
Irving looked at Bosch for a long moment, probably second-guessing his demand that Harry be put on the case.
“Just call if you need me,” he said.
Irving then left the room and Bosch and Chu sat down, Harry making their introductions.
“Mrs. Irving, I want—”
“You can call me Deborah.”
“Deborah, then. We want you to know that you have our condolences for the loss of your husband. We also appreciate your willingness to talk to us at this difficult time.”
“Thank you, Detective. I am more than willing to talk. It’s just that I don’t think I have any answers for you and the shock of this is more than . . .”
She looked around and Bosch knew what she was looking for. The tears were coming again. Harry signaled to Chu.
“Find her some tissues. Check the bathroom.”
Chu got up. Bosch intently watched the woman across from him, looking for signs of genuine emotion and loss.
“I don’t know why he would have done this,” she said.
“Why don’t we start with the easy questions? The ones where there are answers. Why don’t you tell me when you last saw your husband?”
“Last night. He left the house after dinner and didn’t come back.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, he said he needed air, that he was going to put the top down and take a drive up on Mulholland. He told me not to wait up for him. I didn’t.”
Bosch waited but nothing else came.
“Was that unusual, him going out for a drive like that?”
“He had been doing it a lot lately. I didn’t think he was really out driving, though.”
“You mean he was doing something else?”
“Connect the dots, Lieutenant.”
“I’m a detective, not a lieutenant. Why don’t you connect the dots for me, Deborah. Do you know what your husband was doing?”
“No, I don’t. I’m just telling you that I didn’t think he was just riding around on Mulholland. I thought he was probably meeting someone.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“No. I was going to but I was waiting.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know exactly. I was just waiting.”
Chu came back with a box of tissues and handed it to her. But the moment had passed and her eyes looked cold and hard now. Even so, she was beautiful, and Bosch found it hard to believe a husband would take to late- night drives when the woman waiting at home was Deborah Irving.
“Let’s go back a second. You said he left after you two had dinner. Was that at home or had you been out?”
“We were home. Neither of us was very hungry. We just had sandwiches.”
“Do you remember what time dinner was?”
“It would’ve been about seven thirty. He left at eight thirty.”
Bosch took out his notebook and wrote a few things down about what had been said so far. He remembered that Solomon and Glanville had reported that someone—presumably George Irving—had made the reservation at the Chateau at eight fifty, twenty minutes after Deborah said her husband had left their home.
“One-four-nine-two.”
“Excuse me?”
“Do those numbers mean anything to you? One-four-nine-two—fourteen ninety-two?
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
She seemed genuinely confused. Bosch had meant to keep her off balance by asking questions in a nonsequential manner.
“Your husband’s property—his wallet and phone and wedding ring—were in the hotel safe. That was the combination that was entered to lock it. Is there any significance to those numbers to your husband or you?”
“I can’t think of any.”
“Okay. Did your husband have a familiarity with the Chateau Marmont? Had he stayed there before?”
“We had been there before together, but like I said, I didn’t really know where he went when he went on his drives. He could’ve been going there. I don’t know.”
Bosch nodded.
“How would you describe your husband’s state of mind when you last saw him?”
She thought for a long moment before shrugging and saying that her husband seemed normal, not burdened or upset as far as she could tell.
“How would you describe the state of your marriage?”
She dropped her eyes to the floor for a moment before bringing them up to his.
“We would have reached our twentieth anniversary in January. Twenty years is a long time. A lot of highs and lows but many more highs than lows.”
Bosch noted that she did not answer the question he had asked.
“What about right now? Were you in a high or a low?”
She paused a long moment before answering.
“Our son—our only child—left in August for college. It has been a difficult adjustment.”
“Empty nest syndrome,” Chu said.
Both Bosch and Deborah Irving looked at him but he added nothing else and looked a little foolish for interrupting.
“What day in January was your anniversary?” Bosch asked.
“The fourth.”
“So you were married on January fourth, nineteen ninety-two?”
“Oh, my god!”
She brought her hands to her mouth in embarrassment over not recognizing the hotel room safe combination. Tears rolled out of her eyes and she pulled tissues from the box.
“How stupid of me! You must think I’m a complete—”
“It’s okay,” Bosch offered. “I said it like a year, not a full date. Do you know if he used that number as a combination or password before?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“ATM password?”
“No we used our son’s birthday—five-two-ninety-three.”
“What about on his cell phone?”
“That’s Chad’s birthday, too. I’ve used George’s phone.”
Bosch wrote the new date down in his notebook. The cell phone had been logged into evidence by the SID team and was on its way downtown. He would be able to unlock it and access its call records at the PAB. He had to consider what this meant. On the one hand, use of the Irving’s anniversary date tended to indicate that it had been George Irving who had set the combination on the room safe. But a wedding date could be found in court records with a computer. Once again it was information that did not exclude either suicide or murder.
He decided to move in a new direction again.
“Deborah, what exactly did your husband do for a living?”
She responded with a more detailed version of what Irvin Irving had already told him. George had followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the LAPD at twenty-one. But after five years in patrol he left the department for law
