There was a small enclosed yard with a clothesline stretching from the corner of the garage to the corner of the house. There were a few things hanging on the line, two silk slips and other women’s undergarments. There were more clothing items on the ground, having fallen or been blown off the line. The winds came up at night. People didn’t leave their clothes on the line overnight.
Bosch went to the garage first and stood on his toes to look through one of two windows set high in the wooden door. He saw the distinctive curving roofline of a Volkswagen Beetle inside. The car and the clothing left out on the line seemed to confirm what the odor already told him. June Wilkins had not left on a trip, simply forgetting to tell her daughter back east. She was inside the house waiting for them.
He turned to the house and went up the three concrete steps to the back door stoop. There was a glass panel in the door that allowed him to see into the kitchen and partway down a hallway that led to the front rooms of the house. Nothing seemed amiss. No rotting food on the table. No blood on the floor.
He then saw on the floor next to a trash can a dog food bowl with flies buzzing around the rotting mound inside it.
Bosch felt a quickening of his pulse. He took his stick out and used it to rap on the glass. He waited but there was no response. He heard his partner knock on the front door again and announce once more that it was the police.
Bosch tried the knob on the back door and found it unlocked. He slowly opened the door and the odor came out with an intensity that made him drop back off the stoop.
“Ron!” he called out. “Open door in the back.”
After a moment he could hear his partner’s equipment belt jangling as he hustled to the back, his footfalls heavy. He came around the corner to the stoop.
“Did you-oh, shit! That is rank! I mean, that is
“Should we go in?” he asked.
“Yeah, we better check it out,” Eckersly said. “But wait a second.”
He went over to the clothesline and yanked the two slips off the line. He threw one to Bosch.
“Use that,” he said.
Eckersly bunched the silk slip up against his mouth and nose and went first through the door. Bosch did the same and followed him in.
“Let’s do this quick,” Eckersly said in a muffled voice.
They moved with speed through the house and found the DB in the bathroom off the hallway. There was a clawfoot bathtub filled to the brim with still dark water. Breaking the surface were two rounded shapes, one at either end, with hair splayed out on the water. Flies had collected on each as if they were lifeboats on the sea.
“Let me see your stick,” Eckersly said.
Not comprehending, Bosch pulled it out of his belt ring and handed it to his partner. Eckersly dipped one end of the stick into the tub’s dark water and prodded the round shape near the foot of the tub. The flies dispersed and Bosch waved them away from his face. The object in the water shifted its delicate balance and turned over. Bosch saw the jagged teeth and snout of a dog break the surface. He involuntarily took a step back.
Eckersly moved to the next shape. He probed it with the stick and the flies angrily took flight, but the object in the water did not move so readily. It was not free-floating like the dog. It went down deep like an iceberg. He dipped the stick down farther and then raised it. The misshapen and decaying face of a human being came up out of the water. The small features and long hair suggested a woman but that could not be determined for sure by what Bosch saw.
The stick had found leverage below the dead person’s chin. But it quickly slipped off and the face submerged again. Dark water lapped over the side of the tub and both of the police officers stepped back again.
“Let’s get out of here,” Eckersly said. “Or we’ll never get it out of our noses.”
He handed the nightstick back to Bosch and pushed past him to the door.
“Wait a second,” Bosch said.
But Eckersly didn’t wait. Bosch turned his attention back to the body and dipped the stick into the dark water again. He pulled it through the water until it hooked something and he raised it up. The dead person’s hands came out of the water. They were bound at the wrists with a dog collar. He slowly let them back down into the water again.
On his way out of the house, Bosch carried the stick at arm’s length from his body. In the backyard he founth=yard hed Eckersly standing by the garage door, gulping down fresh air. Bosch threw the slip he had used to breathe through over the clothesline and came over.
“Congratulations, boot,” Eckersly said, using the department slang for rookie. “You got your first DB. Stick with the job and it will be one of many.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He tossed his nightstick onto the grass-he planned to get a new one now-and took out his cigarettes.
“What do you think?” Eckersly asked. “Suicide? She took the pooch with her?”
“Her hands were tied with the dog’s collar,” Bosch said.
Eckersly’s mouth opened a little but then he recovered and became the training officer again.
“You shouldn’t have gone fishing in there,” he said sternly. “Suicide or homicide, it’s not our concern anymore. Let the detectives handle it from here.”
Bosch nodded his contrition and agreement.
“What I don’t get,” his partner said, “is how the hell did you smell that at the front door?”
Bosch shrugged.
“Used to it, I guess.”
He nodded toward the west, as if the war had been just down the street.
“I guess that also explains why you’re not puking your guts out,” Eckersly said. “Like most rookies would be doing right now.”
“I guess so.”
“You know what, Bosch. Maybe you’ve got a nose for this stuff.”
“Maybe I do.”
NOW
Harry Bosch and his partner, Kiz Rider, shared an alcove in the back corner of the Open-Unsolved Unit in Parker Center. Their desks were pushed together so they could face each other and discuss case matters without having to talk loudly and bother the six other detectives in the squad. Rider was writing on her laptop, entering the completion and summary reports on the Verloren case. Bosch was reading through the dusty pages of a blue binder known as a murder book.
“Anything?” Rider asked without looking up from her screen.
Bosch was reviewing the murder book since it was the next case they would work together. He hadn’t chosen it at random. It involved the 1972 slaying of June Wilkins. Bosch had been a patrolman then and had been on the job only two days when he and his partner at the time had discovered the body of the murdered woman in her bathtub. Along with the body of her dog. Both had been held underwater and drowned.
There were thousands of unsolved murders in the files of the Los Angeles Police Department. To justify the time and cost of mounting a new investigation, there had to be a hook. Something that could be sent through the forensic databases in search of a match: fingerprints, ballistics, DNA. That was what Rider was asking. Had he found a hook?
“Not yet,” he answered.
“Then why don’t you quit fooling with it and skip to the back?”
She wanted him to skip to the evidence report in the back of the binder and see if there was anything that could fit the bill. But Bosch wanted to take his time. He wanted to know all the details of the case. It had been his first DB. One of many that would come to him in the department. But he’d had no part in the investigation. He had been a rookie patrolman at the time. He had to watch the detectives work it. It would be years in the department
