He noticed a hairbrush on the bureau and saw strands of blond hair caught in it. It made him feel a little easier. He knew that the hair from the brush could be used, if it ever came to the point of connecting evidence – possibly from the trunk of a car – to the dead girl.
He stepped over and looked at the window. It was a slider and he saw the black smudges of fingerprint powder still on the frame. He unlocked the window and pulled it open. There were splinter marks where the latch had supposedly been jimmied with a screwdriver or similar tool.
Bosch looked out through the rain at the back yard. There was a lima bean-shaped pool that was covered with a plastic tarp. Rainwater was collecting on the tarp. Again Bosch thought of the girl. He wondered if she ever dove into the pool to escape and to swim to the bottom to scream.
Past the pool he noticed the hedge that surrounded the back yard. It was ten feet high and insured backyard privacy. Bosch recognized the hedge from the computer images he had seen on the Charlotte’s Web Site.
Bosch closed the window. Rain always made him sad. And this day he didn’t need it to feel that way. He already had the ghost of Frankie Sheehan in his head, he had a crumbled marriage he didn’t have time to think about, and he had haunting thoughts about the little girl with the lost-in-the-woods face.
He took his hand from his pocket to open the closet door. The girl’s clothes were still there. Colorful dresses on white plastic hangers. He looked through them until he found the white dress with the little semaphore flags. He remembered that from the web site, too.
He went back out into the hallway and checked the other rooms. There was what looked like a guest bedroom, which Bosch recognized as the room from the photos on the web page. This was where Stacey Kincaid had been assaulted and filmed. Bosch didn’t stay long. Further down the hall were a bathroom, the master suite and another bedroom, which had been converted into a library and office.
He went back out to the living room. It did not look as though Kate Kincaid had moved. He picked up his briefcase and walked into the room to join her.
“I’m a little damp, Mrs. Kincaid. All right if I sit down?”
“Of course. And it’s Kate.”
“I was thinking that I’d rather keep things on a formal basis for the moment, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself, Detective.”
He was angry at her, angry at what had happened in this house and how the secret had been locked away. He had seen enough during his tour of the place to confirm in his own mind what Kizmin Rider had fervently believed the night before.
He sat down on one of the covered chairs across from the couch and put his briefcase on his knees. He opened it and started going through some of the contents, which from her angle Kate Kincaid could not see.
“Did you find something of interest in Stacey’s bedroom?”
Bosch stopped what he was doing and looked over the top of the briefcase at her for a moment.
“Not really,” he said. “I was just getting a feel for the place. I assume it was thoroughly searched before and there isn’t anything in there that I could find. Did Stacey like the pool?”
He went back to his work inside the briefcase while she told him what a fine swimmer her daughter had been. Bosch really wasn’t doing anything. He was just following an act he had rehearsed in his head all morning.
“She could go up and back without having to come up for air,” Kate Kincaid said.
Bosch closed the case and looked at her. She was smiling at the memory of her daughter. Bosch smiled but without any warmth.
“Mrs. Kincaid, how do you spell innocence?”
“Excuse me?”
“The word. Innocence. How do you spell it?”
“Is this about Stacey? I don’t understand. Why are you – ”
“Indulge me for a moment. Please. Spell the word.”
“I’m not a good speller. With Stacey I always kept a dictionary in my purse in case she asked about a word. You know, one of those little ones that – ”
“Go ahead. Try it.”
She paused to think. The confusion was evident on her face.
“I-double n, I know there’s two. I-double n-o-c-e-n-s-e.”
She looked at him and raised her eyebrows in a question. Bosch shook his head and reopened the briefcase.
“Almost,” he said. “But there’s two c’s, no s.”
“Darn. I told you.”
She smiled at him. He took something out of the briefcase, closed it and put it down on the floor. He got up and walked across to the couch. He handed her a plastic document envelope. Inside it was one of the anonymous letters that had been sent to Howard Elias.
“Take a look,” he said. “You spelled it wrong there, too.”
She stared at the letter for a long time and then took a deep breath. She spoke without looking up at Bosch.
“I guess I should have used my little dictionary. But I was in a hurry when I wrote this.”
Bosch felt a lifting inside. He knew then that there would be no fight, no difficulty. The woman had been waiting for this moment. Maybe she knew it was coming. Maybe that was why she had said she felt better than she had in a long, long time.
“I understand,” Bosch said. “Would you like to talk to me about this, Mrs. Kincaid? About everything?”
“Yes,” she said, “I would.”
• • •
Bosch put a fresh battery into the tape recorder, then turned it on and put it down on the coffee table, the microphone pointed up so that it would capture his voice as well as Kate Kincaid’s.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He then identified himself and said who she was, noted the date, time and location of the interview. He read off a constitutional rights advisement from a printed form he had taken from his briefcase.
“Do you understand these rights as I have just read them?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you wish to talk with me, Mrs. Kincaid, or do you wish to contact an attorney?”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No attorney. An attorney can’t help me. I want to talk.”
This gave Bosch pause. He was thinking about how best to keep hair off the cake.
“Well, I can’t give you legal advice. But when you say, ‘An attorney can’t help me,’ I’m not sure that that is going to constitute a waiver. You see what I mean? Because it is always possible that an attorney could – ”
“Detective Bosch, I don’t want an attorney. I fully understand my rights and I don’t want an attorney.”
“Okay, then I need you to sign this paper at the bottom and then sign again where it says that you do not request an attorney.”
He put the rights form down on the coffee table and watched her sign it. He then took it back and made sure she had signed her own name. He then signed it himself as the witness and put it in one of the slots of the accordion file in the briefcase. He sat back down in the chair and looked at her. He thought for a moment about talking to her about a spousal waiver but decided that could wait. He’d let the district attorney’s office handle that – when and if the time came.
“Then I guess this is it,” he said. “You want to start, Mrs. Kincaid, or do you want me to ask you questions?”
He was using her name frequently on purpose – in case the tape was ever played before a jury there would be no misunderstanding of whom the voices belonged to.
“My husband killed my daughter. I guess that’s what you want to know first. That’s why you are here.”
Bosch froze for a moment and then slowly nodded.
