“How do you know this?”
“For a long time it was a suspicion… then it became my belief based on things I had heard. Eventually, he actually told me. I finally confronted him and he admitted it.”
“What exactly did he tell you?”
“He said that it was an accident – but you don’t strangle people by accident. He said she threatened him, said that she was going to tell her friends what he… what he and his friends did to her. He said he was trying to stop her, to talk her out of doing it. He said things got out of hand.”
“This occurred where?”
“Right here. In the house.”
“When?”
She gave the date of her daughter’s reported abduction. She seemed to understand that Bosch had to ask some questions that had obvious answers. He was building a record.
“Your husband had sexually abused Stacey?”
“Yes.”
“He admitted this to you?”
“Yes.”
She started to cry then and opened her purse for a tissue. Bosch let her alone for a minute. He wondered if she was crying because of grief or guilt or out of relief that the story was finally being told. He thought it was probably a combination of all three.
“Over how long a period was she abused?” he finally asked.
Kate Kincaid dropped the tissue to her lap.
“I don’t know. We were married five years before… before she died. I don’t know when it started.”
“When did you become aware of it?”
“I would rather not answer that question, if you don’t mind.”
Bosch studied her. Her eyes were downcast. The question was at the foundation of her guilt.
“It’s important, Mrs. Kincaid.”
“She came to me once.” She got a fresh tissue from her purse for a fresh torrent of tears. “About a year before… She said that he was doing things she didn’t think were right… At first, I didn’t believe her. But I asked him about it anyway. He denied it, of course. And I believed him. I thought it was an adjustment problem. You know, to a stepfather. I thought maybe this was her way of acting out or something.”
“And later?”
She didn’t say anything. She looked down at her hands. She pulled her purse onto her lap and held it tightly.
“Mrs. Kincaid?”
“And later there were things. Little things. She never wanted me to go out and leave her with him – but she’d never tell me why. Looking back, it is obvious why. It wasn’t so obvious then. One time he was taking a long time in her room saying good night. I went to see what was wrong and the door was locked.”
“Did you knock on the door?”
She sat frozen for a long moment before shaking her head no.
“Is that a no?”
Bosch had to ask it for the tape.
“Yes, no. I did not knock.”
Bosch decided to press on. He knew that mothers of incest and molestation victims often didn’t see the obvious or take the obvious steps to save their daughters from jeopardy. Now Kate Kincaid lived in a personal hell in which her decision to give up her husband – and herself – to public ridicule and criminal prosecution would always seem like too little too late. She had been right. A lawyer couldn’t help her now. No one could.
“Mrs. Kincaid, when did you become suspicious of your husband’s involvement in your daughter’s death?”
“During Michael Harris’s trial. You see I believed he did it – Harris. I mean, I just didn’t believe that the police would plant fingerprints. Even the prosecutor assured me that it was unlikely that it could be done. So I believed in the case. I wanted to believe. But then during the trial one of the detectives, I think it was Frank Sheehan, was testifying and he said they arrested Michael Harris at the place where he worked.”
“The car wash.”
“Right. He gave the address and the name of the place. And it hit me then. I remembered going to that same car wash with Stacey. I remembered her books were in the car. I told my husband and said we should tell Jim Camp. He was the prosecutor. But Sam talked me out of it. He said the police were sure and he was sure that Michael Harris was the killer. He said if I raised the question the defense would find out and use the information to twist the case. Like with the O.J. case, the truth meant nothing. We’d lose the case. He reminded me that Stacey was found right near Harris’s apartment… He said he probably saw her with me at the car wash that day and started to stalk us – stalk her. He convinced me… and I let it go. I still wasn’t sure it wasn’t Harris. I did what my husband told me.”
“And Harris got off.”
“Yes.”
Bosch paused for a moment, believing the break was needed before the next question.
“What changed, Mrs. Kincaid?” he finally asked. “What made you send those notes to Howard Elias?”
“My suspicions were never far away. Then one day, a few months ago, I overheard part of a conversation my husband was having with his… his friend.”
She said the last word as if it was the worst thing you could ever say about anybody.
“Richter?”
“Yes. They thought I wasn’t home and I wasn’t supposed to be. I was supposed to be at lunch with my girlfriends at the club. Mountaingate. Only I stopped going to lunches with my girlfriends after Stacey… well, you know, lunches and that sort of thing didn’t interest me anymore. So I would tell my husband I was going to lunch but instead I’d go visit Stacey. At the cemetery…”
“Okay. I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you could understand, Detective Bosch.”
Bosch nodded.
“I’m sorry. You’re probably right. Go on, Mrs. Kincaid.”
“It was raining on that particular day. Just like today, hard and sad. So I only visited with her for a few minutes. I got back to the house early. I guess they didn’t hear me come in because of the rain. But I heard them. They were in his office talking… I’d had my suspicions so I went to the door. I didn’t make a sound. I stood outside the door and listened.”
Bosch leaned forward. This was the payoff. He’d know in a moment how legitimate she was. He doubted two men involved in the killing of a twelve-year-old girl would sit around reminiscing about it. If Kate Kincaid said that was the case, then Bosch would have to think she was lying.
“What did they say?”
“They weren’t talking in sentences. Do you understand? They were just making short comments. I could tell they were talking about girls. Different girls – it was disgusting what they said. I had no idea how organized this all was. I had deluded myself into thinking that if something had happened with Stacey it was a weakness on his part, something he struggled with. I was wrong. These men were organized predators.”
“So you were at the door listening…,” Bosch said by way of getting her back on track.
“They weren’t talking to each other. It was like they were commenting. I could tell by how they spoke that they were looking at something. And I could hear the computer – the keyboard and other sounds. Later I would be able to use the computer and find what it was they were looking at. It was young girls, ten, eleven…”
“Okay, we’ll get back to the computer in a couple of minutes. But let’s go back to what you heard. How did this… these comments lead you to conclude or know something about Stacey?”
“Because they mentioned her. I heard Richter say, ‘There she is.’ And then my husband said her name. The way he said it… almost with a longing – it wasn’t the way a father or a stepfather would have said it. And then they were quiet. I could tell, they were looking at her. I knew.”
Bosch thought about what he had seen on Rider’s computer screen the night before. It was hard for him to imagine Kincaid and Richter sitting in an office together watching the same scenes – and with decidedly different
