talked on the phone and written in her secret journal was unchanged. It had now been preserved longer than the girl had actually lived.
Bosch stepped further into the room and looked around silently. Even the cat didn’t intrude here. The air smelled clean and fresh.
“This is just how it was on the morning she was gone,” Muriel said. “Except I made the bed.”
Bosch looked at the quilt with the cats on it. It flowed over the edges and draped down to the bed skirt, which flowed neatly to the floor.
“You and your husband were sleeping on the other side of the house, right?” Bosch asked.
“Yes. Rebecca was at that age where she wanted her privacy. There are two bedrooms downstairs, on the other side of the house. Her first bedroom was down there. But when she was fourteen she moved up here.”
Bosch nodded and looked around before asking anything else.
“How often do you come up here, Mrs. Verloren?” Rider asked.
“Every single day. Sometimes when I can’t sleep-which is a lot of the time-I come in here and lie down. I don’t get under the covers, though. I want it to be her bed.”
Bosch realized he was nodding again, as if what she had said made some sort of sense to him. He stepped over to the vanity. There were photos slid into the frame of the mirror. Bosch recognized a young Bailey Sable in one of them. There was also a photo of Becky by herself in front of the Eiffel Tower. She was wearing a black beret. None of the other kids from the Art Club trip were present.
Also on the mirror was a photo of a boy with Becky. It looked like they were on a ride at Disneyland, or maybe just down at the Santa Monica pier.
“Who is this?” he asked.
Muriel came over and looked.
“The boy? That’s Danny Kotchof. Her first boyfriend.”
Bosch nodded. The boy who had moved to Hawaii.
“When he moved away it just broke her heart,” Muriel added.
“When exactly was that?”
“The summer before, in June. Right after her freshman year and his sophomore. He was a year older.”
“Why did the family move, do you know?”
“Danny’s dad worked for a rent-a-car company and he got transferred to a new franchise in Maui. It was a promotion.”
Bosch glanced at Rider to see if she picked up on the significance of the information Muriel had just given them. Rider subtly shook her head once. She didn’t get it. But Bosch wanted to pursue it.
“Did Danny go to Hillside Prep?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s where they met,” Muriel said.
Bosch looked down at the vanity and noticed a cheap souvenir snow globe with the Eiffel Tower in it. Some of the water had evaporated, leaving a bubble in the top of the globe and the tip of the tower poking from the water into the air pocket.
“Was Danny in the Art Club?” he asked. “Did he make the trip to Paris with her?”
“No, they moved away before,” Muriel said. “He left in June and the club went to Paris the last week of August.”
“Did she ever see or hear from Danny again?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, they sent letters back and forth and there were phone calls. At first they phoned back and forth, but it got too expensive. And then Danny did all the calling. Every night before bedtime. That lasted almost right up until… until she was gone.”
Bosch reached up and removed the photo from the mirror’s border. He looked closely at Danny Kotchof.
“What happened when your daughter was taken? How did Danny find out? How did he react?”
“Well… we called there and told his father so that he could sit Danny down and tell him the bad news. We were told he did not take it well. Who would?”
“The father told Danny. Did either you or your husband talk directly to Danny?”
“No, but Danny wrote me a long letter about Becky and how much she meant to him. It was very sad and very sweet. Everything was.”
“I’m sure it was. Did he come to the funeral?”
“No, no he didn’t. His, uh, his parents thought it best for him if he stayed there in the islands. The trauma, you know? Mr. Kotchof called and said he wouldn’t be coming.”
Bosch nodded. He turned from the mirror, sliding the photo into his pocket. Muriel didn’t notice.
“What about after?” he asked. “After the letter, I mean. Did he ever contact you? Maybe call and talk to you?”
“No, I don’t think we ever heard from him. Not since the letter.”
“Do you still have that letter?” Rider asked.
“Of course. I kept everything. I have a drawer full of letters we got about Rebecca. She was a well-loved girl.”
“We need to borrow that letter from you, Mrs. Verloren,” Bosch said. “We also might need to look through the whole drawer at some point.”
“Why?”
“Because you never know,” Bosch said.
“Because we want to leave no stone unturned,” Rider added. “We know this is disruptive but please remember what we are doing. We want to find the person who did this to your daughter. It has been a long time but that doesn’t mean anybody should get away with it.”
Muriel Verloren nodded. She had absentmindedly picked up a small decorative pillow off the bed and was clutching it with both hands in front of her chest. It looked like it might have been made by her daughter many years ago. It was a small blue square with a red felt heart sewn across its middle. Holding it made Muriel Verloren look like a target.
13
WHILE BOSCH DROVE, Rider read the letter Danny Kotchof had sent to the Verlorens after Becky’s murder. It was a single page, filled mostly with his fond memories of their lost daughter.
“‘All I can tell you is that I am so sorry this had to happen. I will miss her always. Love, Danny.’ And that’s it.”
“What’s the postmark on it?”
She flipped over the envelope and looked at it.
“ Maui, July twenty-ninth, nineteen eighty-eight.”
“Sure took his time writing it.”
“Maybe it was hard for him. Why are you keying on him, Harry?”
“I’m not. It’s just that Garcia and Green relied on a phone call to clear him. You remember what it said in the book? It said the kid’s supervisor said he was washing cars at the rent-a-car agency the day of and the day after. No time to fly to L.A., kill Becky, and get back home in time for work.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, now we find out from Muriel that his old man ran a rent-a-car. There was nothing about that in the murder book. Did Garcia and Green know that? How much you want to bet that dad was running the place where the son washed cars? How much you want to bet that the supervisor who alibied the son was working for the father?”
“Man, I was kidding about going to Paris. Sounds like you’re jonesing for a trip to Maui.”
“I just don’t like sloppy work. It leaves loose ends. We have to talk to Danny Kotchof and clear him ourselves. If that’s even possible after so many years.”
“AutoTrack, baby.”
“That might find him for us. It won’t clear him.”
