Bosch rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a headache from staring at the machine’s screen and reading tale after tale of parental anguish and juvenile angst. He looked over and realized he hadn’t eaten his sandwich.
He returned the stack of microfiche envelopes to the clerk and decided to do the computer work in Parker Center rather than drive back to Hollywood. From Parker Center he could jump on the 10 Freeway and shoot out to Venice for dinner at Julia Brasher’s house. It would be easier.
The squad room of the Robbery-Homicide Division was empty except for the two on-call detectives who were sitting in front of a television watching a football game. One of them was Bosch’s former partner, Kizmin Rider. The other Bosch didn’t recognize. Rider stood up smiling when she saw it was Bosch.
“Harry, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Working a case. I want to use a computer, that all right?”
“That bone thing?”
He nodded.
“I heard about it on the news. Harry, this is Rick Thornton, my partner.”
Bosch shook his hand and introduced himself.
“I hope she makes you look as good as she did me.”
Thornton just nodded and smiled and Rider looked embarrassed.
“Come on over to my desk,” she said. “You can use my computer.”
She showed him the way and let him sit in her seat.
“We’re just twiddling our thumbs here. Nothing happening. I don’t even like football.”
“Don’t complain about the slow days. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that?”
“Yeah, my old partner. Only thing he ever said that made any sense.”
“I bet.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“I’m just running the names-the usual.”
He opened his briefcase and took out the murder book. He opened it to a page where he had listed the names, addresses and birth dates of residents on Wonderland Avenue who had been interviewed during the neighborhood canvas. It was a matter of routine and due diligence to run the name of every person investigators came across in an investigation.
“You want a coffee or something?” Rider asked.
“Nah, I’m fine. Thanks, Kiz.”
He nodded in the direction of Thornton, who had his back to them and was on the other side of the room.
“How are things going?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Every now and then he lets me do some real detective work,” she said in a whisper.
“Well, you can always come back to Hollywood,” he whispered back with a smile.
He started typing in the commands for entering the National Crime Index Computer. Immediately, Rider made a sound of derision.
“Harry, you’re still typing with two fingers?”
“It’s all I know, Kiz. I’ve been doing it this way for almost thirty years. You expect me to suddenly know how to type with ten fingers? I’m still not fluent in Spanish and don’t know how to dance, either. You’ve only been gone a year.”
“Just get up, dinosaur. Let me do it. You’ll be here all night.”
Bosch raised his hands in surrender and stood up. She sat down and went to work. Behind her back Bosch secretly smiled.
“Just like old times,” he said.
“Don’t remind me. I always get the shit work. And stop smiling.”
She hadn’t looked up from her typing. Her fingers were a blur above the keyboard. Bosch watched in awe.
“Hey, it’s not like I planned this. I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“Yeah, like Tom Sawyer didn’t know he had to paint a fence.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Tell me about the boot.”
Bosch was stunned.
“What?”
“Is that all you can say? You heard me. The rookie you’re, uh… seeing.”
“How the hell do you know about it already?”
“I’m a highly skilled gatherer of information. And I still have sources in Hollywood.”
Bosch stepped away from her cubicle and shook his head.
“Well, is she nice? That’s all I wanted to know. I don’t want to pry.”
Bosch came back.
“Yes, she’s nice. I hardly know her. You seem to know more about her and me than me.”
“You havin’ dinner with her tonight?”
“Yeah, I’m having dinner with her.”
“Hey, Harry?”
Rider’s voice had lost any note of humor.
“What?”
“You got a pretty good hit here.”
Bosch leaned down and looked at the screen. After digesting the information he said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it to dinner tonight.”
Chapter 14
BOSCH pulled to a stop in front of the house and studied the darkened windows and porch.
“Figures,” Edgar said. “The guy ain’t even going to be home. Probably already in the wind.”
Edgar was annoyed with Bosch, who had called him in from home. The way he figured it, the bones had been in the ground twenty years, what was the harm of waiting until Monday morning to talk to this guy? But Bosch said he was going by himself if Edgar didn’t come in.
Edgar came in.
“No, he’s home,” Bosch said.
“How d’you know?”
“I just know.”
He looked at his watch and wrote the time and address down on a page in his small notebook. It occurred to him then that the house they were at was the one where he had seen the curtain pulled closed behind a window on the evening of the first call out.
“Let’s go,” he said. “You talked to him the first time, so you take the lead. I’ll jump in when it feels right.”
They got out and walked up the driveway to the house. The man they were visiting was named Nicholas Trent. He lived alone in the house, which was across the street and two houses down from the hillside where the bones had been found. Trent was fifty-seven years old. He had told Edgar during his initial canvas of the neighborhood that he was a set decorator for a studio in Burbank. He was unmarried and had no children. He knew nothing about the bones on the hill and could offer no clues or suggestions that were helpful.
Edgar knocked hard on the front door and they waited.
“Mr. Trent, it’s the police,” he said loudly. “Detective Edgar. Answer your door, please.”
He had raised his fist to hit the door again when the porch light went on. The door was then opened and a white man with a shaved scalp stood in the darkness within. The light from the porch slashed across his face.
“Mr. Trent? It’s Detective Edgar. This is my partner, Detective Bosch. We have a few follow-up questions for you. If you don’t mind.”
Bosch nodded but didn’t offer his hand. Trent said nothing and Edgar forced the issue by putting his hand
