“Like when I first moved here. I didn’t get involved. The neighbors who had been here took care of it.”
Bosch moved down the hall. It was a small house, not much bigger than his own. The hallway ended at a conjunction of three doors. Bedrooms on the right and left and a linen closet in the middle. He checked the closet first, found nothing unusual, and then moved into the bedroom on the right. It was Trent’s bedroom. It was neatly kept but the tops of the twin bureaus and bed tables were cluttered with knickknacks that Bosch assumed Trent used on the job in helping to turn sets into real places for the camera.
He looked in the closet. There were several shoe boxes on the upper shelf. Bosch started opening them and found they contained old, worn-out shoes. It was apparently Trent’s habit of buying new shoes and putting his old ones in the box, then shelving them. Bosch guessed that these, too, became part of his work inventory. He opened one box and found a pair of work boots. He noticed that dirt had dried hard in some of the treads. He thought about the dark soil where the bones had been found. Samples of it had been collected.
He put the boots back and made a mental note of it for the search warrant. His current search was just a cursory look around. If they moved to the next step with Trent and he became a full-fledged suspect, then they would come back with a search warrant and literally tear the place apart looking for evidence tying him to the bones. The work boots might be a good place to start. He was already on tape saying he had never been up on that hillside. If the dirt in the treads matched the soil samples from the excavation, then they’d have Trent caught in a lie. Most of what sparring with suspects was about was the locking in of a story. It was then that the investigator looked for the lies.
There was nothing else in the closet that warranted Bosch’s attention. Same with the bedroom or the attached bathroom. Bosch, of course, knew that if Trent was the killer, he’d had many years to cover his tracks. He would also have had the last three days-since Edgar first questioned him during the canvas-to double-check his trail and be ready.
The other bedroom was used as an office and a storage room for his work. On the walls hung framed one sheets advertising the films Bosch assumed Trent had worked on. Bosch had seen some of them on television but rarely went to theaters to see movies. He noticed that one of the frames held the one sheet for a film called The Art of the Cape. Years before, Bosch had investigated the murder of that film’s producer. He had heard that after that, the one sheets from the movie had become collector items in underground Hollywood.
When he was finished looking around the rear of the house, Bosch went through a kitchen door into the garage. There were two bays, one containing Trent’s minivan. The other was stacked with boxes with markings on them corresponding to rooms in a house. At first Bosch was shocked at the thought that Trent had still not completely unpacked after moving in nearly twenty years before. Then he realized the boxes were work related and used in the process of set decoration.
When he turned around he was looking at an entire wall hung with the heads of wild game, their black marble eyes staring at him. Bosch felt a nerve tickle run down his spine. All of his life he had hated seeing things like that. He wasn’t sure why.
He spent another few minutes in the garage, mostly going through a box in the stack that was marked “boy’s room 9-12.” It contained toys, airplane models, a skateboard, and a football. He took the skateboard out for a few moments and studied it, all the while thinking about the shirt from the backpack with “Solid Surf” printed on it. After a while he put the skateboard back in the box and closed it.
There was a side door to the garage that led to a path that went to the backyard. A pool took up most of the level ground before the yard rose into the steep, wooded hillside. It was too dark to see much and Bosch decided he would have to do the exterior look during daylight hours.
Twenty minutes after he left to begin the search Bosch returned to the living room empty-handed. Trent looked up at him expectantly.
“Satisfied?”
“I’m satisfied for now, Mr. Trent. I appreciate your-”
“You see? It never ends. ‘Satisfied for now.’ You people will never let it go, will you? I mean, if I was a drug dealer or a bank robber, my debt would be cleared and you people would leave me alone. But because I touched a boy almost forty years ago I am guilty for life.”
“I think you did more than touch him,” Edgar said. “But we’ll get the records. Don’t worry.”
Trent put his face in his hands and mumbled something about it being a mistake to have cooperated. Bosch looked at Edgar, who nodded that he was finished and ready to go. Bosch stepped over and picked up his recorder. He slid it into the breast pocket of his jacket but didn’t turn it off. He’d learned a valuable lesson on a case the year before-sometimes the most important and telling things are said after an interview is supposedly over.
“Mr. Trent, thank you for your cooperation. We’re going to go. But we might need to talk to you tomorrow. Are you working tomorrow?”
“God, no, don’t call me at work! I need this job and you’ll ruin it. You’ll ruin everything.”
He gave Bosch his pager number. Bosch wrote it down and headed toward the front door. He looked back at Edgar.
“Did you ask him about trips? He’s not planning to go anywhere, is he?”
Edgar looked at Trent.
“Mr. Trent, you work on movies, you know how the dialogue goes. You call us if you plan to go out of town. If you don’t and we have to find you… you’re not going to like it very much.”
Trent spoke in a flat-line monotone, his eyes focused forward, somewhere far away.
“I’m not going anywhere at all. Now please leave. Just leave me alone.”
They walked out the door and Trent closed it hard behind them. At the bottom of the driveway was a large bougainvillea bush in full bloom. It blocked Bosch’s view of the left side of the street until he got there.
A bright light suddenly flashed on and in Bosch’s face. A reporter with a cameraman in tow moved in on the two detectives. Bosch was blinded for a few moments until his eyes started to adjust.
“Hi, detectives. Judy Surtain, Channel Four news. Is there a break in the bones case?”
“No comment,” Edgar barked. “No comment and turn that damn light off.”
Bosch finally saw her in the glare of the light. He recognized her from TV and from the gathering at the roadblock earlier in the week. He also recognized that a “no comment” was not the way to leave this situation. He needed to diffuse it and keep the media away from Trent.
“No,” he said. “No breakthrough. We’re just following routine procedures.”
Surtain shoved the microphone she was carrying toward Bosch’s face.
“Why are you out here in the neighborhood again?”
“We’re just finishing the routine canvas of the residents here. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to the resident here before. We just finished up, that’s all.”
He was talking with a bored tone in his voice. He hoped she was buying it.
“Sorry,” he added. “No big story tonight.”
“Well, was this neighbor or any of the neighbors helpful to the investigation?”
“Well, everyone here has been very cooperative with us but as far as investigative leads go it has been difficult. Most of these people weren’t even living in the neighborhood when the bones were buried. That makes it tough.”
Bosch gestured toward Trent’s house.
“This gentleman, for example. We just found out that he didn’t buy his home here until nineteen eighty-seven and we’re pretty sure those bones were already up there by then.”
“So then it’s back to the drawing board?”
“Sort of. And that’s really all I can tell you. Good night.”
He pushed past her toward his car. A few moments later Surtain was on him at the car door. Without her cameraman.
“Detective, we need to get your name.”
Bosch opened his wallet and took out a business card. The one with the general station number printed on it. He gave it to her and said good night again.
“Look, if there is anything you can tell me, you know, off the record, I would protect you,” Surtain said. “You know, off camera like this, whatever you want to do.”
“No, there is nothing,” Bosch said as he opened the door. “Have a good night.”
Edgar cursed the moment the doors of the car were closed.
