Harry.”
“All right, Antoine.”
Bosch left him there holding the box.
On the way back to Hollywood he let Edgar drive while he pulled the tip sheet out of his briefcase and called Sheila Delacroix on his cell phone. She answered promptly and Bosch introduced himself and said her call had been referred to him.
“Was it Arthur?” she asked urgently.
“We don’t know, ma’am. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Oh.”
“Will it be possible for me and my partner to come see you tomorrow morning to talk about Arthur and get some information? It will help us to be better able to determine if the remains are those of your brother.”
“I understand. Um, yes. You can come here, if that is convenient.”
“Where is there, ma’am?”
“Oh. My home. Off Wilshire in the Miracle Mile.”
Bosch looked at the address on the call-in sheet.
“On Orange Grove.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Is eight-thirty too early for you?”
“That would be fine, Officer. If I can help I would like to. It just bothers me to think that that man lived there all those years after doing something like this. Even if the victim wasn’t my brother.”
Bosch decided it wasn’t worth telling her that Trent was probably completely innocent in terms of the bone case. There were too many people in the world who believed everything they saw on television.
Instead, Bosch gave her his cell phone number and told her to call it if something came up and eight-thirty the next morning turned out to be a bad time for her.
“It won’t be a bad time,” she said. “I want to help. If it’s Arthur, I want to know. Part of me wants it to be him so I know it is over. But the other part wants it to be somebody else. That way I can keep thinking he is out there someplace. Maybe with a family of his own now.”
“I understand,” Bosch said. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter 22
IT was a brutal drive to Venice and Bosch arrived more than a half hour late. His lateness was then compounded by his fruitless search for a parking space before he went back to the library lot in defeat. His delay was no bother to Julia Brasher, who was in the critical stage of putting things together in the kitchen. She instructed him to go to the stereo and put on some music, then pour himself a glass of wine from the bottle that was already open on the coffee table. She did not make a move to touch him or kiss him, but her manner was completely warm. He thought things seemed good, that maybe he had gotten past the gaffe of the night before.
He chose a CD of live recordings of the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Vanguard in New York. He had the CD at home and knew it would make for quiet dinner music. He poured himself a glass of red wine and casually walked around the living room, looking at the things she had on display.
The mantel of the white brick fireplace was crowded with small framed photos he hadn’t gotten a chance to look at the night before. Some were propped on stands and displayed more prominently than others. Not all were of people. Some photos were of places he assumed she had visited in her travels. There was a ground shot of a live volcano billowing smoke and spewing molten debris in the air. There was an underwater shot of the gaping mouth and jagged teeth of a shark. The killer fish appeared to be launching itself right at the camera-and whoever was behind it. At the edge of the photo Bosch could see one of the iron bars of the cage the photographer-who he assumed was Brasher-had been protected by.
There was a photo of Brasher with two Aboriginal men on either side of her standing somewhere, Bosch assumed, in the Australian outback. And there were several other photos of her with what appeared to be fellow backpackers in other locations of exotic or rugged terrain that Bosch could not readily identify. In none of the photos in which Julia was a subject was she looking at the camera. Her eyes were always staring off in the distance or at one of the other individuals posed with her.
In the last position on the mantel, as if hidden behind the other photos, was a small gold-framed shot of a much younger Julia Brasher with a slightly older man. Bosch reached behind the photos and lifted it out so he could see it better. The couple was sitting at a restaurant or perhaps a wedding reception. Julia wore a beige gown with a low-cut neckline. The man wore a tuxedo.
“You know, this man is a god in Japan,” Julia called from the kitchen.
Bosch put the framed photo back in its place and walked to the kitchen. Her hair was down and he couldn’t decide which way he liked it best.
“Bill Evans?”
“Yeah. It seems like they have whole channels of the radio dedicated to playing his music.”
“Don’t tell me, you spent some time in Japan, too.”
“About two months. It’s a fascinating place.”
It looked to Bosch like she was making a risotto with chicken and asparagus in it.
“Smells good.”
“Thank you. I hope it is.”
“So what do you think you were running from?”
She looked up at him from her work at the stove. A hand held a stirring spoon steady.
“What?”
“You know, all the travel. Leaving Daddy’s law firm to go swim with sharks and dive into volcanoes. Was it the old man or the law firm the old man ran?”
“Some people would look at it as maybe I was running toward something.”
“The guy in the tuxedo?”
“Harry, take your gun off. Leave your badge at the door. I always do.”
“Sorry.”
She went back to work at the stove and Bosch came up behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed his thumbs into the indentations of her upper spine. She offered no resistance. Soon he felt her muscles begin to relax. He noticed her empty wine glass on the counter.
“I’ll go get the wine.”
He came back with his glass and the bottle. He refilled her glass and she picked it up and clicked it off the side of his.
“Whether to something or away from something, here’s to running,” she said. “Just running.”
“What happened to ‘Hold fast’?”
“There’s that, too.”
“Here’s to forgiveness and reconciliation.”
They clicked glasses again. He came around behind her and started working her neck again.
“You know, I thought about your story all last night after you left,” she said.
“My story?”
“About the bullet and the tunnel.”
“And?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Nothing. It’s just amazing, that’s all.”
“You know, after that day, I wasn’t afraid anymore when I was down in the darkness. I just knew that I was going to make it through. I can’t explain why, I just knew. Which, of course, was stupid, because there are no guarantees of that-back then and there or anywhere else. It made me sort of reckless.”
He held his hands steady for a moment.
