“Foster. You mean last name of Foster?”
“Yeah, last name.”
He waited. Edgar said nothing.
“Jerry, you remember?”
“Harry, take it easy. I’m thinking.”
More silence.
“Um,” Edgar finally said. “No Foster. None that I can remember.”
“How sure are you?”
“Well, Harry, come on. I don’t have the board or the lists here. But I think I would’ve remembered that name. Why is it so important? What’s going on?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Bosch took the phone with him out to the dining room table where he had left his briefcase. He opened it and took out the murder book. He quickly turned to the page that listed the current residents of Wonderland Avenue with their addresses and phone numbers. There were no Fosters on the list. He picked up the phone and punched in a number. After four rings it was answered by a voice he recognized.
“Dr. Guyot, this is Detective Bosch. Am I calling too late?”
“Hello, Detective. No, it’s not too late for me. I spent forty years getting phone calls at all hours of the night. Nine o’clock? Nine o’clock is for amateurs. How are your various injuries?”
“They’re fine, Doctor. I’m in a bit of a hurry and I need to ask you a couple questions about the neighborhood.”
“Well, go right ahead.”
“Going way back, nineteen eighty or so, was there ever a family or a couple on the street named Foster?”
There was silence as Guyot thought over the question.
“No, I don’t think so,” he finally said. “I don’t remember anybody named Foster.”
“Okay. Then can you tell me if there was anybody on the street that took in foster kids?”
This time Guyot answered without hesitation.
“Uh, yes, there was. That was the Blaylocks. Very nice people. They helped many children over the years, taking them in. I admired them greatly.”
Bosch wrote the name down on a blank piece of paper at the front of the murder book. He then flipped to the report on the neighborhood canvas and saw there was no one named Blaylock currently living on the block.
“Do you remember their first names?”
“Don and Audrey.”
“What about when they moved from the neighborhood? Do you remember when that was?”
“Oh, that would have been at least ten years ago. After the last child was grown, they didn’t need that big house anymore. They sold it and moved.”
“Any idea where they moved to? Are they still local?”
Guyot said nothing. Bosch waited.
“I’m trying to remember,” Guyot said. “I know I know this.”
“Take your time, Doctor,” Bosch said, even though it was the last thing he wanted Guyot to do.
“Oh, you know what, Detective?” Guyot said. “Christmas. I saved all the cards I received in a box. So I know who to send cards to next year. My wife always did that. Let me put the phone down and get the box. Audrey still sends me a card every year.”
“Go get the box, Doctor. I’ll wait.”
Bosch heard the phone being put down. He nodded to himself. He was going to get it. He tried to think about what this new information could mean but then decided to wait. He would gather the information and then sift through it after.
It took Guyot several minutes to come back to the phone. The whole time Bosch waited with his pen poised to write the address on the note page.
“Okay, Detective Bosch, I’ve got it here.”
Guyot gave him the address and Bosch almost sighed out loud. Don and Audrey Blaylock had not moved to Alaska or some other far reach of the world. They were still within a car drive. He thanked Guyot and hung up.
Chapter 49
AT 8 A.M. Saturday morning Bosch was sitting in his slickback watching a small wood-frame house a block off the main drag in the town of Lone Pine three hours north of Los Angeles in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. He was sipping cold coffee from a plastic cup and had another one just like it ready to take over when he was finished. His bones ached from the cold and a night spent driving and then trying to sleep in the car. He had made it to the little mountain town too late to find a motel open. He also knew from experience that coming to Lone Pine without a reservation on a weekend was not advisable anyway.
As dawn’s light came up he saw the blue-gray mountain rising in the mist behind the town and reducing it to what it was; insignificant in the face of time and the natural pace of things. Bosch looked up at Mt. Whitney, the highest point in California, and knew it had been there long before any human eyes had ever seen it and would be there long after the last set was gone. Somehow it made it easier to know all that he knew.
Bosch was hungry and wanted to go over to one of the diners in town for steak and eggs. But he wouldn’t leave his post. If you moved from L.A. to Lone Pine it wasn’t just because you hated the crowds, the smog and the pace of the big city. It was because you also loved the mountain. And Bosch wasn’t going to risk missing Don and Audrey Blaylock to a morning mountain hike while he was eating breakfast. He settled for turning the car on and running the heater for five minutes. He had been parceling out the heat and the gas that way all night.
Bosch watched the house and waited for a light to come on or someone to pick up the newspaper that had been dropped on the driveway from a passing pickup two hours earlier. It was a thin roll of newspaper. Bosch knew it wasn’t the L.A. Times. People in Lone Pine didn’t care about Los Angeles or its murders or its detectives.
At nine Bosch saw smoke start to curl out of the house’s chimney. A few minutes later, a man of about sixty wearing a down vest came out and got the paper. After picking it up he looked a half block down the street to Bosch’s car. He then went back inside.
Bosch knew his car stood out on the street. He hadn’t been trying to hide himself. He was just waiting. He started the car and drove down to the Blaylocks’ house and pulled into the driveway.
When Bosch got to the door the man he had seen earlier opened it before he had to knock.
“Mr. Blaylock?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
Bosch showed his badge and ID.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you and your wife for a few minutes. It’s about a case I’m working.”
“You alone?”
“Yeah.”
“How long’ve you been out there?”
Bosch smiled.
“Since about four. Got here too late to get a room.”
“Come in. We have coffee on.”
“If it’s hot, I’ll take it.”
He led Bosch in and pointed him toward a seating arrangement of chairs and a couch near the fireplace.
“I’ll get my wife and the coffee.”
Bosch stepped over to the chair nearest the fireplace. He was about to sit down when he noticed all the framed photographs on the wall behind the couch. He stepped over to study them. They were all of children and young adults. They were of all races. Two had obvious physical or mental handicaps. The foster children. He turned and took the seat closest to the fire and waited.
Soon Blaylock returned with a large mug of steaming coffee. A woman came into the room behind him. She looked a little bit older than her husband. She had eyes still creased by sleep but a kind face.
