“No, Harry. I just have something to do tonight.”
Bosch was reminded that he was under explicit orders from his daughter not to be late for dinner.
“What, hot date?” he asked Chu.
“Never mind, let’s go.”
Chu stood up, ready to go rather than answer questions about his private life.
The Washburn house was a small ranch with a threadbare lawn and a Ford junker on blocks in the driveway. Bosch and Chu had circled the block before stopping in front and determined that the west corner of the house’s rear yard was no more than twenty feet from the spot in the alley where Anneke Jespersen was put up against a wall and shot.
Bosch knocked firmly on the door and then stepped to the side of the stoop. Chu took the other side. The door had an iron security gate across it. It was locked.
Eventually the door opened and a woman in her midtwenties stood looking at them through the grate. There was a small boy at her side, an arm wrapped around her leg at the thigh.
“What do you want?” she asked indignantly after correctly sizing them up as cops. “I didn’t call no po- lice.”
“Ma’am,” Bosch said. “We’re just looking for Charles Washburn. We have this address as his home address. Is he here?”
The woman shrieked and it took Bosch a few seconds to realize she was laughing.
“Ma’am?”
“You talking about Two Small? That Charles Washburn?”
“That’s right. Is he here?”
“Now, why would he be here? You people are so stupid. That man owes me money. Why would he be here? He step foot ’round here, he better have that money.”
Bosch now understood. He looked down at the boy in the doorway and then back up at the woman.
“What is your name, please?”
“Latitia Settles.”
“And your son?”
“Charles Junior.”
“Do you have any idea where Charles Senior would be? We have the warrant for him for not making his payments to you. We’re looking for him.”
“’Bout damn time. Every time I see his ass driving by I call you people but nobody comes, nobody does a damn thing. Now you here and I haven’t seen that little man in two months.”
“What do you hear, Latitia? Do people tell you they’ve seen him around?”
She shook her head emphatically.
“He’s gone.”
“What about his mother and his grandmother? They used to live in this house.”
“His grandmother’s dead and his moms moved up to Lancaster a long time ago. She got outta this place.”
“Does Charles go up there?”
“I don’t know. He used to go up and see her for birthdays and such. I don’t know anymore if he’s dead or alive. All I know is my son ain’t seen a dentist or a doctor and he’s got no new clothes his whole life.”
Bosch nodded.
“Latitia, do you mind if we come in?”
“What for?”
“To just look around, make sure the place is safe.”
She banged the grate.
“We safe, don’t worry about that.” “So, we can’t come in?”
“No, I don’t want nobody in here seeing this mess. I’m not ready for that.”
“Okay, what about the backyard? Can we step back there?”
She seemed confused by the question but then shrugged.
“Knock yourself out but he ain’t out there.” “Is the gate at the back unlocked?”
“It’s broke.”
“Okay, we’ll go around.”
Bosch and Chu left the front step and walked over to the driveway, which went down the side of the house and ended at a wooden fence. Chu had to lift the gate and hold it up on one rusted hinge to open it. They then moved into a backyard strewn with old and broken toys and household furniture. There was a dishwasher lying on its side, and it reminded Bosch of being in the alley twenty years before, when appliances beyond saving were stacked there.
The left side of the property was the rear wall of the former tire rims store on Crenshaw. Bosch went to the rear fence line that separated the yard from the alley. It was too tall for him to see over, so he pulled over a tricycle that was missing a rear wheel.
“Careful, Harry,” Chu said.
Bosch put one foot on the seat of the trike and pulled himself up on the fence. He looked across the alley to the spot where Anneke Jespersen had been murdered twenty years before.
Bosch dropped down to the ground and started walking the fence line, pressing his hand on each plank, looking for a loose one or maybe even a trapdoor that would give someone quick access to and from the alley. Two-thirds of the way down, a plank that he pressed on popped back. He stopped and looked closer and then pulled the board toward himself. It was not attached to the upper or lower cross-braces. He easily pulled the plank out of the fence, creating a ten-inch-wide opening.
Chu came up next to him and studied the opening.
“Somebody small could easily slide through there and have access to the alley,” he said.
“What I was thinking,” Bosch replied.
It was stating the obvious. The question was whether the plank had come loose over time or had been a hidden portal back when Charles “2 Small” Washburn had lived here as a sixteen-year-old baby G looking for a shot at being real G.
Bosch told Chu to take a photo of the opening in the fence with his phone. He’d print it later and put it in the book. He then pushed the plank back into place and turned to survey the rest of the yard once more. He saw Latitia Settles standing in the open back door of the house, watching him through another iron gate. He knew that she had to be guessing that they weren’t really looking for Charles because he hadn’t paid child support.
6
Bosch came home to a birthday cake on the table and his daughter in the kitchen making dinner with instructions from a cookbook.
“Wow, smells good,” he said.
He had the Jespersen murder book under his arm.
“Stay out of the kitchen,” she said. “Go out on the deck till I tell you it’s ready. And put that work on the shelf—at least until after dinner. Turn on the music, too.”
“Yes, boss.”
The dining-room table was set for two. After putting the murder book literally on a shelf in the bookcase behind it, he turned on the stereo and opened the CD drawer. His daughter had already loaded the tray with five of his favorite discs. Frank Morgan, George Cables, Art Pepper, Ron Carter, and Thelonious Monk. He set it on random play and stepped out onto the deck.
Outside on the table, there was a bottle of Fat Tire waiting for him in a clay flowerpot filled with ice. This puzzled him. Fat Tire was one of his favorite beers, but he rarely kept alcohol in the house and knew he had not purchased any beer recently. His daughter, at sixteen, looked older than her years but not old enough to buy beer without getting her driver’s license checked.
He cracked open the bottle and took a long pull. It felt good going down, burning the back of his throat with
