City Of Bones

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 against the door and pushing it open.

“All right if we come in?” he asked, already halfway across the threshold.

“No, it’s not all right,” Trent said quickly.

Edgar stopped and put a puzzled look on his face.

“Sir, we just have a few more questions we’d like to ask.”

“Yeah, and that’s bullshit!”

“Excuse me?”

“We all know what is going on here. I talked to my attorney already. Your act is just that, an act. A bad one.”

Bosch could see they were not going to get anywhere with the trick-or-treat strategy. He stepped up and pulled Edgar back by the arm. Once his partner had cleared the threshold he looked at Trent.

“Mr. Trent, if you knew we’d be back, then you knew we’d find out about your past. Why didn’t you tell Detective Edgar about it before? It could have saved us some time. Instead, it gives us suspicion. You can understand that, I’m sure.”

“Because the past is the past. I didn’t bring it up. I buried the past. Leave it that way.”

“Not when there are bones buried in it,” Edgar said in an accusatory tone.

Bosch looked back at Edgar and gave him a look that said use some finesse.

“See?” Trent said. “This is why I am saying, ‘Go away.’ I have nothing to tell you people. Nothing. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Mr. Trent, you molested a nine-year-old boy,” Bosch said.

“The year was nineteen sixty-six and I was punished for it. Severely. It’s the past. I’ve been a perfect citizen ever since. I had nothing to do with those bones up there.”

Bosch waited a moment and then spoke in a calm and quieter tone.

“If that is the truth, then let us come in and ask our questions. The sooner we clear you, the sooner we move on to other possibilities. But you have to understand something here. The bones of a young boy were found about a hundred yards from the home of a man who molested a young boy in nineteen sixty-six. I don’t care what kind of citizen he’s been since then, we need to ask him some questions. And we will ask those questions. We have no choice. Whether we do it in your home right now or with your lawyer at the station with all of the news cameras waiting outside, that’s going to be your choice.”

He paused. Trent looked at him with scared eyes.

“So you can understand our situation, Mr. Trent, and we can certainly understand yours. We are willing to move quickly and discreetly but we can’t without your cooperation.”

Trent shook his head as though he knew that no matter what he did now, his life as he knew it was in jeopardy and probably permanently altered. He finally stepped back and signaled Bosch and Edgar in.

Trent was barefoot and wearing baggy black shorts that showed off thin ivory legs with no hair on them. He wore a flowing silk shirt over his thin upper body. He had the same build as a ladder, all hard angles. He led them to a living room cluttered with antiques. He sat down in the center of a couch. Bosch and Edgar took the two leather club chairs opposite. Bosch decided to keep the lead. He didn’t like the way Edgar had handled the door.

“To be cautious and careful, I am going to read you your constitutional rights,” he said. “Then I’ll ask you to sign a waiver form. This protects you as well as us. I am also going to record our conversation so that nobody ends up putting words in anybody else’s mouth. If you want a copy of the tape I will make it available.”

Trent shrugged and Bosch took it as reluctant agreement. When Bosch had the form signed he slipped it into his briefcase and took out a small recorder. Once he started it and identified those present as well as the time and date, he nodded to Edgar to assume the lead again. This was because Bosch thought that observations of Trent and his surroundings were going to be more important than his answers now.

“Mr. Trent, how long have you lived in this house?”

“Since nineteen eighty-four.”

He then laughed.

“What is funny about that?” Edgar asked.

“Nineteen eighty-four. Don’t you get it? George Orwell? Big Brother?”

He gestured toward Bosch and Edgar as the front men of Big Brother. Edgar apparently didn’t follow the statement and continued with the interview.

“Rent or own?”

“Own. Uh, at first I rented, then I bought the house in ’eighty-seven from the landlord.”

“Okay, and you are a set designer in the entertainment industry?”

“Set decorator. There is a difference.”

“What is the difference?”

“The designer plans and supervises the construction of the set. The decorator then goes in and puts in the details. The little character strokes. The characters’ belongings or tools. Like that.”

“How long have you done this?”

“Twenty-six years.”

“Did you bury that boy up on the hillside?”

Trent stood up indignantly.

“Absolutely not. I’ve never even set foot on that hill. And you people are making a big mistake if you waste your time on me when the true killer of that poor soul is still out there somewhere.”

Bosch leaned forward in his chair.

“Sit down, Mr. Trent,” he said.

The fervent way in which Trent delivered the denial made Bosch instinctively think he was either innocent or one of the better actors he had come across on the job. Trent slowly sat down on the couch again.

“You’re a smart guy,” Bosch said, deciding to jump in. “You know exactly what we’re doing here. We have to bag you or clear you. It’s that simple. So why don’t you help us out? Instead of dancing around with us, why don’t you tell us how to clear you?”

Trent raised his hands wide.

“I don’t know how! I don’t know anything about the case! How can I help you when I don’t know the first thing about it?”

“Well, right off the bat, you can let us take a look around here. If I can start to get comfortable with you, Mr. Trent, then maybe I can start seeing it from your side of things. But right now… like I said, I’ve got you with your record and I’ve got bones across the street.”

Bosch held up his two hands as if he was holding those two things in them.

“It doesn’t look that good from where I’m looking at things.”

Trent stood up and threw one hand out in a gesture toward the interior of the house.

“Fine! Be my guest. Look around to your heart’s content. You won’t find a thing because I had nothing to do with it. Nothing!”

Bosch looked at Edgar and nodded, the signal being that he should keep Trent occupied while Bosch took a look around.

“Thank you, Mr. Trent,” Bosch said as he stood up.

As he headed into a hallway that led to the rear of the house, he heard Edgar asking if Trent had ever seen any unusual activity on the hillside where the bones had been found.

“I just remember kids used to play up-”

He stopped, apparently when he realized that any mention he made of kids would only further suspicion about him. Bosch glanced back to make sure the red light of the recorder was still on.

“Did you like watching the kids play up there in the woods, Mr. Trent?” Edgar asked.

Bosch stayed in the hallway, out of sight but listening to Trent’s answer.

“No, I couldn’t see them if they were up in the woods. On occasion I would be driving up or walking my dog-when he was alive-and I would see the kids climbing up there. The girl across the street. The Fosters next door. All the kids around here. It’s a city-owned right-of-way-the only undeveloped land in the neighborhood. So they went up there to play. Some of the neighbors thought the older ones went up there to smoke cigarettes, and the concern was they would set the whole hillside on fire.”

“How long ago are you talking about?”

“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.

“How the hell did she know we were here?”

“Probably a neighbor,” Bosch said. “She was out here the whole two days of the dig. She’s a celebrity. She made nice with the residents. Made friends. Plus, we’re sitting in a goddamn Shamu. Might as well have called a press conference.”

Bosch thought of the inanity of trying to do detective work in a car painted black and white. Under a program designed to make cops more visible on the street, the department had assigned detectives in the divisions to black-and-whites that didn’t carry the emergency lights on top but were just as noticeable.

They watched as the reporter and her cameraman went to Trent’s door.

“She’s going to try to talk to him,” Edgar said.

Bosch quickly went into his briefcase and got out his cell phone. He was about to dial Trent’s number and tell him not to answer when he realized he couldn’t get a cell signal.

“Goddammit,” he said.

“Too late anyway,” Edgar said. “Let’s just hope he plays it smart.”

Bosch could see Trent at his front door, totally bathed in the white light from the camera. He said a few words and then made a waving gesture and closed the door.

“Good,” Edgar said.

Bosch started the car, turned it around and headed back through the canyon to the station.

“So what’s next?” Edgar asked.

“We have to pull the records on his conviction, see what it was about.”

“I’ll do that first thing.”

“No. First thing I want to deliver the search warrants to the hospitals. Whether Trent fits our picture or not, we need to ID the kid in order to connect him to Trent. Let’s meet at Van Nuys Courthouse at eight. We get them signed and then split ’em up.”

Bosch had picked Van Nuys court because Edgar lived nearby and they could separate and go from there in the morning after the warrants had been approved by a judge.

“What about a warrant on Trent’s place?” Edgar said. “You see anything while you were looking around?”

“Not much. He’s got a skateboard in a box in the garage. You know, with his work stuff. For putting on a set. I was thinking of our victim’s shirt when I saw that. And there were some work boots with dirt in the treads. It might match the samples from the hill. But I’m not counting on a search coming through for us. The guy has had twenty years to make sure he’s clear. If he’s the guy.”

“You don’t think so?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Timing’s wrong. ’Eighty-four is on the late side. The far edge of our window.”

“I thought we were looking at ’seventy-five to ’eighty-five.”

“We are. In general. But you heard Golliher-twenty to twenty-five years ago. That’s early eighties on the high side. I don’t know about ’eighty-four being early eighties.”

“Well, maybe he moved to that house because of the body. He buried the kid there before and wanted to be close by so he moves into the neighborhood. I mean, Harry, these are sick fucks, these guys.”

Bosch nodded.

“There’s that. But I just wasn’t getting the vibe from the guy. I believed him.”

“Harry, your mojo’s been wrong before.”

“Oh, yeah…”

“I think it’s him. He’s the guy. Hear how he said, ‘just because I touched a boy.’ Probably to him, sodomizing a nine-year-old is reaching out and touching somebody.”

Edgar was being reactionary but Bosch didn’t call him on it. He was a father; Bosch wasn’t.

“We’ll get the records and we’ll see. We also have to go to the Hall to check the reverses, see who was on that street back then.”

The reverses were phone books that listed residents by address instead of by name. A collection of the books for every year was kept in the Hall of Records. They would allow the detectives to determine who was living on the street during the 1975 to 1985 range they were looking at as the boy’s time of death.

“That’s going to be a lot of fun,” Edgar said.

“Oh, yeah,” Bosch said. “I can’t wait.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way. Bosch became depressed. He was disappointed with himself for how he had run the investigation so far. The bones were discovered Wednesday, and the full investigation took off on Thursday. He knew he should have run the names-a basic part of the investigation-sooner than Sunday. By delaying it he had given Trent the advantage. He’d had three days to expect and prepare for their questions. He had even been briefed by an attorney. He could have even been practicing his responses and looks in a mirror. Bosch knew what his internal lie detector said. But he also knew that a good actor could beat it.