City Of Bones

Chapter 37

BOSCH identified the three occupants of the interview room and announced the date and time, even though both of these would be printed on the lower frame of the video being recorded of the session. He put a rights waiver form on the table and told Delacroix he wanted to advise him one more time of his rights. When he was finished he asked Delacroix to sign the form and then moved it to the side of the table. He took a gulp of coffee and started.

“Mr. Delacroix, earlier today you expressed to me a desire to talk about what happened to your son, Arthur, in nineteen eighty. Do you still wish to speak to us about that?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s start with the basic questions and then we can go back and cover everything else. Did you cause the death of your son, Arthur Delacroix?”

“Yes, I did.”

He said it without hesitation or emotion.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Yes.”

“When did this occur?”

“It was in May, I think, of nineteen eighty. I think that’s when it was. You people probably know more about it than me.”

“Please don’t assume that. Please answer each question to the best of your ability and recollection.”

“I’ll try.”

“Where was your son killed?”

“In the house where we lived at the time. In his room.”

“How was he killed? Did you strike him?”

“Uh, yes. I…”

Delacroix’s businesslike approach to the interview suddenly eroded and his face seemed to close in on itself. He used the heels of his palms to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes.

“You struck him?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“All over, I guess.”

“Including the head?”

“Yes.”

“This was in his room, you said?”

“Yes, his room.”

“What did you hit him with?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you use your fists or an object of some kind?”

“Yes, both. My hands and an object.”

“What was the object you struck your son with?”

“I really can’t remember. I’ll have to… it was just something he had there. In his room. I have to think.”

“We can come back to it, Mr. Delacroix. Why on that day did you-first of all, when did it happen? What time of day?”

“It was in the morning. After Sheila-she’s my daughter-had gone to school. That’s really all I remember, Sheila was gone.”

“What about your wife, the boy’s mother?”

“Oh, she was long gone. She’s the reason I started-”

He stopped. Bosch assumed he was going to lay blame for his drinking on his wife, which would conveniently blame her for everything that came out of the drinking, including murder.

“When was the last time you talked to your wife?”

“Ex-wife. I haven’t talked to her since the day she left. That was…”

He didn’t finish. He couldn’t remember how long.

“What about your daughter? When did you talk to her last?”

Delacroix looked away from Bosch and down at his hands on the table.

“Long time,” he said.

“How long?”

“I don’t remember. We don’t talk. She helped me buy the trailer. That was five or six years ago.”

“You didn’t talk to her this week?”

Delacroix looked up at him, a curious look on his face.

“This week? No. Why would-”

“Let me ask the questions. What about the news? Did you read any newspapers in the last couple weeks or watch the news on TV?”

Delacroix shook his head.

“I don’t like what’s on television now. I like to watch tapes.”

Bosch realized he had gotten off track. He decided to get back to the basic story. What was important for him to achieve here was a clear and simple confession to Arthur Delacroix’s death. It needed to be solid and detailed enough to stand up. Without a doubt Bosch knew that at some point after Delacroix got a lawyer, the confession would be withdrawn. They always were. It would be challenged on all fronts-from the procedures followed to the suspect’s state of mind-and Bosch’s duty was not only to take the confession but to make sure it survived and could eventually be delivered to twelve jurors.

“Let’s get back to your son, Arthur. Do you remember what the object was you struck him with on the day of his death?”

“I’m thinking it was this little bat he had. A miniature baseball bat that was like a souvenir from a Dodgers game.”

Bosch nodded. He knew what he was talking about. They sold bats at the souvenir stands that were like the old billy clubs cops carried until they went to metal batons. They could be lethal.

“Why did you hit him?”

Delacroix looked down at his hands. Bosch noticed his fingernails were gone. It looked painful.

“Um, I don’t remember. I was probably drunk. I…”

Again the tears came in a burst and he hid his face in his tortured hands. Bosch waited until he dropped his hands and continued.

“He… he should have been in school. And he wasn’t. I came in the room and there he was. I got mad. I paid good money-money I didn’t have-for that school. I started to yell. I started to hit and then… then I just picked up the little bat and I hit him. I hit him too hard, I guess. I didn’t mean to.”

Bosch waited again but Delacroix didn’t go on.

“He was dead then?”

Delacroix nodded.

“That means yes?”

“Yes. Yes.”

There was a soft knock on the door. Bosch nodded to Edgar, who got up and went out. Bosch assumed it was the prosecutor but he wasn’t going to interrupt things now to make introductions. He pressed on.

“What did you do next? After Arthur was dead.”

“I took him out the back and down the steps to the garage. Nobody saw me. I put him in the trunk of my car. I then went back to his room, I cleaned up and put some of his clothes in a bag.”

“What kind of bag?”

“It was his school bag. His backpack.”

“What clothes did you put into it?”

“I don’t remember. Whatever I grabbed out of the drawer, you know?”

“All right. Can you describe this backpack?”

Delacroix shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t remember. It was just a normal backpack.”

“Okay, after you put clothes in it, what did you do?”

“I put it in the trunk. And I closed it.”

“What car was that?”

“That was my ’seventy-two Impala.”

“You still have it?”

“I wish; it’d be a classic. But I wrecked it. That was my first DUI.”

“What do you mean ‘wrecked’?”

“I totaled it. I wrapped it around a palm tree in Beverly Hills. It was taken to a junkyard somewhere.”

Bosch knew that tracing a thirty-year-old car would be difficult, but news that the vehicle had been totaled ended all hope of finding it and checking the trunk for physical evidence.

“Then let’s go back to your story. You had the body in the trunk. When did you dispose of it?”

“That night. Late. When he didn’t come home from school that day we started looking for him.”

“We?”

“Sheila and me. We drove around and we looked. We went to all the skateboard spots.”

“And all the time Arthur’s body was in the trunk of the car you were in?”

“That’s right. You see, I didn’t want her to know what I had done. I was protecting her.”

“I understand. Did you make a missing person report with the police?”

Delacroix shook his head.

“No. I went to the Wilshire station and talked to a cop. He was right there where you walk in. At the desk. He told me Arthur probably ran away and he’d be back. To give it a few days. So I didn’t make out the report.”

Bosch was trying to cover as many markers as he could, going over story facts that could be verified and therefore used to buttress the confession when Delacroix and his lawyer withdrew it and denied it. The best way to do this was with hard evidence or scientific fact. But cross-matching stories was also important. Sheila Delacroix had already told Bosch and Edgar that she and her father had driven to the police station on the night Arthur didn’t come home. Her father went in while she waited in the car. But Bosch found no record of a missing person report. It now seemed to fit. He had a marker that would help validate the confession.

“Mr. Delacroix, are you comfortable talking to me?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You are not feeling coerced or threatened in any way?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You are talking freely to me, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, when did you take your son’s body from the trunk?”

“I did that later. After Sheila went to sleep I went back out to the car and I took it to where I could hide the body.”

“And where was that?”

“Up in the hills. Laurel Canyon.”

“Can you remember more specifically where?”

“Not too much. I went up Lookout Mountain past the school. Up in around there. It was dark and I… you know, I was drinking because I felt so bad about the accident, you know.”

“Accident?”

“Hitting Arthur too hard like I did.”

“Oh. So up past the school, do you remember what road you were on?”

“Wonderland.”

“Wonderland? Are you sure?”

“No, but that’s what I think it was. I’ve spent all these years… I tried to forget as much about this as I could.”

“So you’re saying you were intoxicated when you hid the body?”

“I was drunk. Don’t you think I’d have to be?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Bosch felt the first tremor of danger go through him. While Delacroix was offering a complete confession, Bosch had elicited information that might be damaging to the case as well. Delacroix being drunk could explain why the body had apparently been hurriedly dropped in the hillside woods and quickly covered with loose soil and pine needles. But Bosch recalled his own difficult climb up the hill and couldn’t imagine an intoxicated man doing it while carrying or dragging the body of his own son along with him.

Not to mention the backpack. Would it have been carried along with the body or did Delacroix climb back up the hill a second time with the bag, somehow finding the same spot in the dark where he had left the body?

Bosch studied Delacroix, trying to figure out which way to go. He had to be very careful. It would be case suicide to bring out a response that a defense attorney could later exploit for days in court.

“All I remember,” Delacroix suddenly said unbidden, “is that it took me a long time. I was gone almost all night. And I remember that I hugged him as tight as I could before I put him down in the hole. It was like I had a funeral for him.”

Delacroix nodded and searched Bosch’s eyes as if looking for an acknowledgment that he had done the right thing. Bosch returned nothing with his look.

“Let’s start with that,” he said. “The hole you put him into, how deep was it?”

“It wasn’t that deep, maybe a couple feet at the most.”

“How did you dig it? Did you have tools with you?”

“No, I didn’t think about that. So I had to dig with my hands. I didn’t get very far either.”

“What about the backpack?”

“Um, I put it there, too. In the hole. But I’m not sure.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay. Do you remember anything else about this place? Was it steep or flat or muddy?”

Delacroix shook his head.

“I can’t remember.”

“Were there houses there?”

“There was some right nearby, yeah, but nobody saw me, if that’s what you mean.”

Bosch finally concluded that he was going too far down a path of legal peril. He had to stop and go back and clean up a few details.

“What about your son’s skateboard?”

“What about it?”

“What did you do with it?”

Delacroix leaned forward to consider this.

“You know, I don’t really remember.”

“Did you bury it with him?”

“I can’t… I don’t remember.”

Bosch waited a long moment to see if something would come out. Delacroix said nothing.

“Okay, Mr. Delacroix, we’re going to take a break here while I go talk to my partner. I want you to think about what we were just talking about. About the place where you took your son. I need you to remember more about it. And about the skateboard, too.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

“I’ll bring you back some more coffee.”

“That would be good.”

Bosch got up and took the empties from the room. He immediately went to the viewing room and opened the door. Edgar and another man were in there. The man, whom Bosch didn’t know, was looking at Delacroix through the one-way glass. Edgar was reaching to the video to turn it off.

“Don’t turn it off,” Bosch said quickly.

Edgar held back.

“Let it run. If he starts remembering more stuff I don’t want anybody to try to say we gave it to him.”

Edgar nodded. The other man turned from the window and put out his hand. He looked like he was no more than thirty. He had dark hair that was slicked back and very white skin. He had a broad smile on his face.

“Hi, George Portugal, deputy district attorney.”

Bosch put the empty cups down on a table and shook his hand.

“Looks like you’ve got an interesting case here,” Portugal said.

“And getting more so all the time,” Bosch said.

“Well, from what I’ve seen in the last ten minutes, you don’t have a worry in the world. This is a slam dunk.”

Bosch nodded but didn’t return the smile. What he wanted to do was laugh at the inanity of Portugal’s statement. He knew better than to trust the instincts of young prosecutors. He thought of all that had happened before they had gotten Delacroix into the room on the other side of the glass. And he knew there was no such thing as a slam dunk.