City Of Bones

Chapter 3

THE woods were dark long before the sun disappeared. The overhead canopy created by a tall stand of Monterey pines blocked out most of the light before it got to the ground. Bosch used the flashlight and made his way up the hillside in the direction in which he had heard the dog moving through the brush. It was slow moving and hard work. The ground contained a foot-thick layer of pine needles that gave way often beneath Bosch’s boots as he tried for purchase on the incline. Soon his hands were sticky with sap from grabbing branches to keep himself upright.

It took him nearly ten minutes to go thirty yards up the hillside. Then the ground started to level off and the light got better as the tall trees thinned. Bosch looked around for the dog but didn’t see her. He called down to the street, though he could no longer see it or Dr. Guyot.

“Dr. Guyot? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“Whistle for your dog.”

He then heard a three-part whistle. It was distinct but very low, having the same trouble getting through the trees and underbrush as the sunlight had. Bosch tried to repeat it and after a few tries thought he had it right. But the dog didn’t come.

Bosch pressed on, staying on the level ground because he believed that if someone was going to bury or abandon a body, then it would be done on even ground as opposed to the steep slope. Following a path of least resistance, he moved into a stand of acacia trees. And here he immediately came upon a spot where the earth had recently been disturbed. It had been overturned, as if a tool or an animal had been randomly rooting in the soil. He used his foot to push some of the dirt and twigs aside and then realized they weren’t twigs.

He dropped to his knees and used the light to study the short brown bones scattered over a square foot of dirt. He believed he was looking at the disjointed fingers of a hand. A small hand. A child’s hand.

Bosch stood up. He realized that his interest in Julia Brasher had distracted him. He had brought no means with him for collecting the bones. Picking them up and carrying them down the hill would violate every tenet of evidence collection.

The Polaroid camera hung on a shoelace around his neck. He raised it now and took a close-up shot of the bones. He then stepped back and took a wider shot of the spot beneath the acacia trees.

In the distance he heard Dr. Guyot’s weak whistle. Bosch went to work with the yellow plastic crime scene tape. He tied a short length of it around the trunk of one of the acacia trees and then strung a boundary around the trees. Thinking about how he would work the case the following morning, he stepped out of the cover of the acacia trees and looked for something to use as an aerial marker. He found a nearby growth of sagebrush. He wrapped the crime scene tape around and over the top of the bush several times.

When he was finished it was almost dark. He took another cursory look around the area but knew that a flashlight search was useless and the ground would need to be exhaustively covered in the morning. Using a small penknife attached to his key chain, he began cutting four-foot lengths of the crime scene tape off the roll.

Making his way back down the hill, he tied the strips off at intervals on tree branches and bushes. He heard voices as he got closer to the street and used them to maintain his direction. At one point on the incline the soft ground suddenly gave way and he fell, tumbling hard into the base of a pine tree. The tree impacted his midsection, tearing his shirt and badly scratching his side.

Bosch didn’t move for several seconds. He thought he might have cracked his ribs on the right side. His breathing was difficult and painful. He groaned loudly and slowly pulled himself up on the tree trunk so that he could continue to follow the voices.

He soon came back down into the street where Dr. Guyot was waiting with his dog and another man. The two men looked shocked when they saw the blood on Bosch’s shirt.

“Oh my, what happened?” Guyot cried out.

“Nothing. I fell.”

“Your shirt is… there’s blood!”

“Comes with the job.”

“Let me look at your chest.”

The doctor moved in to look but Bosch held his hands up.

“I’m okay. Who is this?”

The other man answered.

“I’m Victor Ulrich. I live there.”

He pointed to the house next to the lot. Bosch nodded.

“I just came out to see what was going on.”

“Well, nothing is going on at the moment. But there is a crime scene up there. Or there will be. We probably won’t be back to work it until tomorrow morning. But I need both you men to keep clear of it and not to tell anybody about this. All right?”

Both of the neighbors nodded.

“And Doctor, don’t let your dog off the leash for a few days. I need to go back down to my car to make a phone call. Mr. Ulrich, I am sure we will want to talk to you tomorrow. Will you be around?”

“Sure. Anytime. I work at home.”

“Doing what?”

“Writing.”

“Okay. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Bosch headed back down the street with Guyot and the dog.

“You really need me to take a look at your injury,” Guyot insisted.

“It’ll be fine.”

Bosch glanced to his left and thought he saw a curtain quickly close behind a window of the house they were passing.

“The way you are holding yourself when you walk-you’ve damaged a rib,” Guyot said. “Maybe you’ve broken it. Maybe more than one.”

Bosch thought of the small, thin bones he had just seen beneath the acacia trees.

“There’s nothing you can do for a rib, broken or not,” he said.

“I can tape it. You’ll breathe a hell of a lot easier. I can also take care of that wound.”

Bosch relented.

“Okay, Doc, you get out your black bag. I’m going to get my other shirt.”

Inside Guyot’s house a few minutes later, the doctor cleaned the deep scratch on the side of Bosch’s chest and taped his ribs. It did feel better, but it still hurt. Guyot said he could no longer write a prescription but suggested Bosch not take anything more powerful than aspirin anyway.

Bosch remembered that he had a prescription bottle with some Vicodin tablets left over from when he’d had a wisdom tooth removed a few months earlier. They would smooth out the pain if he wanted to go that way.

“I’ll be fine,” Bosch said. “Thanks for fixing me up.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Bosch pulled on his good shirt and watched Guyot as he closed up his first-aid kit. He wondered how long it had been since the doctor had used his skills on a patient.

“How long have you been retired?” he asked.

“Twelve years next month.”

“You miss it?”

Guyot turned from the first-aid kit and looked at him. The tremor was gone.

“Every day. I don’t miss the actual work-you know, the cases. But it was a job that made a difference. I miss that.”

Bosch thought about how Julia Brasher had described homicide work earlier. He nodded that he understood what Guyot was saying.

“You said there was a crime scene up there?” the doctor asked.

“Yes. I found more bones. I’ve got to make a call, see what we’re going to do. Can I borrow your phone? I don’t think my cell will work around here.”

“No, they never do in the canyon. Use the phone on the desk there and I’ll give you some privacy.”

He headed out, carrying the first-aid kit with him. Bosch went behind the desk and sat down. The dog was on the ground next to the chair. The animal looked up and seemed startled when she saw Bosch in the master’s spot.

“Calamity,” he said. “I think you lived up to your name today, girl.”

Bosch reached down and rubbed the scruff of the dog’s neck. The dog growled and he quickly took his hand away, wondering if it was the dog’s training or something about himself that had caused the hostile response.

He picked up the phone and called the home of his supervisor, Lt. Grace Billets. He explained what had happened on Wonderland Avenue and his findings up on the hill.

“Harry, how old do these bones look?” Billets asked.

Bosch looked at the Polaroid he had taken of the small bones he had found in the dirt. It was a bad photo, the flash overexposing it because he was too close.

“I don’t know, they look old to me. I’d say we’re talking years here.”

“Okay, so whatever’s there at the scene isn’t fresh.”

“Maybe freshly uncovered, but no, it’s been there.”

“That’s what I’m saying. So I think we should stick a pin in it and gear up for tomorrow. Whatever is up there on that hill, it’s not going anywhere tonight.”

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “I’m thinking the same thing.”

She was silent a moment before speaking.

“These kind of cases, Harry…”

“What?”

“They drain the budget, they drain manpower… and they’re the hardest to close, if you can close them.”

“Okay, I’ll climb back up there and cover the bones up. I’ll tell the doctor to keep his dog on a leash.”

“Come on, Harry, you know what I mean.” She exhaled loudly. “First day of the year and we’re going to start in the hole.”

Bosch was silent, letting her work through her administrative frustrations. It didn’t take long. It was one of the things he liked about her.

“Okay, anything else happen today?”

“Not too much. A couple suicides, that’s it so far.”

“Okay, when are you going to start tomorrow?”

“I’d like to get out there early. I’ll make some calls and see what I can get going. And get the bone the dog found confirmed before we start anything.”

“Okay, let me know.”

Bosch agreed and hung up the phone. He next called Teresa Corazon, the county medical examiner, at home. Though their relationship outside of work had ended years before and she had moved at least two times since, she had always kept the same number and Bosch knew it by heart. It came in handy now. He explained what he had going and that he needed an official confirmation of the bone as human before he set other things in motion. He also told her that if it was confirmed he would need an archeological team to work the crime scene as soon as possible.

Corazon put him on hold for almost five minutes.

“Okay,” she said when she came back on the line. “I couldn’t get Kathy Kohl. She’s not home.”

Bosch knew that Kohl was the staff archeologist. Her real expertise and reason for her inclusion as a full-time employee was retrieving bones from the body dump sites up in the desert of the north county, which was a weekly occurrence. But Bosch knew she would be called in to handle the search for bones off Wonderland Avenue.

“So what do you want me to do? I want to get this confirmed tonight.”

“Just hold your horses, Harry. You are always so impatient. You’re like a dog with a bone, no pun intended.”

“It’s a kid, Teresa. Can we be serious?”

“Just come here. I’ll look at this bone.”

“And what about tomorrow?”

“I’ll get things in motion. I left a message for Kathy and as soon as we hang up here I’ll call the office and have her paged. She’ll head up the dig as soon as the sun is up and we can get in there. Once the bones are recovered, there is a forensic anthropologist at UCLA we have on retainer and I can bring him in if he’s in town. And I’ll be there myself. Are you satisfied?”

This last part gave Bosch pause.

“Teresa,” he finally said, “I want to try to keep this as low profile as I can for as long as I can.”

“And what are you implying?”

“That I’m not sure that the medical examiner for Los Angeles County needs to be there. And that I haven’t seen you at a crime scene without a cameraman in tow for a long time.”

“Harry, he is a private videographer, okay? The film he takes is for future use by me and controlled solely by me. It doesn’t end up on the six o’clock news.”

“Whatever. I just think we need to avoid any complications on this one. It’s a child case. You know how they get.”

“Just get over here with that bone. I’m leaving in an hour.”

She abruptly hung up.

Bosch wished he had been a little more politic with Corazon but was glad he’d made his point. Corazon was a personality, regularly appearing on Court TV and network shows as a forensic expert. She had also taken to having a cameraman follow her so that her cases could be turned into documentaries for broadcast on any of the cop and legal shows on the vast cable and satellite spectrum. He could not and would not let her goals as a celebrity coroner interfere with his goals as an investigator of what might be the homicide of a child.

He decided he’d make the calls to the department’s Special Services and K-9 units after he got confirmation on the bone. He got up and left the room, looking for Guyot.

The doctor was in the kitchen, sitting at a small table and writing in a spiral-bound notebook. He looked up at Bosch.

“Just writing a few notes on your treatment. I’ve kept notes on every patient I’ve ever treated.”

Bosch just nodded, even though he thought it was odd for Guyot to be writing about him.

“I’m going to go, Doctor. We’ll be back tomorrow. In force, I’d expect. We might want to use your dog again. Will you be here?”

“I’ll be here and be glad to help. How are the ribs?”

“They hurt.”

“Only when you breathe, right? That’ll last about a week.”

“Thanks for taking care of me. You don’t need that shoe box back, do you?”

“No, I wouldn’t want that back now.”

Bosch turned to head toward the front door but then turned back to Guyot.

“Doctor, do you live alone here?”

“I do now. My wife died two years ago. A month before our fiftieth anniversary.”

“I’m sorry.”

Guyot nodded and said, “My daughter has her own family up in Seattle. I see them on special occasions.”

Bosch felt like asking why only on special occasions but didn’t. He thanked the man again and left.

Driving out of the canyon and toward Teresa Corazon’s place in Hancock Park, he kept his hand on the shoe box so that it would not be jostled or slide off the seat. He felt a deep sense of dread rising from within. He knew it was because fate had certainly not smiled on him this day. He had caught the worst kind of case there was to catch. A child case.

Child cases haunted you. They hollowed you out and scarred you. There was no bulletproof vest thick enough to stop you from being pierced. Child cases left you knowing the world was full of lost light.