The Wrong Side of Goodbye

10

Bosch loitered near the gated entrance to the apartment complex and acted like he was on a phone call, when all he was really doing was replaying a year-old message his daughter had left him after she had accepted admission to Chapman University.

“Dad, it’s a really exciting day for me and I want to thank you for all your help in getting me to this point. And I am so glad I won’t be too far away from you and that whenever we need each other we will only be an hour away. Okay, well, maybe two because of traffic.”

He smiled. He didn’t know how long messages would be retained on his phone but he hoped he would always be able to listen to the pure joy he heard in his daughter’s voice.

He saw a man approaching the gate from the other side and timed his approach to reach it at the same time. He acted like he was trying to carry on a phone conversation while digging his key to the gate out of his pocket.

“That’s great,” he said into the phone. “I feel the same way about it too.”

The man on the other side pushed open the gate to exit. Bosch mumbled a thank you and entered. He preserved the message from his daughter one more time and put his phone away.

Signs along the stone pathway directed him to the building he waslooking for and he found Abigail Turnbull’s apartment on the first floor. As he approached he saw that the front door was open behind a screen door. He heard a voice from within the apartment.

“All done, Abigail?”

He stepped closer without knocking and looked through the screen. He could see down a short hallway into a living room, where an old woman was sitting on a couch with a folding table in front of her. She looked old and frail and had on thick glasses and an obvious wig of brown hair. Another woman, much younger, was clearing a dish off the table and gathering silverware. The woman Bosch assumed was Abigail was just finishing a late breakfast or early lunch.

Bosch decided to wait to see if the caregiver would be leaving after cleaning up. The apartment fronted a small courtyard where the water tumbling down a three-level fountain masked most of the freeway noise. It was most likely the reason Turnbull was able to leave her door open. Bosch took a seat on a precast concrete bench in front of the fountain and put the stack of birth certificates down next to him. He checked his phone for messages while he waited. No more than five minutes later he heard the voice from the apartment again.

“You want the door left open, Abigail?”

Bosch heard a muffled reply and watched as the caregiver stepped out of the apartment, carrying an insulated bag for transporting meals. Bosch recognized it as belonging to a charitable meal delivery service for shut-ins that his daughter had volunteered for while she was a senior in high school. He realized that she might have delivered meals to Abigail Turnbull.

The woman followed the path toward the front gate. Bosch waited a moment and then approached the screen door and looked in. Abigail Turnbull was still seated on the couch. The folding tablewas gone and in its place in front of her was a walker with two wheels. She was staring across the room at something Bosch could not see but he thought he could hear the low murmur of a television.

“Ms. Turnbull?”

He said it loudly in case she had hearing loss. But his voice startled her and she looked fearfully toward the screen door.

“I’m sorry,” Bosch said quickly. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

She looked around her as if to see if she had anyone with her as backup if needed.

“What do you want?” she said.

“I’m a detective,” Bosch said. “I want to ask you about a case I’m working on.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t know any detectives.”

Bosch tried the screen door. It was unlocked. He opened it halfway so that she could see him better. He held his SFPD badge up and smiled.

“I’m working on an investigation and I think you could help me, Abigail,” he said.

The woman who had delivered her meal had called her by her full first name. He thought he would try. Turnbull didn’t reply but Bosch could see her hands ball into nervous fists.

“Do you mind if I come in?” he said. “This will only take a few minutes.”

“I don’t have visitors,” she said. “I don’t have any money to buy anything.”

Bosch slowly entered the hallway. He kept the smile on his face even though he felt bad about scaring the old woman.

“I’m not trying to sell you anything, Abigail. I promise.”

He stepped down the hallway and into the small living room.The TV was on and Ellen DeGeneres was on the screen. There was only the couch and a kitchen chair set in the corner of the room. Behind it there was a small kitchenette with a half-size refrigerator. He put the birth certificates under one arm and pulled his SFPD ID out of his badge wallet. She reluctantly took it from him and studied it.

“San Fernando?” she said. “Where is that?”

“Not too far,” he said. “I-”

“What are you investigating?”

“I’m looking for someone from a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand why you want to talk to me. I’ve never been to San Fernando.”

Bosch pointed to the chair against the wall.

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Go ahead. I still don’t know what you want with me.”

Bosch pulled the chair over and sat down in front of her, her walker between them. She wore a loose-fitting housedress with a faded pattern of flowers on it. She was still looking at his ID card.

“How do you say this name?” she asked.

“Hieronymus,” Bosch said. “I was named after a painter.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“You’re not alone. I read the article that was in the paper a few years ago about St. Helen’s. It had the story you told at the anniversary party. About your daughter coming there for answers and finding you.”

“What about it?”

“I’m working for a man-a very old man-who is looking for answers. His child was born at St. Helen’s and I’m hoping you could help me find him or her.”

She leaned back as if to remove herself from the discussion and shook her head.

“So many children were born there,” she said. “And I was there for fifty years. I can’t remember all of the babies. Most of them got new names when they left.”

Bosch nodded.

“I know. But this I think was a special case. I think you’d remember the mother. Her name was Vibiana. Vibiana Duarte. I’m talking about the year after you got to St. Helen’s.”

Turnbull closed her eyes as if to ward off a great pain. Bosch knew instantly that she knew and remembered Vibiana, that his journey back through time had found a destination.

“You remember her, don’t you?” he said.

Turnbull nodded once.

“I was there,” she said. “It was an awful day.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Why? It’s a long time ago.”

Bosch nodded. It was a valid question.

“Remember when your daughter came to St. Helen’s and found you? You called it a miracle. It’s like that. I’m working for a man who wants to find his child, the child he had with Vibiana.”

Bosch could see the anger work into her face and immediately regretted his choice of words.

“It’s not the same,” she said. “He wasn’t forced to give up his baby. He abandoned Vibby and he abandoned his son.”

Bosch quickly tried to repair the damage, but he noted that she had said the child was a boy.

“I know that, Abigail,” he said. “Not the same at all. I know that. But it’s a parent who is looking for his child. He’s old and he’s going to die soon. He has a lot to pass on. It won’t make up for things. Of course not. But is that our call or the son’s call to make? Do we not even allow the son to make that choice?”

She remained quiet while considering Bosch’s words.

“I can’t help you,” she finally said. “I have no idea what happened to that boy after the day they took him.”

“Just, if you can, tell me what you do know,” Bosch said. “I know it’s an awful story, but tell me what happened. If you can. And tell me about Vibby’s son.”

Turnbull cast her eyes down toward the floor. Bosch knew she was seeing the memory and that she was going to tell the story. She reached out both hands and gripped her walker as if reaching for support.

“He was frail, that one,” she began. “Born underweight. We had a rule, no baby could go home until it weighed at least five pounds.”

“What happened?” Bosch asked.

“Well, the couple that was there to take him couldn’t. Not like that. He needed to be healthier and heavier.”

“So the adoption was delayed?”

“Sometimes it happened like that. Delayed. They told Vibby she had to get weight on him. She had to keep him in her room and feed him with her milk. Feed him all the time to get him healthy and get his weight up.”

“How long did that last?”

“A week. Maybe longer. All I know is that Vibby got that time with her baby that nobody else ever got with theirs. That I never got. And then after that week it was time for the switch. The couple came back and the adoption proceeded. They took Vibby’s baby.”

Bosch glumly nodded. The story got worse from every angle.

“What happened to Vibby?” he asked.

“My job back then was in the laundry,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot of money. There were no dryers. We hung everything on the clotheslines in the field behind the kitchen. Before they built the addition there.

“Anyway, the morning after the adoption, I took sheets out to hang and I saw that one of the clotheslines was missing.”

“Vibiana.”

“And then I heard. One of the girls told me. Vibby had hanged herself. She had gone into the bathroom and tied the rope to one of the shower pipes. They found her in there but it was too late. She was dead.”

Turnbull looked down. It was as if she didn’t want to make eye contact with Bosch over such a horrible story.

Bosch was repelled by the tale. It sickened him. But he needed more. He needed to find Vibiana’s son.

“So that was it?” he asked. “The boy was taken and never came back?”

“Once they were gone, they were gone.”

“You remember his name? The name of the couple who adopted him?”

“Vibby called him Dominick. I don’t know if that name stayed with him. They usually didn’t. I called my daughter Sarah. When she came back to me her name was Kathleen.”

Bosch pulled up the stack of birth certificates. He was sure he remembered seeing the name Dominick when he had gone through the documents that morning on the back deck. He started quickly moving through the stack again, looking for the name. When he found it, he studied the full name and date. Dominick Santanello was born on January 31, 1951. But his birth wasn’t registered with the recorder’s office until fifteen days later. He knew the delay was probably caused by the baby’s weight postponing the adoption.

He showed the sheet to Turnbull.

“Is this him?” he asked. “Dominick Santanello?”

“I told you,” Turnbull said. “I only know what she called him.”

“It’s the only birth certificate with Dominick on it from that timeperiod. It’s got to be him. It’s listed as a home birth, which was how they did it back then.”

“Then I guess you found who you’re looking for.”

Bosch glanced at the birth certificate. In the boxes denoting the race of the child, “Hisp.” was checked. The Santanello family’s address was in Oxnard in Ventura County. Luca and Audrey Santanello, both of them twenty-six years old. Luca Santanello’s occupation was listed as appliance salesman.

Bosch noticed that Abigail Turnbull’s hands tightly gripped the aluminum tubes of her walker. Thanks to her, Bosch believed he had found Whitney Vance’s long missing child, but the price had been high. Bosch knew he would carry the story of Vibiana Duarte with him for a long time.