The Wrong Side of Goodbye

13

Bosch made his way over to the 405 freeway and headed south through the Valley and over the Sepulveda Pass. It took him an hour to get down to LAX, where he slowly followed the loop on the departures level and parked in the last garage. He grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and then got out and quickly moved around the car, crouching down to point the light into the wheel wells and under the bumpers and the gas tank. But he knew that if his car had been tagged with a GPS tracker, the likelihood of him finding it would be very low. Advances in tracking technology had made the devices smaller and easier to hide.

His plan was to go online and buy a GPS jammer but it would take a few days to get it. Meantime, he went into the car to return the flashlight to the glove box and gather the birth certificates into a backpack he kept on the floor. He then locked the car and took the pedestrian overpass to the United Airlines terminal where he rode an escalator down to the arrivals level. Circling around a baggage carousel that was surrounded by travelers fresh off a flight, he moved in and out of the crowd and went out the double doors to the pickup zone. He crossed the pickup lanes to the rental-car island and jumped on the first shuttle he saw, a yellow bus destined for the Hertz rental counters on Airport Boulevard.He asked the driver if they had cars available and the driver gave him the thumbs-up.

The Cherokee that Bosch left in the parking garage was twenty-two years old. At the Hertz counter he was offered the option of trying out a brand-new Cherokee, and he took it despite the surcharge. Ninety minutes after leaving San Fernando he was back on the 405, heading north in a car that could not have been tagged by anyone hoping to follow him or keep GPS tabs on where he was going. Just the same, he checked the mirrors repeatedly to be sure.

When he got up to Westwood he exited the freeway on Wilshire Boulevard and made his way into the Los Angeles National Cemetery. It was 114 acres of graves containing soldiers from every war, every campaign, from the Civil War to Afghanistan. Thousands of white marble stones in perfect rows standing as a testament to the military precision and waste of war.

Bosch had to use the Find a Grave screen in the Bob Hope Memorial Chapel to locate the spot where Dominick Santanello was buried on the North Campus. But soon he stood in front of it, looking down at the perfect green grass and listening to the constant hiss of the nearby freeway as the sun turned the sky in the west pink. Somehow, in little more than twenty-four hours, he had built a feeling of kinship with this soldier he had never met or known. They had both been on that boat in the South China Sea. And there was the fact that Bosch alone knew the secret history and tragedy heaped upon tragedy of the dead man’s short life.

After a while he pulled out his phone and took a photo of the marker. It would be part of the report he would eventually give Whitney Vance-if the old man was able to receive it.

While the phone was still in his hand it buzzed with a new call.The screen showed a number with an 805 area code and Bosch knew that was Ventura County. He took the call.

“This is Harry Bosch.”

“Uh, hello. This is Olivia Macdonald. You posted a message on my brother’s memorial page. You wanted to talk to me?”

Bosch nodded, noting that she had already answered one question. Dominick Santanello was her brother.

“Thank you for calling so quickly, Olivia,” Bosch said. “At the moment, I’m actually standing at Nick’s grave in Westwood. At the veterans’ cemetery.”

“Really?” she said. “I don’t understand. What is going on?”

“I need to speak to you. Could we meet? I could come to you.”

“Well, I guess so. I mean, wait a minute. No. Not until you tell me what this is about.”

Bosch thought for a long moment before responding. He didn’t want to lie to her but he couldn’t reveal his true purpose. Not yet. He was bound by confidentiality and the sheer complication of the story. She hadn’t blocked her number. He knew he could find her even if she told him to pound sand and hung up on him. But the connection he felt with Dominick Santanello extended to his sister. He didn’t want to hurt or haunt this woman, who at the moment was no more than a voice on the phone.

He decided to take a shot in the dark.

“Nick knew he was adopted, right?” he said.

There was a long silence before she answered.

“Yes, he knew,” Olivia said.

“Did he ever wonder where he came from?” Bosch asked. “Who his father was. His mother…”

“He knew his mother’s name,” Olivia said. “Vibiana. She was named after a church. But that was all our adoptive parents knew. He never pursued it past that.”

Bosch closed his eyes for a moment. It was another piece of confirmation. It told him that since Olivia had been adopted too, she might understand the need to know.

“I know more,” he said. “I’m a detective and I know the whole story.”

There was another long pause before Olivia spoke.

“Okay,” she said. “When do you want to meet?”