The Wrong Side of Goodbye

27

The San Diego County Bureau of Vital Records and Statistics was open until 5 p.m. Bosch walked hurriedly through the door at 4:35 and luckily found no one in line at the window marked Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Changes of Name. He had only a single document to request and getting it now would save him from having to stay in San Diego overnight.

Bosch left the Mercado Apartments convinced that Vibiana and Gilberto Veracruz were direct descendants of Whitney Vance. If that could be proved, they were in line to inherit the Vance fortune. Genetic analysis would of course be the key but Bosch also wanted to gather legal documentation that would go hand in hand with the science and be part of a judge-convincing package. Gabriela had told him that she put Dominick’s name down on her daughter’s birth certificate. Details like that would make the package complete.

At the window Bosch provided the name Vibiana Santanello and the date she was born, and requested a certified copy of her birth certificate. While he waited for the clerk to find and print it, he considered some of the other revelations and confirmations that came out of his conversation with Gabriela.

Bosch had asked her how she had learned of Santanello’s death inVietnam and she said she knew in her heart that he had been killed when a week went by and she did not receive a letter from him. He had never gone that long without writing her. Her intuition was sadly confirmed when later she saw a story in the newspaper about how the shooting down of a single helicopter in Vietnam had hit Southern California particularly hard. All the Marines on the chopper had California hometowns and had previously been stationed at El Toro Marine Air Base in Orange County. The lone corpsman who was killed had trained at Camp Pendleton in San Diego after being raised in Oxnard.

Gabriela also told Bosch that Dominick’s face was on one of the murals at the park. She had put it there many years before. It was on the mural called the Face of Heroes-several depictions of men and women forming one face. Bosch remembered seeing the mural as he had walked through the park earlier that day.

“Here you are, sir,” the clerk said to Bosch. “You pay at the window to your left.”

Bosch took the document from the clerk and proceeded to the cash window. He studied it as he walked and saw the name Dominick Santanello listed as father. He realized how close he was to finishing the journey Whitney Vance had sent him on. He was disappointed that the old man would not be on hand at the finish line.

He was soon back on the 5 and heading north. He had told Gabriela that it was in her best interests to reveal nothing about her conversation with Bosch to anyone else. They had not immediately reached out to Vibiana because Gabriela said her daughter led a life devoid of the trappings of digital technology. She had no cell phone and rarely answered the phone in the studio-loft where she lived and worked.

Bosch planned to be at Vibiana’s studio the next morning. Meanwhile, on the brutal rush-hour drive back up to L.A. he spoke atlength on his cell to Mickey Haller, who said he had made some subtle inquiries of his own.

“Pasadena did sign off on it as a natural but there will be an autopsy,” he said. “I think Kapoor wants the headlines so he’s going to milk cause of death for all it’s worth.”

Bhavin Kapoor was the embattled chief medical examiner of Los Angeles County. In recent months he had come under fire for mismanagement and delays in processing autopsies at the office that handled more than eight thousand of them a year. Law enforcement agencies and loved ones of murder and accident victims complained that some autopsies were taking months to complete, delaying investigations, funerals, and closure. The media piled on further when it was revealed that some bodies got mixed up in the Big Crypt, a giant refrigerated storage center that held over a hundred cadavers. Toe tags blown off by the giant turbine fans that kept things cold had been reattached to the wrong toes.

Looking for headlines that didn’t involve scandal, Kapoor had evidently decided to proceed with an autopsy on Whitney Vance’s body so that he could hold a press conference that was about something other than his handling of his duties and department.

“You watch, though,” Haller said. “Some smart reporter will turn this against him by pointing out that the billionaire didn’t have to wait in line for an autopsy while every other body does. Even in death the rich get treated special-that’ll be the headline.”

Bosch knew the observation was dead-on accurate and was surprised that Kapoor’s advisers, if he had any, had not warned him.

Haller asked what Bosch had found in San Diego and Harry reported that there might be two blood descendants in play. He recounted his conversation with Gabriela and told Haller that it might soon be time for DNA analysis. He outlined what he had: A sealed sample from Vance, though he did not witness the oldman being swabbed. Several items that belonged to Dominick Santanello, including a razor that might have his blood on it. A swab sample he had taken from Gabriela Lida in case it was needed. And he planned to swab Vibiana when he met her the following day. For the moment he planned to leave Vibiana’s son-Vance’s presumed great-grandson-out of it.

“The only thing that’s going to matter is Vibiana’s DNA,” Haller said. “We will need to show the hereditary chain, which I think you have in hand. But it’s going to come down to her DNA and whether they match it to Vance’s as direct descendant.”

“We need to do it as a blind, right?” Bosch said. “Not tell them the swab is from Vance. Just give them the swab from Vibiana. Then see what they say.”

“Agreed. Last thing we want is for them to know whose DNA they have. I will work on that and set something up in one of the labs I gave you. Whichever one will do it the fastest. Then when you get the blood from Vibiana, we go in.”

“I’m hoping that will be tomorrow.”

“That’ll be good. What did you do with the swab from Vance?”

“My refrigerator.”

“Not sure that’s the safest place. And I don’t think refrigeration is required.”

“It’s not. I just hid it in there.”

“I like the idea of keeping it separate from the will and the pen. Don’t want everything in the same place. I’m just concerned with it being in your house. It’s probably the first place they’ll look.”

“There you go with that ‘they’ thing again.”

“I know. But it is what it is. Maybe you should think of another place.”

Bosch told Haller about his run-in with Creighton and Harry’s suspicion that there might be camera surveillance on his house.

“I’ll check it out tomorrow morning first thing,” he said. “It will be dark by the time I get there tonight. The point is, there was nobody out there this morning when I left. I checked my car for a GPS tag and yet somehow Creighton’s following me up Laurel Canyon Boulevard.”

“Maybe it was a fucking drone,” Haller said. “They’re being used all over the place now.”

“I’ll have to remember to start looking up. You too. Creighton said they knew you were on the case, too.”

“Not a surprise.”

Bosch could see the lights of downtown now through the wind-shield. He was finally getting close to home and he could feel the exhaustion from the day on the road settling on his body. He was bone tired and wanted to rest. He decided that he would skip dinner in favor of extra sleep time.

His mind wandered from the conversation when the thought of food reminded him that he needed to call or text his daughter to tell her he had driven home and wouldn’t be passing by campus the next day. Their getting together would have to wait.

Maybe that was a good thing, Bosch thought. After their last phone call it might be better to have some time and distance between them.

“Harry, you still there?” Haller said.

Bosch came out of the unrelated thoughts.

“Here,” he said. “You just cut out for second. I’m going through a bad cell area. Go ahead.”

Haller said he wanted to discuss a strategy involving where and when they should make a move in court. It was a subtle form of judge shopping but he explained that deciding in what courthouse to file the will could give them an advantage. He said he assumed that probate on Vance would be opened in Pasadena, near wherehe lived and died, but that did not require a claimant to file there as well. If Vibiana Veracruz was determined to establish herself as Vance’s heir, then she could file her claim at a courthouse convenient to her.

To Bosch these were decisions that were above his pay grade and he told Haller so. His job here, and his responsibility and promise to Vance, was simply to find the heir, if one existed, and gather the evidence to prove the bloodline. Legal strategies involving the subsequent claim to the Vance fortune were for Haller to decide.

Bosch added something that he had been thinking about since his conversation with Gabriela.

“What if they don’t want it?” he asked.

“What if who doesn’t want what?” Haller replied.

“The money,” Bosch said. “What if Vibiana doesn’t want it? These people are artists. What if they don’t want to be involved in running a corporation, sitting on a board of directors, being in that world? When I told Gabriela that her daughter and grandson might be in line for a lot of money, she just shrugged it off. She said she hadn’t had any money for seventy years and didn’t want any now.”

“Not going to happen,” Haller said. “This is change-the-world money. She’ll take it. What artist doesn’t want to change the world?”

“Most want to change it with their art, not their money.” Bosch got a call-waiting signal and saw that it was from one of the SFPD exchanges. He thought maybe it was Bella Lourdes calling with the results of the second search of the Sahagun house. He told Haller he needed to go and would check in with him the next day after he found Vibiana and spoke to her.

He switched over but it wasn’t Lourdes calling.

“Bosch, Chief Valdez. Where are you?”

“Uh, heading north, just passing by downtown. What’s up?”

“Are you with Bella?”

“Bella? No, why would I be with Bella?”

Valdez ignored Bosch’s question and asked another. The serious tone in his voice had Bosch’s attention.

“Have you heard from her today?”

“Not since this morning when we talked on the phone. Why? What’s going on, Chief?”

“We can’t find her and we’re not getting any answers on her cell or the radio. She signed in this morning on the board in the D bureau but never signed out. It’s not like her. Trevino was working on budgets with me today, so he was never in the D bureau. He never saw her.”

“Her car in the lot?”

“Both her personal car and her plain wrap are still in the lot and her partner called and said she hasn’t come home.”

A hollow opened up in the middle of his chest.

“Did you talk to Sisto?” he asked.

“Yeah, he hasn’t seen her either,” Valdez said. “He said she called him this morning to see if he was available to go with her into the field but he was tied up on a commercial burglary.”

Bosch pushed his foot further down on the gas pedal.

“Chief, send a car right now up to the Sahagun house. That was where she was going.”

“Why, what was-”

“Just send the car, Chief. Now. Tell them to search inside and outside the house. The backyard in particular. We can talk after. I’m on my way and will be there in thirty minutes or less. Send that car.”

“Right away.”

Bosch disconnected and called Bella’s number, though he knew it was unlikely she would answer for him if she wasn’t answering for the police chief.

It rang through to voice mail and Bosch disconnected. He felt the hollow in his chest growing wider and deeper.