The Closers (2005) Page 11

  "No, I don't remember. Why don't you tell me and maybe that will help jog my memory."

  Bosch made a quick side glance at Rider. This was not totally unexpected, but it always complicated things when the parent of a victim was so eager to help that he or she simply asked what it was the police wanted them to say. Muriel Verloren had waited seventeen years for her daughter's killer to be brought forward into the light of the justice system. It was very clear that she was going to carefully choose answers that would in no way hinder the possibility of that happening. At this point it might not even matter if it was a false light. The past years had been cruel to her and the memory of her daughter. Someone still needed to pay.

  "We can't tell you that because we don't know, Mrs. Verloren," Bosch said. "Think about it and let us know if you remember him."

  She nodded sadly, as if she thought it was yet another missed opportunity.

  "Mrs. Verloren, what do you do for a living?" Rider asked.

  It seemed to bring the woman in front of them back from her memories and desires.

  "I sell things," she said matter-of-factly. "Online."

  They waited for further explanation and didn't get any.

  "Really?" Rider asked. "What things do you sell?"

  "Whatever I can find. I go to yard sales. I find things. Books, toys, clothes. People will buy anything. And they'll pay anything. This morning I sold two napkin rings for fifty dollars. They were very old."

  "We want to ask your husband about the photo," Bosch said then. "Do you know where we could find him?"

  She shook her head.

  "Somewhere down there in toyland. I haven't heard from him in a long, long time."

  A somber moment of silence passed by. Most of the homeless missions in downtown Los Angeles were clustered at the edge of the Toy District, several blocks of toy manufacturers and wholesalers, even a few retailers. It wasn't unusual to find homeless people sleeping in the doorways of toy stores.

  What Muriel Verloren was telling them was that her husband was lost in the world of floating human debris. He had descended from restaurateur to the stars to a homeless existence on the streets. But there was a contradiction there. He still had a home here. He just couldn't stay because of what had happened. Yet his wife would never leave.

  "When were you divorced?" Rider asked.

  "We never did get a divorce. I guess I always thought Robert would wake up and realize that no matter how far you run you can't get away from what happened to us. I thought he would realize that and come home. It hasn't happened yet."

  "Do you think you knew all of your daughter's friends?" Bosch asked.

  Muriel thought about this one for a long moment.

  "Until the morning she disappeared I did. But then we learned things. She kept secrets. I think that is one of the things that bothers me most. Not that she kept secrets from us, but that she thought she had to. I think that maybe if she had come to us things would have been different."

  "You mean the pregnancy?"

  Muriel nodded.

  "What makes you think that played into what happened to her?"

  "Just a mother's instinct. I have no proof. I just think it started with that."

  Bosch nodded. But he couldn't blame the daughter for her secrets. By the time he had been her age Bosch had been on his own, without real parents. He had no idea what that relationship would have been like.

  "We spoke to Commander Garcia," Rider said. "He told us that several years ago he returned your daughter's journal to you. Do you still have that?"

  Muriel looked alarmed.

  "I read part of it every night. You're not going to take that away from me are you? It's my bible!"

  "We need to borrow it and make a copy of it. Commander Garcia should have made a copy back then but he didn't."

  "I don't want to lose it."

  "You won't, Mrs. Verloren. I promise. We'll copy it and get it right back to you."

  "Do you want it now? It's by my bed."

  "Yes, if you could get it."

  Muriel Verloren left them and disappeared down a hallway that led toward the left side of the house. Bosch looked at Rider and raised his eyebrows in a what-do-you-think sort of way. Rider shrugged, meaning that they would talk about it later.

  "Once my daughter wanted to get another cat," Bosch whispered. "My ex said no, one was enough. Now I know why."

  Rider was smiling inappropriately when Muriel came back in, carrying a small book with a flowery cover and the words My Journal embossed in gold on it. The gold was flaking off. The book had been handled a lot. She gave it to Rider, who went out of her way to handle it reverently.

  "If you don't mind, Mrs. Verloren, we'd like to look around," Bosch said. "To sort of connect what we've seen and read in the book with the actual layout of the house."

  "What book?"

  "Oh, I'm sorry. That's copspeak. All the investigative records from the case are kept in a large binder. We call it a book."

  "A murder book?"

  "Yes, that's right. Is it all right if we look around? I would like to look at the back door and look around out back, too."

  She signaled with a raised arm which way they should go. Bosch and Rider got up.

  "It's changed," Muriel said. "It used to be there were no houses up there. You'd go out our door and walk straight up the mountain. But they terraced it. Now there are houses. Millions of dollars. They built a mansion on the spot where my baby was found. I hate it."

  There was nothing to say to that. Bosch just nodded and followed her down a short hallway and into the kitchen. There was a door with a glass window in it. It led to the backyard. Muriel unlocked the door and they all stepped out. The yard was on a steep incline that led to a grove of eucalyptus trees. Through the trees Bosch could see the Spanish-tiled roofline of a large house.

  "It used to be all open up there," Muriel said. "Just trees. Now there are houses. It's got a gate. They don't let me walk up there like I used to. They think I'm a bag lady or something because I liked to go up there sometimes and have a picnic at Becky's spot."

  Bosch nodded and thought for a moment about a mother having a picnic at the spot where her daughter was murdered. He tried to drop the idea and instead study the terrain of the hillside. The autopsy had said Becky Verloren weighed ninety-six pounds. Even as light as that, it would have been a struggle taking her up that incline. He wondered about the possibility that there had been more than one killer. He thought of Bailey Sable saying they.

  He looked at Muriel Verloren, who was standing still and silent, her eyes closed. She had canted her head so that the late afternoon sun warmed her face. Bosch wondered if this was some form of communion with her lost daughter. As if sensing that they were looking at her, she spoke, keeping her eyes closed.

  "I love this place. I'll never leave."

  "Can we look at your daughter's bedroom?" Bosch asked.

  She opened her eyes.

  "Just wipe your feet when we go back inside."

  She led them back through the kitchen and into the hallway. The stairway up began next to the door that led to the garage. The door was open and Bosch caught a glimpse of a battered minivan surrounded by stacks of boxes and things Muriel Verloren had apparently collected on her rounds. He also noted how close the door to the garage was to the stairs. He didn't know whether this meant anything. But he recalled the summary report in the murder book that suggested the killer had hidden somewhere in the house and waited for the family to go to sleep. The garage was the likely place.

  The stairway was narrow because there were boxes of yard sale purchases lining one side all the way up. Rider went first. Muriel signaled for Bosch to go next and when he passed by her she whispered to him.

  "Do you have children?"

  He nodded, knowing his answer would hurt.

  "A daughter."

  She nodded back.

  "Never let her out of your sight."

  Bosch didn't tell her that she lived
with her mother far out of his sight. He just nodded and started up the stairs.

  On the second floor there was a landing and two bedrooms with a bathroom in between them. Becky Verloren's bedroom was to the rear, with windows that looked up the hillside.

  The door was closed and Muriel opened it. When they stepped inside they stepped into a time warp. The room was unchanged from the seventeen-year-old photos Bosch had studied in the murder book. The rest of the house was crowded with junk and the detritus from a disintegrated life, but the room where Becky Verloren had slept and talked on the phone and written in her secret journal was unchanged. It had now been preserved longer than the girl had actually lived.

  Bosch stepped further into the room and looked around silently. Even the cat didn't intrude here. The air smelled clean and fresh.

  "This is just how it was on the morning she was gone," Muriel said. "Except I made the bed."

  Bosch looked at the quilt with the cats on it. It flowed over the edges and draped down to the bed skirt, which flowed neatly to the floor.

  "You and your husband were sleeping on the other side of the house, right?" Bosch asked.

  "Yes. Rebecca was at that age where she wanted her privacy. There are two bedrooms downstairs, on the other side of the house. Her first bedroom was down there. But when she was fourteen she moved up here."

  Bosch nodded and looked around before asking anything else.

  "How often do you come up here, Mrs. Verloren?" Rider asked.

  "Every single day. Sometimes when I can't sleep-which is a lot of the time-I come in here and lie down. I don't get under the covers, though. I want it to be her bed."

  Bosch realized he was nodding again, as if what she had said made some sort of sense to him. He stepped over to the vanity. There were photos slid into the frame of the mirror. Bosch recognized a young Bailey Sable in one of them. There was also a photo of Becky by herself in front of the Eiffel Tower. She was wearing a black beret. None of the other kids from the Art Club trip were present.

  Also on the mirror was a photo of a boy with Becky. It looked like they were on a ride at Disneyland, or maybe just down at the Santa Monica pier.

  "Who is this?" he asked.

  Muriel came over and looked.

  "The boy? That's Danny Kotchof. Her first boyfriend."

  Bosch nodded. The boy who had moved to Hawaii.

  "When he moved away it just broke her heart," Muriel added.

  "When exactly was that?"

  "The summer before, in June. Right after her freshman year and his sophomore. He was a year older."

  "Why did the family move, do you know?"

  "Danny's dad worked for a rent-a-car company and he got transferred to a new franchise in Maui. It was a promotion."

  Bosch glanced at Rider to see if she picked up on the significance of the information Muriel had just given them. Rider subtly shook her head once. She didn't get it. But Bosch wanted to pursue it.

  "Did Danny go to Hillside Prep?" he asked.

  "Yes, that's where they met," Muriel said.

  Bosch looked down at the vanity and noticed a cheap souvenir snow globe with the Eiffel Tower in it. Some of the water had evaporated, leaving a bubble in the top of the globe and the tip of the tower poking from the water into the air pocket.

  "Was Danny in the Art Club?" he asked. "Did he make the trip to Paris with her?"

  "No, they moved away before," Muriel said. "He left in June and the club went to Paris the last week of August."

  "Did she ever see or hear from Danny again?" he asked.

  "Oh, yes, they sent letters back and forth and there were phone calls. At first they phoned back and forth, but it got too expensive. And then Danny did all the calling. Every night before bedtime. That lasted almost right up until . . . until she was gone."

  Bosch reached up and removed the photo from the mirror's border. He looked closely at Danny Kotchof.

  "What happened when your daughter was taken? How did Danny find out? How did he react?"

  "Well . . . we called there and told his father so that he could sit Danny down and tell him the bad news. We were told he did not take it well. Who would?"

  "The father told Danny. Did either you or your husband talk directly to Danny?"

  "No, but Danny wrote me a long letter about Becky and how much she meant to him. It was very sad and very sweet. Everything was."

  "I'm sure it was. Did he come to the funeral?"

  "No, no he didn't. His, uh, his parents thought it best for him if he stayed there in the islands. The trauma, you know? Mr. Kotchof called and said he wouldn't be coming."

  Bosch nodded. He turned from the mirror, sliding the photo into his pocket. Muriel didn't notice.

  "What about after?" he asked. "After the letter, I mean. Did he ever contact you? Maybe call and talk to you?"

  "No, I don't think we ever heard from him. Not since the letter."

  "Do you still have that letter?" Rider asked.

  "Of course. I kept everything. I have a drawer full of letters we got about Rebecca. She was a well-loved girl."

  "We need to borrow that letter from you, Mrs. Verloren," Bosch said. "We also might need to look through the whole drawer at some point."

  "Why?"

  "Because you never know," Bosch said.

  "Because we want to leave no stone unturned," Rider added. "We know this is disruptive but please remember what we are doing. We want to find the person who did this to your daughter. It has been a long time but that doesn't mean anybody should get away with it."

  Muriel Verloren nodded. She had absentmindedly picked up a small decorative pillow off the bed and was clutching it with both hands in front of her chest. It looked like it might have been made by her daughter many years ago. It was a small blue square with a red felt heart sewn across its middle. Holding it made Muriel Verloren look like a target.

  13

  WHILE BOSCH DROVE, Rider read the letter Danny Kotchof had sent to the Verlorens after Becky's murder. It was a single page, filled mostly with his fond memories of their lost daughter.

  "'All I can tell you is that I am so sorry this had to happen. I will miss her always. Love, Danny.' And that's it."

  "What's the postmark on it?"

  She flipped over the envelope and looked at it.

  "Maui, July twenty-ninth, nineteen eighty-eight."

  "Sure took his time writing it."

  "Maybe it was hard for him. Why are you keying on him, Harry?"

  "I'm not. It's just that Garcia and Green relied on a phone call to clear him. You remember what it said in the book? It said the kid's supervisor said he was washing cars at the rent-a-car agency the day of and the day after. No time to fly to L.A., kill Becky, and get back home in time for work."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "Well, now we find out from Muriel that his old man ran a rent-a-car. There was nothing about that in the murder book. Did Garcia and Green know that? How much you want to bet that dad was running the place where the son washed cars? How much you want to bet that the supervisor who alibied the son was working for the father?"

  "Man, I was kidding about going to Paris. Sounds like you're jonesing for a trip to Maui."

  "I just don't like sloppy work. It leaves loose ends. We have to talk to Danny Kotchof and clear him ourselves. If that's even possible after so many years."

  "AutoTrack, baby."

  "That might find him for us. It won't clear him."

  "Even if we knock down his alibi, what are you saying, that this sixteen-year-old kid snuck over here from Hawaii, knocked off his old girlfriend and then went back without anybody seeing him?"

  "Maybe it wasn't planned like that. And he was seventeen-Muriel said he was a year older."

  "Oh, seventeen," she said sarcastically, as if that made all the difference in the world.

  "When I was eighteen I got a leave from Vietnam to Hawaii. You were not allowed to go stateside from there. Once I got there I changed clothes, bought
a civilian-looking suitcase and walked right by the MPs to get on a plane to L.A. I think a seventeen-year-old could have done it."

  "Okay, Harry."

  "Look, all I'm saying is that it was sloppy work. According to the murder book, Green and Garcia cleared this guy with a phone call. There's nothing in there about checking airlines and now it's too late. It bugs me."

  "I understand. But just remember. We have a logic triangle we have to complete. We can connect Danny to Becky easy enough, and the gun connects Becky to Mackey. But what connects Danny to Mackey?"