City of Bones Page 3

  “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.

  4

  TERESA Corazon lived in a Mediterranean-style mansion with a stone turnaround circle complete with koi pond in front. Eight years earlier, when Bosch had shared a brief relationship with her, she had lived in a one-bedroom condominium. The riches of television and celebrity had paid for the house and the lifestyle that came with it. She was not even remotely like the woman who used to show up at his house unannounced at midnight with a cheap bottle of red wine from Trader Joe’s and a video of her favorite movie to watch. The woman who was unabashedly ambitious but not yet skilled at using her position to enrich herself.

  Bosch knew he now served as a reminder of what she had been and what she had lost in order to gain all that she had. It was no wonder their interactions were now few and far between but as tense as a visit to the dentist when they were unavoidable.

  He parked on the circle and got out with the shoe box and the Polaroids. He looked into the pond as he came around the car and could see the dark shapes of the fish moving below the surface. He smiled, thinking about the movie Chinatown and how often they had watched it the year they were together. He remembered how much she enjoyed the portrayal of the coroner. He wore a black butcher’s apron and ate a sandwich while examining a body. Bosch doubted she had the same sense of humor about things anymore.

  The light hanging over the heavy wood door to the house went on, and Corazon opened it before he got there. She was wearing black slacks and a cream-colored blouse. She was probably on her way to a New Year’s party. She looked past him at the slickback he had been driving.

  “Let’s make this quick before that car drips oil on my stones.”

  “Hello to you, too, Teresa.”

  “That’s it?”

  She pointed at the shoe box.

  “This is it.”

  He handed her the Polaroids and started taking the lid off the box. It was clear she was not asking him in for a glass of New Year’s champagne.

  “You want to do this right here?”

  “I don’t have a lot of time. I thought you’d be here sooner. What moron took these?”

  “That would be me.”

  “I can’t tell anything from these. Do you have a glove?”

  Bosch pulled a latex glove out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. He took the photos back and put them in an inside pocket of his jacket. She expertly snapped the glove on and reached into the open box. She held the bone up and turned it in the light. He was silent. He could smell her perfume. It was strong as usual, a holdover from her days when she spent most of her time in autopsy suites.

  After a five-second examination she put the bone back down in the box.

  “Human.”

  “You sure?”

  She looked up at him with a glare as she snapped off the glove.

  “It’s the humerus. The upper arm. I’d say a child of about ten. You may no longer respect my skills, Harry, but I do still have them.”

  She dropped the glove into the box on top of the bone. Bosch could roll with all the verbal sparring from her, but it bothered him that she did that with the glove, dropping it on the child’s bone like that.

  He reached into the box and took the glove out. He remembered something and held the glove back out to her.

  “The man whose dog found this said there was a fracture on the bone. A healed fracture. Do you want to take a look and see if you—”

  “No. I’m late for an engagement. What you need to know right now is if it is human. You now have that confirmation. Further examination will come later under proper settings at the medical examiner’s office. Now, I really have to go. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

  Bosch held her eyes for a long moment.

  “Sure, Teresa, have a good time tonight.”

  She broke off the stare and folded her arms across her chest. He carefully put the top back on the shoe box, nodded to her and headed back to his car. He heard the heavy door close behind him.

  Thinking of the movie again as he passed the koi pond, he spoke the film’s final line quietly to himself.

  “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

  He got in the car and drove home, his hand holding the shoe box secure on the seat next to him.

  5

  BY nine o’clock the next morning the end of Wonderland Avenue

  was a law enforcement encampment. And at its center was Harry Bosch. He directed teams from patrol, K-9, the Scientific Investigation Division, the medical examiner’s office and the Special Services unit. A department helicopter circled above and a dozen police academy cadets milled about, waiting for orders.

  Earlier, the aerial unit had locked in on the sagebrush Bosch had wrapped in yellow crime scene tape and used it as a base point to determine that Wonderland offered the closest access to the spot where Bosch had found the bones. The Special Services unit then swung into action. Following the trail of crime scene tape up the hillside, the six-man team hammered and strung together a series of wooden ramps and steps with rope guidelines that led up the hillside to the bones. Accessing and exiting the site would now be much easier than it had been for Bosch
the evening before.

  It was impossible to keep such a nest of police activity quiet. Also by 9 A.M. the neighborhood had become a media encampment. The media trucks were stacked behind the roadblocks set a half block from the turnaround circle. The reporters were gathering into press conference–sized groups. And no fewer than five news helicopters were circling at an altitude above the department’s chopper. It all created a background cacophony that had already resulted in numerous complaints from residents on the street to police administrators at Parker Center downtown.

  Bosch was getting ready to lead the first group up to the crime scene. He first conferred with Jerry Edgar, who had been apprised of the case the night before.

  “All right, we’re going to take the ME and SID up first,” he said, pronouncing the acronyms as Emmy and Sid. “Then we’ll take the cadets and the dogs up. I want you to oversee that part of it.”

  “No problem. You see your pal the ME’s got her damn cameraman with her?”

  “Nothing we can do about it at the moment. Let’s just hope she gets bored and goes back downtown, where she belongs.”

  “You know, for all we know, these could be old Indian bones or something.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. Too shallow.”

  Bosch walked over to the first group: Teresa Corazon, her videographer and her four-person dig team, which consisted of archeologist Kathy Kohl and three investigators who would do the spadework. The dig team members were dressed in white jumpsuits. Corazon was in an outfit similar to what she was wearing the night before, including shoes with two-inch heels. Also in the group were two criminalists from SID.

  Bosch signaled the group into a tighter circle so he could speak privately to them and not be overheard by all the others milling about.

  “Okay, we’re going to go up and start the documentation and recovery. Once we have all of you in place we’ll bring up the dogs and the cadets to search the adjacent areas and possibly expand the crime scene. You guys—”

  He stopped to reach his hand up to Corazon’s cameraman.

  “Turn that off. You can film her but not me.”

  The man lowered his camera, and Bosch gave Corazon a look and then continued.

  “You all know what you are doing so I don’t need to brief you. The one thing I do want to say is that it is tough going getting up there. Even with the ramps and the stairs. So be careful. Hold on to the ropes, watch your footing. We don’t want anybody hurt. If you have heavy equipment, break it up and make two or three trips. If you still need help I’ll have the cadets bring it up. Don’t worry about time. Worry about safety. All right, everybody cool?”

  He got simultaneous nods from everybody. Bosch signaled Corazon away from the others and into a private conversation.

  “You’re not dressed right,” he said.

  “Look, don’t you start telling—”

  “You want me to take my shirt off so you can see my ribs? The side of my chest looks like blueberry pie because I fell up there last night. Those shoes you’ve got on aren’t going to work. It might look good for the camera but not—”

  “I’m fine. I’ll take my chances. Anything else?”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “I warned you,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He headed toward the ramp, and the others followed. Special Services had constructed a wooden gateway to be used as a checkpoint. A patrol officer stood there with a clipboard. He took each person’s name and affiliation before they were allowed through.

  Bosch led the way. The climbing was easier than the day before but his chest burned with pain as he pulled himself along on the rope guides and negotiated the ramps and steps. He said nothing and tried not to show it.

  When he got to the acacia trees he signaled the others to hold back while he went under the crime scene tape to check first. He found the area of overturned earth and the small, brown bones he had seen the night before. They appeared undisturbed.

  “Okay, come on in here and have a look.”

  The group members came under the tape and stood over the bones in a semicircle. The camera started rolling and Corazon now took charge.

  “All right, the first thing we’re going to do is back out and take photos. Then we’re going to set up a grid and Dr. Kohl will supervise the excavation and recovery. If you find anything, photograph it nine ways from Sunday before you collect it.”

  She turned to one of the investigators.

  “Finch, I want you to handle the sketches. Standard grid. Document everything. Don’t assume we will be able to rely on photos.”

  Finch nodded. Corazon turned to Bosch.

  “Detective, I think we’ve got it. The less people in here the better.”

  Bosch nodded and handed her a two-way radio.

  “I’ll be around. If you need me use the rover. Cell phones don’t work up here. But be careful what you say.”

  He pointed up at the sky, where the media helicopters were circling.

  “Speaking of which,” Kohl said, “I think we’re going to string a tarp up off these trees so we can have some privacy as well as cut down on the sun glare. Is that okay with you?”

  “It’s your crime scene now,” Bosch said. “Run with it.”

  He headed back down the ramp with Edgar behind him.

  “Harry, this could take days,” Edgar said.

  “And maybe then some.”

  “Well, they’re not going to give us days. You know that, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, these cases . . . we’ll be lucky if we even come up with an ID.”

  “Right.”

  Bosch kept moving. When he got down to the street he saw that Lt. Billets was on the scene with her supervisor, Capt. LeValley.

  “Jerry, why don’t you go get the cadets ready?” Bosch said. “Give them the crime scene one-oh-one speech. I’ll be over in a minute.”

  Bosch joined Billets and LeValley and updated them on what was happening, detailing the morning’s activities right down to the neighborhood complaints about noise from the hammers, saws and helicopters.

  “We’ve got to give something to the media,” LeValley said. “Media Relations wants to know if you want them to handle it from downtown or you want to take it here.”

  “I don’t want to take it. What does Media Relations know about it?”

  “Almost nothing. So you have to call them and they’ll work up the press release.”

  “Captain, I’m kind of busy here. Can I—”

  “Make the time, Detective. Keep them off our backs.”

  When Bosch looked away from the captain to the reporters gathered a half block away at the roadblock, he noticed Julia Brasher showing her badge to a patrol officer and being allowed through. She was in street clothes.

  “All right. I’ll make the call.”

  He started down the street to Dr. Guyot’s home. He was headed toward Brasher, who smiled at him as she approached.

  “I’ve got your Mag. It’s in my car down here. I have to go down to Dr. Guyot’s house anyway.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. That’s not why I’m here.”

  She changed direction and continued with Bosch. He looked at her attire: faded blue jeans and a T-shirt from a 5K charity run.

  “You’re not on the clock, are you?”

  “No, I work the three-to-eleven. I just thought you might need a volunteer. I heard about the academy call out.”

  “You want to go up there and look for bones, huh?”

  “I want to learn.”

  Bosch nodded. They walked up the path to Guyot’s door. It opened before they got there and the doctor invited them in. Bosch asked if he could use the phone in his office again and Guyot showed him the way even though he didn’t have to. Bosch sat down behind the desk.

  “How are the ribs?” the doctor asked.

  “Fine.”

  Brasher raised her eyebrows and Bosch picked up on it.
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br />   “Had a little accident when I was up there last night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, I was just sort of minding my own business when a tree trunk suddenly attacked me for no reason.”

  She grimaced and somehow managed to smile at the same time.