The Closers Page 5

  Included in this section was a summary of a phone interview conducted with a former boyfriend of Becky Verloren's who had moved with his family to Hawaii the year before her murder. Attached to the summary was an alibi confirmation report stating that the teenager's supervisor had confirmed that the boy had worked in the car wash and detail facility at a Maui rent-a-car franchise on the days of and after the murder, making it unlikely that he could have been in Los Angeles to kill her.

  There was a separate packet of summaries of interviews with employees of the Island House Grill, the restaurant owned by Robert Verloren. His daughter had just started a part-time summer job at the restaurant. She was an assistant hostess during lunch. Her job was to lead customers to their tables and to put down the menus. Though Bosch knew restaurants often drew a variety of drifters to the low-level kitchen jobs, Robert Verloren avoided hiring men with criminal records, instead drawing on the population of surfers and other free spirits who flocked to the beaches of Malibu. These people would have had limited contact with Rebecca, who worked in the dining room, but they were interviewed just the same and seemingly dismissed by the investigators.

  There was also a victim's chronology in which the investigators outlined Rebecca Verloren's movements in the days leading up to her murder. In 1988 July Fourth fell on a Monday. Rebecca spent most of the holiday weekend at home, except for a Sunday-night sleepover with three girlfriends at one of their houses. The attached summaries of interviews with these three girls were long but contained no information of investigative value.

  On Monday, the holiday, she stayed home until she and her parents went to Balboa Park to watch a fireworks display. It was a rare night off for Robert Verloren and he insisted that the family stay together, much to Becky's reported upset at missing out on a friend's party in the Porter Ranch area.

  On Tuesday the summer routine began again with Rebecca going to the restaurant with her father to work the lunch shift as a hostess. At three o'clock her father drove her home. He stayed at home through the afternoon and then headed back to the restaurant for the dinner shift at about the same time Rebecca used her mother's car to run the errand of collecting the dry cleaning.

  Bosch saw nothing in the schedule that raised suspicions, nothing that was missed by the original investigators.

  He next came to a transcript of a formal interview with the parents. It was taken at Devonshire Division on July 14, more than a week after their daughter was discovered missing. By this point the detectives had accumulated a lot of case knowledge and were specific with their questions. Bosch carefully read this transcript, as much for the answers as for the insight it would give to the investigators' view of the case at that point.

  Case No. 88-641, Verloren, Rebecca (DOD 7-6-88), I/O A. Garcia, #993

  7/14/88 - 2:15 p.m., Devonshire Homicide GARCIA: Thank you for coming in. I hope you don't mind but we are recording this so we will have a record. How are you managing?

  ROBT. VERLOREN: About as well as expected. We're devastated. We don't know what to do.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: We keep thinking, what could we have done to prevent this from happening to our little girl?

  GREEN: We're truly sorry, ma'am. But you can't blame yourself for this. As far as we can tell it was nothing you did or didn't do. It just happened. Don't blame yourself. Blame the person who did this.

  GARCIA: And we are going to get him. You don't have to worry about that. Now, we have some questions we need to ask. Some of these might be painful but we need the answers if we are going to get this guy.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: You keep saying "guy." Is there a suspect? Do you know it was a man?

  GARCIA: We don't know anything for sure, sir. We're mostly going with the percentages there. But also you have that steep hill behind your house. Becky was definitely carried up that hill. She wasn't a big girl but we definitely think it would have to be a man.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: But you said she wasn't . . . that there was no sexual assault.

  GARCIA: That is true, ma'am. But that does not preclude this from being a sexually motivated or related crime.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: How do you mean?

  GARCIA: We will get to that, sir. If you don't mind, let us ask our questions and then we will get to your questions if you would like.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: Go ahead, please. I'm sorry. It's just that we cannot understand what has happened. It's like we are underwater all the time.

  GARCIA: That is completely understandable. As I said, you have our deepest sympathy. From the department, too. We have the upper echelon of this department watching over this case very closely.

  GREEN: We would like to start by going back before her disappearance. Maybe a month before. Did your daughter go away at all during that time?

  ROBT. VERLOREN: What do you mean, away?

  GARCIA: Was she away from you at any time?

  ROBT. VERLOREN: No. She was sixteen. She was in school. She didn't go away on her own.

  GREEN: What about a sleepover with her friends?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: No, I don't think so.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: What are you looking for?

  GREEN: Was she sick at all in the month or two prior to the disappearance?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: Yes, she had the flu the first week after school ended. It delayed her going to work for Bob.

  GREEN: Was she in bed sick?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: A lot of the time. I don't see what this has to GARCIA: Mrs. Verloren, did your daughter go to see a doctor at this time?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: No, she just said she had to rest. To tell you the truth, we thought she just didn't want to go to work in the restaurant. She didn't have a fever or a cold. We just thought she was being lazy.

  GREEN: She didn't confide in you at this time that she had been pregnant?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: What? No!

  ROBT. VERLOREN: Look, Detective, what are you telling us?

  GREEN: The autopsy revealed that Becky had had a procedure called a dilation and curettage about a month before her death. An abortion. Our guess is that she was resting and recovering from this procedure when she told you she had the flu.

  GARCIA: Would you two like to take a break here?

  GREEN: Why don't we take a break? We'll step out and get all of us some water.

  [Break]

  GARCIA: Okay, we're back. I hope you understand and forgive us. We do not ask questions or attempt to shock you to hurt you. We need to follow procedure and employ methods that allow us to collect information that is unfettered by preconceived perceptions.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: We understand what you are doing. It's part of our life now. What's left of it.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: You are saying our daughter was pregnant and chose to get an abortion?

  GARCIA: Yes, that's right. And we think there is a possibility that it could have a bearing on what happened to her a month later. Do you have any idea where she would have gone for this procedure?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: No. I had no idea about this. Neither of us.

  GREEN: And as you said before, she did not go away overnight during that time?

  MURIEL VERLOREN: No, she was home every night.

  GARCIA: Any idea who the relationship could have been with? In our earlier talks you said she had no current boyfriend.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: Well, obviously I guess we were wrong about that. But, no, we don't know who she was seeing or who could have . . . done this.

  GREEN: Have either of you ever read the journal that your daughter kept?

  ROBT. VERLOREN: No, we didn't even know there was a journal until you found it in her room.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: I would like to get that back. Will I get that back?

  GREEN: We will need to keep it through the investigation but you will eventually get it back.

  GARCIA: There are several references in the journal to an individual referred to as MTL. This is a person we would like to identify and talk to.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: I don't know anyone with those
initials offhand.

  GREEN: We looked at the school's yearbook. There is one boy named Michael Lewis. But we checked and his middle name is Charles. We think the initials were a code or an abbreviation. It could stand for My True Love.

  MURIEL VERLOREN: So there was obviously someone we didn't know about, that she kept from us.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: I can't believe this. You two are telling us we didn't really know our little girl.

  GARCIA: I'm sorry, Bob. Sometimes the damage from a case like this goes deep. But it's our job to follow it where it goes. This is the current we are in right now.

  GREEN: Basically, we need to pursue this aspect of the investigation and find out who MTL is. Which means we need to ask questions of your daughter's friends and acquaintances. Word about this, it will get around, I'm afraid.

  ROBT. VERLOREN: We understand this, Detective. We will deal with it. As we said on the day we met, do what you have to do. Find the person who did this.

  GARCIA: Thank you, sir. We will.

  [End of interview, 2:40 p.m.]

  Bosch read the transcript a second time, this time writing down notes on his pad as he went. He then moved on to three more formal interview transcripts. These were conducted with Becky Verloren's three closest friends, Tara Wood, Bailey Koster and Grace Tanaka. But none of the girls-girls at the time-said they had knowledge of Becky's pregnancy or the secret relationship that produced it. All three said they did not see her the week after school got out because she was not answering her phone and when they called the house's main number Muriel Verloren told them her daughter was sick. Tara Wood, who was splitting a work schedule as a hostess at the Island House Grill with Becky, said that her friend was moody and incommunicative in the weeks prior to her murder, but the reason for this was unknown because she rebuffed Wood's efforts to find out what was wrong.

  The last entry in the murder book was the media file. It was where Garcia and Green kept the newspaper stories that accumulated in the early stages of the case. The crime played bigger in the Daily News than in the Times. This was understandable because the News circulated primarily in the San Fernando Valley and the Times usually treated the Valley as an unwanted stepchild, relegating the news emanating from its environs to the inside pages.

  There was no coverage of Becky Verloren's initial disappearance. The newspapers had obviously viewed it in the same way as the police had. But once the body was found there were several stories on the investigation, the funeral and the impact the young girl's death had at her school. There was even a mood piece set at the Island House Grill. This story had been in the Times and had apparently been a stab at making the case meaningful to the paper's Westside circulation base. A restaurant in Malibu was something the Westsiders could relate to.

  Both newspapers linked the murder weapon to a burglary that occurred a month before the killing but neither had the anti-Semitic angle. Neither reported on the blood evidence recovered from the weapon either. Bosch guessed that the blood and tissue recovery was the investigators' ace in the hole, the one piece of evidence held close to the vest to give them the advantage if a prime suspect was ever identified.

  Finally Bosch noticed that there were no media interviews with the grieving parents. The Verlorens apparently chose not to hold their loss out for public consumption. Bosch liked that about them. It seemed to him that increasingly the media forced the victims of tragedy to grieve in public, in front of cameras and in newspaper stories. Parents of murdered children became talking heads who appeared on the tube as experts the next time there was another child murdered and another set of parents grieving. It all didn't sit well with Bosch. It seemed to him that the best way to honor the dead was to keep them close to the heart, not to share them with the world across the electronic spectrum.

  At the back of the murder book there was a pocket containing a manila envelope with the Times's eagle insignia and address in the corner. Bosch pulled it out and opened it and found a series of 8 x 10 color photos taken at Rebecca Verloren's funeral one week after her murder. Apparently there had been a deal cut, the photos traded for access. Bosch remembered making such deals in the past when he was unable because of scheduling or budget to get a police photographer out to a funeral. He would promise the reporter working the story that he or she would be in line for an exclusive if the newspaper photographer wouldn't mind running off a complete set of crowd shots of the people attending the service. You never knew when the killer might show up to get a rise out of the anguish and grief he had caused. Reporters always went for the deal. Los Angeles was one of the most competitive media markets in the world and reporters lived and died by the access they had.

  Bosch studied the photos but was handicapped in looking for Roland Mackey because he didn't know what he looked like in 1988. The photos Kiz Rider had pulled up on the computer were from his most recent arrest. They showed a balding man with a goatee and dark eyes. It was hard to trace that visage back to any of the teenaged faces that gathered to put one of their own in the ground.

  For a while he studied Becky Verloren's parents in one of the photos. They were standing at the graveside, leaning against each other as if holding each other from falling. Tears lined their faces. Robert Verloren was black and Muriel Verloren was white. Bosch now understood where their daughter had gotten her growing beauty. The mix of races in a child often rose above the attendant social difficulties to achieve such grace.

  Bosch put the photos down and thought for a moment. Nowhere in the murder book had there been mention of the possibility of race playing a part in the murder. But the murder weapon's coming from the burglary of a man being threatened because of his religion seemed to give rise to the possibility of at least a tenuous link to the murder of a girl of mixed races.

  The fact that this was not mentioned in the murder book meant nothing. The aspect of race was always something held close to the vest in the LAPD. To commit something to the paperwork was to make it known within the department-investigative summaries were reviewed all the way up the line on hot cases. It could then be leaked and turned into something else, something political. So its absence was not seen by Bosch as a taint on the investigation. Not yet, at least.

  He returned the photos to the envelope and closed the murder book. He guessed that there were more than three hundred pages of documents and photos in it, and nowhere on any of those pages had he seen the name Roland Mackey. Was it possible that he had escaped even peripheral notice in the investigation so many years before? If so, was it still possible he was indeed the killer?

  These questions bothered Bosch. He always tried to keep faith in the murder book, meaning that he believed the answers usually lay within its plastic sides. But this time he was having difficulty believing the cold hit. Not the science. He had no doubt about Mackey being matched to the blood and tissue found inside the murder weapon. But he believed something was wrong. Something was missing.

  He looked down at his pad. He had taken few notes. He had really only composed a list of people he wanted to talk to.

  Green and Garcia Mother/Father school/friends/teachers former boyfriend probation agent Mackey-school?

  He knew that every note he had taken was obvious. He realized how little they had besides the DNA match, and once again he was uneasy about building a case without anything else.

  Bosch was staring at his notes when Kiz Rider walked into the office. She was empty-handed and unsmiling.

  "Well?" Bosch asked.

  "Bad news. The murder weapon's gone. I don't know if you've read the whole book but there's mention of a journal in there. The girl kept a journal. That's gone, too. Everything's gone."

  7

  THEY DECIDED that the best way to deal with and discuss bad news was to eat. Besides that, nothing made Bosch hungrier than sitting in an office all morning and reading through a murder book. They went over to Chinese Friends, a small place on Broadway at the end of Chinatown where they knew they could still get a table this early. It w
as a place where you could eat well and to capacity and barely go over five bucks. The trouble was that it filled up fast, mostly with headquarters staff from the Fire Department, the gold badges from Parker Center and the bureaucrats from City Hall. If you didn't get there by noon you ordered takeout and you had to sit and eat on the bus benches out front in the sun.

  They left the murder book in the car so as not to disturb other patrons in the restaurant, where the tables were jammed as close as the desks in a public school. They did bring their notes, and discussed the case in an improvised shorthand designed to keep their conversation private. Rider explained that when she had said the gun and the journal were missing from the ESB what she meant was that no evidence carton from the case could be found during an hour-long search by two evidence clerks. This was not much of a surprise to Bosch. As Pratt had warned earlier, the department had taken haphazard care of evidence for decades. Evidence cartons were booked and filed on shelves in chronological order and without any sort of separation according to crime classification. Consequently, evidence from a murder might sit on a shelf next to evidence from a burglary. And when clerks came through periodically to clear out evidence from cases where the statute of limitations had expired, sometimes the wrong box got tossed. The security of the ESB was also a low priority for many years. It was not difficult for anyone with an LAPD badge to gain access to any piece of evidence in the facility. So the evidence cartons were subject to pilfering. It was not unusual for weapons to be missing, or other kinds of evidence from famous cases like the Black Dahlia, Charles Manson, and the Dollmaker crimes.