Angels Flight

he said, deciding not to pursue it.
    “Why, Harry, are they saying it was your gun? Are you in trouble?”
    Bosch thought a moment before answering.
    “No, Margie, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

Chapter 31
    THE rain continued through Monday morning and slowed Bosch’s drive into Brentwood to a frustrating crawl. It wasn’t heavy rain, but in Los Angeles any rain at all can paralyze the city. It was one of the mysteries Bosch could never fathom. A city largely defined by the automobile yet full of drivers unable to cope with even a mild inclemency. He listened to KFWB as he drove. There were far more reports of traffic tie-ups than incidents of violence or unrest during the night. Unfortunately, the skies were expected to clear by midday.
    He arrived twenty minutes late for his appointment with Kate Kincaid. The house from which Stacey Kincaid had allegedly been kidnapped was a sprawling white ranch house with black shutters and a slate-gray roof. It had a broad green lawn stretching back from the street and a driveway that cut across the front of the house, and then back around to the garage in the side yard. When Bosch pulled in there was a silver Mercedes Benz parked near the covered entryway. The front door of the house was open.
    When he got to the threshold Bosch called out a hello and he heard Kate Kincaid’s voice telling him to enter. He found her in the living room, sitting on a couch that was covered in a white sheet. All the furniture was covered in this way. The room looked like a meeting of big, heavy ghosts. She noticed Bosch’s eyes taking in the room.
    “When we moved we didn’t take a single piece of furniture,” she said. “We decided just to start over. No reminders.”
    Bosch nodded and then studied her. She was dressed completely in white, with a silk blouse tucked into tailored linen pants. She looked like a ghost herself. Her large black leather purse, which was on the couch next to her, seemed to clash with her outfit and the sheets covering the furniture.
    “How are you, Mrs. Kincaid?”
    “Please call me Kate.”
    “Kate then.”
    “I am very fine, thank you. Better than I have been in a long, long time. How are you?”
    “I’m just so-so today, Kate. I had a bad night. And I don’t like it when it rains.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that. It does look like you haven’t slept.”
    “Do you mind if I look around a little bit before we start talking?”
    He had a signed search warrant for the house in his briefcase but he didn’t want to bring it up yet.
    “Please do,” she said. “Stacey’s room is down the hall to your left. First door on the left.”
    Bosch left his briefcase on the tiled entryway floor and headed the way she had directed. The furniture in the girl’s room was not covered. The white sheets that had covered everything were in piles on the floor. It looked like someone – probably the dead girl’s mother – had visited here on occasion. The bed was unmade. The pink bedspread and matching sheets were twisted into a knot – not as if by someone sleeping, but maybe by someone who had lain on the bed and gathered the bedclothes to her chest. It made Bosch feel bad seeing it that way.
    Bosch stepped to the middle of the room, keeping his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He studied the girl’s things. There were stuffed animals and dolls, a shelf of picture books. No movie posters, no photos of young television stars or pop singers. It was almost as if the room belonged to a girl much younger than Stacey Kincaid had been at the end. Bosch wondered if the design was her parents’ or her own, as if maybe she had thought by holding on to the things of her past she could somehow avoid the horror of the present. The thought made him feel worse than when he had studied the bedclothes.
    He noticed a hairbrush on the bureau and saw strands of blond hair caught in it. It made him feel a little easier. He knew that the hair from the brush could be used, if it ever came to the point of connecting evidence – possibly from the trunk of a car – to the dead girl.
    He stepped over and looked at the window. It was a slider and he saw the black smudges of fingerprint powder still on the frame. He unlocked the window and pulled it open. There were splinter marks where the latch had supposedly been jimmied with a screwdriver or similar tool.
    Bosch looked out through the rain at the back yard. There was a lima bean-shaped pool that was covered with a