Angle of Investigation

my slips and made a few callbacks while I was waiting.”
    “What are your slips?”
    “Phone messages. People who see our signs on properties and call. I don’t put my cell oriv t my ce home number on the signs.”
    “How many callbacks did you make?”
    “I think just two. I got a message on one and spoke briefly to the other person. My fax came in and that was what I was there for. I got off the line.”
    “Now, at this point it was what time?”
    “I don’t know, about ten after ten.”
    “Would you say that at this point you were still cognizant that your son was still in your car in the parking lot?”
    Helton took time to think through an answer again but spoke before Bosch had to prompt him.
    “No, because if I knew he was in the car, I would not have left him in the first place. I forgot about him while I was still in the car. You understand?”
    Bosch leaned back in his seat. Whether he understood it or not, Helton had just dodged one legal bullet. If he had acknowledged that he knowingly left the boy in the car—even if he planned to be back in a few minutes—that would have greatly supported a charge of negligent homicide. But Helton had maneuvered the question correctly, almost as if he had expected it.
    “Okay,” Bosch said. “What happened next?”
    Helton shook his head wistfully and looked at the side wall as if gazing through a window toward the past he couldn’t change.
    “I, uh, got involved in the deal,” he said. “The fax came in, I called my client and I faxed back a counter. I also did a lot of talking to the other agent. By phone. We were trying to get the deal done and we had to hand-hold both our clients through this.”
    “For two hours.”
    “Yes, it took that long.”
    “And when was it that you remembered that you had left William in the car out in the parking lot where it was about ninety-five degrees?”
    “I guess as soon—first of all, I didn’t know what the temperature was. I object to that. I left that car at about ten and it was not ninety-five degrees. Not even close. I hadn’t even used the air conditioner on the way over.”
    There was a complete lack of remorse or guilt in Helton’s demeanor. He wasn’t even attempting to fake it anymore. Bosch had become convinced that this man had no love or affinity for his damaged and now lost child. William was simply a burden that had to be dealt with and therefore could easily be forgotten when things like business and selling houses and making money came up.
    But where was the crime in all of this? Bosch knew he could charge him with negligence but the courts tend to view the loss of a child as enough punishment in these situations. Helton would go free with hi defree wis wife as sympathetic figures, free to continue their lives while baby William moldered in his grave.
    The tells always add up. Bosch instinctively believed Helton was a liar. And he began to believe that William’s death was no accident. Unlike his partner, who had let the passions of his own fatherhood lead him down the path, Bosch had gotten here after careful observation and analysis. It was now time to press on, to bait Helton and see if he would make a mistake.
    “Is there anything else you want to add to the story?” he asked.
    Helton let out a deep breath and slowly shook his head.
    “That’s the whole sad story,” he said. “I wish to God it never happened. But it did.”
    He looked directly at Bosch for the first time during the entire interview. Bosch held his gaze and then asked a question.
    “Do you have a good marriage, Stephen?”
    Helton looked away and stared at the invisible window again.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean do you have a good marriage? You can say yes or no if you want.”
    “Yes, I have a good marriage,” Helton responded emphatically. “I don’t know what my wife told you but I think it is very solid. What are you trying to say?”
    “All I’m saying is that sometimes when there is a child with challenges, it strains the marriage. My partner just had a baby. The kid’s healthy but money’s tight and his wife isn’t back at work yet. You know the deal. It’s tough. I can only imagine what the strain of having a child with William’s difficulties would be like.”
    “Yeah, well, we made it by all right.”
    “The nannies quitting all the time…”
    “It wasn’t that hard. As soon as one quits we put an ad on Craigslist for another.”
    Bosch nodded and scratched the back of his