City Of Bones

you talking about?”
    “Did you help your father that night? Did you help him carry your brother up the hill and bury him?”
    She brought her hands up to her face so quickly it was as if Bosch had thrown acid in her eyes. Through her hands she yelled, “Oh my God, oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening! What are you-”
    She just as abruptly dropped her hands and stared at him with bewildered eyes.
    “You think I had something to do with it? How could you think that?”
    Bosch waited a moment for her to calm down before answering.
    “I think you’re not telling me the truth about what’s going on here. So it makes me suspicious and it means I have to consider all possibilities.”
    She abruptly stood up.
    “Am I under arrest?”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “No, Sheila, you’re not. But I would appreciate it if you’d tell me the-”
    “Then I’m leaving.”
    She stepped around the coffee table and headed for the door with a purposeful stride.
    “What about the cat?” Bosch asked.
    She didn’t stop. She was through the door and into the night. Bosch heard her answer from outside.
    “You take care of it.”
    Bosch stepped to the door and watched her walking down the trailer park’s access road, out toward the management building, where her car was parked.
    “Yeah,” he said to himself.
    He leaned against the door frame and breathed some of the untainted air from the outside. He thought about Sheila and what she might have been doing. After a while he checked his watch and looked back over his shoulder at the interior of the trailer. It was after midnight and he was tired. But he decided he was going to stay and look for whatever it was she had been looking for.
    He felt something brush up against his leg and looked down to see a black cat rubbing up against him. He gently pushed it away with his leg. He didn’t care much for cats.
    The animal came back and insisted on rubbing its head against Bosch’s leg again. Bosch stepped back into the trailer, causing the cat to make a cautionary retreat of a few feet.
    “Wait here,” Bosch said. “I’ve got some food in the car.”

Chapter 43
    DOWNTOWN arraignment court was always a zoo. When Bosch entered the courtroom at ten minutes before nine on Friday morning, he saw no judge yet on the bench but a flurry of lawyers conferring and moving about the front of the courtroom like ants on a kicked-over hill. It took a seasoned veteran to know and understand what was going on at any given time in arraignment court.
    Bosch first scanned the rows of public seating for Sheila Delacroix but didn’t see her. He next looked for his partner and Portugal, the prosecutor, but they weren’t in the courtroom either. He did notice that two cameramen were setting up equipment next to the bailiff’s desk. Their position would give them a clear view of the glass prisoner docket once court was in session.
    Bosch moved forward and pushed through the gate. He took out his badge, palmed it and showed it to the bailiff, who had been studying a computer printout of the day’s arraignment schedule.
    “You got a Samuel Delacroix on there?” he asked.
    “Arrested Wednesday or Thursday?”
    “Thursday. Yesterday.”
    The bailiff flipped the top sheet over and ran his finger down a list. He stopped at Delacroix’s name.
    “Got it.”
    “When will he come up?”
    “We’ve still got some Wednesdays to finish. When we get to Thursdays it will depend on who his lawyer is. Private or public?”
    “It’ll be a PD, I think.”
    “They go in order. You’re looking at an hour, at least. That’s if the judge starts at nine. Last I heard he wasn’t here yet.”
    “Thanks.”
    Bosch moved toward the prosecution table, having to weave around two groupings of defense lawyers telling war stories while waiting for the judge to take the bench. In the first position at the table was a woman Bosch didn’t recognize. She would be the arraignments deputy assigned to the courtroom. She would routinely handle eighty percent of the arraignments, as most of the cases were minor in nature and had not yet been assigned to prosecutors. In front of her on the table was a stack of files-the morning’s cases-half a foot high. Bosch showed her his badge, too.
    “Do you know if George Portugal is coming down for the Delacroix arraignment? It’s a Thursday.”
    “Yes, he is,” she said, without looking up. “I just talked to him.”
    She now looked up and Bosch saw her eyes go to