City Of Bones

middle of the room. He was reading from a page of script. A young woman was in the corner behind a video camera on a tripod. In another corner two men sat on folding chairs watching the reading.
    The man reading the script didn’t stop when Bosch and Edgar entered.
    “The proof’s in your pudding, you mutt!” he said. “You left your DNA all over the scene. Now get up and get against-”
    “Okay, okay,” Delacroix said. “Stop there, Frank.”
    She looked up at Bosch and Edgar.
    “What is this?”
    The woman from the desk roughly pushed past Bosch into the room.
    “I’m sorry, Sheila, these guys just bullied their way in like they’re real cops or something.”
    “We need to talk to you, Sheila,” Bosch said. “Right now.”
    “I’m in the middle of a reading. Can’t you see that I-”
    “We’re in the middle of a murder investigation. Remember?”
    She threw a pen down on the desk and pushed her hands up through her hair. She turned to the woman on the video camera, which was now focused on Bosch and Edgar.
    “Okay, Jennifer, turn that off,” she said. “Everybody, I need a few minutes. Frank, I am very sorry. You were doing great. Can you stay and wait a few minutes? I promise to take you first, as soon as I am done.”
    Frank stood up and smiled brilliantly.
    “No problem, Sheila. I’ll be right outside.”
    Everybody shuffled out of the room, leaving Bosch and Edgar alone with Sheila.
    “Well,” she said after the door closed. “With an entrance like that, you really should be actors.”
    She tried smiling but it didn’t work. Bosch came over to the desk. He remained standing. Edgar leaned his back against the door. They had decided on the way over that Bosch would handle her.
    She said, “The show I’m casting is about two detectives called ‘the closers’ because they have a perfect record of closing cases nobody else seems able to. I guess there’s no such thing in real life, is there?”
    “Nobody’s perfect,” Bosch said. “Not even close.”
    “What is so important that you had to come bursting in here, embarrassing me like that?”
    “Couple things. I thought you might want to know that I found what you were looking for last night and-”
    “I told you, I wasn’t-”
    “-your father was released from custody about an hour ago.”
    “What do you mean released? You said last night he wouldn’t be able to make bail.”
    “He wouldn’t have been able to. But he’s not charged with the crime anymore.”
    “But he confessed. You said he-”
    “Well, he de-confessed this morning. That was after we told him we were going to put him on a polygraph machine and mentioned that it was you who called us up and gave us the tip that led to the ID of your brother.”
    She shook her head slightly.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I think you do, Sheila. Your father thought you killed Arthur. You were the one who hit him all the time, who hurt him, who put him in the hospital that time after hitting him with the bat. When he disappeared your father thought maybe you’d finally gone all the way and killed him, then hidden the body. He even went into Arthur’s room and got rid of that little bat in case you had used that again.”
    Sheila put her elbows on the desk and hid her face in her hands.
    “So when we showed up he started confessing. He was willing to take the fall for you to make up for what he did to you. For this.”
    Bosch reached into his pocket and took out the envelope containing the photos. He dropped it onto the desk between her elbows. She slowly lowered her hands and picked it up. She didn’t open the envelope. She didn’t have to.
    “How’s that for a reading, Sheila?”
    “You people… is this what you do? Invade people’s lives like this? I mean, their secrets, everything?”
    “We’re the closers, Sheila. Sometimes we have to.”
    Bosch saw a case of water bottles on the floor next to her desk. He reached down and opened a bottle for her. He looked at Edgar, who shook his head. Bosch got another bottle for himself, pulled the chair Frank had used close to her desk and sat down.
    “Listen to me, Sheila. You were a victim. You were a kid. He was your father, he was strong and in control. There is no shame for you in being a victim.”
    She didn’t respond.
    “Whatever baggage you carry with you, now is the time to lose it. To tell us what happened. Everything. I think there is more than what you told us before. We’re back at square one and