City Of Bones

came in.
    “No, he’s home,” Bosch said.
    “How d’you know?”
    “I just know.”
    He looked at his watch and wrote the time and address down on a page in his small notebook. It occurred to him then that the house they were at was the one where he had seen the curtain pulled closed behind a window on the evening of the first call out.
    “Let’s go,” he said. “You talked to him the first time, so you take the lead. I’ll jump in when it feels right.”
    They got out and walked up the driveway to the house. The man they were visiting was named Nicholas Trent. He lived alone in the house, which was across the street and two houses down from the hillside where the bones had been found. Trent was fifty-seven years old. He had told Edgar during his initial canvas of the neighborhood that he was a set decorator for a studio in Burbank. He was unmarried and had no children. He knew nothing about the bones on the hill and could offer no clues or suggestions that were helpful.
    Edgar knocked hard on the front door and they waited.
    “Mr. Trent, it’s the police,” he said loudly. “Detective Edgar. Answer your door, please.”
    He had raised his fist to hit the door again when the porch light went on. The door was then opened and a white man with a shaved scalp stood in the darkness within. The light from the porch slashed across his face.
    “Mr. Trent? It’s Detective Edgar. This is my partner, Detective Bosch. We have a few follow-up questions for you. If you don’t mind.”
    Bosch nodded but didn’t offer his hand. Trent said nothing and Edgar forced the issue by putting his hand against the door and pushing it open.
    “All right if we come in?” he asked, already halfway across the threshold.
    “No, it’s not all right,” Trent said quickly.
    Edgar stopped and put a puzzled look on his face.
    “Sir, we just have a few more questions we’d like to ask.”
    “Yeah, and that’s bullshit!”
    “Excuse me?”
    “We all know what is going on here. I talked to my attorney already. Your act is just that, an act. A bad one.”
    Bosch could see they were not going to get anywhere with the trick-or-treat strategy. He stepped up and pulled Edgar back by the arm. Once his partner had cleared the threshold he looked at Trent.
    “Mr. Trent, if you knew we’d be back, then you knew we’d find out about your past. Why didn’t you tell Detective Edgar about it before? It could have saved us some time. Instead, it gives us suspicion. You can understand that, I’m sure.”
    “Because the past is the past. I didn’t bring it up. I buried the past. Leave it that way.”
    “Not when there are bones buried in it,” Edgar said in an accusatory tone.
    Bosch looked back at Edgar and gave him a look that said use some finesse.
    “See?” Trent said. “This is why I am saying, ‘Go away.’ I have nothing to tell you people. Nothing. I don’t know anything about it.”
    “Mr. Trent, you molested a nine-year-old boy,” Bosch said.
    “The year was nineteen sixty-six and I was punished for it. Severely. It’s the past. I’ve been a perfect citizen ever since. I had nothing to do with those bones up there.”
    Bosch waited a moment and then spoke in a calm and quieter tone.
    “If that is the truth, then let us come in and ask our questions. The sooner we clear you, the sooner we move on to other possibilities. But you have to understand something here. The bones of a young boy were found about a hundred yards from the home of a man who molested a young boy in nineteen sixty-six. I don’t care what kind of citizen he’s been since then, we need to ask him some questions. And we will ask those questions. We have no choice. Whether we do it in your home right now or with your lawyer at the station with all of the news cameras waiting outside, that’s going to be your choice.”
    He paused. Trent looked at him with scared eyes.
    “So you can understand our situation, Mr. Trent, and we can certainly understand yours. We are willing to move quickly and discreetly but we can’t without your cooperation.”
    Trent shook his head as though he knew that no matter what he did now, his life as he knew it was in jeopardy and probably permanently altered. He finally stepped back and signaled Bosch and Edgar in.
    Trent was barefoot and wearing baggy black shorts that showed off thin ivory legs with no hair on them. He wore a flowing silk shirt over his thin upper body. He had the same build as a ladder, all hard