City Of Bones

prepare for their questions. He had even been briefed by an attorney. He could have even been practicing his responses and looks in a mirror. Bosch knew what his internal lie detector said. But he also knew that a good actor could beat it.

Chapter 15
    BOSCH drank a beer on the back porch with the sliding door open so he could hear Clifford Brown on the stereo. Almost fifty years before, the trumpet player made a handful of recordings and then checked out in a car crash. Bosch thought about all the music that had been lost. He thought about young bones in the ground and what had been lost. And then he thought about himself and what he had lost. Somehow the jazz and the beer and the grayness he was feeling about the case had all mixed together in his mind. He felt on edge, like he was missing something that was right in front of him. For a detective it was just about the worst feeling in the world.
    At 11 P.M. he came inside and turned the music down so he could watch the news on Channel 4. Judy Surtain’s report was the third story after the first break. The anchor said, “New developments in the Laurel Canyon bone case. We go to Judy Surtain at the scene.”
    “Ah, shit,” Bosch said, not liking the sound of the introduction.
    The program cut to a live shot of Surtain on Wonderland Avenue, standing on the street in front of a house Bosch recognized as Trent’s.
    “I’m here on Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, where four days ago a dog brought home a bone that authorities say was human. The dog’s find led to the discovery of more bones belonging to a young boy who investigators believe was murdered and then buried more than twenty years ago.”
    Bosch’s phone started ringing. He picked it up off the arm of the TV chair and answered it.
    “Hold on,” he said and then held the phone down by his side while he watched the news report.
    Surtain said, “Tonight the lead investigators on the case returned to the neighborhood to speak to one resident who lives less than one hundred yards from the place where the boy was buried. That resident is Nicholas Trent, a fifty-seven-year-old Hollywood set decorator.”
    The program cut to tape of Bosch being questioned by Surtain that night. But it was used as visual filler while Surtain continued her report in a voice-over dub.
    “Investigators declined to comment on their questioning of Trent, but Channel Four news has learned-”
    Bosch sat down heavily on the chair and braced himself.
    “-that Trent was once convicted of molesting a young boy.”
    The sound was then brought up on the street interview just as Bosch said, “That’s really all I can tell you.”
    The next jump was to video of Trent standing in his doorway and waving the camera off and closing the door.
    “Trent declined comment on his status in the case. But neighbors in the normally quiet hillside neighborhood expressed shock upon learning of Trent’s background.”
    As the report shifted to a taped interview of a resident Bosch recognized as Victor Ulrich, Bosch hit the mute button on the TV remote and brought the phone up. It was Edgar.
    “You watching this shit?” he asked.
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “We look like shit. We look like we told her. They used your quote out of context, Harry. We’re going to be fucked by this.”
    “Well, you didn’t tell her, right?”
    “Harry, you think I’d tell some-”
    “No, I don’t. I was confirming. You didn’t tell her, right?”
    “Right.”
    “And neither did I. So, yeah, we’re going to take some shit but we’re clear on it.”
    “Well, who else knew? I doubt Trent was the one who told her. About a million people now know he’s a child molester.”
    Bosch realized the only people who knew were Kiz, who had gotten the records flag while doing the computer work, and Julia Brasher, whom Bosch told while he was making his excuse for missing dinner. Suddenly a vision of Surtain standing at the roadblock on Wonderland came to him. Brasher had volunteered her help during both days of the hillside search and excavation. It was entirely possible that she had connected with Surtain in some way. Was she the reporter’s source, the leak?
    “There didn’t have to be a leak,” Bosch said to Edgar. “All she needed was Trent’s name. She could have gotten any cop she knew to run it on the box for her. Or she could have looked it up on the sexual offenders CD. It’s public record. Hold on.”
    He had gotten a call-waiting beep on the phone. He