City Of Bones

identify the bones. He watched Edgar put the photo in a short stack of pictures he intended to borrow from Sheila’s collection.
    Bosch checked his watch and looked back at Sheila.
    “What about your mother?”
    Sheila immediately shook her head.
    “Nope, she was long gone by the time all of this happened.”
    “You mean she died?”
    “I mean she took a bus the minute the going got tough. You see, Arthur was a difficult child. Right from the beginning. He needed a lot of attention and it fell to my mother. After a while she couldn’t take it any longer. One night she went out to get some medicine at the drugstore and she never came back. We found little notes from her under our pillows.”
    Bosch dropped his eyes to his notebook. It was hard to hear this story and keep looking at Sheila Delacroix.
    “How old were you? How old was your brother?”
    “I was six, so that would make Artie two.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Did you keep the note from her?”
    “No. There was no need. I didn’t need a reminder of how she supposedly loved us but not enough to stay with us.”
    “What about Arthur? Did he keep his?”
    “Well, he was only two, so my father kept it for him. He gave it to him when he was older. He may have kept it, I don’t know. Because he never really knew her, he was always very interested in what she was like. He asked me a lot of questions about her. There were no photos of her. My father had gotten rid of them all so he wouldn’t have any reminders.”
    “Do you know what happened to her? Or if she’s still alive?”
    “I haven’t the faintest idea. And to tell you the truth, I don’t care if she is alive or not.”
    “What is her name?”
    “Christine Dorsett Delacroix. Dorsett was her maiden name.”
    “Do you know her birth date or Social Security number?”
    Sheila shook her head.
    “Do you have your own birth certificate handy here?”
    “It’s somewhere in my records. I could go look for it.”
    She started to get up.
    “No, wait, we can look for that at the end. I’d like to keep talking here.”
    “Okay.”
    “Um, after your mother was gone, did your father remarry?”
    “No, he never did. He lives alone now.”
    “Did he ever have a girlfriend, someone who might have stayed in the house?”
    She looked at Bosch with eyes that seemed almost lifeless.
    “No,” she said. “Never.”
    Bosch decided to move on to an area of discussion that would be less difficult for her.
    “What school did your brother go to?”
    “At the end he was going to The Brethren.”
    Bosch didn’t say anything. He wrote the name of the school down on his pad and then a large letter B beneath it. He circled the letter, thinking about the backpack. Sheila continued unbidden.
    “It was a private school for troubled boys. My dad paid to send him there. It’s off of Crescent Heights near Pico. It’s still there.”
    “Why did he go there? I mean, why was he considered troubled?”
    “Because he got kicked out of his other schools for fighting mostly.”
    “Fighting?” Edgar said.
    “That’s right.”
    Edgar picked the top photograph off of his keeper file and studied it for a moment.
    “This boy looks like he was as light as smoke. Was he the one starting these fights?”
    “Most times. He had trouble getting along. All he wanted to do was be on his skateboard. I think that by today’s standards he would be diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder or something similar. He just wanted to be by himself all the time.”
    “Did he get hurt in these fights?” Bosch asked.
    “Sometimes. Black and blue mostly.”
    “Broken bones?”
    “Not that I remember. Just schoolyard fights.”
    Bosch felt agitated. The information they were getting could point them in many different directions. He had hoped a clear-cut path might emerge from the interview.
    “You said your father searched the drawers in your brother’s room and found clothes missing.”
    “That’s right. Not a lot. Just a few things.”
    “Any idea what was missing specifically?”
    She shook her head.
    “I can’t remember.”
    “What did he take the clothes in? Like a suitcase or something?”
    “I think he took his schoolbag. Took out the books and put in some clothes.”
    “Do you remember what that looked like?”
    “No. Just a backpack. Everybody had to use the same thing at The Brethren. I still see kids walking on Pico with them, the backpacks with the B on the back.”
    Bosch glanced at Edgar and then back at