City Of Bones

skeleton, actually-of another woman were found in the tar. She had the same star fracture in the same spot on her skull. Her bones were carbon-dated as nine thousand years old. Same time frame as her.”
    He nodded to the skull in the box.
    “So, what are you saying, Doc, that there was a serial killer here nine thousand years ago?”
    “It’s impossible to know that, Detective Bosch. All we have are the bones.”
    Bosch looked down at the skull again. He thought about what Julia Brasher had said about his job, about his taking evil out of the world. What she didn’t know was a truth he had known for too long. That true evil could never be taken out of the world. At best he was wading into the dark waters of the abyss with two leaking buckets in his hands.
    “But you have other things on your mind, don’t you?” Golliher said, interrupting Bosch’s thoughts. “Do you have the hospital records?”
    Bosch brought his briefcase up onto the worktable and opened it. He handed Golliher a file. Then, from his pocket he pulled the stack of photos he and Edgar had borrowed from Sheila Delacroix.
    “I don’t know if these help,” he said. “But this is the kid.”
    Golliher picked up the photos. He went through them quickly, stopping at the posed close-up of Arthur Delacroix in a jacket and tie. He went over to a chair where a backpack was slung over the armrest. He pulled out his own file and came back to the worktable. He opened the file and took out an 8 × 10 photo of the skull from Wonderland Avenue. For a long moment he held the photos of Arthur Delacroix and the skull side by side and studied them.
    Finally, he said, “The malar and superciliary ridge formation look similar.”
    “I’m not an anthropologist, Doc.”
    Golliher put the photos down on the table. He then explained by running his finger across the left eyebrow of the boy and then down around the outside of his eye.
    “The brow ridge and the exterior orbit,” he said. “It’s wider than usual on the recovered specimen. Looking at this photo of the boy, we see his facial structure is in line with what we see here.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Let’s look at the X-rays,” Golliher said. “There’s a box back here.”
    Golliher gathered the files and led Bosch to another worktable, where there was a light box built into the surface. He opened the hospital file, picked up the X-rays and began reading the patient history report.
    Bosch had already read the document. The hospital reported that the boy was brought into the emergency room at 5:40 P.M. on February 11, 1980, by his father, who said he was found in a dazed and unresponsive state following a fall from a skateboard in which he struck his head. Neurosurgery was performed in order to relieve pressure inside the skull caused by swelling of the brain. The boy remained in the hospital under observation for ten days and was then released to his father. Two weeks later he was readmitted for follow-up surgery to remove the clips that had been used to hold his skull together following the neurosurgery.
    There was no report anywhere in the file of the boy complaining about being mistreated by his father or anyone else. While recovering from the initial surgery he was routinely interviewed by an on-site social worker. Her report was less than half a page. It reported that the boy said he had hurt himself while skateboarding. There was no follow-up questioning or referral to juvenile authorities or the police.
    Golliher shook his head while he finished his scan of the document.
    “What is it?” Bosch asked.
    “It’s nothing. And that’s the problem. No investigation. They took the boy at his word. His father was probably sitting right there in the room with him when he was interviewed. You know how hard it would have been for him to tell the truth? So they just patched him up and sent him right back to the person who was hurting him.”
    “Hey, Doc, you’re getting a little bit ahead of us. Let’s get the ID, if it’s there, and then we’ll figure out who was hurting the kid.”
    “Fine. It’s your case. It’s just that I’ve seen this a hundred times.”
    Golliher dropped the reports and picked up the X-rays. Bosch watched him with a bemused smile on his face. It seemed that Golliher was annoyed because Bosch had not jumped to the same conclusions he had with the same speed he had.
    Golliher put two X-rays down on the light box. He then went to his own file and brought out X-rays he