City Of Bones

climbed out of the trap, holding his club with both hands still locked in their grip, a posture that suggested he had just hit the ball.
    Finally, Christine Waters began to talk again and Bosch looked back at her.
    “Arthur only weighed five pounds when he was born. He was small right up through that first year and very sickly. We never talked about it but I think we both knew that what Sam had done had hurt that boy. He just wasn’t right.”
    “Aside from that incident when he struck you, you never saw him strike Arthur or Sheila?”
    “He might have spanked Sheila. I don’t really remember. He never hit the children. I mean, he had me there to hit.”
    Bosch nodded, the unspoken conclusion being that once she was gone, who knows who became the target? Bosch thought of the bones laid out on the autopsy table and all the injuries Dr. Golliher had catalogued.
    “Is my hus-is Sam under arrest?”
    Bosch looked at her.
    “No. We’re in the fact-finding stage here. The indication from your son’s remains is that there is a history of chronic physical abuse. We’re just trying to figure things out.”
    “And Sheila? Was she…?”
    “We haven’t specifically asked her. We will. Mrs. Waters, when you were struck by your husband, was it always with his hand?”
    “Sometimes he would hit me with things. A shoe once, I remember. He held me on the floor and hit me with it. And once he threw his briefcase at me. It hit me in the side.”
    She shook her head.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. Just that briefcase. He carried it with him to all his auditions. Like he was so important and had so much going on. And all he ever had in it were a few head shots and a flask.”
    Bitterness burned in her voice, even after so many years.
    “Did you ever go to a hospital or an emergency room? Is there any physical record of the abuse?”
    She shook her head.
    “He never hurt me enough that I had to go. Except when I had Arthur, and then I lied. I said I fell and my water broke. You see, Detective, it wasn’t something I wanted the world to know about.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “When you left, was that planned? Or did you just go?”
    She didn’t answer for a long moment as she watched the memory first on her inside screen.
    “I wrote the letters to my children long before I left. I carried them in my purse and waited for the right time. On the night I left, I put them under their pillows and left with my purse and only the clothes I was wearing. And my car that my father had given us when we got married. That was it. I’d had enough. I told him we needed medicine for Arthur. He had been drinking. He told me to go out and get it.”
    “And you never went back.”
    “Never. About a year later, before I came out to the Springs, I drove by the house at night. Saw the lights on. I didn’t stop.”
    Bosch nodded. He couldn’t think of anything else to ask. While the woman’s memory of that early time in her life was good, what she was remembering wasn’t going to help make a case against her ex-husband for a murder committed ten years after she had last seen him. Maybe Bosch had known that all along-that she wouldn’t be a vital part of the case. Maybe he had just wanted to take the measure of a woman who had abandoned her children, leaving them with a man she believed was a monster.
    “What does she look like?”
    Bosch was momentarily taken aback by her question.
    “My daughter.”
    “Um, she’s blonde like you. A little taller, heavier. No children, not married.”
    “When will Arthur be buried?”
    “I don’t know. You would have to call the medical examiner’s office. Or you could probably check with Sheila to see if…”
    He stopped. He couldn’t get involved in mending the thirty-year gaps in people’s lives.
    “I think we’re finished here, Mrs. Waters. We appreciate your cooperation.”
    “Definitely,” Edgar said, the sarcasm in his tone making its mark.
    “You came all this way to ask so few questions.”
    “I think that’s because you have so few answers,” Edgar said.
    They walked to the door and she followed a few paces behind. Outside, under the portico, Bosch looked back at the woman standing in the open doorway. They held each other’s eyes for a moment. He tried to think of something to say. But he had nothing for her. She closed the door.

Chapter 28
    THEY pulled into the station lot shortly before eleven. It had been a sixteen-hour day that had netted very little in terms of evidence that