City Of Bones

he didn’t. Bosch looked at Billets and spread his hands in a what-gives gesture. She shrugged her shoulders.
    “So then…,” Bosch began, “we’re not putting it out, right?”
    Silence. Then:
    “I think that is the prudent course to follow,” Irving said.
    Medina tore the page he had written on out of his notebook, crumpled it and tossed it into a trash can in the corner.
    “Is there anything we can put out?” he asked.
    “Yes,” Bosch said quickly. “We can clear Trent.”
    “Negative,” Irving said just as quickly. “We do that at the end. When and if you make a case, then we will clean up the rest.”
    Bosch looked at Edgar and then at Billets.
    “Chief,” he said. “If we do it that way, we could be hurting our case.”
    “How so?”
    “It’s an old case. The older the case, the longer the shot. We can’t take chances. If we don’t go out there and tell them Trent is clear, we’ll be giving the guy we eventually take down a defense. He’ll be able to point at Trent and say he was a child molester, he did it.”
    “But he will be able to do that, whether we clear Trent now or later.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “True. But I am looking at it from the standpoint of testifying at trial. I want to be able to say we checked Trent out and quickly dismissed him. I don’t want some lawyer asking me why, if we so quickly dismissed him, we waited a week or two weeks to announce it. Chief, it will look like we were hiding something. It’s going to be subtle but it will have an impact. People on juries look for any reason not to trust cops in general and the LAPD in par-”
    “Okay, Detective, you have made your point. My decision still stands. There will be no announcement on Trent. Not at this time, not until we have a solid suspect we can come forward with.”
    Bosch shook his head and slumped a bit in his seat.
    “What else?” Irving said. “I have a briefing with the chief in two minutes.”
    Bosch looked at Billets and shook his head again. He had nothing else he wanted to share. Billets spoke up.
    “Chief, at this time I think that’s pretty much where we stand.”
    “When do you plan to approach the father, Detectives?”
    Bosch poked his chin at Edgar.
    “Uh, Chief, Detective Edgar here. We are still looking for a witness that could be important to talk to before approaching the father. That would be a boyhood friend of the victim. We’re thinking he might have knowledge of the abuse the boy suffered. We’re planning to give it the day. We believe he’s here in Hollywood and we have a lot of eyes out there on the-”
    “Yes, that is fine, Detective. We will reconvene this conversation tomorrow morning.”
    “Yes, Chief,” Billets said. “At nine-thirty again?”
    There was no answer. Irving was already gone.

Chapter 30
    BOSCH and Edgar spent the rest of the morning updating reports and the murder book and calling hospitals all over the city to cancel the records searches they had requested by warrant on Monday morning. But by noon Bosch had had enough of the office work and said he had to get out of the station.
    “Where you want to go?” Edgar asked.
    “I’m tired of waiting around,” Bosch said. “Let’s go take a look at him.”
    They used Edgar’s personal car because it was unmarked and there were no undercover units left in the motor pool. They took the 101 up into the Valley and then the 405 north before exiting in Van Nuys. The Manchester Trailer Park was on Sepulveda near Victory. They drove by it once before coming back and driving in.
    There was no gate house, just a yellow-striped speed bump. The park road circled the property, and Sam Delacroix’s trailer was at the rear of the tract, where it bumped up against a twenty-foot-high sound-retention wall next to the freeway. The wall was designed to knock down the nonstop roar of the freeway. All it did was redirect and change its tone, but it was still there.
    The trailer was a single-wide with rust stains dripping down the aluminum skin from most of the steel rivet seams. There was an awning with a picnic table and a charcoal grill beneath it. A clothesline ran from one of the awning’s support poles to a corner of the next trailer in line. Near the back of the narrow yard an aluminum storage shed about the size of an outhouse was pushed up against the sound wall.
    The windows and door of the trailer were closed. There was no vehicle in the lone parking spot. Edgar kept the car going by at an even five miles