City Of Bones

up the hill and couldn’t imagine an intoxicated man doing it while carrying or dragging the body of his own son along with him.
    Not to mention the backpack. Would it have been carried along with the body or did Delacroix climb back up the hill a second time with the bag, somehow finding the same spot in the dark where he had left the body?
    Bosch studied Delacroix, trying to figure out which way to go. He had to be very careful. It would be case suicide to bring out a response that a defense attorney could later exploit for days in court.
    “All I remember,” Delacroix suddenly said unbidden, “is that it took me a long time. I was gone almost all night. And I remember that I hugged him as tight as I could before I put him down in the hole. It was like I had a funeral for him.”
    Delacroix nodded and searched Bosch’s eyes as if looking for an acknowledgment that he had done the right thing. Bosch returned nothing with his look.
    “Let’s start with that,” he said. “The hole you put him into, how deep was it?”
    “It wasn’t that deep, maybe a couple feet at the most.”
    “How did you dig it? Did you have tools with you?”
    “No, I didn’t think about that. So I had to dig with my hands. I didn’t get very far either.”
    “What about the backpack?”
    “Um, I put it there, too. In the hole. But I’m not sure.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Okay. Do you remember anything else about this place? Was it steep or flat or muddy?”
    Delacroix shook his head.
    “I can’t remember.”
    “Were there houses there?”
    “There was some right nearby, yeah, but nobody saw me, if that’s what you mean.”
    Bosch finally concluded that he was going too far down a path of legal peril. He had to stop and go back and clean up a few details.
    “What about your son’s skateboard?”
    “What about it?”
    “What did you do with it?”
    Delacroix leaned forward to consider this.
    “You know, I don’t really remember.”
    “Did you bury it with him?”
    “I can’t… I don’t remember.”
    Bosch waited a long moment to see if something would come out. Delacroix said nothing.
    “Okay, Mr. Delacroix, we’re going to take a break here while I go talk to my partner. I want you to think about what we were just talking about. About the place where you took your son. I need you to remember more about it. And about the skateboard, too.”
    “Okay, I’ll try.”
    “I’ll bring you back some more coffee.”
    “That would be good.”
    Bosch got up and took the empties from the room. He immediately went to the viewing room and opened the door. Edgar and another man were in there. The man, whom Bosch didn’t know, was looking at Delacroix through the one-way glass. Edgar was reaching to the video to turn it off.
    “Don’t turn it off,” Bosch said quickly.
    Edgar held back.
    “Let it run. If he starts remembering more stuff I don’t want anybody to try to say we gave it to him.”
    Edgar nodded. The other man turned from the window and put out his hand. He looked like he was no more than thirty. He had dark hair that was slicked back and very white skin. He had a broad smile on his face.
    “Hi, George Portugal, deputy district attorney.”
    Bosch put the empty cups down on a table and shook his hand.
    “Looks like you’ve got an interesting case here,” Portugal said.
    “And getting more so all the time,” Bosch said.
    “Well, from what I’ve seen in the last ten minutes, you don’t have a worry in the world. This is a slam dunk.”
    Bosch nodded but didn’t return the smile. What he wanted to do was laugh at the inanity of Portugal’s statement. He knew better than to trust the instincts of young prosecutors. He thought of all that had happened before they had gotten Delacroix into the room on the other side of the glass. And he knew there was no such thing as a slam dunk.

Chapter 38
    AT 7 P.M. Bosch and Edgar drove Samuel Delacroix downtown to be booked at Parker Center on charges of murdering his son. With Portugal in the interview room taking part in the questioning, they had interrogated Delacroix for almost another hour, gleaning only a few new details about the killing. The father’s memory of his son’s death and his part in it had been eroded by twenty years of guilt and whiskey.
    Portugal left the room still believing the case was a slam dunk. Bosch, on the other hand, was not so sure. He was never as welcoming of voluntary confessions as other detectives and prosecutors were. He