The Closers

cast as wide a net as possible.
    “Do you know where Tara Wood is these days?” he asked.
    Sable shook her head.
    “We had a ten-year reunion and she didn’t come. I lost touch with her. I still talk to Grace Tanaka from time to time. But she lives up in the Bay Area so I don’t see her too much.”
    “Can you give us her number?”
    “Sure, I have it here.”
    She reached down and opened a desk drawer and pulled out her purse. While she was getting out an address book Bosch took the photo of Mackey off the desk and put it back into his pocket. When Sable read off a phone number Rider wrote it down in a small notebook.
    “Five ten,” Rider said. “What is that, Oakland?”
    “She lives in Hayward. She wants to live in San Francisco but it costs too much for what she makes.”
    “What does she do?”
    “She’s a metal sculptor.”
    “Her last name is still Tanaka?”
    “Yes. She never married. She…”
    “What?”
    “She turned out to be gay.”
    “Turned out?”
    “Well, what I mean is, we never knew. She never told us. She moved up there and once about eight years ago I went up to visit and then I knew.”
    “It was obvious?”
    “Obvious.”
    “Did she come to the ten-year high school reunion?”
    “Yes, she was there. We had fun, but it was sort of sad, too, because people talked about Becky and how it was never solved. I think that’s probably why Tara didn’t come. She didn’t want to be reminded of what happened to Becky.”
    “Well, maybe we’ll change that by the twentieth reunion,” Bosch said, immediately regretting the flippant remark. “Sorry, that wasn’t a nice thing to say.”
    “Well, I hope you do change it. I think about her all the time. Always wondering who did it and why they have never been found. I look at her picture every day on the plaque when I come into school. It’s weird. I helped raise the money for that plaque when I was class president.”
    “They?” Bosch asked.
    “What?”
    “You said they have never been found. Why did you say
they
?”
    “I don’t know. He, she, whatever.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Mrs. Sable, thanks for your time,” he said. “Would you do us a favor and not talk about this with anyone? We don’t want people being prepared for us, you know what I mean?”
    “Like with me?”
    “Exactly. And if you think of anything else, anything at all you want to talk about, my partner will give you a card with our numbers on it.”
    “Okay.”
    She seemed to be in a far-off reverie. The detectives said good-bye and left her there with the stack of papers to grade. Bosch thought she was probably remembering a time when four girls were the best of friends and the future sparkled in front of them like an ocean.
    Before leaving the school they stopped by the office to see if the school had any current contact information for former student Tara Wood. Gordon Stoddard had Mrs. Atkins check but the answer was no. Bosch asked if they could borrow the 1988 yearbook to make copies of some of the photos and Stoddard gave his approval.
    “I’m on my way out,” he said. “I’ll walk with you.”
    They small-talked on the way back to the library and Stoddard gave them the yearbook, which had already been returned to the shelves. On the way out to the parking lot Stoddard stopped with them once more in front of the memorial plaque. Bosch ran his fingers over the raised letters of Becky Verloren’s name. He noticed that the edges had been worn smooth over the years by many students doing the same thing.

11
    RIDER WORKED THE FILE and the phone while Bosch drove toward Panorama City, which was just on the east side of the 405 and across the Devonshire Division line.
    Panorama City was a district carved off the north side of Van Nuys many years before when residents there decided they needed to distance themselves from negative connotations ascribed to Van Nuys. Nothing about the place was changed but the name and a few street signs. Still, Panorama City sounded clean and beautiful and crime free, and the residents felt better about themselves. But many years had passed and resident groups had petitioned to rename their neighborhoods again and to distance themselves, if not physically then image-wise, from negative connotations associated with Panorama City. Bosch guessed it was one of the ways Los Angeles kept reinventing itself. Like a writer or actor who keeps changing his name to leave past failings behind and start fresh, even with the same