The Drop

what he wanted . . .”
    Bosch waited. There was no need to ask another question. Stone seemed to sense it as well. After a long moment Pell nodded a third time and spoke.
    “Everybody called him Chill. Including my mother.”
    Bosch wrote it down.
    “You said the belt buckle had letters on it. You mean like initials? What were they?”
    “C. H.”
    Bosch wrote it down. His adrenaline started to kick in. He might not have a full name but he was getting close. For a split second an image came to him. His fist raised and knocking on a door. No, pounding on a door. A door that would be opened by the man known as Chill.
    Pell continued to talk unbidden.
    “I thought of Chill last year when I saw all that stuff on the news about the Grim Sleeper. Chill had photos like that guy, too.”
    The Grim Sleeper was the name given to a serial killer suspect and the task force investigation that sought him. A single killer was suspected in multiple murders of women, but there were large spaces of time between killings and it was as though he had gone to sleep and was hibernating. When a suspect was identified and captured the year before, investigators found hundreds of photos of women in his possession. Most of the women were naked and in sexually suggestive poses in the shots. The investigation was ongoing as to who the women were and what had happened to them.
    “He had photos of women?” Bosch asked.
    “Yeah, the women he’d fucked. Naked pictures. His trophies. He took pictures of my mother. I saw ’em. He had one of those cameras where the picture just came right out so he didn’t have to worry about taking film to the drugstore and getting found out. Back before they had digital.”
    “A Polaroid.”
    “Yeah, right. Polaroid.”
    “It is not unusual,” Stone said. “For men who physically hurt women or not. It’s a form of control. Ownership. Skins on the wall, keeping score. A symptom of a very controlling personality. In today’s world of digital cameras and Internet porn, you see this more and more.”
    “Yeah, well then, I guess Chill was a pioneer,” Pell said. “He didn’t have no computer. He kept his pictures in a shoe box. That’s how we moved away from him.”
    “What do you mean?” Bosch asked.
    Pell tightened his lips for a moment before answering.
    “He took a picture of me with his dick in my mouth. And he put it in his shoebox. One day I stole it and left it where my mom would see it. We moved out that day.”
    “Were there other photos of boys or men in that shoebox?” Bosch asked.
    “I remember seeing one other. It was a kid like me but I didn’t know who it was.”
    Bosch wrote down a few more notes. Pell’s information that Chill was apparently a pansexual predator was a key part of the emerging profile. He then asked if Pell could remember where they lived when he and his mother were with the man called Chill. He could only remember that they were close to Travel Town at Griffith Park, because his mother used to take him there to ride on the trains.
    “Could you walk there or did you drive?”
    “We took a taxi and I remember it was close. We went there a lot. I liked being on those little trains.”
    It was a good note. Bosch knew Travel Town was on the north side of the park and it probably meant Pell had lived with Chill in North Hollywood or Burbank. It would help narrow things.
    He then asked for a description of Chill, and Pell only described him as being white, tall and muscular.
    “Did he have a job?”
    “Not really. I think he was like a handyman or something. He had a lot of tools he kept in his truck.”
    “What kind of truck?”
    “Van, actually. Ford Econoline. That was where he made me do things to him.”
    And a van would be the kind of vehicle Pell would use later to commit the same sort of crime. Bosch didn’t mention this, of course.
    “How old would you say Chill was back then?” he asked.
    “No idea. You’re probably right about what you said before. About five years older than my mother.”
    “You don’t happen to have a photo of him with your things or in storage or something?”
    Pell laughed and looked at Bosch like he thought he was an imbecile.
    “You think I’d keep his picture around? I don’t even have a picture of my mother, man.”
    “Sorry, had to ask. Did you ever see this guy with any women other than your mother?”
    “You mean like to have sex with?”
    “Yes.”
    “No.”
    “Clayton, what else do you remember about