The Wrong Side of Goodbye(44)

“And he’d go to see her on weekend leave?”

“Yeah. There was this place down in San Diego where he would go to see her when he got liberty. It was in the barrio and under a freeway or a bridge and they called it Chicano Way or something like that. It was so long ago it’s hard to remember. But he told me about it. They were trying to make it like a park and they painted graffiti on the freeway. He started calling those people his new familia. He used the Spanish and that was funny because he didn’t even speak Spanish. He had never learned.”

It was all interesting information and Bosch could see where it fit with other parts of the story he already had. He was thinking of what to ask next when the true payoff to the shot-in-the-dark call to Tallahassee came.

“Gabriela,” Lewis said. “It just came to me.”

“That was her name?” Bosch said.

He had failed to keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure now,” Lewis said. “Gabriela.”

“Remember a last name?” Bosch tried.

Lewis laughed.

“Man, I can’t believe I pulled her first name up out of the muck.”

“It’s very helpful.”

Bosch started shutting the conversation down. He gave Lewis his phone number and asked him to call if he remembered anything else about Gabriela or Santanello’s time in San Diego.

“So you returned to Tallahassee after you served,” Bosch said, just to move the conversation toward a close.

“Yes, I came right back,” Lewis said. “Had enough of California, Vietnam, all of it. I’ve been here ever since.”

“What kind of law do you practice?”

“Oh, just about any kind of law you need. In a town like Tallahassee it pays to diversify. I like to say the one thing I won’t do is defend FSU football players. I’m a Gator and can’t cross that line.”

Bosch guessed he was speaking to some sort of state rivalry but it was beyond him. His knowledge of sports had only recently stretched past the Dodgers to a cursory interest in the return of the L.A. Rams.

“Can I ask you something?” Lewis said. “Who wants to know if Nick left an heir?”

“You can ask, Mr. Lewis, but that’s the one question I can’t answer.”

“Nick had nothing and his family didn’t have much more. This has got to do with his adoption, right?”

Bosch was silent. Lewis had nailed it.

“I know, you can’t answer,” Lewis said. “I’m a lawyer. I guess I have to respect that.”

Bosch decided to get off the line before Lewis put anything else together and asked another question.

“Thank you, Mr. Lewis, and thank you for your help.”

Bosch disconnected and decided to continue to San Fernando even though he had already found Lewis. He would check in on matters relating to the Screen Cutter and do some Internet work to confirm the information Lewis had provided. But he knew without a doubt that he would eventually be heading south to San Diego on the case.

A few minutes later he turned onto First Street in San Fernando and saw the three television trucks parked in front of the police station.





19

Bosch entered the police station through the side door and headed down the back hall to the detective bureau. At the crossroads with the main hallway he looked right and saw a gathering of people outside the door to the roll-call room. Among them was Bella Lourdes, who caught Bosch in her peripheral vision and signaled him over. She was wearing jeans and a black golf shirt with the SFPD badge and unit designation on the left breast. Her gun and real badge were on her belt.

“What’s going on?” Bosch asked.

“We got lucky,” Lourdes said. “The Screen Cutter made an attempt today but the victim got away. The chief said that’s enough. He’s going public.”

Bosch just nodded. He still thought it was the wrong move but he understood the pressure on Valdez. Having sat on knowledge of the previous cases was going to look bad enough. Lourdes was right about that. They were lucky the chief wasn’t in the roll-call room telling the media about a fifth rape.

“Where’s the victim?” Bosch asked.

“In the War Room,” Lourdes said. “She’s still pretty shaky. I was giving her some time.”

“How come I wasn’t called?”

Lourdes looked surprised.

“The captain said he couldn’t reach you.”

Bosch just shook his head and let it go. It was a petty move on Trevino’s part, but there were more important things to worry about.

Bosch looked over the heads of Lourdes and the others in the hallway to try to get a glimpse of the press conference. He could see Valdez and Trevino at the front of the room. He could not tell how many members of the media had shown up, because the reporters would be sitting and the camera operators would be at the back. He knew it all depended on what else was going on in Los Angeles that day. A serial rapist on the loose in San Fernando, where the population largely ignored English-language media, was probably not a massive draw. He had seen that one of the media trucks outside was from Univision Noticias. That would get the word out locally.

“So did Trevino or Valdez talk about a control?” he asked.

“A control?” Lourdes asked.