The Wrong Side of Goodbye(50)

Bosch waited while he heard Lourdes finish a call in Spanish. The moment she hung up he got her attention.

“Bella.”

“What?”

“Ready to take a ride? I’ve got a line on the knife. A guy up in Santa Clarita who reported it stolen six years ago.”

She popped her head up over the privacy wall.

“I’m ready to shoot myself is what I am,” she said. “These people, they’re just ratting out their old boyfriends, anybody they want to have the cops hassle. And a lot of date rapes, sad to say. Women who think the guy who forced himself on them is our guy.”

“We’re going to keep getting those calls until we find the real guy,” Bosch said.

“I know. I was just hoping to spend tomorrow with my son. But I’ll be stuck here if these calls keep coming.”

“I’ll take tomorrow. You take off. I’ll leave all the Spanish-only calls for Monday.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Thank you. Do we know how the knife was stolen back then?”

“Not yet. You ready to go?”

“Could this be our guy? Report the knife stolen as a cover?”

Bosch shrugged and pointed at his computer.

“His record’s clean,” he said. “The profiler said look for priors. Little stuff that builds up to the big stuff.”

“Profilers don’t always get it right,” she said. “I’ll drive.”

That last sentence was a joke between them. As a reserve officer Bosch was given no city vehicle. Lourdes had to drive if they were conducting official police business.

On the way out of the bureau Lourdes stopped to note the time and their destination—SCV—on the board by the squad room door.

Bosch didn’t.





21

The Santa Clarita Valley was a sprawling bedroom community built into the cleft of the San Gabriel and Santa Susana Mountains. It was north of the city of Los Angeles and buffered from it and its ills by those same mountain chains. It was a place that from its beginning drew families north from the city, families looking for cheaper homes, newer schools, greener parks, and less crime. Those same features were also the draw for hundreds of law officers who wanted to get away from the places they protected and served. It was said that over time Santa Clarita became the safest place in the county to live because there was a cop residing on almost every block.

But even with that deterrent and the mountains as a wall, the ills of the city were inescapable and they eventually started to migrate through the mountain passes and into the neighborhoods and parks. Jonathan Danbury could attest to that. He told Bosch and Lourdes that his $300 TitaniumEdge knife had been stolen from the glove compartment of his car parked right in the driveway of his house on Featherstar Avenue. To add insult to injury, the theft occurred right across the street from the home of a Sheriff’s deputy.

It was a nice neighborhood of middle-to upper-middle-class homes, with a natural drainage swale called the Haskell Canyon Wash running behind it. Danbury had answered the door in a T-shirt, board shorts, and flip-flops. He explained that he was an Internet-based travel agent who worked from home, while his wife sold real estate in the Saugus area of the Valley. He said he had forgotten all about his stolen knife until Bosch presented it in its evidence bag.

“Never thought I’d see that again,” he said. “Wow.”

“You reported it stolen to TitaniumEdge six years ago,” Bosch said. “Was there a report made with the Sheriff’s Department too?”

Santa Clarita had no police department and had contracted since its inception with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“I called them,” Danbury said. “In fact, Tillman, the deputy who lived across the street back then, came over and took the report. But nothing ever came of it.”

“You get a follow-up from a detective?” Bosch asked.

“I think I remember getting a call but they weren’t too enthused about it. The detective thought it was probably just kids in the neighborhood. I thought that was pretty bold.”

He pointed across the street to illustrate the story.

“There was a sheriff’s car parked right there and my car is right here, twenty feet away, and these kids have the cojones to break into the car to steal my knife.”

“They break the window, set off the car’s alarm?”

“Nope. The detective concluded I left the car unlocked, made it sound like I was at fault. But I didn’t leave it unlocked. I never do. I think those kids had a Slim Jim or something and they got in without breaking the window.”

“So no arrests came about as far as you know?”

“If there were, they sure as shit didn’t tell me.”

“Did you keep a copy of the report, sir?” Lourdes asked.

“I did but that was a long time ago,” Danbury said. “I got three kids and run a business out of here. That’s why I’m not asking you in. The place is a perpetual mess and I would need some time to look for the report in all the debris that we call a house.”

He laughed. Bosch didn’t. Lourdes just nodded.

Danbury pointed at the evidence bag.

“So I don’t see any blood on it,” Danbury said. “Please don’t tell me someone was stabbed or something.”