The Wrong Side of Goodbye(9)

“Where did she live?”

“By the school. Just a few blocks away. She walked to work.”

“Do you remember the address? The street, maybe?”

“No, I don’t remember. It was so long ago and I spent so many years trying to block it out. But the truth is, I never really loved anybody again after that.”

It was the first time Vance mentioned love or gave an indication of how deep the relationship had been. It had been Bosch’s experience that when you looked back at a life, you used a magnifying glass. Everything was bigger, amplified. A college tryst could become the love of a lifetime in memory. Still, Vance’s pain seemed real so many decades after the events he was describing. Bosch believed him.

“How long were you together with her before all of this happened?” he asked.

“Eight months between the first and last times I ever saw her,” Vance said. “Eight months.”

“Do you remember when she told you she was pregnant? I mean, what month or time of year?”

“It was after the start of the summer session. I had enrolled just because I knew I would see her. So late June 1950. Maybe early July.”

“And you say you met her eight months before that?”

“I had started in September the year before. I noticed her right away working at the EVK. I didn’t get the courage to talk to her for a couple months.”

The old man looked down at the desk.

“What else do you remember?” Bosch prompted. “Did you ever meet her family? Do you remember any names?”

“No, I didn’t,” Vance said. “She told me her father was very strict and they were Catholic, and I was not. You know, we were like Romeo and Juliet. I never met her family and she never met mine.”

Bosch seized on the one piece of information in Vance’s answer that might advance the investigation.

“Do you know what church she went to?”

Vance looked up, his eyes sharp.

“She told me she was named after the church where she was baptized. St. Vibiana’s.”

Bosch nodded. The original St. Vibiana’s was in downtown, just a block from the LAPD headquarters, where he used to work. More than a hundred years old, it was badly damaged in the 1994 earthquake. A new church was built nearby and the old structure was donated to the city and preserved. Bosch wasn’t sure but he believed it was an event hall and library now. But the connection to Vibiana Duarte was a good one. Catholic churches kept records of births and baptisms. He felt this bit of good information countered the bad news that Vibiana had not been a USC student. It was also a strong indication that she might have been a U.S. citizen, whether or not her parents were. If she was a citizen, she would be easier to track through public records.

“If the pregnancy was carried to full term, when would the child have been born?” he asked.

It was a delicate question but Bosch needed to narrow the timing down if he was going to wade into records.

“I think that she was at least two months pregnant when she told me,” Vance said. “So I would say January of the following year would be the birth. Maybe February.”

Bosch wrote it down.

“How old was she when you knew her?” he asked.

“She was sixteen when we met,” Vance said. “I was eighteen.”

It was another reason for the reaction of Vance’s father. Vibiana was underage. Getting a sixteen-year-old pregnant in 1950 could have gotten Whitney into minor but embarrassing legal trouble.

“Was she in high school?” Bosch asked.

He knew the area around USC. The high school would have been Manual Arts—another shot at traceable records.

“She had dropped out to work,” Vance said. “The family needed the money.”

“Did she ever say what her father did for a living?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t recall.”

“Okay, going back to her birthday, you don’t remember the date but do you remember ever celebrating it with her during those eight months?”

Vance thought a moment and then shook his head.

“No, I can’t remember a birthday occurring,” he said.

“And if I have this right, you were together from late October till June and maybe early July, so her birthday would have likely been somewhere in July to late October. Roughly.”

Vance nodded. Narrowing it to four months might help at some point when Bosch was going through records. Attaching a birth date to the name Vibiana Duarte would be a key starting point. He wrote the spread of months down and the likely birth year: 1933. He then looked up at Vance.

“Do you think your father paid her or her family off?” he asked. “So they would keep quiet and just go away?”

“If he did, he never told me that,” Vance said. “I was the one who went away. An act of cowardice I have always regretted.”

“Have you ever looked for her before now? Ever paid anybody else to?”

“No, sadly, I have not. I can’t say if anyone else has.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that it is quite possible such a search was conducted as a preemptive move in preparation for my death.”

Bosch thought about that for a long moment. He then looked at the few notes he had written. He felt he had enough to start.