WITHOUT NEED OF an alarm, Bosch awoke at five-thirty the next morning. This was not unusual for him. He knew that this was what happened when you surfed into the tube on a case. Waking hours overpowered the sleeping hours. You did all you could to stay up on that board and in the pipeline. Though not scheduled to begin work for more than twelve hours, he knew this would be the pivotal day in the case. He could not sleep anymore.
In darkness and unfamiliar surroundings he got dressed and made his way to the kitchen, where he found a pad for writing down needed grocery items. He wrote a note and left it in front of the automatic coffeemaker, which he had watched Vicki Landreth set the night before to begin brewing at 7 a.m. The note said very little other than thank you for the evening and good-bye. There were no promises or see-you-laters. Bosch knew she would not be expecting any. They both knew that little had changed in the twenty years between their liaisons. They liked each other fine but that wasn’t enough to build a house on.
The streets between Vicki Landreth’s Los Feliz home and the Cahuenga Pass were misted and gray. People drove with their lights on, either because they had been driving through the night or because they thought it might help wake up the world. Bosch knew the dawn had nothing on the dusk. Dawn always came up ugly, as if the sun was clumsy and in a hurry. The dusk was smoother, the moon more graceful. Maybe it was because the moon was more patient. In life and nature, Bosch thought, darkness always waits.
He tried to push thoughts of the night before out of his mind so that he could focus only on the case. He knew the others would be moving into position now on Mariano Street in Woodland Hills and in the ListenTech sound room in the City of Industry. While Roland Mackey slept, the forces of justice were quietly closing in on him. That’s how Bosch looked at it. That was what put the wire in his blood. He still believed it was unlikely that Mackey had been the one to pull the trigger on Rebecca Verloren. But Bosch felt no doubt that Mackey provided the gun and would lead them on this day to the triggerman, whether it would be William Burkhart or someone else.
Bosch pulled into the parking lot in front of the Poquito Mas at the bottom of the hill from his house. He left the Mercedes running and got out and went to the row of newspaper boxes. He saw the face of Rebecca Verloren staring out at him through the smeared plastic window of the box. He felt a little catch in his rhythm. It didn’t matter what the story said, they were now in play.
He dropped the coins into the box and took a paper out. He repeated the process, taking a second paper. One for the files and one for Mackey. He didn’t bother reading the story until he had driven up the hill to his house. He put a pot of coffee on and read the story while standing in the kitchen. The window photo was a shot of Muriel Verloren sitting on her daughter’s bed. The room was neat and the bed perfectly made, right down to the ruffle skirting the floor. There was an inset photograph of Rebecca in the top corner. It turned out that the Daily News archives had held the same shot as the yearbook. A headline above the photo said A MOTHER’S LONG VIGIL.
The bedroom photograph was credited to Emerson Ward, the photographer apparently using her given name. Below it was a caption that read: “Muriel Verloren sits in her daughter’s bedroom. The room, like Mrs. Verloren’s grief, has been untouched by time.”
Beneath the photo and above the body of the story was what a reporter had once told Bosch was a deck headline—a fuller description of the story. It read: “HAUNTED: Muriel Verloren has waited 17 years to learn who took her daughter’s life. In a renewed effort the LAPD may be close to finding out.”
Bosch thought the deck was perfect. If and when Mackey saw it, he would feel the cold finger of fear poke him in the chest. Bosch anxiously read the story.
Seventeen years ago this summer, a young and beautiful high-school girl named Rebecca Verloren was stolen away from her Chatsworth home and brutally murdered on Oat Mountain. The case was never solved, leaving in its wake a splintered family, haunted police officers and a community with no sense of closure from the crime.
But in a measure of hope for the victim’s mother, the Los Angeles Police Department has launched a new investigation of the case that may see results and closure for Muriel Verloren. This time out the detectives have something they didn’t in 1988: the killer’s DNA.
The LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit began the intense refocus on the Verloren case after one of the original detectives—now a Valley area commander—urged that it be reopened two years ago when the squad was formed to investigate cold cases.
“As soon as I heard we were going to start looking at cold cases I was on the phone to them,” Cmdr. Arturo Garcia said yesterday from his office in the Valley Bureau command center. “This was the case that always stuck with me. That beautiful young girl taken from her home like that. No murder in our society is acceptable, but this one hurt more than most. It haunted me all these years.”
So, too, Muriel Verloren. Rebecca’s mother has continued to live in the house on Red Mesa Way from which her 16-year-old daughter was taken. Rebecca’s bedroom remains unaltered from the night she was carried out a back door, never to return.
“I don’t want to change anything,” the tearful mother said yesterday while smoothing the spread on her daughter’s bed. “It’s my way of remaining close to her. I will never change this room and I will never leave this house.”
Det. Harry Bosch, who is assigned to the renewed investigation, told the News that there are several promising leads in the case now. The greatest aid in the case has been the technological advances made since 1988. Blood that did not belong to Rebecca Verloren was actually found inside the murder weapon. Bosch explained that the pistol’s hammer “bit” the shooter on the hand, taking a sample of blood and tissue. In 1988 it could only be analyzed, typed and preserved. Now it can be directly matched to a suspect. The challenge is finding that suspect.
“The case was thoroughly investigated previously,” Bosch said. “Hundreds of people were questioned and hundreds of leads were followed. We are backtracking on all of that but our real hope lies in the DNA. It will be the case breaker, I think.”
The detective explained that while the victim was not sexually assaulted, there were elements to the crime of a psychosexual nature. Ten years ago the state Department of Justice started a database containing DNA samples from every person convicted of a sexually related crime. The DNA from the Verloren case is in the process of being compared to those samples. Bosch believes it is likely that Rebecca Verloren’s killing was not an isolated crime.
“I think it is unlikely that this killer only committed this one crime and then led a law-abiding existence. The nature of this offense indicates to us that this person likely committed other crimes. If he was ever caught and his DNA put into a data bank, then it’s only a matter of time before we identify him.”
Rebecca was carried from her home in the dead of night on July 5, 1988. For three days police and community members searched for her. A woman riding a horse on Oat Mountain found the body secreted by a fallen tree. While the investigation revealed many things, including that Rebecca had terminated a pregnancy about six weeks before her death, the police were unable to determine who her killer was and how he got into the house.
In the years since, the crime has echoed through many lives. The victim’s parents have split up and Muriel Verloren could not say where her husband, Robert Verloren, a former Malibu restaurateur, is now located. She said the disintegration of their marriage was directly attributed to the strain and grief brought on by their daughter’s murder.
One of the original investigators on the case, Ronald Green, retired early from the department and later committed suicide. Garcia said he believes the unsolved Verloren case played a part in his former partner’s decision to end his life.
“Ronnie took things to heart, and I think this one always bothered him,” Garcia said.
And at Hillside Preparatory School, where Rebecca Verloren was a popular student, there is a daily reminder of her life and death. A plaque erected by her classmates remains affixed to the wall in the exclusive school’s main hallway.
“We don’t ever want to forget someone like Rebecca,” said Principal Gordon Stoddard, who was a teacher when Verloren was a student at the school.
One of Rebecca’s friends and classmates is now a teacher at Hillside. Bailey Koster Sable spent an evening with Rebecca just two days before she was murdered. The loss has haunted her, and she says she thinks about her friend all the time.
“I think about it because it feels like it could have happened to anybody,” Sable said after classes yesterday. “So it leads me to always ask the same thing: why her?”
That is a question the Los Angeles police hope to finally answer soon.
Bosch looked at the photo on the inside page where the story jumped to. It showed Bailey Sable and Gordon Stoddard standing on either side of the plaque on the wall at Hillside Prep. Emerson Ward was credited with this photo as well. The caption read: “FRIEND AND TEACHER: Bailey Sable went to school with Rebecca Verloren, and Gordon Stoddard taught her science class. Now school principal, Stoddard said, ‘Becky was a good kid. This shouldn’t have happened.’”
Bosch poured coffee into a mug and then read the story again while sipping his breakfast. He then excitedly grabbed the phone off the counter and called Kizmin Rider’s home number. She answered with a blurry voice.
“Kiz, the story is perfect. She put in everything we wanted.”
“Harry? What time is it, Harry?”
“Almost seven. We’re in business.”
“Harry, we have to work all night. What are you doing awake? What are you doing calling me at seven o’clock?”
Bosch realized his mistake.
“I’m sorry. I’m just excited about it.”
“Call me back in two hours.”
She hung up. There had not been a pleasant tone in her voice.
Undaunted, Bosch pulled a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. It was the sheet of numbers Pratt had passed out during the staff meeting. He called Tim Marcia’s cell number.
“It’s Bosch,” he said. “You guys in position?”
“Yeah, we’re here.”
“Anything shaking?”
“It’s a sleepy hollow right now. We figure if this guy worked till midnight last night, then he’s going to be sleeping late.”
“His car is there? The Camaro?”
“Yes, Harry, it’s here.”
“Okay. Did you read the story in the paper?”
“Not yet. But we’ve got two teams sitting on this house for Mackey and Burkhart. We’re about to break off to get coffee and pick up the paper.”
“It’s good. It’s going to work.”
“Let’s hope so.”
After Bosch hung up he realized that until Mackey or Burkhart left the house on Mariano there would be double surveillance on the place. It was a waste of time and money but he didn’t see any way around it. There was no telling when one of the surveillance subjects might take off from the house. They knew very little about Burkhart. They didn’t even know if he had a job.
He next called Renner in the sound room at ListenTech. He was the oldest detective on the squad and had used seniority to get him and his partner the day shift in the sound room.
“Anything yet?” Bosch asked him.
“Not yet, but you’ll be the first to know.”
Bosch thanked him and hung up. He checked his watch. It wasn’t even seven-thirty and he knew it was going to be a long day waiting for his surveillance shift to begin. He refilled his coffee mug and looked at the paper again. The photo of the dead girl’s bedroom bothered him in a way he could not pinpoint. There was something there but he could not pull it out. He closed his eyes for a five count and then brought them open, hoping the trick would jar something loose. But the photo did not reveal the secret. A sense of frustration started to rise in him but then the phone rang.
It was Rider.
“Great, now I can’t go back to sleep. You better be bright-eyed tonight, Harry, because I won’t be.”
“Sorry, Kiz. I will.”
“Read me the story.”
He did, and when he was finished she seemed to have caught some of his excitement. They both knew that the story would play perfectly into provoking a response from Mackey. The key would be to make sure that he saw it and read it, and they thought they had that covered.
“Okay, Harry, I’m going to get going. I have some things to do today.”
“All right, Kiz, see you up there. How ’bout we meet at quarter to six on Tampa about a block south of the service station?”
“I’ll be there unless something happens before.”
“Yeah, me too.”
After hanging up, Bosch went into his bedroom and changed into fresh clothes that would be comfortable during an all-night surveillance and useful as well for the play he intended for Mackey. He chose a white T-shirt that had been washed many times and had shrunk so that its sleeves were tight and short on his biceps. Before putting on a shirt over it he checked his look in the mirror. A full half of the skull was exposed and the SS bolts pointed up above the cotton on his neck.
The tattoos looked more authentic than they had the night before. He had taken a shower at Vicki Landreth’s and she told him that the water would slightly blur the ink on his skin as was the case with most prison-applied tattoos. She warned him that the ink would start to wash away after two or three showers and, if needed, she could maintain his look with further applications. He told her he wasn’t planning on needing the tattoos more than one day. They would work or not work when he made his play.
He put on a long-sleeved button-down shirt over the T-shirt. He checked this in the mirror and thought he could see details of the skull tattoo bleeding through the cotton. The thick black swastika on the crown was coming through.
Ready to go but with hours before he was needed, Bosch paced nervously around his living room for a few moments, wondering what to do. He decided to call his daughter, hoping that her sweet voice and cheerfulness would give him an added charge for the day.
He got the number for the Intercontinental Hotel in Kowloon off the Post-it on his refrigerator and punched it into his phone. It would be almost 8 p.m. there. His daughter should still be awake. But when his call was connected to Eleanor Wish’s room there was no answer. He wondered if he had the time change wrong. Maybe he was calling too early or too late.
After six rings an answering service picked up, giving Bosch instructions in English and Cantonese in how to leave a message. He left a short message for both Eleanor and his daughter and hung up the phone.
Now not wanting to dwell on his daughter or thoughts about where she was, Bosch opened the murder book and began reviewing its contents again, always looking for details of the case he had possibly missed. Despite everything he had learned about the case and how it was pushed off track by the powers that be, he still believed in the book. He believed the answers to the mysteries were always found in the details.
He finished a read-through and was going to take up the copy of Mackey’s probation file when he thought of something and called Muriel Verloren. She was at home.
“Did you see the story in the paper?” he asked.
“Yes, it makes me feel so sad to see that.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it makes it all real to me. I had pushed it away.”
“I’m sorry but it is going to help us. I promise. I’m glad you did it. Thank you.”
“Whatever will help I want to do.”
“Thank you, Muriel. Listen, I wanted to tell you that I located your husband. I spoke to him yesterday morning.”
There was a long silence before she spoke.
“Really? Where is he?”
“Down on Fifth Street. He runs a soup kitchen for the homeless. He serves breakfast to them. It’s called the Metro Shelter. I thought you might want to know.”
Again a silence. Bosch guessed she wanted to ask him questions and he was willing to wait.
“You mean he works there?”
“Yes. He’s sober now. He said it’s been three years. I guess he first went there for a meal and he’s sort of worked his way up. He runs the kitchen now. And it’s good food. I ate there yesterday.”
“I see.”
“Um, I have a number that he gave me. It’s not a direct line. He doesn’t have a phone in his room. But it’s in the kitchen and he’s there in the mornings. He said it slows down after about nine.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want the number, Muriel?”
This question was followed by the longest silence of all. Bosch finally answered the question himself.
“I’ll tell you what, Muriel. I’ve got the number, and if you ever want it you can just call me. Is that okay?”
“That would be fine, Detective. Thank you.”
“No problem. I’m going to go now. We’re hoping something breaks on the case today.”
“Please call me.”
“It will be the first call I make.”
After hanging up, Bosch realized that talking about breakfast had made him hungry. It was now almost noon and he hadn’t eaten anything since the steak at Musso’s the night before. He decided that he would go into the bedroom and rest for a while and then have a late lunch before reporting for the surveillance. He would go over to Dupar’s in Studio City. It was on the way out to Northridge. Pancakes were the perfect surveillance food. He would order a full stack of buttered pancakes and they would sit in his stomach like clay and keep him full all night if necessary.
In the bedroom he lay on his back and shut his eyes. He tried to think of the case but his mind wandered to the drunken time he got the tattoo put on his arm in a dirty studio in Saigon. As he drifted off to sleep he remembered the man with the needle and his smile and his body odor. He remembered the man had said, “Are you sure? Remember, you’ll be marked forever with this.”
Bosch had smiled back and said, “I already am.”
Then in his dream the man’s smiling face turned into Vicki Landreth’s face. She had red lipstick smeared across her mouth. She held up a buzzing tattoo needle.
She said, “Are you ready, Michael?”
He said, “I’m not Michael.”
She said, “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter who you are. Everybody’s dodging the needle. But nobody gets away.”