He heard a key hit the dead bolt on the other side of the front door. He was up, with his gun out, moving quickly across the room to the hallway. He went into the bedroom first but then went back into the hall and into the bathroom because it afforded a better view of the living room. He dropped his cigarette into the toilet and heard it hiss as it died.
He heard the front door open and then a few seconds of silence. Then a light went on in the living room and he stepped back into the dark recesses of his hiding spot. In the medicine cabinet mirror he saw Sylvia Moore standing in the middle of the living room looking around as if it was her first time in the apartment. Her eyes fell on the white bag on the couch and she picked it up. Bosch watched her as she looked through the photographs. She lingered over the last one. It was the one of her. She held her hand to her cheek as if charting the changes of time.
When she was done, she put the photographs back in the bag and placed it back on the couch. She then started for the hallway and Bosch moved further back, silently stepping into the bathtub. Now a light came from the bedroom and he heard the closet door open. Hangers scraping on the bar. Bosch holstered his gun and then stepped out of the tub and the bathroom and into the hallway.
“Mrs. Moore? Sylvia?” he called from the hall, unsure how to get her attention without scaring her.
“Who’s that?” came the high-pitched, frightened reply.
“It’s me, Detective Bosch. It’s okay.”
She came out of the bedroom closet then, the fright wide in her eyes. She carried the hanger with her dead husband’s dress uniform on it.
“Jesus, you scared me. What are you doing here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
She held the uniform up in front of her as if Bosch had walked in on her while she was undressed. She took one step back toward the bedroom door.
“You followed me?” she said. “What’s going on?”
“No, I didn’t follow you. I was already here.”
“In the dark?”
“Yes. I was thinking. When I heard somebody opening the door I went into the bathroom. Then when I saw it was you, I didn’t know how to come out without scaring you. Sorry. You scared me. I scared you.”
She nodded once, seeming to accept his explanation. She was wearing a light blue denim shirt and unbleached blue jeans. Her hair was tied behind her head and she wore earrings made of a pinkish crystal. Her left ear had a second earring. It was a silver crescent moon with a star hooked on its bottom point. She put on a polite smile. Bosch became aware that he had not shaved in a day.
“Did you think it was the killer?” she said when he said nothing else. “Kind of like coming back to the scene of the crime?”
“Maybe. Something like that… Actually, no, I don’t know what I thought. This isn’t the scene of the crime, anyway.”
He nodded toward the uniform she carried.
“I have to take this by McEvoy Brothers tomorrow.”
She must have read the frown on his face.
“It’s a closed-casket service. Obviously. But I think he would’ve liked it this way, wearing the dress blues. Mr. McEvoy asked me if I had it.”
Harry nodded. They were still in the hallway. He backed out into the living room and she followed.
“What do you hear from the department? How are they going to handle it? The funeral, I mean.”
“Who knows? But as of now, they are saying he went down in the line of duty.”
“So he’s going to get the show.”
“I think so.”
A hero’s farewell, Bosch thought. The department wasn’t into self-flagellation. It wasn’t going to announce to the world that a bad cop was put down by the bad people he had done bad things for. Not unless it had to. And not when it could throw a hero’s funeral at the media and then sit back and watch sympathetic stories on seven different channels that night. The department needed all the sympathy it could get.
He also realized that a line-of-duty death meant the widow would get full pension rights. If Sylvia Moore wore a black dress, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue at appropriate times and kept her mouth shut, she’d get her husband’s paycheck for the rest of her life. Not a bad deal. Either way. If Sylvia was the one who tipped IAD, she now stood to lose the pension if she pressed it or went public. The department could claim Cal had been killed because of his extracurricular activities. No pension. Bosch was sure this didn’t have to be explained to her.
“So when’s the funeral?” he asked.
“It’s Monday at one. At the San Fernando Mission Chapel. The burial is at Oakwood, up in Chatsworth.”
Well, Bosch thought, if they are going to put on the show, that’s the place to do it. A couple hundred motor cops coming in in procession on curving Valley Circle Boulevard always made a good front-page photo.
“Mrs. Moore, why did you come here at”-he looked at his watch; it was 10:45-“so late to get your husband’s dress blues?”
“Call me Sylvia.”
“Sure.”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know why now. I haven’t been sleeping-I mean at all-since it… since he was found. I don’t know. I just felt like taking a drive. I just got the key to the place today, anyway.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“Assistant Chief Irving. He came by, said they were through with the apartment and if there was anything I wanted I could take it. Trouble is, there isn’t. I had hoped I’d never see this place. Then the man at the funeral home called and said he needed the dress uniform if I had it. Here I am.”
Bosch picked the bag of photographs up off the couch and held it out to her.
“What about these? Do you want them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Ever see them before?”
“I think some of them. At least, some of them seemed familiar. Some of them I know I never saw.”
“Why do you think that is? A man keeps photographs his whole life and never shows some of them to his wife?”
“I don’t know.”
“Strange.” He opened the bag and while he was looking through the photos said, “What happened to his mother, do you know?”
“She died. Before I knew him. Had a tumor in her head. He was about twenty, he said.”
“What about his father?”
“He told me he was dead. But I told you, I don’t know if that was true. Because he never said how or when. When I asked, he said he didn’t want to talk about it. We never did.”
Bosch held up the photo of the two boys on the picnic table.
“Who’s this?”
She stepped close to him and looked at the photo. He studied her face. He saw flecks of green in her brown eyes. There was a light scent of perfume.
“I don’t know who it is. A friend, I guess.”
“He didn’t have a brother?”
“Not one he ever told me about. He told me when we got married, he said I was his only family. He said… said he was alone except for me.”
Now Bosch looked at the photo.
“Kinda looks like him to me.”
She didn’t say anything.
“What about the tattoo?”
“What about it?”
“He ever tell you where he got it, what it means?”
“He told me he got it in the village he grew up in. He was a boy. Actually, it was a barrio. I guess. They called it Saints and Sinners. That’s what the tattoo means. Saints and Sinners. He said that was because the people that lived there didn’t know which they were, which they would be.”
He thought of the note found in Cal Moore’s back pocket.I found out who I was. He wondered if she realized the significance of this in terms of the place he grew up. Where each young boy had to find out who he was. A saint or a sinner.
Sylvia interrupted his thoughts.
“You know, you didn’t really say why you were already here. Sitting in the dark thinking. You had to come here to do that?”
“I came to look around, I guess. I was trying to shake something loose, get a feel for your husband. That sound stupid?”