The door was answered by a woman who wore a shapeless blue pullover dress that helped hide her own shapeless body. She wore flat sandals. Her hair was dyed a color red that had too much orange in it. It looked like a home job that didn’t go as planned, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. As soon as she opened the door a gray cat shot out of the opening and into the front yard.
“Smoke, don’t get hit!” she yelled first. Then she said, “Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Verloren?” Rider asked.
“Yes, what is it?”
“We’re with the police. We’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”
As soon as Rider said the word “police” and before she got to “daughter,” Muriel Verloren brought both hands up to her mouth and reacted as though it was the moment she had learned her daughter was dead.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Tell me you caught him. Tell me you caught the bastard who took my baby away from me.”
Rider reached a comforting hand to the woman’s shoulder.
“It’s not quite that simple, ma’am,” Rider said. “Can we come in and talk?”
She stepped back and let them in. She seemed to be whispering something and Bosch thought it might be a prayer. Once they were in she closed the door after yelling a warning one more time into the front yard to the escaped cat.
The home smelled as though the cat had not escaped often enough. The living room to which they were led was neatly kept but with furniture that was old and worn. There was the distinct odor of cat urine in the place. Bosch suddenly wished they had invited Muriel Verloren down to Parker Center for the interview, but knew that would have been a mistake. They needed to see this place.
They sat side by side on the couch and Muriel rushed to one of the chairs across the glass-topped coffee table from them. Bosch noticed paw prints on the glass.
“What is it?” she asked desperately. “Is there news?”
“Well, I guess the news is that we are looking into the case again,” Rider said. “I am Detective Rider and this is Detective Bosch. We work for the Open-Unsolved Unit out of Parker Center.”
By agreement while driving to the house Bosch and Rider decided to be cautious with the information they gave members of the Verloren family. Until they knew the family situation it would be better to take rather than to give.
“Is there anything new?” Muriel asked urgently.
“Well, we are just starting out,” Rider replied. “We’re covering a lot of the old ground right now. Trying to get up to speed. We just wanted to come by and tell you we were working the case again.”
She seemed a bit crestfallen. She had apparently thought that for the police to show up after so many years there would have to be something new. Bosch felt a twinge of guilt over withholding the fact that they had a rock-solid DNA lead-a cold hit-to work with, but at the moment he felt that it was for the best.
“There are a couple things,” he said, speaking for the first time. “First, in looking through the files on the case, we came across this photo.”
He took the photo of Roland Mackey as an eighteen-year-old out of his pocket and put it down on the coffee table in front of Muriel. She immediately leaned down to look at it.
“We’re not sure what the connection is,” he continued. “We thought maybe you might recognize this man and tell us if you knew him back then.”
She continued to look without responding.
“This is a photo from nineteen eighty-eight,” Bosch said as a means of prompting her.
“Who is he?” she finally asked.
“We’re not sure. His name is Roland Mackey. He’s got a small-time record for crimes committed after your daughter’s death. We’re not sure why his photo was in the file. Do you recognize him?”
“Did you ask Art or Ron about it?”
Bosch started to ask who Art and Ron were when he realized.
“Actually, Detective Green retired and passed away a long time ago. Detective Garcia is Commander Garcia now. We talked to him but he wasn’t able to help us with Mackey. How about you? Could he have been one of your daughter’s acquaintances? Do you recognize him?”
“He could have been. There is something about him that I recognize.”
Bosch nodded.
“Do you know how you recognize him or from where?”
“No, I don’t remember. Why don’t you tell me and maybe that will help jog my memory.”
Bosch made a quick side glance at Rider. This was not totally unexpected, but it always complicated things when the parent of a victim was so eager to help that he or she simply asked what it was the police wanted them to say. Muriel Verloren had waited seventeen years for her daughter’s killer to be brought forward into the light of the justice system. It was very clear that she was going to carefully choose answers that would in no way hinder the possibility of that happening. At this point it might not even matter if it was a false light. The past years had been cruel to her and the memory of her daughter. Someone still needed to pay.
“We can’t tell you that because we don’t know, Mrs. Verloren,” Bosch said. “Think about it and let us know if you remember him.”
She nodded sadly, as if she thought it was yet another missed opportunity.
“Mrs. Verloren, what do you do for a living?” Rider asked.
It seemed to bring the woman in front of them back from her memories and desires.
“I sell things,” she said matter-of-factly. “Online.”
They waited for further explanation and didn’t get any.
“Really?” Rider asked. “What things do you sell?”
“Whatever I can find. I go to yard sales. I find things. Books, toys, clothes. People will buy anything. And they’ll pay anything. This morning I sold two napkin rings for fifty dollars. They were very old.”
“We want to ask your husband about the photo,” Bosch said then. “Do you know where we could find him?”
She shook her head.
“Somewhere down there in toyland. I haven’t heard from him in a long, long time.”
A somber moment of silence passed by. Most of the homeless missions in downtown Los Angeles were clustered at the edge of the Toy District, several blocks of toy manufacturers and wholesalers, even a few retailers. It wasn’t unusual to find homeless people sleeping in the doorways of toy stores.
What Muriel Verloren was telling them was that her husband was lost in the world of floating human debris. He had descended from restaurateur to the stars to a homeless existence on the streets. But there was a contradiction there. He still had a home here. He just couldn’t stay because of what had happened. Yet his wife would never leave.
“When were you divorced?” Rider asked.
“We never did get a divorce. I guess I always thought Robert would wake up and realize that no matter how far you run you can’t get away from what happened to us. I thought he would realize that and come home. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“Do you think you knew all of your daughter’s friends?” Bosch asked.
Muriel thought about this one for a long moment.
“Until the morning she disappeared I did. But then we learned things. She kept secrets. I think that is one of the things that bothers me most. Not that she kept secrets from us, but that she thought she had to. I think that maybe if she had come to us things would have been different.”
“You mean the pregnancy?”
Muriel nodded.
“What makes you think that played into what happened to her?”
“Just a mother’s instinct. I have no proof. I just think it started with that.”
Bosch nodded. But he couldn’t blame the daughter for her secrets. By the time he had been her age Bosch had been on his own, without real parents. He had no idea what that relationship would have been like.