'He used to say that?'
'Have a seat, Harry, for crying out loud. Yes, used to. He passed away five yean ago last Thanksgiving.'
Bosch sat down on the couch and she took the chair across the glass coffee table.
'I'm sorry.'
'It's okay, you didn't know. You never even knew him and I've been a different person for a long time. Can I get you something? Some coffee or maybe something stronger?'
It occurred to him that she had sent him the card on the Christmas soon after her husband's death. He was hit with another wave of guilt for not having responded.
'Harry?'
'Oh, uh, no, I'm fine. I ... do you want me to call you by your new name?'
She started laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation and he joined in.
'Call me any damn thing you want.' She laughed girlishly, a laugh he remembered from a long time before. 'It's great to see you. You know, to see how, uh ...'
'I turned out?'
She laughed again.
'I guess so. You know, I knew you were with the police because I had read your name in some of the news stories.'
'I know you knew. I got the Christmas card you sent to the station. That must have been right after your husband died. I, uh, I'm sorry I never wrote back or visited. I should have.'
'That's okay, Harry, I know you're busy with the job and a career and all ... I'm glad you got my card. Do you have a family?'
'Uh, no. How about you? Any children?'
'Oh, no. No children. You have a wife, don't you, a handsome man like you?'
'No, I'm alone right now.'
She nodded, seeming to sense that he wasn't here to reveal his personal history to her anyway. For a long moment they just both looked at each other and Bosch wondered what she really thought of his being a cop. The initial delight in seeing each other was descending into the uneasiness that comes when old secrets come close to the surface.
'I guess ...'
He didn't finish the thought. He was grappling for a way into the conversation. His interviewing skills had deserted him.
'You know, if it's not too much trouble, I'd take a glass of water.'
It was all he could think of.
'Be right back.'
She got up quickly and went to the kitchen. He heard her getting ice out of a tray. It gave him time to think. It had taken him an hour to drive to her house but he hadn't given one thought to what this would be like or how he would get to what he wanted to say and ask. She came back in a few minutes with a glass of ice water. She handed it to him and put a round coaster made of cork on the glass-topped coffee table in front of him.
'If you're hungry, I can bring out some crackers and cheese. I just didn't know how much time you -'
'No, I'm fine. This is great, thanks.'
He saluted her with the glass and drank half of it, then put it down on the table.
'Harry, use the coaster. Getting rings out of the glass is murder.'
Bosch looked down at what he had done.
'Oh, sorry.'
He corrected the placement of his glass.
'You're a detective.'
'Yes. I work in Hollywood now ... Uh, but I'm not really working right now. I'm on sort of a vacation.'
'Oh, that must be nice.'
Her spirits seemed to lift, as if she knew there was a chance he was not here on business. Bosch knew it was time to get to the point.
'Uh, Mer uh, Katherine, I need to ask you about something.'
'What is it, Harry?'
'I look around here and I see you have a very nice home, a different name, a different life. You're no longer Meredith Roman and I know you don't need me to tell you that. You've got ... I think what I'm saying is the past may be a difficult thing to talk about. I know it is for me. And, believe me, I don't want to hurt you in any way.'
'You're here to talk about your mother.'
He nodded and looked down at the glass on the cork coaster.
'Your mother and I were best friends. Sometimes I think I had almost as much a hand in raising you as she did. Until they took you away from her. From us.'
He looked back up at her. Her eyes were looking hard at distant memories.
'I don't think a day goes by that I don't think about her. We were just kids. Having a good time, you know. We never thought either of us could get hurt.'
She suddenly stood up.
'Harry, come here. I want to show you something.'
He followed her down a carpeted hallway and into a bedroom. There was a four-poster bed with light blue coverings, an oak bureau and matching bedside tables. Katherine Register pointed to the bureau. There were
several photos in ornate stand-up frames on top. Most of them were of Katherine and a man who seemed much older than she was in the photos. Her husband, Bosch guessed. But she pointed to one that was to the right side of the grouping. The photo was old, its color faded. It was a picture of two young women with a tiny boy of three or four.
'I've always had that there, Harry. Even when my husband was alive. He knew my past. I told him. It didn't matter. We had twenty-three great years together. You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong. I'm strong, Harry. Now, tell me why you came to visit me today.'
Bosch reached for the framed photo and picked it up.
'I want ...' He looked up from the photo to her. 'I'm going to find out who killed her.'
An undecipherable look froze on her face for a moment and then she wordlessly took the frame out of his hands and put it back on the bureau. Then she pulled him into another deep embrace, her head against his chest. He could see himself holding her in the mirror over the bureau. When she pulled back and looked up at him he saw the tears were already down her cheeks. There was a slight tremor in her lower lip.
'Let's go sit down,' he said.
She pulled two tissues out of a box on the bureau and he led her back to the living room and to her chair.
'Do you want me to get you some water?'
'No, I'm fine. I'll stop crying, I'm sorry.'
She wiped at her eyes with the tissues. He sat back down on the couch.
'We used to say we were the two musketeers, both for one and one for both. It was stupid, but it was because we were so young and so close.'
'I'm starting from scratch with it, Katherine. I pulled the old files on the investigation. It -'
She made a dismissing sound and shook her head.
'There was no investigation. It was a joke.'
'That's my sense of it, too, but I don't understand why.'
'Look, Harry, you know what your mother was.' He nodded and she continued. 'She was a party girl. We both were. I'm sure you know that's the polite way of saying it. And the cops really didn't care that one of us ended up dead. They just wrote the whole damn thing off. I know you're a policeman now, but that's the way it was then. They just didn't care about her.'
'I understand. Things probably are not too much different now, believe it or not. But there has to have been more to it than that.'
'Harry, I don't know how much you want to know about your mother.'
He looked at her.
'The past made me strong, too. I can handle it.'
'I'm sure it did ... I remember that place where they put you. McEvoy or something like -'
'McClaren.'
'That's it, McClaren. What a depressing place. Your mother would come home from visiting you and just sit down and cry her eyes out.'
'Don't change the subject, Katherine. What is it I should know about her?'
She nodded but hesitated for a moment before continuing.
'Mar knew some policemen. You understand?'
He nodded.
'We both did. It was the way it worked. You had to get along to go along. That's what we called it anyway. And when you have that situation and she ends up dead, it's usually best for the cops to just sweep it under the rug. Let