“So your operating theory?” he’d asked.
“Her father,” Detective Zebrowski said. “Guy’s got priors the way other guys have nose hair.”
“To what end?”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s a scumbag,” Patrick said, “I get it. But his scumbaggedness makes sense usually, right? There’s motive behind it. He steals one of his kids, he wants to get paid or get the mother off his back for something. But here the mother’s got no money, she’s never sued him for child support or alimony, and what guy with his psychological makeup wants to bring his twelve-year-old daughter back to his spot, have her ragging on him from dawn to dusk?”
Detective Zebrowski shrugged. “You think d-bags like Lonnie Cullen think things through before they do them? If they did, they wouldn’t know the number on their orange jumpsuits better than their own birthdays. He did it because he’s a criminal and he’s an idiot and he has less impulse control than a flea at a livestock auction.”
“And the boyfriend angle?”
“Looking into it.”
Two nights ago Dontelle said to Patrick, “But you don’t believe it?”
Patrick shrugged. “Deadbeat dads dodge their kids, they don’t kidnap ’em, not the ones who’ve been out of the picture as long as Lonnie has. As for the boyfriend theory, she’s, what, shacked up with him for three days, they never go out to grab a bite, call a friend?”
“All I know,” Dontelle said, “is she seemed like a sweet kid. Not one of them typical project girls who’s always frontin’, talkin’ shit. She was quiet but… considerate, you know?”
Patrick took another drink of beer. “No. Tell me.”
“Well, you get a job like mine, you got to do a probation period — ninety days during which they can shitcan you without cause. After that, you with the city, man, gotta fuck up huge and be named Bin Laden for the city be able to get rid of your ass. I hit my ninety a couple weeks ago and not only did Chiffon congratulate me, she gave me a cupcake.”
“No shit?” Patrick smiled.
“Store bought,” Dontelle said, “but still. How sweet is that?”
“Pretty sweet.” Patrick nodded.
“You’ll see in about twelve years with your kid, they ain’t too into thinking about others at that age. It’s all about what’s going on up here”—he tapped his head—“and down there”—he pointed at his groin.
They drank in silence for a minute.
“Nothing else you remember about that day? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
He shook his head. “Just a day like any other—‘See you tomorrow, Chiffon,’ and she say, ‘See you tomorrow, Dontelle.’ And off she walk.”
Patrick thanked him and paid for the drinks. He was scooping his change off the bar when he said, “You had a probationary period?”
Dontelle nodded. “Yeah, it’s standard.”
“No, I know, but I guess I was wondering why you started so late in the school year. I mean, it’s May. Means you started in, what, February?”
Another nod. “End of January, yeah.”
“What’d you do before that?”
“Drove a tour bus. Drove from here to Florida, here to Montreal, here to P-Town, all depended on the season. Hours were killing me. Shit, the road was killing me. This job opened up, I jumped.”
“Why’d it open up?”
“Paisley got a duey.”
“Paisley?”
“Guy I replaced. Other drivers told me he was a piece of work, man. Show up with forty kids in his charge, eyes all glassy. Even the union wouldn’t protect him after the last time. Drove the bus off the side of the American Legion Highway, right?” Dontelle was laughing in disbelief. “Damn near tipped it. Gets out to take a piss. This is at six thirty in the ante meridiem, feel me? He gets back in, tries to pull back off the shoulder, but now the bus does tip. That’s Lawsuit City there, man. Forty times over.”
“Paisley,” Patrick said.
“Edward Paisley,” Dontelle said, “like the ties.”
Paisley lived on Wyman Street in a gray row house with fading white trim. There was a front porch with an old couch on it. Bosch drove by the place and then circled the block and went by again before finding a parking space at the curb a half block away. By adjusting his side-view mirror he had a bead on the front door and porch. He liked doing one-man surveillances this way. If somebody was looking for a watcher they usually checked windshields. Parking with his back to his target made him harder to see. Edward Paisley may have had nothing to do with the murder of Letitia Williams all those years ago. But if he did, he hadn’t survived the last fifteen years without checking windshields and being cautious.
All Bosch was hoping for, and that he’d be happy with, was to see some activity at the home to confirm that Paisley was at the address. If he got lucky, Paisley would go out and grab a cup of coffee or a bite to eat at lunch. Bosch would be able to get all the DNA he’d need off a discarded cup or a pizza crust. Maybe Paisley was a smoker. A cigarette butt would do the trick as well.
Harry pulled a file out of the locking briefcase he took on trips and opened it to look at the enlargement of the photo he’d pulled the day before from the Massachusetts DMV. It was taken three years earlier. Paisley was white, balding, and then fifty-three years old. He no longer had the driver’s license, thanks to the suspension that followed the DUI arrest four months ago. Paisley tipped a school bus and then blew a point-oh-two on the machine and with it blew his job with the school district and possibly his freedom. The arrest put his fingerprints into the system where they were waiting for Bosch. Sometimes Harry got lucky that way. If he had pulled the Williams case eleven months earlier and submitted the prints collected at the crime scene for electronic comparison there would have been no resulting match. But Bosch pulled the case four months ago and here he was in Boston.
Two hours into his surveillance Bosch had seen no sign of Paisley and was growing restless. Perhaps Paisley had left the house for the day before Bosch could set up on the street. Bosch could be wasting his time, watching an empty house. He decided to get out and do a walk-by. He’d seen a convenience store a block past the target address. He could walk by Paisley’s address, eyeball the place up close, then go down and pick up a newspaper and a gallon of milk. Back at the car he would pour the milk into the gutter and keep the jug handy if he had to urinate. It could be a long day watching the house.
The paper would come in handy as well. He’d be able to check the late baseball scores. The Dodgers had gone into extra innings the night before against the hated Giants and Bosch had gotten on the plane not knowing the game’s outcome.
But at the last moment Bosch decided to stay put. He watched a dinged-up Jeep Cherokee pull into a curbside slot directly across the street from his own position. There was a lone man in the car and what made Bosch curious was that he never got out. He stayed slumped a bit in his seat and appeared to be keeping an eye on the same address as Bosch.
Bosch could see he was on a cell phone when he first arrived but then for the next hour the man remained behind the wheel of his Jeep, simply watching the goings-on on the street. He was too young to be Paisley. Late thirties or early forties, wearing a baseball cap and a thin gray hoodie over a dark-blue graphic tee. Something about the cap gave Bosch pause until he realized it was the first one he’d seen in a city filled with them that didn’t have a B on it. Instead, it had what appeared to be a crooked smiley face on it, though Bosch couldn’t be positive from the other side of the street. It looked to Bosch like the guy was waiting for somebody, possibly the same somebody Bosch was waiting for.