Her smile had now turned into the pout from the photo Bosch had hung in the cell where he worked.
He stood up.
“I think I have what I need to close this out,” he said.
“That’s all you need to know?” she asked.
She seemed surprised.
“For now,” Bosch said. “I’ll get back to you if there’s anything else.”
“Well, you know where to find me,” she said. “Finally.”
Bosch headed to the station after that. He was morose. He was coming in with another case closed but there was nothing to feel good about. A lot of people had spent time, money, and emotions on Esme Tavares. As had always been suspected, Esme Tavares was dead. But Angela Martinez was alive.
After parking at SFPD, he made a swing through the detective bureau on his way to the main interior hallway of the station. The pods were empty and Bosch heard voices from the war room. He suspected the detectives were taking a joint lunch break.
The chief of police’s office was located at the center of the station and across a hallway from the watch lieutenant’s office. Bosch stuck his head in the door and asked Valdez’s secretary if the boss had a free five minutes. He knew that once he got in the room with the man, the conversation would likely last a lot longer. The secretary called back to the room behind her desk and got an approval. Bosch stepped in.
Valdez was in uniform as usual and seated behind his desk. He held up the A section of the Times.
“Just reading about you, Harry,” he said. “They exonerated you pretty good here. Congratulations.”
Bosch sat down across the desk from him.
“Thanks,” he said.
Bosch had read the story that morning before heading off to his appointment and was satisfied with it. However, he knew that more people read the Sunday edition of the Times than the Thursday paper. There was always going to be a gulf between those who had read that he was a crooked cop and those who read the never-mind-he’s-straight story.
It didn’t bother him too much. The one person he wanted most to read the latest story had already seen it online and had texted him, saying again that she was very proud of him and happy with the outcome of the Borders case.
“So,” he said. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, so I’ll just tell you. I just met Esme Tavares. She’s alive and well and living in Woodland Hills.”
Valdez almost came out of his seat. He leaned violently forward across the desk, his face showing his surprise.
“What?”
Bosch ran down the story, beginning with him opening the letter the night before.
“Mother of God,” Valdez said. “I’ve had her as dead for fifteen years. Let me tell you, many was the night I wanted to go to that house and drag that asshole husband of hers behind the back of my car until he told me where she was buried.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I mean, Christ, I fell in love with her. You know how you do with victims sometimes?”
“Yeah, I had a little bit of that too. Until today.”
“So did she tell you why?”
Bosch recounted the conversation he’d had that morning with Angela Martinez. As he told it, Valdez’s face grew increasingly dark with anger. He shook his head several times and wrote some notes down on a scratch pad on his desk.
When Bosch was finished, the chief checked his notes before speaking.
“Did you advise her?” he asked.
Bosch knew he was asking if Bosch had informed Martinez of her constitutional rights to an attorney and to avoid self-incrimination.
“No,” Bosch said. “I didn’t think I had to. She called me to her place and we sat in her living room. I identified myself and she obviously knew who I was. But it doesn’t matter, Chief. I know what you’re thinking, and those things never work out.”
“This is a fraud,” Valdez said. “Over the years, we’ve spent probably close to half a million dollars looking for her. I remember when she was first reported missing, the overtime was flowing like an open fire hydrant. It was all hands on deck. And then we’ve never let up, right on up to you taking the case and running with it.”
“Look, I hate to come off as defending her, but she committed a moral crime, not a crime that the D.A. will find prosecutable. She was escaping from what she considered a dangerous situation. She was long gone before the overtime and everything else started flowing. She can claim she didn’t know or that it was too dangerous to call in and say she was okay. She’s got a lot of defenses. The D.A. won’t touch it.”
The chief didn’t respond. He leaned back in his chair and stared at a toy police helicopter hanging on a string from the ceiling. He liked to say it was the tiny department’s air squadron.
“Shit,” he finally said. “I wish there was something we could do about it.”
“We just have to live with it,” Bosch said. “She was in a bad situation back then. She made the wrong choice, but people are flawed. They’re selfish. All this time we thought she was dead, she was pure and innocent to us. Now we find out she was the kind that would leave a baby in a crib to save herself.”
Bosch thought about Jose Esquivel Jr. dying with his cheek on the linoleum in the back hallway of his father’s business. He wondered if anybody was pure and innocent.
Valdez got up from his desk and went to the bulletin board over the low row of filing cabinets against the right wall. He flipped back some deployment sheets, then weeded through a stack of Wanted flyers until he found the MISSING leaflet with the photo of Esme Tavares on it circa 2002. He tore it off the board and crumpled it between his hands, crushing the ball as small as he could. He then fired a shot at a trash can at the end of the file cabinets.
He missed.
“What’s this world about, Harry?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “This week I closed out a double murder and a fifteen-year-old missing-persons case. And I don’t feel good about any of it.”
Valdez dropped back into his seat.
“You gotta feel good about the farmacia caper,” he said. “You took two pieces of shit off the board.”
Bosch nodded. But the truth was, it felt to him like he was walking in circles. True justice was the brass ring just out of reach.
Bosch stood up.
“You going to call up Carlos and tell him he’s off the hook?” he asked.
Carlos Tavares was Esmerelda’s husband, fifteen years a suspect.
“Fuck him,” Valdez said. “He’s still an asshole. He can read about it in the paper.”
Bosch went to the door and then looked back at his boss.
“I’ll have the report on this finished today,” he said.
“Good,” Valdez said. “Then we go drinking.”
“That sounds right.”
44
Bosch wanted to avoid the detective bureau. He didn’t want to talk anymore. Bella Lourdes and the others would find out soon enough about Esme Tavares being alive and well, and it would be the talk of the department and then the whole town. But Bosch had talked about it enough for the time being.
He walked out the front door of the station and then crossed the street. He went through the Public Works yard and into the jail. After unlocking his cell, he slid the heavy steel door open and it banged hard against its frame. Like the police chief, Bosch went to the photo of Esme Tavares to yank it down. But then he stopped. He decided to leave it in place so he would always see it and it would remind him about how wrong he had been about the case.
It was the child in the crib that had misled him. He knew this. It seemed against all laws of nature, and so it had led him and many others before him down the wrong path.