“What is her name?”

“Christine Dorsett Delacroix. Dorsett was her maiden name.”

“Do you know her birth date or Social Security number?”

Sheila shook her head.

“Do you have your own birth certificate handy here?”

“It’s somewhere in my records. I could go look for it.”

She started to get up.

“No, wait, we can look for that at the end. I’d like to keep talking here.”

“Okay.”

“Um, after your mother was gone, did your father remarry?”

“No, he never did. He lives alone now.”

“Did he ever have a girlfriend, someone who might have stayed in the house?”

She looked at Bosch with eyes that seemed almost lifeless.

“No,” she said. “Never.”

Bosch decided to move on to an area of discussion that would be less difficult for her.

“What school did your brother go to?”

“At the end he was going to The Brethren.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. He wrote the name of the school down on his pad and then a large letter B beneath it. He circled the letter, thinking about the backpack. Sheila continued unbidden.

“It was a private school for troubled boys. My dad paid to send him there. It’s off of Crescent Heights near Pico. It’s still there.”

“Why did he go there? I mean, why was he considered troubled?”

“Because he got kicked out of his other schools for fighting mostly.”

“Fighting?” Edgar said.

“That’s right.”

Edgar picked the top photograph off of his keeper file and studied it for a moment.

“This boy looks like he was as light as smoke. Was he the one starting these fights?”

“Most times. He had trouble getting along. All he wanted to do was be on his skateboard. I think that by today’s standards he would be diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder or something similar. He just wanted to be by himself all the time.”

“Did he get hurt in these fights?” Bosch asked.

“Sometimes. Black and blue mostly.”

“Broken bones?”

“Not that I remember. Just schoolyard fights.”

Bosch felt agitated. The information they were getting could point them in many different directions. He had hoped a clear-cut path might emerge from the interview.

“You said your father searched the drawers in your brother’s room and found clothes missing.”

“That’s right. Not a lot. Just a few things.”

“Any idea what was missing specifically?”

She shook her head.

“I can’t remember.”

“What did he take the clothes in? Like a suitcase or something?”

“I think he took his schoolbag. Took out the books and put in some clothes.”

“Do you remember what that looked like?”

“No. Just a backpack. Everybody had to use the same thing at The Brethren. I still see kids walking on Pico with them, the backpacks with the B on the back.”

Bosch glanced at Edgar and then back at Delacroix.

“Let’s go back to the skateboard. Are you sure he took it with him?”

She paused to think about this, then slowly nodded.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure he took it with him.”

Bosch decided to cut off the interview and concentrate on completing the identification. Once they confirmed the bones came from Arthur Delacroix, then they could come back to his sister.

He thought about Golliher’s take on the injuries to the bones. Chronic abuse. Could it all have been injuries from schoolyard fights and skateboarding? He knew he needed to approach the issue of child abuse but did not feel the time was appropriate. He also didn’t want to tip his hand to the daughter so that she could turn around and possibly tell the father. What Bosch wanted was to back out and come back in later when he felt he had a tighter grasp on the case and a solid investigative plan to go with.

“Okay, we’re going to wrap things up here pretty quickly, Sheila. Just a few more questions. Did Arthur have some friends? Maybe a best friend, someone he might confide in?”

She shook her head.

“Not really. He mostly was by himself.”

Bosch nodded and was about to close his notebook when she continued.

“There was one boy he’d go boarding with. His name was Johnny Stokes. He was from somewhere down near Pico. He was bigger and a little bit older than Arthur but they were in the same class at The Brethren. My father was pretty sure he smoked pot. So we didn’t like Arthur being friends with him.”

“By ‘we,’ you mean your dad and you?”

“Yes, my father. He was upset about it.”

“Did either of you talk to Johnny Stokes after Arthur went missing?”

“Yes, that night when he didn’t come home my father called Johnny Stokes, but he said he hadn’t seen Artie. The next day when Dad went to the school to ask about him, he told me he talked to Johnny again about Artie.”

“And what did he say?”

“That he hadn’t seen him.”

Bosch wrote down the friend’s name in his notebook and underlined it.

“Any other friends you can think of?”

“No, not really.”

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Samuel. Are you going to talk to him?”

“Most likely.”

Her eyes dropped to the hands clasped in her lap.

“Is that a problem if we talk to him?”

“Not really. He’s just not well. If those bones turn out to be Arthur… I was thinking it would be better if he didn’t ever know.”

“We’ll keep that in mind when we talk to him. But we won’t do it until we have a positive identification.”

“But if you talk to him, then he’ll know.”

“It may be unavoidable, Sheila.”

Edgar handed Bosch another photo. It showed Arthur standing next to a tall blond man who looked faintly familiar to Bosch. He showed the photo to Sheila.

“Is this your father?”

“Yes, it’s him.”

“He looks familiar. Was he ever-”

“He’s an actor. Was, actually. He was on some television shows in the sixties and a few things after that, some movie parts.”

“Not enough to make a living?”

“No, he always had to work other jobs. So we could live.”

Bosch nodded and handed the photo back to Edgar but Sheila reached across the coffee table and intercepted it.

“I don’t want that one to leave, please. I don’t have many photos of my father.”

“Fine,” Bosch said. “Could we go look for the birth certificate now?”

“I’ll go look. You can stay here.”

She got up and left the room again, and Edgar took the opportunity to show Bosch some of the other photos he had taken to keep during the investigation.

“It’s him, Harry,” he whispered. “I got no doubt.”

He showed him a photo of Arthur Delacroix that had apparently been taken for school. His hair was combed neatly and he wore a blue blazer and tie. Bosch studied the boy’s eyes. They reminded him of the photo of the boy from Kosovo he had found in Nicholas Trent’s house. The boy with the thousand-yard stare.

“I found it.”

Sheila Delacroix came into the room carrying an envelope and unfolding a yellowed document. Bosch looked at it for a moment and then copied down the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of her parents.

“Thanks,” he said. “You and Arthur had the same parents, right?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, Sheila, thank you. We’re going to go. We’ll call you as soon as we know something for sure.”

He stood up and so did Edgar.

“All right if we borrow these photos?” Edgar asked. “I will personally see that you get them back.”

“Okay, if you need them.”

They headed to the door and she opened it. While still on the threshold Bosch asked her one last question.

“Sheila, have you always lived here?”

She nodded.

“All my life. I’ve stayed here in case he comes back, you know? In case he doesn’t know where to start and comes here.”

She smiled but not in any way that imparted humor. Bosch nodded and stepped outside behind Edgar.