eight-foot-high stone wall eclipsed all but the tower. Only through a black wrought-iron gate was there a fuller view. Bosch pulled onto the driveway and up to the gate. Heavy steel chain and lock kept it closed. He got out, looked through the bars and saw that the parking circle in front of the house was empty. The curtains inside every front window were pulled closed.
On the wall next to the gate were a mailbox and an intercom. He pushed the ringer but got no response. He wasn't sure what he would have said if someone had answered. He opened the mailbox and found that empty, too.
Bosch left his car where it was and walked back down Coyote Trail to the nearest house. This was one of the few without a wall. But there was a white picket fence and an intercom at the gate. And this time when he rang the buzzer, he got a response.
"Yes?" a woman's voice asked.
"Yes, ma'am, police. I was wondering if I can ask a few questions about your neighbor's house."
"Which neighbor?"
The voice was very old.
"The castle."
"Nobody lives there. Mr. Moore died some time ago."
"I know that, ma'am. I was wondering if I could come in and talk to you a moment. I have identification."
There was a delay before he heard a curt "Very well" over the speaker and the gate lock buzzed.
The woman insisted that he hold his ID up to a small window set in the door. He saw her in there, white-haired and decrepit, straining to see it from a wheelchair. She finally opened up.
"Why do they send a Los Angeles police officer?"
"Ma'am, I'm working on a Los Angeles case. It involves a man who used to live in the castle. As a boy, long ago."
She looked up at him through squinting eyes, as if she was trying to see past a memory.
"Are you talking about Calexico Moore?"
"Yes. You knew him?"
"Is he hurt?"
Bosch hesitated, then said, "I'm afraid he's dead."
"Up there in Los Angeles?"
"Yes. He was a police officer. I think it had something to do with his life down here. That's why I came out here. I don't really know what to ask . . . He didn't live here long. But you remember him, yes?"
"He didn't live here long but that doesn't mean I never saw him again. Quite the contrary. I saw him regularly over the years. He'd ride his bicycle or he'd drive a car and come and sit out there on the road and just watch that place. One time I had Marta bring him out a sandwich and a lemonade."
He assumed Marta was the maid. These estates came with them.
"He'd just watch and remember, I guess," the old woman was saying. "Terrible thing that Cecil did to him. He's probably paying for it now, that Cecil."
"What do you mean, 'terrible'?"
"Sending the boy and his mother away like that. I don't think he ever spoke to that boy or the woman again after that. But I'd see the boy and I'd see him as a man, come out here to look at the place. People 'round here say that's why Cecil put that wall up. Did that twenty years ago. They say it's because he got tired of seeing Calexico in the street. That was Cecil's way of doing things. You don't like what you see out your window, you put up a wall. But I'd still see young Cal from time to time. One time I took a cold drink out to him myself. I wasn't in this chair then. He was sitting in a car, and I asked him, 'Why do you come out here all the time?' and he just said, 'Aunt Mary, I like to remember.' That's what he said."
"Aunt Mary?"
"Yes. I thought that was why you came here. My Anderson and Cecil were brothers, God rest their souls."
Bosch nodded and waited a respectful five seconds before speaking.
"The man at the museum in town said Cecil had no children."
"'Course he said that. Cecil kept it a secret from the public. Big secret. He didn't want the company name blemished."
"Calexico's mother was the maid?"
"Yes, she—it sounds like you know all of this already."
"Just a few parts. What happened? Why did he send her and the boy away?"
She hesitated before answering, as if to compose a story that was more than thirty years old.
"After she became pregnant, she lived there—he made her—and she had the baby there. Afterward, four or five years, he discovered