investigative instincts. He had no feel for the truth. He could not tell whether there was more to what she was telling him or not. He decided he had to somehow steer the conversation back to the party. He thought she knew more than she had said all those years ago.
She came back with two glasses filled with ice water and placed his back down on the cork coaster. Something about the way she was so careful about putting the glass down gave him a knowledge about her that had not come through in her spoken words. It was simply that she had worked hard to attain the level she was at in life. That position and the material things it brought with it—like glass coffee tables and plush carpets—meant a lot to her and were to be taken care of.
She took a long drink from her glass after sitting down.
“Let me tell you something, Harry,” she said. “I didn’t tell them everything. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell them everything. I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“I became afraid on the day they found her. You see, I’d gotten a call that morning. Before I even knew what had happened to her. It was a man, but a voice I didn’t recognize. He told me if I said anything I would be next. I remember, he said, ‘My advice to you, little lady, is to get the hell out of Dodge.’ Then, of course, I heard the police were in the building and had gone to her apartment. Then I heard she was dead. So I did what I was told. I left. I waited about a week until the police said they were done with me, then I moved to Long Beach. I changed my name, changed my life. I met my husband down there and then years later we moved here.… You know, I’ve never been back to Hollywood, not even to drive through. It’s an awful place.”
“What was it that you didn’t tell Eno and McKittrick?”
Katherine looked down at her hands as she spoke.
“I was afraid, you see, so I didn’t tell everything…but I knew who she was going to see there, at the party. We were like sisters. Lived in the same building, shared clothes, secrets, everything. We talked every morning, had our coffee together. We had no secrets between us. And we were going to go to the party together. Of course, after that…after Johnny hit me, she had to go alone.”
“Who was she going to meet there, Katherine?” Bosch prompted.
“You see that is the right question but the detectives never asked that. They only wanted to know whose party it was and where it was. That didn’t matter. What was important was who was she going to meet there and they never asked that.”
“Who was it?”
She looked away from her hands and to the fireplace. She stared at the cold, blackened logs left from an old fire the way some people stare mesmerized by a burning fire.
“It was a man named Arno Conklin. He was a very important man in the—”
“I know who he was.”
“You do?”
“His name came up in the records. But not that way. How could you not tell the cops this?”
She turned and looked at him sharply.
“Don’t you look at me that way. I told you I was scared. I’d been threatened. And they wouldn’t have done anything with it anyway. They were bought and paid for by Conklin. They wouldn’t go near him on just the word of a…call girl who didn’t see anything but knew a name. I had to think of myself. Your mother was dead, Harry. There was nothing I could do about it.”
He could see the sharp edges of anger in her eyes. He knew it was directed at him but more toward herself. She could list all her reasons out loud but inside Bosch thought she paid a price every day for not having done the right thing.
“You think Conklin did it?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that she’d been with him before and there was never anything violent. I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Any idea now who called you?”
“No, none.”
“Conklin?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know his voice anyway.”
“Did you ever see them together, my mother and him?”
“Once, at a dance at the Masonic. I think it was the night they met. Johnny Fox introduced them. I don’t think Arno knew… anything about her. At least, then.”