for Bosch to go next and when he passed by her she whispered to him.
“Do you have children?”
He nodded, knowing his answer would hurt.
“A daughter.”
She nodded back.
“Never let her out of your sight.”
Bosch didn’t tell her that she lived with her mother far out of his sight. He just nodded and started up the stairs.
On the second floor there was a landing and two bedrooms with a bathroom in between them. Becky Verloren’s bedroom was to the rear, with windows that looked up the hillside.
The door was closed and Muriel opened it. When they stepped inside they stepped into a time warp. The room was unchanged from the seventeen-year-old photos Bosch had studied in the murder book. The rest of the house was crowded with junk and the detritus from a disintegrated life, but the room where Becky Verloren had slept and talked on the phone and written in her secret journal was unchanged. It had now been preserved longer than the girl had actually lived.
Bosch stepped further into the room and looked around silently. Even the cat didn’t intrude here. The air smelled clean and fresh.
“This is just how it was on the morning she was gone,” Muriel said. “Except I made the bed.”
Bosch looked at the quilt with the cats on it. It flowed over the edges and draped down to the bed skirt, which flowed neatly to the floor.
“You and your husband were sleeping on the other side of the house, right?” Bosch asked.
“Yes. Rebecca was at that age where she wanted her privacy. There are two bedrooms downstairs, on the other side of the house. Her first bedroom was down there. But when she was fourteen she moved up here.”
Bosch nodded and looked around before asking anything else.
“How often do you come up here, Mrs. Verloren?” Rider asked.
“Every single day. Sometimes when I can’t sleep-which is a lot of the time-I come in here and lie down. I don’t get under the covers, though. I want it to be her bed.”
Bosch realized he was nodding again, as if what she had said made some sort of sense to him. He stepped over to the vanity. There were photos slid into the frame of the mirror. Bosch recognized a young Bailey Sable in one of them. There was also a photo of Becky by herself in front of the Eiffel Tower. She was wearing a black beret. None of the other kids from the Art Club trip were present.
Also on the mirror was a photo of a boy with Becky. It looked like they were on a ride at Disneyland, or maybe just down at the Santa Monica pier.
“Who is this?” he asked.
Muriel came over and looked.
“The boy? That’s Danny Kotchof. Her first boyfriend.”
Bosch nodded. The boy who had moved to Hawaii.
“When he moved away it just broke her heart,” Muriel added.
“When exactly was that?”
“The summer before, in June. Right after her freshman year and his sophomore. He was a year older.”
“Why did the family move, do you know?”
“Danny’s dad worked for a rent-a-car company and he got transferred to a new franchise in Maui. It was a promotion.”
Bosch glanced at Rider to see if she picked up on the significance of the information Muriel had just given them. Rider subtly shook her head once. She didn’t get it. But Bosch wanted to pursue it.
“Did Danny go to Hillside Prep?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s where they met,” Muriel said.
Bosch looked down at the vanity and noticed a cheap souvenir snow globe with the Eiffel Tower in it. Some of the water had evaporated, leaving a bubble in the top of the globe and the tip of the tower poking from the water into the air pocket.
“Was Danny in the Art Club?” he asked. “Did he make the trip to Paris with her?”
“No, they moved away before,” Muriel said. “He left in June and the club went to Paris the last week of August.”
“Did she ever see or hear from Danny again?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, they sent letters back and forth and there were phone calls. At first they phoned back and forth, but it got too expensive. And then Danny did all the calling. Every night before bedtime. That lasted almost right up until… until she was gone.”
Bosch reached up and removed the photo from the mirror’s border. He looked closely at Danny Kotchof.
“What happened when your daughter was taken? How did Danny find out? How did he react?”
“Well… we called there and told his father so that