“They said it would be hard for me to keep my business if everybody thought I had… I had done that to my daughter…”
Now more tears came down his dark face. He did nothing to stop their flow.
“And so I did what they wanted. I backed off and dropped it. Stopped stirring the pot. I told myself it didn’t matter; it wouldn’t bring Becky back to us. So I never called Detective Green again… and they never solved the case. After a while I started drinking to forget what I had lost and what I had done, that I had put myself and my pride and my reputation and my business ahead of my daughter. And pretty soon, before you knew it, I came to that black hole I was telling you about. I fell in and I’m still climbing out.”
After a moment he turned and looked at Bosch.
“How’s that for a story, Detective?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Verloren. I’m sorry that happened. All of it.”
“Is that the story you wanted to hear, Detective?”
“I just wanted to know the truth. Believe it or not, it is going to help me. It will help me speak for her. Can you describe these two men who came to you?”
Verloren shook his head.
“It’s been a long time. I probably wouldn’t recognize them if they stood in front of me. I just remember they were both white men. One of them I always thought of as Mr. Clean because his head was shaved and he stood with his arms folded like the guy on the bottle.”
Bosch nodded and he felt his anger working into the muscles of his shoulders. He knew who Mr. Clean was.
“How much of all this did your wife know?” he asked in a calm tone.
Verloren shook his head.
“Muriel didn’t know anything about this. I kept it from her. It was my water to carry.”
Verloren wiped his cheeks and seemed to have earned some relief from finally telling the story.
Bosch reached into his back pocket and came up with the old photograph of Roland Mackey. He put it down on the table in front of Verloren.
“Do you recognize this kid?”
Verloren looked for a long moment before shaking his head in the negative.
“Should I? Who is he?”
“His name is Roland Mackey. He was a couple years older than your daughter in ’eighty-eight. He didn’t go to school at Hillside but he lived in Chatsworth.”
Bosch waited for a response but didn’t get any. Verloren just stared at the photo on the table.
“That’s a mug shot. What did he do?”
“Stole a car. But he has a record of associating with white power extremists. In and outside of jail. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
“I don’t know. I’m just asking. Can you remember if your daughter ever mentioned his name or maybe somebody named Ro?”
Verloren shook his head.
“What we are trying to do is figure out if they could have intersected anywhere. The Valley’s a big place. They could’ve -”
“What school did he go to?”
“He went to Chatsworth High but never finished. He got a GED.”
“Rebecca went to Chatsworth High for driver’s ed the summer before she was taken.”
“You mean ’eighty-seven?”
Verloren nodded.
“I’ll check it out.”
But Bosch didn’t think it was a good lead. Mackey had dropped out before the summer of 1987 and didn’t come back for his general education degree until 1988. Still, it was worth a thorough look.
“What about the movies? Did she like to go to movies and the mall?”
Verloren shrugged.
“She was a sixteen-year-old girl. Of course she liked movies. Most of her friends had cars. Once they hit sixteen and got mobile they were all over the place. My wife called it the three Ms-movies, malls, and Madonna.”
“Which malls? Which theaters?”
“They went to the Northridge Mall because it was close, you know. They also liked to go to the drive-in over on Winnetka. That way they could sit in the car and talk during the movie. One of the girls had a convertible and they liked going in that.”
Bosch zeroed in on the drive-in. He had forgotten about it when he had spoken about movie theaters with Rider earlier. But Roland Mackey had once been arrested burglarizing the same drive-in on Winnetka. That made it a key possibility as the point of intersection.
“How often did Rebecca and her friends go to the drive-in?”
“I think they liked to go on Friday nights, when the new movies were just out.”