The Burning Room

34



They now had too much momentum to stop. They made the two-hundred-mile drive that night after filling the gas tank and grabbing convenience-store food to go. Bosch took the 10 freeway east and then at Indio turned south on State Road 86. The route took them down past Borrego Springs and skirting along the Salton Sea. It was open and desolate country with the Chocolate Mountains in the far distance to the east.

“You ever been down this way before?” Soto asked.

“A long time ago,” Bosch said.

“On a case?”

He happened to have been thinking about it when she asked the question.

“Sort of,” he answered. “I was looking for my partner.”

“Your partner? What happened?”

“It’s a long story. In fact, it would probably fill a book. He went off the reservation and he…well, he never came back.”

“You mean he disappeared?”

“No, he got killed.”

Bosch glanced over at her.

“You knew about me when we got assigned to each other, right?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said. “I was just told I was with you.”

“Well, just so you know, I’ve lost two partners. Another one got shot but survived and then I had one who ended up killing himself, but that was a long time after we were no longer partners.”

That filled the car with silence for a few miles. Soto eventually went back to looking at the screen on her tablet instead of taking in the pink hue of the desert air.

“It’s a strange place down here,” Bosch said after a while. “These two towns on either side of the border. Calexico on our side, Mexicali on theirs. Hard to figure out what’s going on. I remember when I went down here—it would have been even before the case with my partner, I think. And I checked in like you’re supposed to do and I got no help from the locals. But then I go across the border and there was a guy…an investigator…and it was like he was the only guy who wasn’t corrupt and wanted to get something done…on either side of the border.”

Soto didn’t respond. He figured she was probably still working out the math on all the partners he’d had who died.

“Anyway, strange place,” he said. “Watch yourself down here.”

“Copy that,” she finally said. “Are we going to check in with the locals?”

Bosch shook his head.

“I don’t see the need to,” he said.

“Okay by me,” she said.

“What have you found out on that thing?”

“Well, not a lot. Out here I’m not getting any kind of signal—Wi-Fi or cell. But back when we were still close to the city, I started a search on the Sisters of the Sacred Promise and downloaded some stuff. They have convents in California, Arizona, and Texas. There’re five of them on the border and then they have a couple more in Mexico. Oaxaca, and Guerrero.”

“What are they about, catechism and stuff like that? Baptisms?”

“There’s that but it’s a little more hard-core. They take the vows, you know? All of them. Poverty, chastity, obedience, and everything else. The sacred promise is life everlasting in heaven in exchange for all the suffering and sacrifice on earth. They go on missions, taking the word of the Lord into some pretty bad areas. I’m talking about cartel areas, the poppy fields of the Montana region in Guerrero. Some of them don’t come back, Harry. Each convent has a memorial wall that lists the ones they’ve lost. Reminds me of the station memorials we have.”

“You’d think they’d leave the nuns alone.”

“Apparently not. Nobody’s safe down there.”

Bosch thought about things for a few moments. His one memory involving a nun was of the one who told him that his mother was dead. He was eleven years old at the time and she was the volunteer house mother in the county youth hall where he had been placed after the state removed him from his mother’s custody. It was supposed to be a temporary stay, but everything changed in his life that day. Somehow, in all the years since, he had connected the idea and image of nuns with death.

“What will we say to Ana?” Soto said. “I mean, if she’s there all these years later.”

“It doesn’t matter if she’s a sister or even the mother superior,” Bosch said. “She’s a suspect and that’s how we need to treat her. Remember, there’s two people out there directly responsible for dropping that firebomb down the chute. One of them could be the pope for all I care, and we’re still going to take him down. Ana Acevedo is our link to those two. She might not have known what they were going to do—my guess is that she didn’t. Maybe that’s why she ended up in a convent.”

“Right.”

They drove in silence after that and Bosch kept coming back to the memory of the nun and the indoor pool they had at MacLaren Hall. After he got the news, he broke away from the nun and dove down to the bottom of the pool. He screamed his lungs out, but not a sound broke the surface.





They got into Calexico shortly after nine. Soto had plugged the address into her phone’s GPS app and she directed Bosch into the western segment of town. The convent was located on Nosotros Street in a largely residential tract. Bosch parked at the curb right in front and opened his door.

“Bring the photo of Ana,” he said. “Just in case.”

“Got it,” Soto said.

The darkness of the evening was pierced by the shrill pitch of a cicada perched somewhere in one of the trees that lined the front lawn of the convent.

“I hate those things,” Soto said.

“Why?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t know. They always mean bad news in the Bible and in movies.”

“You’re talking about locusts. That’s a cicada.”

“Same difference. It still means bad news. You wait and see.”

The gate surrounding the convent was unlocked. They passed through and went to the door. Through a side window it appeared all was dark inside. There was a glowing doorbell button and Bosch gave it a good ride.

“What if she’s taken a vow of silence and can’t answer our questions?” he asked while they waited.

“I didn’t see the vow of silence in anything I read,” Soto said.

“I was just kidding. Somebody’s coming.”

He could see a shadow behind the glass, coming closer. The door was opened and a startlingly young woman in a full nun’s habit opened the door. She had a pretty face and dark eyes. She opened the door only a foot.

“Yes, can I help you?” she said.

“Sister, we’re sorry to bother you so late at night,” Bosch began. “We are from Los Angeles and are with the police up there.”

He showed her his badge and Soto did the same.

“We are looking for a woman who may be here at the convent,” Bosch said. “We need to talk to her.”

The woman seemed confused.

“You mean today?” she asked. “We’ve had no one come—”

“Actually, she came about twenty years ago,” Bosch said.

The nun studied him for a long moment. Bosch guessed that she was about three years old when Ana Acevedo came to the convent—if she actually did end up there.

“I’m not sure I understand,” the nun said.

Bosch nodded and tried a comforting smile on her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It is a bit confusing. We need to speak to a woman about something that happened in Los Angeles a long time ago. It’s a cold case. We are cold case detectives and the last known address we have for this woman is this convent. She forwarded mail to this location in 1994. Her name is Ana Maria Acevedo. Do you know that name? Is she here?”

Bosch could clearly see by her reaction that the name meant nothing to the nun.

“I know this was long before you got here but maybe there is someone else here who—”

“This is Ana,” Soto said.

She proffered the photo from Ana Acevedo’s last driver’s license. The nun leaned forward to look at it in the dim glow from an overhead light.

“That looks like Sister Esi,” she said. “But she’s not here.”

Bosch and Soto couldn’t help but break pose and look at each other. Ana Acevedo had taken the name of the beloved woman who had died trying to save the children in the Bonnie Brae fire.

“Are you sure?” Bosch asked.

“Well, no, but it looks like her,” the nun said.

“Is that her full name?” Soto asked. “Sister Esi?”

“No, it’s Esther,” the nun confirmed. “Sister Esther Gonzalez, but we’re not always that formal around here.”

“What is your name?” Bosch asked.

“I’m Sister Theresa.”

Bosch asked her to look at the photo again and confirm the ID. She did so and nodded.

“She’s obviously older now,” she said. “Sister Geraldine is here and she’s been here the longest. She would know for sure.”

“Can we talk to Sister Geraldine? It could be very important.”

“Could you please wait here? I’ll see if she is still awake.”

“That’s fine. But before you go, can you tell me where Sister Esther went? You said she’s not here.”

“Let me just see if Sister Geraldine is awake. I really shouldn’t be the one speaking for the convent. May I take the photo?”

Soto gave her the photo and Sister Theresa closed the door. Bosch and Soto looked at each other. Things were falling together.

“She took Esi’s name,” Soto said. “If that’s not a guilty conscience, I don’t know what is.”

Bosch just nodded and tried to reserve his excitement. Sister Esther was not in the convent. Even if she was Ana Maria Acevedo, they still had to find her and hope she’d be able to lead them to the men who started the fire.

Five minutes went by before the door was reopened. The young nun handed the photo back to Soto and announced that Sister Geraldine was waiting to speak with them.

They were led into the building and down a hallway. On one side was the memorial to the nuns who were lost. There were nine names and photos, all of them of the women in habits. They all looked the same.

They arrived at a sparely furnished sitting room with an old box television in the corner. Another nun was waiting for them. She was in her sixties and wore rimless glasses in front of sharp eyes that Bosch guessed had seen things that rivaled what his own had seen.

“Detectives, please be seated,” she said. “I am Sister Geraldine Turner but around here people call me Sister G. I believe the woman in the photograph you gave Sister Theresa is our Sister Esther. Is she all right? What is this about?”

Bosch lowered himself onto a padded bench across a coffee table from the nun. Soto sat next to him.

“Sister G, we have no news about Sister Esther,” Bosch said. “We are looking for her because we need her help on a case we’re working on.”

Sister G put her hand on her chest as if to calm her beating heart.

“Thanks be to God,” she said. “I thought perhaps the worst had happened.”

“Where exactly is Sister Esther?” Bosch asked.

“She is on a mission to Estado de Guerrero, Mexico. She went to the village of Ayutla and we have heard reports that vigilantes and narcos are fighting there. We have not heard from her in over a week now.”

“Why did she go there?”

“We all have missions, Detective. We bring books and medical supplies and we bring the word of God to children. It is our calling.”

“When was Sister Esther supposed to check in or be back? Is she overdue?”

“No, she is not overdue. She doesn’t return for another two weeks, in fact. But we make weekly contact with home base when we can. This is home base, Detective. It has been ten days since we heard from her.”

Bosch nodded. Sister G made the sign of the cross as she sent a quick prayer up for Sister Esther.

“Were you here when Sister Esther came to the convent twenty years ago?” Soto asked.

“Yes,” Sister G said. “I believe I am the only one of us here now who was in the convent then. Many of us have gone to the Lord.”

“Do you remember the circumstances of her coming here?” Soto asked.

“It was a long time ago,” the nun responded. “I do remember she was from Los Angeles—I remember because it was as though we had received an angel from the City of Angels.”

“How so?” Bosch asked.

“Well, we were in dire need at the time,” Sister G said. “We had a mortgage then and it was well overdue. We were faced with losing this wonderful place we call home base, and then she arrived. She paid off the whole mortgage. And she said she wanted to join us. We took her under our wing and led her to the vows.”

Bosch nodded.

“Would you like to see Sister Esther’s work?” Sister G asked.

“How do you mean?” Bosch asked.

She pointed to the old television to her right.

“We keep video records of our missions,” she said. “It helps with fund-raising. I believe we have Sister Esther’s last mission in the DVD player. She went to a school in Chiapas. Have you heard of the cinturones de miseria?”

Bosch looked at Soto for a translation.

“The barrio,” she said. “The slums.”

“Chiapas has the most extreme poverty in all of Mexico,” Sister G said.

The nun took a remote control off the table next to her chair and turned on the television and DVD player. Soon the screen was depicting a scene in a school where two nuns in all-white habits were serving food to children in a threadbare classroom. The children had dirty clothes and many had swollen bellies. Bosch didn’t have to ask which nun was Sister Esther. He recognized her from photographs of Ana Acevedo.

Sister G fast-forwarded the DVD and stopped it at a point where the nuns were conducting a class. Sister Esther was reading from a Bible with an ornate gold design on its leather cover. The children, who ranged in age from about six to early teens, listened with rapt attention.

Sister G jumped the video again and stopped it at a scene in which the two nuns were leaving the village where there appeared to be no paved roads and no power poles. They were about to board a colorful but old bus. Over the windshield of the bus the destination read “Cristobal de las Casas.” Bosch had never heard of the place.

A young boy of about eight didn’t want Sister Esther to leave. He was clinging to her white habit and crying. She was softly caressing the back of his head, trying to calm him.

Sister G turned the television off.

“That is Sister Esther,” she said.

“Thank you for showing us,” Bosch said.

He wondered if Sister G had a sense of why they had really come to see Sister Esther and had shown them the video to earn sympathy for her. Soto was about to say or ask something but Bosch put his hand on her arm to stop her. They had what they needed for now. He was concerned that too many more questions would create suspicion—if they hadn’t already—and word might get back to Sister Esther. He didn’t want to spook her before he got the chance to talk to her himself.

“Well, Sister,” he said, “if you don’t mind, we’re going to check with you at a later point after Sister Esther makes it back okay. When she does, we’ll come back to speak to her. We’re sorry for this intrusion and thank you for your time.”

He started to get up.

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” Sister G asked.

“Sure,” Bosch said pleasantly. “I don’t know if Sister Theresa mentioned it, but we work on a cold case squad and try to solve old cases, old crimes. Sister Esther—back when she was Ana Acevedo—was a witness to a crime and we are taking another look at it. We would like to talk to her and see if she remembers anything she might not have shared with police back then. You would be surprised by how much is imprinted on the memory and has the tendency to bubble up to the surface over time.”

The nun checked her watch and looked at Bosch suspiciously.

“I’m sure I would be,” she finally said. “If you want to leave a business card I will have Sister Esther call you as soon as she returns, the Lord willing.”

“You don’t have to bother, Sister,” Bosch said. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”