Bosch went back to his mapping and started including streets that in 1949 and 1950 still provided walking access to the northeast corner of campus, where the EVK was located. Soon he had a list of fourteen streets with a four-block range of address numbers. At the library he would first look up the name Duarte in the old directories and see if any were located on the streets and blocks on the list. Back then almost everybody was listed in the phone book—if they had a phone.
He was leaning over his phone’s small screen, checking the map for side streets he might have missed, when Flora came back from the bowels of the record center. She was carrying one spool for the microfilm machine triumphantly up in her hand and that immediately put a charge in Bosch’s bloodstream. Flora had found Vibiana.
“She not born here,” Flora said. “Mexico.”
This confused Bosch. He stood up and headed to the counter.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“It say on her death certificate,” Flora said. “Loreto.”
Flora had pronounced the name wrong but Bosch understood it. He had once traced a murder suspect to Loreto, far down the inner coast of the Baja peninsula. He guessed if he went there now he would find a St. Vibiana’s Cathedral or Church.
“You already found her death certificate?” he asked.
“Not taking long,” Flora said. “Only look to nineteen and fifty-one.”
Her words sucked the air out of Bosch. Vibiana was not only dead, but dead so long. He had heard her name for the first time less than six hours ago but already he had found her—in a way. He wondered how Vance would react to the news.
He held his hand out for the microfilm reel. As Flora handed it to him she told him the record number he should look for: 51-459. Bosch recognized it as a low number, even for 1951. The four hundred and fifty-ninth death recorded in L.A. County that year. How far into the year could that be? A month? Two?
A fleeting thought came to him. He looked at Flora. Had she read the cause of death when she found the document?
“She died in childbirth?” he asked.
Flora looked puzzled.
“Uh, no,” she said. “But you read. Make sure.”
Bosch took the spool and turned back to the machine. He quickly threaded the film through and turned on the projection light. There was an automatic feed controlled with a button. He sped through the documents, stopping every few seconds to check the record number stamped at the top corner. He was halfway through February before he got to the four hundred and fifty-ninth death. When he found the document, he saw that the State of California certificate of death had not changed much over the decades. It might have been the oldest such document he had ever looked at but he was intimately familiar with it. His eyes dropped down to the section the coroner or attending physician filled in. The cause of death was handwritten: strangulation by ligature (clothesline) due to suicide.
Bosch stared for a long time at the line without moving or breathing. Vibiana had killed herself. No details were written beyond what he had already read. There was just a signature too scribbled to decipher, followed by the printed words Deputy Coroner.
Bosch leaned back and took in air. He felt immense sadness come over him. He didn’t know all the details. He had heard only Vance’s view of the story—an eighteen-year-old’s experience filtered through the frail and guilty memory of an eighty-five-year-old. But he knew enough to know that what happened to Vibiana wasn’t right. Vance had left her on the wrong side of good-bye, and what happened in June brought about what happened in February. Bosch had a gut feeling that Vibiana’s life was taken from her long before she put the rope around her neck.
The death certificate offered details that Bosch wrote down. Vibiana took her life on February 12, 1951. She was seventeen. Her next of kin was listed as her father, Victor Duarte. His address was on Hope Street, which had been one of the streets Bosch had written down after studying the map of the USC neighborhood. The street name seemed like a sad irony now.
The lone curiosity on the document was the location of death. There was only an address on North Occidental Boulevard. Bosch knew that Occidental was west of downtown near Echo Park and not at all close to Vibiana’s home neighborhood. He opened his phone and typed the address into the search app. It came back as the address of St. Helen’s Home for Unwed Mothers. The search provided several websites associated with St. Helen’s and a link to a 2008 story in the Los Angeles Times marking the one-hundredth anniversary of the facility.
Bosch quickly pulled up the link and started reading the story.
Maternity Home Marks 100th Birthday
By Scott B. Anderson, Staff Writer
St. Helen’s Home for Unwed Mothers is marking its 100th birthday this week with a celebration that honors its evolution from a place of family secrets to a center for family life.
The three-acre complex near Echo Park will be the site of a full week of programs, including a family picnic and featuring an address from a woman who more than 50 years ago was forced by family to give up her newborn for adoption at the center.
Just as social mores have changed in the last few decades, so has St. Helen’s. Getting prematurely pregnant once resulted in the mother being hidden away, delivering a child in secret and then having that child immediately taken away for adoption…
Bosch stopped reading as he came to understand what had happened sixty-five years ago to Vibiana Duarte.
“She had the baby,” he whispered. “And they took it away from her.”
8
Bosch looked over at the counter. Flora was looking at him strangely.
“Harry, you okay?” she asked.
He got up without answering and came to the counter.
“Flora, I need birth records for the first two months of 1951,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “What name?”
“I’m not sure. Duarte or Vance. I’m not sure how it would be listed. Give me your pen and I’ll write it down.”
“Okay.”
“The hospital will be St. Helen’s. In fact, I want to look at all births at St. Helen’s the first two—”
“No, no St. Helen Hospital in L.A. County.”
“It’s not exactly a hospital. It’s for unwed mothers.”
“No record here, then.”
“What are you talking about? There has to be a—”
“Records secret. When a baby is born, get adopted. New certificate come in and no mention of St. Helen. You see?”
Bosch wasn’t sure if he was tracking what she was trying to tell him. He knew there were all kinds of privacy laws protecting adoption records.
“You’re saying they don’t file the birth certificate until after the adoption?” he asked.
“Exactly,” Flora said.
“And it only has the names of the new parents on it?”
“Uh-huh. True.”
“And the baby’s new name?”
Flora nodded.
“What about the hospital? They lie about that?”
“They say home birth.”
In frustration Bosch slapped his hands down flat on the counter.
“So there is no way I can find out who her child was?”
“I’m sorry, Harry. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad, Flora. At least not at you.”
“You good detective, Harry Bosch. You figure it out.”
“Yeah, Flora. I’ll figure it out.”
Hands still on the counter, Bosch leaned down and tried to think. There had to be a way to find the child. He thought about going to St. Helen’s. It might be his only shot. He then thought of something else and looked back up at Flora.
“Harry, I never see you this way,” she said.
“I know, Flora,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t like dead ends. Can you bring me the reels with births in January and February 1951, please?”
“You sure? You got a lot a births in two month.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Okay, then.”
Flora disappeared again and Bosch went back to the microfilm cubicle to wait. Checking his watch, he realized that it was likely he would be looking through microfilm until the office closed at 5:00. He would then face a brutal rush-hour drive through the heart of downtown and up into Hollywood to get home, a slog that could take two hours. Since he was closer to Orange County than home, he decided to text his daughter on the off chance she’d have time for dinner away from the Chapman University student cafeteria.
Mads, I’m in Norwalk on a case. I could come down for dinner if you have time.
She texted back right away.
Where is Norwalk?