“I don’t recall.”
“Okay, going back to her birthday, you don’t remember the date but do you remember ever celebrating it with her during those eight months?”
Vance thought a moment and then shook his head.
“No, I can’t remember a birthday occurring,” he said.
“And if I have this right, you were together from late October till June and maybe early July, so her birthday would have likely been somewhere in July to late October. Roughly.”
Vance nodded. Narrowing it to four months might help at some point when Bosch was going through records. Attaching a birth date to the name Vibiana Duarte would be a key starting point. He wrote the spread of months down and the likely birth year: 1933. He then looked up at Vance.
“Do you think your father paid her or her family off?” he asked. “So they would keep quiet and just go away?”
“If he did, he never told me that,” Vance said. “I was the one who went away. An act of cowardice I have always regretted.”
“Have you ever looked for her before now? Ever paid anybody else to?”
“No, sadly, I have not. I can’t say if anyone else has.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that it is quite possible such a search was conducted as a preemptive move in preparation for my death.”
Bosch thought about that for a long moment. He then looked at the few notes he had written. He felt he had enough to start.
“You said you had a cover story for me?”
“Yes, James Franklin Aldridge. Write it down.”
“Who is he?”
“My first roommate at USC. He was dismissed from school in the first semester.”
“For academics?”
“No, for something else. Your cover is that I asked you to find my college roommate because I want to make amends for something we both did but he took the blame for. This way, if you are looking at records from that time, it will seem plausible.”
Bosch nodded.
“It might work. Is it a true story?”
“It is.”
“I should probably know what it is you both did.”
“You don’t need to know that to find him.”
Bosch waited a moment but that was all Vance had to say on the subject. Harry wrote the name down after checking the spelling of Aldridge with Vance and then closed his notebook.
“Last question. The odds are Vibiana Duarte is dead by now. But what if she had the child and I find living heirs? What do you want me to do? Do I make contact?”
“No, absolutely not. You make no contact until you report to me. I’ll need thorough confirmation before any approach will be made.”
“DNA confirmation?”
Vance nodded and studied Bosch for a long moment before once more going to the desk drawer. He removed a padded white envelope with nothing written on it. He slid it across the desk to Bosch.
“I am trusting you, Mr. Bosch. I have now given you all you need to trick an old man if you want. I trust you won’t.”
Bosch picked up the envelope. It wasn’t sealed. He looked into it and saw a clear glass test tube containing a swab used to collect saliva. It was Vance’s DNA sample.
“This is where you could be tricking me, Mr. Vance.”
“How so?”
“It would have been better if I had swabbed you, collected this myself.”
“You have my word.”
“And you have mine.”
Vance nodded and there did not seem to be anything else to say.
“I think I have what I need to start.”
“Then I have a final question for you, Mr. Bosch.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m curious because it wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper stories I read about you. But you appear to be the right age. What was your status during the Vietnam War?”
Bosch paused a moment before answering.
“I was over there,” he finally said. “Two tours. I probably flew more times on the helicopters you helped build than you ever did.”
Vance nodded.
“Probably so,” he said.
Bosch stood up.
“How do I reach you if I have more questions or want to report what I find out?”
“Of course.”
Vance opened the desk drawer and removed a business card. He handed it to Bosch with a shaking hand. There was a phone number printed on it, nothing else.
“Call that number and you will get to me. If it’s not me, then something is wrong. Don’t trust anyone else you speak to.”
Bosch looked from the number on the card to Vance, sitting in his wheelchair, his papier-maché skin and wispy hair looking as frail as dried leaves. He wondered if his caution was paranoia or if there was a real danger to the information he would be seeking.
“Are you in danger, Mr. Vance?” he asked.
“A man in my position is always in danger,” Vance said.
Bosch ran his thumb along the crisp edge of the business card.
“I’ll get back to you soon,” he said.
“We have not discussed payment for your services,” Vance said.
“You’ve paid me enough to start. Let’s see how it goes.”
“That payment was only to get you to come here.”
“Well, it worked and it’s more than enough, Mr. Vance. All right if I find my way out? Or will that set off a security alarm?”
“As soon as you leave this room they’ll know it and come to meet you.”
Vance registered Bosch’s puzzled look.
“This is the only room in the house not under camera surveillance,” he explained. “There are cameras to watch over me even in my bedroom. But I insisted on privacy here. As soon as you leave, they will come.”
Bosch nodded.
“I understand,” he said. “Talk to you soon.”
He stepped through the door and started down the hallway. Soon enough Bosch was met by the man in the suit and escorted wordlessly through the house and out to his car.
4
Working cold cases had made Bosch proficient in time travel. He knew how to go back into the past to find people. Going back to 1951 would be the farthest and likely the most difficult trek he had ever made but he believed he was up to it and that made him excited about the challenge.
The starting point was finding the birth date of Vibiana Duarte and he believed he knew the best way to accomplish that. Rather than go home after his meeting with Vance, Bosch took the 210 freeway across the northern rim of the Valley and headed toward the city of San Fernando.
Barely bigger than two square miles in size, San Fernando was an island city within the megalopolis of Los Angeles. A hundred years earlier all of the small towns and cities that comprised the San Fernando Valley were annexed into Los Angeles for one reason: the newly built Los Angeles Aqueduct offered bountiful supplies of water that would keep their rich agricultural fields from drying up and blowing away. One by one they were added and Los Angeles grew and spread north, eventually taking in the area’s entire sprawl. All except for the 2.3 square miles of the Valley’s namesake, the city of San Fernando. The little town didn’t need L.A.’s water. Its ground supplies were more than adequate. Avoiding the overture of the big city that now surrounded it, it stayed independent.
A hundred years later it remained so. The Valley’s agriculture pedigree may have long ago given way to urban sprawl and urban blight, but the city of San Fernando remained a quaint throwback to small-town sensibilities. Of course, urban issues and crime were unavoidable but they were nothing the tiny town’s police department couldn’t routinely take care of.