Bosch nodded reluctantly and changed the subject.

“I don’t know what the reporters told you, Mrs. Moore, but I have been sent out to tell you that it appears your husband has been found and he is dead. I am sorry to have had to tell you this. I-”

“I knew and you knew and every cop in town knew it would come to this. I didn’t talk to the reporters. I didn’t need to. I told them no comment. When that many of them come to your house on Christmas night, you know it’s because of bad news.”

He nodded and looked down at the imaginary hat in his hands.

“So, are you going to tell me? Was it an official suicide? Did he use a gun?”

Bosch nodded and said, “It looks like it but nothing is definite un-”

“Until the autopsy. I know, I know. I’m a cop’s wife. Was, I mean. I know what you can say and can’t say. You people can’t even be straight with me. Until then there are always secrets to keep to yourselves.”

He saw the hard edge enter her eyes, the anger.

“That’s not true, Mrs. Moore. I’m just trying to soften the im-”

“Detective Bosch, if you want to tell me something, just tell me.”

“Yes, Mrs. Moore, it was with a gun. If you want the details, I can give you the details. Your husband, if it was your husband, took his face off with a shotgun. Gone completely. So, we have to make sure it was him and we have to make sure he did it himself, before we can say anything for sure. We are not trying to keep secrets. We just don’t have all the answers yet.”

She leaned back in her chair, away from light. In the veil of shadows Bosch saw the look on her face. The hardness and anger in her eyes had softened. Her shoulders seemed to untighten. He felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I told you that. I should have just-”

“That’s okay. I guess I deserved it… I apologize, too.”

She looked at him then without anger in her eyes. He had broken through the shell. He could see that she needed to be with someone. The house was too big and too dark to be alone in right now. All the Christmas trees and book reports in the world couldn’t change that. But there was more than that making Bosch want to stay. He found that he was instinctively attracted to her. For Bosch it had never been an attraction of an opposite but the reverse of that myth. He had always seen something of himself in the women who attracted him. Why it was this way, he never understood. It was just there. And now this woman whose name he didn’t even know was there and he was being drawn to her. Maybe it was a reflection of himself and his own needs, but it was there and he had seen it. It hooked him and made him want to know what had etched the circles beneath such sharp eyes. Like himself, he knew, she carried her scars on the inside, buried deep, each one a mystery. She was like him. He knew.

“I’m sorry but I don’t know your name. The deputy chief just gave me the address and said go.”

She smiled at his predicament.

“It’s Sylvia.”

He nodded.

“Sylvia. Um, is that coffee I smell by any chance?”

“Yes. Would you like a cup?”

“That would be great, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all.”

She got up and as she passed in front of him so did his doubts.

“Listen, I’m sorry. Maybe I should go. You have a lot to think about and I’m intruding here. I’ve-”

“Please stay. I could use the company.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. The fire made a popping sound as the flames found the last pocket of air. He watched her head toward the kitchen. He waited a beat, took another look around the room and stood up and headed toward the lighted doorway of the kitchen.

“Black is fine.”

“Of course. You’re a cop.”

“You don’t like them much, do you. Cops.”

“Well, let’s just say I don’t have a very good record with them.”

Her back was to him and she put two mugs on the counter and poured coffee from a glass pot. He leaned against the doorway next to the refrigerator. He was unsure what to say, whether to press on with business or not.

“You have a nice home.”

“No. It’s a nice house, not a home. We’re selling it. I guess I should say I’m selling it now.”

She still hadn’t turned around.

“You know you can’t blame yourself for whatever he did.”

It was a meager offering and he knew it.

“Easier said than done.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long moment of silence then before Bosch decided to get on with it.

“There was a note.”

She stopped what she was doing but still did not turn.

“‘I found out who I was.’ That’s all he said.”

She didn’t say anything. One of the mugs was still empty.

“Does it mean anything to you?”

She finally turned to him. In the bright kitchen light he could see the salty tracks that tears had left on her face. It made him feel inadequate, that he was nothing and could do nothing to help heal her.

“I don’t know. My husband… he was caught on the past.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was just-he was always going back. He liked the past better than the present or the hope of the future. He liked to go back to the time he was growing up. He liked… He couldn’t let things go.”

He watched tears slide into the grooves below her eyes. She turned back to the counter and finished pouring the coffee.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“What happens to anybody?” For a while after that she didn’t speak, then said, “I don’t know. He wanted to go back. He had a need for something back there.”

Everybody has a need for their past, Bosch thought. Sometimes it pulls harder on you than the future. She dried her eyes with tissue and then turned and gave him a mug. He sipped it before speaking.

“Once he told me he lived in a castle,” she said. “That’s what he called it, at least.”

“In Calexico?” he asked.

“Yes, but it was for a short while. I don’t know what happened. He never told me a lot about that part of his life. It was his father. At some point, he wasn’t wanted anymore by his father. He and his mother had to leave Calexico-the castle, or whatever it was-and she took him back across the border with her. He liked to say he was from Calexico but he really grew up in Mexicali. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there.”

“Just to drive through. Never stopped.”

“That’s the general idea. Don’t stop. But he grew up there.”

She stopped and he waited her out. She was looking down at her coffee, an attractive woman who looked weary of this. She had not yet seen that this was a beginning for her as well as an end.

“It was something he never got over. The abandonment. He often went back there to Calexico. I didn’t go but I know he did. Alone. I think he was watching his father. Maybe seeing what could have been. I don’t know. He kept pictures from when he was growing up. Sometimes at night when he thought I was asleep, he’d take them out and look at them.”

“Is he still alive, the father?”

She handed him a mug of coffee.

“I don’t know. He rarely spoke of his father and when he did he said his father was dead. But I don’t know if that was metaphorically dead or that he actually was dead. He was dead as far as Cal went. That was what mattered. It was a very private thing with Cal. He still felt the rejection, all these years later. I could not get him to talk about it. Or, when he would, he would just lie, say the old man meant nothing and that he didn’t care. But he did. I could tell. After a while, after years, I have to say that I stopped trying to talk with him about it. And he would never bring it up. He’d just go down there-sometimes for a weekend, sometimes a day. He’d never talk about it when he came back.”

“Do you have the photos?”

“No, he took them when he left. He’d never leave them.”

Bosch sipped some coffee to give himself time to think.

“It seems,” he said, “I don’t know, it seems like… could this have had anything to do with…”