There was a separate packet of summaries of interviews with employees of the Island House Grill, the restaurant owned by Robert Verloren. His daughter had just started a part-time summer job at the restaurant. She was an assistant hostess during lunch. Her job was to lead customers to their tables and to put down the menus. Though Bosch knew restaurants often drew a variety of drifters to the low-level kitchen jobs, Robert Verloren avoided hiring men with criminal records, instead drawing on the population of surfers and other free spirits who flocked to the beaches of Malibu. These people would have had limited contact with Rebecca, who worked in the dining room, but they were interviewed just the same and seemingly dismissed by the investigators.

There was also a victim’s chronology in which the investigators outlined Rebecca Verloren’s movements in the days leading up to her murder. In 1988 July Fourth fell on a Monday. Rebecca spent most of the holiday weekend at home, except for a Sunday-night sleepover with three girlfriends at one of their houses. The attached summaries of interviews with these three girls were long but contained no information of investigative value.

On Monday, the holiday, she stayed home until she and her parents went to Balboa Park to watch a fireworks display. It was a rare night off for Robert Verloren and he insisted that the family stay together, much to Becky’s reported upset at missing out on a friend’s party in the Porter Ranch area.

On Tuesday the summer routine began again with Rebecca going to the restaurant with her father to work the lunch shift as a hostess. At three o’clock her father drove her home. He stayed at home through the afternoon and then headed back to the restaurant for the dinner shift at about the same time Rebecca used her mother’s car to run the errand of collecting the dry cleaning.

Bosch saw nothing in the schedule that raised suspicions, nothing that was missed by the original investigators.

He next came to a transcript of a formal interview with the parents. It was taken at Devonshire Division on July 14, more than a week after their daughter was discovered missing. By this point the detectives had accumulated a lot of case knowledge and were specific with their questions. Bosch carefully read this transcript, as much for the answers as for the insight it would give to the investigators’ view of the case at that point.

Case No. 88-641, Verloren, Rebecca (DOD 7-6-88), I/O A. Garcia, #993

7/14/88 – 2:15 p.m., Devonshire Homicide

GARCIA: Thank you for coming in. I hope you don’t mind but we are recording this so we will have a record. How are you managing?

ROBT. VERLOREN: About as well as expected. We’re devastated. We don’t know what to do.

MURIEL VERLOREN: We keep thinking, what could we have done to prevent this from happening to our little girl?

GREEN: We’re truly sorry, ma’am. But you can’t blame yourself for this. As far as we can tell it was nothing you did or didn’t do. It just happened. Don’t blame yourself. Blame the person who did this.

GARCIA: And we are going to get him. You don’t have to worry about that. Now, we have some questions we need to ask. Some of these might be painful but we need the answers if we are going to get this guy.

ROBT. VERLOREN: You keep saying “guy.” Is there a suspect? Do you know it was a man?

GARCIA: We don’t know anything for sure, sir. We’re mostly going with the percentages there. But also you have that steep hill behind your house. Becky was definitely carried up that hill. She wasn’t a big girl but we definitely think it would have to be a man.

MURIEL VERLOREN: But you said she wasn’t… that there was no sexual assault.

GARCIA: That is true, ma’am. But that does not preclude this from being a sexually motivated or related crime.

ROBT. VERLOREN: How do you mean?

GARCIA: We will get to that, sir. If you don’t mind, let us ask our questions and then we will get to your questions if you would like.

ROBT. VERLOREN: Go ahead, please. I’m sorry. It’s just that we cannot understand what has happened. It’s like we are underwater all the time.

GARCIA: That is completely understandable. As I said, you have our deepest sympathy. From the department, too. We have the upper echelon of this department watching over this case very closely.

GREEN: We would like to start by going back before her disappearance. Maybe a month before. Did your daughter go away at all during that time?

ROBT. VERLOREN: What do you mean, away?

GARCIA: Was she away from you at any time?

ROBT. VERLOREN: No. She was sixteen. She was in school. She didn’t go away on her own.

GREEN: What about a sleepover with her friends?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No, I don’t think so.

ROBT. VERLOREN: What are you looking for?

GREEN: Was she sick at all in the month or two prior to the disappearance?

MURIEL VERLOREN: Yes, she had the flu the first week after school ended. It delayed her going to work for Bob.

GREEN: Was she in bed sick?

MURIEL VERLOREN: A lot of the time. I don’t see what this has to -

GARCIA: Mrs. Verloren, did your daughter go to see a doctor at this time?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No, she just said she had to rest. To tell you the truth, we thought she just didn’t want to go to work in the restaurant. She didn’t have a fever or a cold. We just thought she was being lazy.

GREEN: She didn’t confide in you at this time that she had been pregnant?

MURIEL VERLOREN: What? No!

ROBT. VERLOREN: Look, Detective, what are you telling us?

GREEN: The autopsy revealed that Becky had had a procedure called a dilation and curettage about a month before her death. An abortion. Our guess is that she was resting and recovering from this procedure when she told you she had the flu.

GARCIA: Would you two like to take a break here?

GREEN: Why don’t we take a break? We’ll step out and get all of us some water.

[Break]

GARCIA: Okay, we’re back. I hope you understand and forgive us. We do not ask questions or attempt to shock you to hurt you. We need to follow procedure and employ methods that allow us to collect information that is unfettered by preconceived perceptions.

ROBT. VERLOREN: We understand what you are doing. It’s part of our life now. What’s left of it.

MURIEL VERLOREN: You are saying our daughter was pregnant and chose to get an abortion?

GARCIA: Yes, that’s right. And we think there is a possibility that it could have a bearing on what happened to her a month later. Do you have any idea where she would have gone for this procedure?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No. I had no idea about this. Neither of us.

GREEN: And as you said before, she did not go away overnight during that time?

MURIEL VERLOREN: No, she was home every night.

GARCIA: Any idea who the relationship could have been with? In our earlier talks you said she had no current boyfriend.

MURIEL VERLOREN: Well, obviously I guess we were wrong about that. But, no, we don’t know who she was seeing or who could have… done this.

GREEN: Have either of you ever read the journal that your daughter kept?

ROBT. VERLOREN: No, we didn’t even know there was a journal until you found it in her room.

MURIEL VERLOREN: I would like to get that back. Will I get that back?

GREEN: We will need to keep it through the investigation but you will eventually get it back.

GARCIA: There are several references in the journal to an individual referred to as MTL. This is a person we would like to identify and talk to.

MURIEL VERLOREN: I don’t know anyone with those initials offhand.

GREEN: We looked at the school’s yearbook. There is one boy named Michael Lewis. But we checked and his middle name is Charles. We think the initials were a code or an abbreviation. It could stand for My True Love.