City of Bones (harry Bosch, #8; Harry Bosch Universe, #11)

The eighth novel in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series follows LAPD Homicide Detective Harry Bosch through a case that begins with a dog's discovery and spirals into child abuse, false confessions, and devastating loss.

On New Year's Day, Bosch is working holiday call-out duty in Hollywood Division when he receives an unusual report: A retired physician named Dr. Paul Guyot says his dog brought home a bone from the wooded hillside above Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon. The doctor identifies it as the humerus, or upper arm bone, of a child. Bosch drives to the scene alone; his partner, Jerry Edgar, is unavailable, and the third slot on their team has been vacant since Kizmin Rider's promotion to the Robbery-Homicide Division. At Guyot's house, Bosch meets patrol officers Julia Brasher, a rookie, and her training partner Edgewood. He climbs the steep hillside and beneath a stand of acacia trees finds finger bones of a small hand in disturbed soil. Teresa Corazon, the county medical examiner, confirms the bone is human and mobilizes a forensic team.

By morning the street is packed with officers, criminalists, and media trucks. Forensic archeologist Kathy Kohl supervises a grid excavation she labels "City of Bones." About forty yards from the main grave, Brasher finds a child's skull with fracture lines and surgical scarring, suggesting homicide. Over two days, roughly sixty percent of a skeleton is recovered along with deteriorated clothing, a canvas backpack bearing a letter "B," and a 1975 quarter establishing the earliest possible date of death.

Forensic anthropologist Dr. William Golliher identifies the remains as a young male, likely twelve or thirteen, dead an estimated twenty to twenty-five years. He catalogs forty-four distinct trauma sites in various stages of healing: twist fractures of the arm, an unset forearm break, nearly two dozen rib fractures dating from age two, and facial damage. The skull shows three cranial fractures. One required trephine surgery, a procedure in which holes are drilled to relieve brain swelling, approximately six months before death. The fatal wound is a tight fracture consistent with a blow from a hard object. Golliher notes the surgery will have left hospital records. Bosch silently vows to find the killer.

Meanwhile, Bosch begins a relationship with Brasher, a former lawyer who joined the LAPD at thirty-four after traveling the world. The relationship violates department regulations because Bosch holds a D-3 supervisor-level rank.

Running computer checks on Wonderland Avenue residents, Bosch discovers that Nicholas Trent, a set decorator living across from the burial site, was convicted of child molestation in 1966. Trent reluctantly lets the detectives inside after Bosch frames the visit as routine. Bosch searches the house while Edgar records an interview. That night, reporter Judy Surtain of Channel 4 broadcasts Trent's criminal record. Bosch traces the leak to Rider's new partner, Rick Thornton, and confirms it by feeding false information that Thornton passes to Surtain. Trent's employer fires him. The next morning Bosch and Edgar find Trent hanged in his shower. A suicide note denies involvement; a search reveals Trent spent his income supporting children's charities worldwide.

Deputy Chief Irvin Irving pressures Bosch to close the case by blaming Trent, but Bosch resists: The estimated time of death places the killing years before Trent moved to Wonderland in 1984.

A tip call breaks the case open. Sheila Delacroix phones to say her younger brother Arthur disappeared May 4, 1980, at age twelve. Months before, he had brain surgery after what the family called a skateboard accident. Golliher compares hospital X-rays to the recovered skull and confirms a match. Edgar's research reveals the father, Samuel Delacroix, is a failed actor drinking heavily in a trailer park. The mother, Christine Waters, left the family when Arthur was two and remarried into wealth in Palm Springs; their divorce cited physical abuse. Arthur's only friend was Johnny Stokes, a troubled older boy with a long criminal record who has recently disappeared after clearing parole.

At Sheila's childhood home, she tells the detectives Arthur attended The Brethren, a private school for troubled boys, and carried a backpack with a "B" on it. Edgar spots a photo of Arthur wearing a "Solid Surf" T-shirt, matching one found with the bones. In Palm Springs, Christine confirms Samuel was violent toward her but says she never saw him strike the children.

Bosch and Edgar attempt to pick up Stokes at a car wash. Stokes sprays commercial tire cleaner into Bosch's face, temporarily blinding him, and flees into an underground parking garage. Brasher corners him on the lower level. Bosch, his vision impaired, approaches and sees Brasher step back from Stokes. A gunshot fills the garage and Brasher falls. Bosch sees no struggle. The bullet strikes bone in Brasher's shoulder, ricochets into her chest, and pierces her heart; she dies before reaching the hospital. Irving declares the shooting accidental and tells Bosch to consider retirement. At the funeral, Bosch confides to the department psychologist his suspicion that Brasher deliberately wounded herself to create a pretext for shooting Stokes.

Bosch and Edgar serve a search warrant on Samuel Delacroix's trailer. Before Bosch can read him his rights, Delacroix confesses: He struck Arthur with a souvenir baseball bat, put the body in his trunk, and buried it on the Wonderland hillside while drunk. Bosch is skeptical. He hauls a seventy-pound test dummy up the hillside at night and barely makes it, concluding a drunk man could not have managed the climb. Returning to the trailer, he discovers fourteen Polaroid photos hidden beneath a drawer, documenting years of the father's sexual abuse of Sheila. When told her father has confessed and been charged, Sheila insists she never saw him hit Arthur.

Bosch theorizes that Sheila, herself a victim of her father's abuse, became the one who chronically hurt Arthur. Samuel suspected Sheila killed Arthur and confessed to protect her. A newspaper article gave Delacroix enough crime scene detail to fabricate a believable confession. On arraignment morning, when told Sheila provided the identification tip and offered a polygraph, Delacroix recants. The charge is dropped. Confronted at her workplace, Sheila admits she came home on May 4, 1980, and saw Arthur packing his backpack to run away. She went to her room and closed the door. Arthur left the house alive.

A breakthrough comes from the LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division (SID). Criminalist Antoine Jesper finds "1980 A.D." scratched under the skateboard from Trent's house: Arthur Delacroix's initials. Bosch traces the board to a foster home on Wonderland where Stokes lived in 1980. When Stokes was removed after a car theft, he left the skateboard behind; the foster parents later sold it to Trent at a garage sale. Bosch reconstructs the crime: Arthur ran to his friend Stokes on Wonderland, and Stokes killed him on the hillside, burying him in a shallow grave. Edgar notes Stokes was only thirteen, making prosecution nearly impossible.

Bosch receives an unexpected transfer to the Robbery-Homicide Division's Homicide Special unit; Irving warns it is Bosch's final opportunity. A police team raids the Hotel Usher, a condemned flophouse where Stokes is squatting. Officer Edgewood shoots and kills Stokes under ambiguous circumstances. The case is classified as closed by other means.

Arthur is buried at Forest Lawn in the rain. His estranged family stands at separate points around the coffin, unable to look at one another. Bosch gives Christine Waters a box of correspondence from Trent's children's charities.

On his last night, alone in the squad room, Bosch finds Brasher's note to him. He reflects on the case's toll and realizes that the mission he thought sustained him may also be what destroys him. He places his badge, ID, and gun in his desk drawer, locks it, and leaves the key on the desk of Lt. Grace Billets, his commanding officer. He walks out the front door of Hollywood Division, calls a cab, and waits in the rain.