The Concrete Blonde

by Michael Connelly

  “Right is might.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Bosch thought about what Edgar had said about Chandler. It was interesting how often a threat from a woman, even a professional woman, was reduced by cops to a sexual threat. He believed that most cops might be like Edgar, thinking there was something about Chandler’s sexuality that gave her an edge. They would not admit that she was damn good at her job, whereas the fat city attorney defending Bosch wasn’t.

  Bosch stood up and went back to the file cabinets. He unlocked one of his drawers and dug into the back to pull out two of the blue binders that were called murder books. Both were heavy, about three inches thick. On the spine of the first it said BIOS. The other was labeled DOCS. They were from the Dollmaker case.

  “Who’s testifying tomorrow?” Edgar called from across the squad room.

  “I don’t know the order. The judge wouldn’t make her say. But she’s got me subpoenaed, also Lloyd and Irving. She’s got Amado, the ME coordinator, and even Bremmer. They all gotta show up and then she’ll say which ones she’ll put on tomorrow and which ones later.”

  “The Times isn’t going to let Bremmer testify. They always fight that shit.”

  “Yeah, but he isn’t subpoenaed as a Times reporter. He wrote that book about the case. So she served paper on him as the author. Judge Keyes already ruled he doesn’t have the same reporter’s-shield rights. Times lawyers may show up to argue but the judge already made the ruling. Bremmer testifies.”

  “See what I mean, she’s probably already been back in chambers with that old guy. Anyway, it’s no matter, Bremmer can’t hurt you. That book made you out like the hero who saved the day.”

  “I guess.”

  “Harry, come here and take a look at this.”

  Edgar got up from his typing station and went over to the file cabinets. He gingerly slid a cardboard box off the top and put it down on the homicide table. It was about the size of a hatbox.

  “Gotta be careful. Donovan says it should set overnight.”

  He lifted off the top of the box and there was a woman’s face set in white plaster. The face was turned slightly so that its right side was fully sculpted in the plaster. Most of the lower left side, the jawline, was missing. The eyes were closed, the mouth slightly open and irregular. The hairline was almost unnoticeable. The face seemed swollen by the right eye. It was like a classical frieze Bosch had seen in a cemetery or a museum somewhere. But it wasn’t beautiful. It was a death mask.

  “Looks like the guy popped her on the eye. It swelled up.”

  Bosch nodded but didn’t speak. There was something unnerving about looking at the face in the box, more so than looking at an actual dead body. He didn’t know why. Edgar finally put the top back on the box and carefully put it back on top of the file cabinet.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Not sure. If we don’t get anything from the prints it might be our only way of getting an ID. There’s an anthropologist at Cal State Northridge that contracts with the coroner to make facial recreations. Usually, he’s working from a skeleton, a skull. I’ll take this to him and see if he can maybe finish the face, put a blonde wig on it or something. He can paint the plaster, too, give it a skin color. I don’t know, it’s probably just pissing in the wind but I figure it’s worth a try.”

  Edgar returned to the typewriter and Bosch sat down in front of the murder books. He opened the binder marked BIOS but then sat there and watched Edgar for a few moments. He did not know whether he should admire Edgar’s hustle on the case or not. They had been partners once and Bosch had essentially spent a year training him to be a homicide investigator. But he was never sure how much of it took. Edgar was always going off to look at real estate, taking two-hour lunches to go to closings. He never seemed to understand that the homicide squad wasn’t a job. It was a mission. As surely as murder was an art for some who committed it, homicide investigation was an art for those on the mission. And it chose you, you didn’t choose it.

  With that in mind it was hard for Bosch to accept that Edgar was busting ass on the case for the right reasons.

  “What’re you looking at?” Edgar asked without looking up from the IBM or stopping his typing.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking about stuff.”

  “Harry, don’t worry. It’s going to work out.”

  Bosch dumped his cigarette butt in a Styrofoam cup of dead coffee and lit another.

  “Did the priority Pounds put on the case open up the OT?”

  “Absolutely,” Edgar said, smiling. “You’re looking at a man who has his head fully in the overtime trough.”

  At least he was honest about it, Bosch thought. Content that his original take on Edgar was still intact, Bosch went back to the murder book and ran his fingers along the edge of the thick sheaf of reports on its three rings. There were eleven divider tabs, each marked with a name of one of the Dollmaker’s victims. He began leafing from section to section, looking at the crime scene photographs from each killing and the biographical data of each victim.

  The women had all come from similar backgrounds; street prostitutes, the higher-class escort outfits, strippers, porno actresses who did outcall work on the side. The Dollmaker had moved comfortably along the underside of the city. He had found his victims with the same ease that they had gone into the darkness with him. There was a pattern in that, Bosch remembered the task force’s psychologist had said.

  But looking at the frozen faces of death in the photographs, Bosch remembered that the task force had never gotten a fix on common physical aspects of the victims. There were blondes and brunettes. Heavy-set women and frail drug addicts. There were six white women, two Latinas, two Asians and a black woman. No pattern. The Dollmaker had been indiscriminate in that respect, his only identifiable pattern being that he sought only women on the edge—that place where choices are limited and they go easily with a stranger. The psychologist had said each of the women was like an injured fish, sending off an invisible signal that inevitably drew the shark.

  “She was white, right?” he asked Edgar.

  Edgar stopped typing.

  “Yeah, that’s what the coroner said.”

  “They already did the cut? Who?”

  “No, the autopsy’s tomorrow or the next day but Corazón took a look when we brought it in. She guessed that the stiff had been white. Why?”

  “Nothing. Blonde?”

  “Yeah, at least when she died. Bleached. If you’re going to ask if I checked missing persons on a white blonde chick who went into the wind four years ago, fuck you, Harry. I can use the OT but that description wouldn’t narrow it down to but three, four hundred. I ain’t going to wade into that when I’ll probably pull a name on the prints tomorrow. Waste of time.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just wish . . .”

  “You just wish you had some answers. We all do. But things take time sometimes, my man.”

  Edgar started typing again and Harry looked down into the binder. But he couldn’t help but think about the face in the box. No name, no occupation. They knew nothing about her. But something about the plaster cast told him she had somehow fit into the Dollmaker’s pattern. There was a hardness there that had nothing to do with the plaster. She had come from the edge.

  “Anything else found in the concrete after I left?”

  Edgar stopped typing, exhaled loudly and shook his head.

  “How do you mean, like the cigarette package?”

  “With the other ones the Dollmaker left their purses. He’d cut the straps off to strangle them, but when he dumped the bodies we always found the purses and clothes nearby. Only thing missing was their makeup. He always kept their makeup.”

  “Not this time—at least in the concrete. Pounds left a uniform on the site while they finished tearing it up. Nothing else was found. That stuff might’ve been stashed in the storage room and got burned up or looted. Harry, what’re you thinking, copycat?
”

  “I guess.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Bosch nodded and told Edgar he was sorry he kept interrupting. He went back to studying the reports. After a few minutes Edgar rolled the form out of the typewriter and brought it back to the homicide table. He snapped it into a new binder with the thin stack of paperwork from the day’s case and put it into a file cabinet behind his chair. He then went through his daily ritual of calling his wife while straightening up the blotter, the message spike and the message pad at his place. He told her he had to make a quick stop on his way home. Listening to the conversation made Bosch think of Sylvia Moore and some of the domestic rituals that had become ingrained for them.

  “I’m outta here, Harry,” Edgar said after hanging up.

  Bosch nodded.

  “So how come you’re hanging around?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just reading through this stuff so I’ll know what I’m saying when I testify.”

  That was a lie. He didn’t need the murder books to refresh his memory of the Dollmaker.

  “I hope you tear Money Chandler up.”

  “She’ll probably rip me. She’s good.”

  “Well, I gotta hit it. I’ll see you.”

  “Hey, remember, if you get a name tomorrow, give me a beep or something.”

  After Edgar was gone Bosch looked at his watch—it was five—and turned on the TV that sat on top of the file cabinet next to the box with the face in it. While he was waiting for the story on the body he picked up his phone and dialed Sylvia’s house.

  “I’m not going to make it out there tonight.”

  “Harry, what’s wrong? How did the opening statements go?”

  “It’s not the trial. It’s another case. A body was found today, looks a lot like the Dollmaker did it. We got a note at the station. Basically said I killed the wrong guy. That the Dollmaker, the real one, is still out there.”

  “Can it be true?”

  “I don’t know. There had been no doubt before today.”

  “How could—”

  “Wait a minute, the story’s on the news. Channel 2.”

  “I’ll put it on.”

  They watched on separate TVs but connected by phone as the story was reported on the early news show. The anchor reported nothing about the Dollmaker. There was an aerial shot of the scene and then a sound bite of Pounds saying that little was known, that an anonymous tip had led police to the body. Harry and Sylvia both laughed when they saw Pounds’s char-smeared forehead. It felt good to Bosch to laugh. After the report Sylvia turned serious.

  “So, he didn’t tell the media.”

  “Well, we have to make sure. We have to figure out what’s going on first. It was either him or a copycat . . . or maybe he had a partner we didn’t know about.”

  “When will you know which direction to go?”

  It was a nice way of asking when he’d know if he had killed an innocent man.

  “I don’t know, probably tomorrow. Autopsy will tell us some things. But the ID will tell us when she died.”

  “Harry, it wasn’t the Dollmaker. Don’t you worry.”

  “Thanks, Sylvia.”

  Her unequivocal loyalty was beautiful, he thought. He then immediately felt guilty because he had never been totally open with her about all the things that concerned them. He had been the one who held back.

  “You still haven’t said how it went in court today or why you aren’t coming out here like you said you would.”

  “It’s this new case they found today. I am involved . . . and I want to do some thinking on it.”

  “You can think anywhere, Harry.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. And court?”

  “It went fine, I guess. We only had openers. Testimony starts tomorrow. But this new case . . . It’s sort of hanging over everything.”

  He switched the channels as he spoke but he had missed reports on the new body discovery on the other channels.

  “Well, what’s your lawyer say about it?”

  “Nothing. He doesn’t want to know about it.”

  “What a shit.”

  “He just wants to get through the case quickly, hope that if the Dollmaker or a partner is still running around out there, that we don’t confirm it until the trial is over.”

  “But, Harry, that is unethical. Even if it is evidence in the plaintiff’s favor, doesn’t he have to bring it forward?”

  “Yes, if he knows about it. That’s just it. He doesn’t want to know about it. That makes him safe.”

  “When will it be your turn to testify? I want to be there. I can take a personal day and be there.”

  “No. Don’t worry. It’s all a formality. I don’t want you to know any more about this story than you do already.”

  “Why? It’s your story.”

  “No it’s not. It’s his.”

  He hung up after telling her he’d call her the next day. Afterward, he looked at the phone on the table in front of him for a long time. He and Sylvia Moore had been spending three or four nights a week together for nearly a year. Though Sylvia had been the one who spoke of changing the arrangement and even had her house for sale, Bosch had never wanted to touch the question for fear that it might disturb the fragile balance and comfort he felt with her.

  He wondered now if he was doing just that, disturbing the balance. He had lied to her. He was involved in the new case to some degree, but he was done for the day and was going home. He had lied because he felt the need to be alone. With his thoughts. With the Dollmaker.

  He flipped through the second binder to the back where there were clear plastic Ziploc pouches for holding documentary evidence. In these were copies of the Dollmaker’s previous letters. There were three of them. The killer had begun sending them after the media firestorm started and he had been christened with the name Dollmaker. One had gone to Bosch, prior to the eleventh killing—the last. The other two had gone to Bremmer at the Times after the seventh and eleventh killings. Harry now studied the photocopy of the envelope that was addressed to him in a printed script of block letters. Then he looked at the poem on the folded page. It also had been printed in the same oddly slanted block script. He read the words he already knew by heart.

  I feel compelled to forewarn and forsake.

  T’night I’m out for a snack—my lust partake.

  Another doll for the shelf, as it were’t.

  She breathes her last—just as I squirt.

  A little late mommy and daddy weeple

  A fine young miss ’neath my steeple.

  As I tight the purse strings ’fore preparing the wash.

  I hear the last gasp—a sound like Boschhhhh!

  Bosch closed the binders and put them in his briefcase. He turned off the TV and headed out to the back parking lot. He held the station door for two uniform cops who were wrestling with a handcuffed drunk. The drunk threw a kick out at him but Harry stepped outside of its reach.

  He pointed the Caprice north and took Outpost Road up to Mulholland, which he then took to Woodrow Wilson. After pulling into the carport, he sat with his hands on the wheel for a long time. He thought about the letters and the signature the Dollmaker had left on each victim’s body, the cross painted on the toenail. After Church was dead they figured out what it had meant. The cross had been the steeple. The steeple of a Church.

  5

  In the morning, Bosch sat on the rear deck of his house and watched the sun come up over the Cahuenga Pass. It burned away the morning fog and bathed the wildflowers on the hillside that had burned the winter before. He watched and smoked and drank coffee until the sound of traffic on the Hollywood Freeway became one uninterrupted hiss from the pass below.

  He dressed in his dark blue suit with a white shirt that had a button-down collar. As he put on a maroon tie dotted with gold gladiator helmets in front of the bedroom mirror, he wondered about how he must appear to the jurors. He had noticed the day before that when
he made eye contact with any of the twelve, they were always the first to look away. What did that mean? He would have liked to ask Belk what it meant but he did not like Belk and knew he would feel uncomfortable asking his opinion on anything.

  Using the same hole poked through it before, he secured the tie in place with his silver tie tack that said “187”—the California penal code for murder. He used a plastic comb to put his brown-and-gray hair, still wet from the shower, in place and then combed his mustache. He put Visine drops in his eyes and then leaned close to the glass to study them. Red-rimmed from little sleep, the irises as dark as ice on asphalt. Why do they look away from me, he wondered again. He thought about how Chandler had described him the day before. And he knew why.

  He was heading to the door, briefcase in hand, when it opened before he got there. Sylvia stepped in while pulling her key out of the lock.

  “Hi,” she said when she saw him. “I hoped I’d catch you.”

  She smiled. She was wearing khaki pants and a pink shirt with a button-down collar. He knew she did not wear dresses on Tuesday and Thursday because those were her assigned days as a schoolyard rover. Sometimes she had to run after students. Sometimes she had to break up fights. The sun coming through the porch door turned her dark blonde hair gold.

  “Catch me at what?”

  She came to him smiling still and they kissed.

  “I know I’m making you late. I’m late, too. But I just wanted to come and say good luck today. Not that you need it.”

  He held on to her, smelling her hair. It had been nearly a year since they met, but Bosch still held to her sometimes with the fear that she might abruptly turn and leave, declare her attraction to him a mistake. Perhaps he was still a substitute for the husband she’d lost, a cop like Harry, a narcotics detective whose apparent suicide Bosch had investigated.

  Their relationship had progressed to a point of complete comfortableness but in recent weeks he had felt a sense of inertia begin to set in. She had, too, and had even talked about it. She said the problem was he could not drop his guard completely and he knew this was true. Bosch had spent a lifetime alone, but not necessarily lonely. He had secrets, many of them buried too deep to give up to her. Not so soon.