The Concrete Blonde (6 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen, that is what this case is about. Detective Harry Bosch has not only looked into the abyss, but on the night Norman Church was murdered it looked into him. The darkness engulfed him and Detective Bosch fell. He became that which he served to fight. A monster. I think you will find that the evidence will lead you to no other conclusion. Thank you.”

Chandler sat down and patted her hand in a “there, there” gesture on Deborah Church's arm. Bosch, of course, knew this was done for the jury's sake, not the widow's.

The judge looked up at the brass hands of the clock built into the mahogany paneling above the courtroom door and declared a fifteen-minute recess before Belk would take the lectern. As he stood for the jury, Bosch noticed one of Church's daughters staring at him from the front row of the spectators section. He guessed she was about thirteen. The older one, Nancy. He quickly looked away and then felt guilty. He wondered if anyone in the jury saw this.

Belk said he needed the break time alone to go over his statement to the jury. Bosch felt like going up to the snack bar on the sixth floor because he still had not eaten, but it was likely a few of the jurors would go there, or worse yet, members of Church's family. Instead, he took the escalator down to the lobby and went out to the ash can in front of the building. He lit a cigarette and leaned back against the base of the statue. He realized that he was clammy with sweat beneath his suit. Chandler's hour-long opener had seemed like an eternity—an eternity with the eyes of the world on him. He knew the suit wouldn't last the week and he would have to make sure his other one was clean. Thinking about such minor details finally helped relax him.

He had already put one butt out in the sand and was on his second smoke when the steel-and-glass door to the courthouse opened. Honey Chandler had used her back to push open the heavy door and therefore hadn't seen him. She turned as she came through the door, her head bent down as she lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. As she straightened and exhaled she saw him. She walked toward the ash can, ready to bury the fresh cigarette.

“It's okay,” Bosch said. “It's the only one around as far as I know.”

“It is, but I don't think it does either of us good to have to face each other outside of court.”

He shrugged and didn't say anything. It was her move, she could leave if she wanted to. She took another drag on the cigarette.

“Just a half. I have to get back in anyway.”

He nodded and looked out toward Spring Street. In front of the county courthouse he saw a line of people waiting to go in through the metal detectors. More boat people, he thought. He saw the homeless man coming up the pavement to make his afternoon check of the ash can. The man suddenly turned around and walked back out to Spring and away. He looked back once uneasily over his shoulder as he went.

“He knows me.”

Bosch looked back at Chandler.

“He knows you?”

“He used to be a lawyer. I knew him then. Tom some-thing-or-other. I can't remember at the—Faraday, that's it. I guess he didn't want me to see him that way. But everybody around here knows about him. He's the reminder of what can happen when things go terribly wrong.”

“What happened?”

“It's a long story. Maybe your lawyer will tell you. Can I ask you something?”

Bosch didn't answer.

“Why didn't the city settle this case? Rodney King, the riots. It's the worst time in the world to take a police case to trial. I don't think Bulk—that's what I call him, because I know he calls me Money. I don't think he's got a hold on this one. And you'll be the one hung out to dry.”

Bosch thought a moment before answering.

“It's off the record, Detective Bosch,” she said. “I'm just making conversation.”

“I told him not to settle. I told him if he wanted to settle, I'd go out and pay for my own lawyer.”

“That sure of yourself, huh?” She paused to inhale on her cigarette. “Well, we'll see, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“You know it's nothing personal.”

He knew she would get around to saying that. The biggest lie in the game.

“Maybe not for you.”

“Oh, it is for you? You shoot an unarmed man and then you take it personally when his wife objects, when she sues you?”

“Your client's husband used to cut the strap off the purses of his victims, tie it in a slipknot around their neck and then slowly but steadily strangle them while he was raping them. He preferred leather straps. He didn't seem to care about what women he did this to. Just the leather.”

She didn't even flinch. He hadn't expected her to.

“That's
late
husband. My client's late husband. And the only thing that is for sure in this case, that is provable, is that you killed him.”

“Yeah, and I'd do it again.”

“I know, Detective Bosch. That's why we're here.”

She pursed her lips in a frozen kiss which sharply set the line of her jaw. Her hair caught the glint of the afternoon sun. She angrily stubbed her cigarette out in the sand and then went back inside. She swung the door open as if it were made of balsa wood.

4

Bosch pulled into the rear parking lot of the Hollywood station on Wilcox shortly before four. Belk had used only ten minutes of his allotted hour for his opening statement and Judge Keyes had recessed early, saying he wanted to start testimony on a separate day from openers so the jury would not confuse evidentiary testimony with the lawyers' words.

Bosch had felt uneasy with Belk's short discourse in front of the jurors but Belk had told him there was nothing to worry about. He walked in through the back door near the tank and took the rear hallway to the detective bureau. By four the bureau is usually deserted. It was that way when Bosch walked in, except for Jerry Edgar, who was parked in front of one of the IBMs typing on a form Bosch recognized as a 51—an Investigating Officer's Chronological Record. He looked up and saw Bosch approaching.

“Whereyat, Harry?”

“Right here.”

“Got done early, I see. Don't tell me, directed verdict. The judge threw Money Chandler out on her ass.”

“I wish.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What do you have so far?”

Edgar said there was nothing so far. No identification yet. Bosch sat down at his desk and loosened his tie. Pounds's office was dark so it was safe to light a cigarette. His mind trailed off into thinking about the trial and Money Chandler. She had captured the jury for most of her argument. She had, in effect, called Bosch a murderer, hitting with a gut-level, emotional charge. Belk had responded with a dissertation on the law and a police officer's right to use deadly force when danger was near. Even if it turned out there was no danger, no gun beneath the pillow, Belk said, Church's own actions created the climate of danger that allowed Bosch to act as he did.

Finally, Belk had countered Chandler's Nietzsche by quoting
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu. Belk said Bosch had entered the “Dying Ground” when he kicked Church's apartment door open. At that point he had to fight or perish, shoot or be shot. Second-guessing his actions afterward was unjust.

Sitting across from Edgar now, Bosch acknowledged to himself that it hadn't worked. Belk had been boring while Chandler had been interesting, and convincing. They were starting in the hole. He noticed Edgar had stopped talking and Harry had not registered anything he had said.

“What about prints?” he asked.

“Harry, you listening to me? I just said we finished with the rubber silicone about an hour ago. Donovan got prints off the hand. He said they look good, came up in the rubber pretty well. He'll start the DOJ run tonight and probably by morning we'll have the similars. It will probably take him the rest of the morning to go through them.

But, at least, they're not letting this one drown in the backup. Pounds gave it a priority status.”

“Good, let me know what comes out. I'll be in and out all week, I guess.”

“Harry, don't worry, I'll let you know what we've got. But try to stay cool. Look, you got the right guy? You got any doubt about that?”

“Not before today.”

“Then don't worry. Might is right. Money Chandler can blow the judge and the whole jury, it's not going to change that.”

“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 Brem-mer. 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 Lati-nas, 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.