The Concrete Blonde

by Michael Connelly

  He unconsciously looked out into the audience, saw Sylvia and then looked away. He tried to compose himself, slow his breathing. He was not going to let Chandler tear him open.

  “I would say yes. They were probably similar. Both monsters.”

  “That’s why you killed him, wasn’t it? The toupee wasn’t under the pillow. You killed him in cold blood because you saw your mother’s killer.”

  “No. You are wrong. Don’t you think if I was going to make up a story I could come up with something better than a toupee? There was a kitchenette, knives in the drawer. Why would I plant—”

  “Hold it, hold it, hold it,” Judge Keyes barked. “Now, we’ve gone off the tracks here. Ms. Chandler, you started making statements instead of asking questions and, Detective Bosch, you did the same thing instead of answering. Let’s start over.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Chandler said. “Isn’t it true, Detective Bosch, that the whole thing—this pinning all the murders on Norman Church—was an elaborate cover-up that is now unraveling with the discovery of the woman in the concrete this week?”

  “No, it is not true. Nothing is unraveling. Church was a killer and he deserved what he got.”

  Bosch mentally flinched and closed his eyes as soon as the words were out of his mouth. She had done it. He opened his eyes and looked at Chandler. Her eyes seemed flat and blank, emotionless.

  Softly, she said, “You say he deserved what he got. When were you appointed judge, jury and executioner?”

  Bosch drank more water from the cup.

  “What I meant was that it was his play. Whatever happened to him, he was ultimately responsible. You put something in play like that and you have to accept the consequences.”

  “Like Rodney King deserved what he got?”

  “Objection!” Belk shouted.

  “Like André Galton deserved what he got?”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained, sustained,” the judge said. “All right now, Ms. Chandler, you—”

  “They’re not the same.”

  “Detective Bosch, I sustained the objections. That means don’t answer.”

  “No further questions at this time, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

  Bosch watched her walk to the plaintiff’s table and drop her tablet onto the wooden surface. The loose strand of hair was there at the back of her neck. He was sure now that even that detail was part of her carefully planned and orchestrated performance during the trial. After she sat down, Deborah Church reached over and squeezed her arm. Chandler didn’t smile or make any gesture in return.

  Belk did what he could to repair the damage on redirect examination, asking more details about the heinous nature of the crimes, and the shooting and investigation of Church. But it seemed as if no one was listening. The courtroom had been sucked into a vacuum created by Chandler’s cross-examination.

  Belk was apparently so ineffective that Chandler didn’t bother to ask anything on recross and Bosch was excused from the witness seat. He felt as if the walk back to the defense table covered at least a mile.

  “Next witness, Mr. Belk?” the judge asked.

  “Your Honor, can I have a few minutes?”

  “Surely.”

  Belk turned to Bosch and whispered, “We’re going to rest, you have a problem with that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There is no one else to call, unless you want to get other members of the task force over here. They’ll say the same thing you did and get the same treatment from Chandler. I’d rather leave that alone.”

  “What about bringing Locke back? He’ll back me up on everything I said about the follower.”

  “Too risky. He is a psychologist, for everything we get him to say is a possibility, she’ll also get him to concede it is possibly not. He hasn’t been deposed on this matter and we won’t know for sure what he would say. Besides, I think we need to stay off the second killer. It’s confusing the jury and we—”

  “Mr. Belk,” the judge said. “We’re waiting.”

  Belk stood up and said, “Your Honor, the defense rests.”

  The judge stared a long moment at Belk before turning to the jury and telling them they were excused for the day because the lawyers would need the afternoon to prepare closing arguments and he would need time to prepare jury instructions.

  After the jury filed out, Chandler went to the lectern. She asked for a directed verdict in favor of the plaintiff, which the judge denied. Belk did the same thing, asking for a verdict in favor of the defendant. In a seemingly sarcastic tone, the judge told him to sit down.

  Bosch met Sylvia in the hallway outside after the crowded courtroom took several minutes to empty. There was a large gathering of reporters around the two lawyers and Bosch took her arm and moved her down the hall.

  “I told you not to come here, Sylvia.”

  “I know, but I felt I had to come. I wanted you to know that I support you no matter what. Harry, I know things about you the jury will never know. No matter how she tries to portray you, I know you. Don’t forget that.”

  She was wearing a black dress with a silvery-white pattern that Bosch liked. She looked very beautiful.

  “I, uh, I—how long were you here?”

  “For most of it. I’m glad I came. I know it was rough, but I saw the goodness of what you are come through all the harshness of what you sometimes have to do.”

  He just looked at her a moment.

  “Be optimistic, Harry.”

  “The stuff about my mother . . .”

  “Yes, I heard it. It hurt me that this is where I learned about it. Harry, where are we if there are those kinds of secrets between us? How many times do I have to tell you that it is endangering what we have?”

  “Look,” he said, “I can’t do this right now. Deal with this and you, us—it’s too much for right now. It’s not the right place. Let’s talk about it later. You’re right, Sylvia, but I, uh, I just can’t . . . talk. I—”

  She reached up and straightened his tie and then smoothed it on his chest.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “What will you do now?”

  “Follow the case. Whether officially or not, I have to follow this. I have to find the second man, the second killer.”

  She just looked at him for a few moments and he knew she had probably hoped for a different answer.

  “I’m sorry. It’s not something I can put off. Things are happening.”

  “I’m going to go in to school then. So I don’t lose the whole day. Will you be up to the house tonight?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Okay, see you, Harry. Be optimistic.”

  He smiled and she leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. Then she walked off toward the escalator.

  Bosch was watching her go when Bremmer came up.

  “You want to talk about this? That was some interesting testimony in there.”

  “I said all I’m saying on the stand.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about what she says? That the second killer is really the first and that Church didn’t kill anybody.”

  “What do you expect her to say? It’s bullshit. Just remember, what I said in the courtroom was under oath. What she says out here isn’t. It’s bullshit, Bremmer. Don’t fall for it.”

  “Look, Harry, I have to write this. You know? It’s my job. You going to understand that? No hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings, Bremmer. Everybody has got their job to do. Now I’m going to go do mine, okay?”

  He walked off toward the escalator. Outside at the statue, he lit a cigarette and gave one to Tommy Faraway, who had been sifting through the ash can.

  “What’s happening, Lieutenant?” the homeless man asked.

  “Justice is happening.”

  18

  Bosch drove over to Central Division and found an open parking space at the front curb. For a while, he sat in his car looking at two trustees
from the lockup washing the painted enamel mural that stretched along the front wall of the bunkerlike station. It was a depiction of a nirvana where black and white and brown children played together and smiled at friendly police officers. It was a depiction of a place where the children still had hope. In angry black spray paint along the bottom of the mural someone had written, “This is a damnable lie!”

  Bosch wondered whether someone from the neighborhood or a cop had done it. He smoked two cigarettes and tried to clear his mind of what had happened in the courtroom. He felt strangely at peace with the idea that some of his secrets had been revealed. But he held little hope for the outcome of the trial. He had moved into a feeling of resignation, an acceptance that the jury would find against him, that the twisted delivery of evidence in the case would convince them that he had acted, if not like the monster Chandler had described, then at least in an undesirable and reckless manner. They would never know what it was like to have to make such decisions as he had made in so fleeting a moment.

  It was the same old story that every cop knew. The citizens want their police to protect them, to keep the plague from their eyes, from their doors. But those same John Q.’s are the first to stare wide-eyed and point the finger of outrage when they see close up exactly what the job they’ve given the cops entails. Bosch wasn’t a hardliner. He didn’t condone the actions taken by police in the André Galton cases and the Rodney King cases. But he understood those actions and knew that his own actions ultimately shared a common root.

  Through political opportunism and ineptitude, the city had allowed the department to languish for years as an understaffed and underequipped paramilitary organization. Infected with political bacteria itself, the department was top-heavy with managers while the ranks below were so thin that the dog soldiers on the street rarely had the time or inclination to step out of their protective machines, their cars, to meet the people they served. They only ventured out to deal with the dirtbags and, consequently, Bosch knew, it had created a police culture in which everybody not in blue was seen as a dirtbag and was treated as such. Everybody. You ended up with your André Galtons and your Rodney Kings. You ended up with a riot the dog soldiers couldn’t control. You ended up with a mural on a station house wall that was a damnable lie.

  • • •

  He badged his way past the front desk and took the stairs up to the Administrative Vice offices. At the door to the squad room he stood for a half minute and watched Ray Mora sitting at his desk on the other side of the room. It looked as if Mora was writing a report, rather than typing it. That probably meant it was a Daily Activity Report, which required little attention—just a few lines—and wasn’t worth the time it took to get up and find a working typewriter.

  Bosch noticed that Mora wrote with his right hand. But he knew this did not eliminate the vice cop as possibly being the follower. The follower knew the details and would have known about pulling the ligature around his victim’s neck from the left side, thereby emulating the Dollmaker. Just as he knew about painting the white cross on the toe.

  Mora looked up and saw him.

  “What’re you doing over there, Harry?”

  “Didn’t want to interrupt.”

  Bosch walked over.

  “What, interrupt a day report? Are you kidding?”

  “Thought it might be something important.”

  “It’s important for me to get my paycheck. That’s about it.”

  Bosch dragged a chair away from an empty desk and pulled it up and sat down. He noticed the statue of the Infant of Prague had been moved. Turned, actually. Its face was no longer looking at the nakedness of the actress on the porn calendar. Bosch looked at Mora and realized he was not sure how to proceed here.

  “You left a message last night.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking . . .”

  “About what?”

  “Well, we know Church didn’t kill Maggie Cum Loudly because of the timing, right? He was already dead when she got her ass dropped in the concrete.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, we’ve gotta copycat.”

  “Right again.”

  “So I was thinking: what if the copycat who did her started earlier?”

  Bosch felt his throat start to tighten. He tried not to show Mora anything. Just gave him the deadpan look.

  “Earlier?”

  “Yeah. What if the two other porno chicks who were killed were actually done by the copycat? Who says he had to start after Church was dead?”

  Bosch felt the full chill now. If Mora was the follower, was he so confident that he would risk laying the whole pattern out for Bosch? Or could his hunch—after all, that’s all it was, a guess—be completely out of line? Regardless, it felt creepy sitting with Mora, his desk covered by magazines with sex acts depicted on the covers, the calendar girl leering from the vertical file. The statue’s clay face turned away. Bosch realized that Delta Bush, the actress on the calendar Mora had displayed, was blonde-haired and buxom. She fit the pattern. Was that why Mora had put up the calendar?

  “You know, Ray,” he said, after composing his voice into a monotone, “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It fits better that way, all the evidence, I mean, if the follower did all three of them . . . What made you think of it?”

  Mora put the report he was working on away in a desk drawer and leaned onto his desk. Subconsciously he brought his left hand up and pulled the Holy Spirit medal from his open collar. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger as he leaned back in his seat again, elbows on the arm rests.

  He dropped the medal and said, “Well, I remembered something is what I did. It was a tip that I got right before you nailed Church. See, I dropped it when you dropped Church.”

  “You’re talking about four years ago.”

  “Yeah. We all thought that was it, end of case, when you got Church.”

  “Get to it, Ray, what’d you remember?”

  “Yeah, right, well, I remember a couple days, maybe a week before you got Church, I was given one of the call-in tips. It was given to me ’cause I was the resident expert on porno and it was a porno chick who called it in. She used the name Gallery. That’s it, just Gallery. She was in the bottom-line stuff. Loops, live shows, peep booths, nine hundred phone call stuff. And she was just beginning to move up, get her name on some video boxes.

  “Anyway, she called the task force—this was right before you nailed Church—and said there was a Tom that’d been making the rounds of the sets up in the Valley. You know, watching the action, hanging out with the producers, but he wasn’t like the other Toms.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Toms?”

  “That’s short for Peeping Tom. That’s what the girls call these guys who hang out on the sets. Usually they’re friendly with the producer or they’ve kicked in part of the budget. They throw a grand to the producer and he lets the guy hang around and watch ’em shoot. It’s pretty common. These shoots draw a lot of people for whom seeing it on video isn’t enough. They want to be right up there and see it live.”

  “All right, so what about this guy?”

  “Well, Harry, look, there’s really only one reason these people hang around the sets. They’re hitting on the chicks between takes. I mean, these guys wanna get laid. Or they want to make flicks themselves. They want to break in. And that was the thing with this guy. He wasn’t hitting on anybody. He was just hanging around. She—this is Gallery—said she never saw this dude make the move on anybody. He talked to some of the girls but never left with any of them.”

  “And that’s what made him weird? He didn’t want to get laid?”

  Mora raised his hands and shrugged like he knew it sounded weak.

  “Yeah, basically. But listen, Gallery worked shoots with both Heather Cumhither and Holly Lere, the two Dollmaker victims, and she said it was on those shoots that she saw this Tom. That’s why she called.”

  Now the story had Bosch’s attention. But he didn’t know w
hat to make of it. Mora could be simply trying to deflect attention, to send Bosch down the wrong trail.

  “She didn’t have a name on the guy?”

  “No, that was the problem. That was why I didn’t jump all over it. I had a backlog of tips I was assigned and she calls in with this one without a name. I would have gotten to it eventually, but a few days later you put Church’s dick in the dirt and that was that.”

  “You let it go.”

  “Yeah, dropped it like a bag of shit.”

  Bosch waited. He knew Mora would go on. He had more to say. There had to be more.

  “So the thing is, when I looked up the card on Magna Cum Loudly for you yesterday, I recognized some of her early titles. She worked with Gallery in some of her early work. That’s what made me remember the tip. So just stringing along on a hunch, I try to look Gallery up, ask around with some people in the business I know, and it turns out Gallery dropped out of the scene three years ago. Just like that. I mean, I know a top producer with the Adult Film Association and he told me she dropped out right in the middle of one of his shoots. Never said a word to anyone. And no one ever heard from her again. The producer, he remembered it pretty clearly ’cause it cost him a lot of money to reshoot the flick. There would’ve been no continuity if he just dumped in another actress to take her place.”

  Bosch was surprised that continuity was even a factor in such films. He and Mora were both silent a moment, thinking about the story, before Bosch finally spoke.

  “So, you’re thinking she might be in the ground somewhere? Gallery, I’m talking about. In concrete like the one we found this week.”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. People in the industry—I mean, they are not your mainstream people, so there are plenty of disappearing acts. I remember this one broad, she dropped out, next thing I know I see her in People magazine. One of those stories about some celebrity fund-raiser and she’s on the arm of what’s his name, guy has his own TV show about the guy in charge of a kennel. Noah’s Bark. I can’t think of—”

  “Ray, I don’t give—”

  “Okay, okay, anyway the point is, these chicks drop in and out of the biz all the time. Not unusual. They aren’t the smartest people in the first place. They just get it in their mind to do something else. Maybe they meet a guy who they think is going to keep them in cocaine and caviar, be their sugar daddy, like that Noah’s Bark asshole, and they never show up for work again—until they find out they were wrong. As a group, they don’t look much past the next line of blow.