Michael Connelly - The Concrete Blonde

He pushed his chair back toward a file cabinet but Bosch told him never mind with the stills.

“Whatever. Anyway, Edgar has it all. Took prints to the coroner’s I think, to confirm the ID. Chick’s name was Rebecca Kaminski. Becky Kaminski. Be twenty-three if she were alive today. Formerly of Chicago before she came on out to sin city for fame and fortune. What a waste, huh? She was a fine young piece, God bless her.”

Bosch felt uncomfortable with Mora. But this was not new. When they had worked the task force together, Harry had never had the feeling that the killings meant much to the vice detective. Didn’t make much of a dent. Mora was just putting in his time, lending his help where it was needed. He definitely was good in his area of expertise, but it didn’t seem to matter to him whether the Dollmaker was stopped or not.

Mora had a strange way of mingling gutter talk and Jesus talk. At first Bosch had thought he was simply playing the born-again line that was popular in the department a few years earlier, but he was never sure. He once saw Mora cross himself and say a silent prayer at one of the Dollmaker murder scenes. Because of the uneasiness Bosch felt, he had had little contact with Mora since the Norman Church shooting and the breakup of the task force. Mora went back to Ad-Vice and Bosch was shipped to Hollywood. Occasionally the two would see each other in the courthouse or at the Seven or the Red Wind. But even at the bars, they were usually with different groups and sat apart, taking turns sending beers back and forth.

“Harry, she was definitely among the living until at least two years ago. That flick you came across, Tails from the Crypt, it was made two years ago. Means Church definitely didn’t do her… Probably whoever sent the note did. I don’t know if that is good or bad news for you.”

“I don’t either.”

Church had a rock-solid alibi for the Kaminski killing; he was dead. With that added to the apparent alibi Wieczorek’s video-tape provided Church for the eleventh killing, Bosch’s sense of paranoia was turning to panic. For four years there had been no doubt for him about what he had done.

“So how’s the trial going, anyway?” Mora asked.

“Don’t ask. Can I use your phone?”

Bosch dialed Edgar’s pager number and then punched in Mora’s phone number. After he hung up to wait for the call back, he didn’t know what else to say.

“The trial’s a trial. You still supposed to testify?”

“I guess. I’m on for tomorrow. I don’t know what she wants from me. I wasn’t even there the night you took that bastard down.”

“Well, you were on the task force with me. That’s good enough to drag you into it.”

“Well, we’ll-”

The phone rang and Mora picked it up. He then passed it to Bosch.

“Whereyat, Harry?”

“I’m here with Mora. He filled me in. Anything on the prints?”

“Not yet. I missed my man at SID. Musta gone to lunch. So I left the prints there. Should have a confirmation later today. But I’m not waiting on it.”

“Where are you now?”

“Missing Persons. Trying to see if this girl ever got reported missing, now that I have a name to go with the body.”

“You gonna be there a while?”

“Just started. We’re looking through hard copies. They only went to computer eighteen months ago.”

“I’ll be over.”

“You got your trial, man.”

“I have some time.”

Bosch felt that he had to keep moving, to keep thinking. It was the only way to keep from examining the horror building in his mind, the possibility he had taken down the wrong man. He drove back to Parker Center and took the stairs down to the first subterranean level. Missing Persons was a small office inside the Fugitives section. Edgar was sitting on a desk, looking through a stack of white forms. Bosch recognized these as cases that were not even investigated after the reports had been made. They would have been in files if there had been any follow-up.

“Nothing so far, Harry,” Edgar said. He then introduced Bosch to Detective Morgan Randolph, who was sitting at a nearby desk. Randolph gave Bosch a stack of reports and he spent the next fifteen minutes looking through the pages, each one an individual story of someone’s pain that had fallen on the deaf ears of the department.

“Harry, on the description, look for a tattoo above the ass,” Edgar said.

“How do you know?”

“Mora had some photos of Magna Cum Loudly. In action, as Mora says. And there’s a tattoo-it’s Yosemite Sam, you know, the cartoon?-to the left of the dimple over the left side of her ass.”

“Well, did you find that on the body?”

“Didn’t notice it ’cause of the severe skin discoloration. But I didn’t really look at the backside, either.”

“What’s going on with that? I thought you said the cut was going to be done yesterday.”

“Yeah, that’s what they said, but I called over and they’re still backed up from the weekend. They haven’t even prepped it yet. I called Sakai a little while ago and he’s going to take a look in the freezer after lunch. Check on the tattoo.”

Bosch looked back at his stack. The recurrent theme was the young ages of the missing people. L.A. was a drain which drew a steady stream of the nation’s runaways. But there were many who disappeared from here as well.

Bosch finished his stack without seeing the name Rebecca Kaminski, her alias, or anyone that matched her description. He looked at his watch and knew he had to get back to court. He took another stack off Randolph’s desk anyway and began to wade through it. As he searched, he listened to the banter between Edgar and Randolph. It was clear that they had known each other before this day’s meeting. Edgar called him Morg. Bosch figured they might’ve known each other from the Black Peace Officers Association.

He found nothing in the second stack.

“I gotta go. I’m gonna be late.”

“Okay, man. I’ll let you know what we find.”

“And the prints, too, okay?”

“You got it.”

Court was already in session when Bosch got to courtroom 4. He quietly opened the gate, went through and took his seat next to Belk. The judge eyed him disdainfully but said nothing. Bosch looked up to see Assistant Chief Irvin Irving in the witness seat. Money Chandler was at the lectern.

“Good going,” Belk whispered to him. “Late for your own trial.”

Bosch ignored him and watched as Chandler began asking Irving general questions about his background and years on the force. They were preliminary questions; Bosch knew he couldn’t have missed much.

“Look,” Belk whispered next. “If you don’t care about this, at least pretend you do for the jury’s sake. I know we are only talking about taxpayers’ money here, but act like it’s going to be your own money they will be deciding to give.”

“I got tied up. It won’t happen again. You know, I’m trying to figure out this case. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, since you’ve already decided.”

He leaned back in his chair to get away from Belk. He was reminded that he had not eaten lunch by a sharp signal of resentment from his stomach. He tried to concentrate on the testimony.

“As assistant chief, what does your command include?” Chandler asked Irving.

“I am presently the commanding officer of all detective services.”

“At the time of the Dollmaker investigation, you were one rank below. A deputy chief, correct?”

“Yes.”

“As such you were in charge of the Internal Affairs Division, correct?”

“Yes. IAD and Operations Bureau, which basically means I was in charge of managing and allocating the department’s personnel.”