Michael Connelly - The Concrete Blonde

“Yes,” he said in a low, strange voice. “I did it. I’m the man. And, yes, I will walk. You wait and see. And when I’m out there you’ll think of me every night for the rest of your life.”

Bosch nodded.

“But I never said that, Bosch. It will be your word against mine. A rogue cop-it will never get to court. They couldn’t afford to put you on the stand against me.”

Bosch leaned closer to him and smiled.

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I taped it.”

Bosch walked over to the radiator and pulled the microrecorder from between two of the iron coils. He held it up on his palm for Bremmer to see. Bremmer’s eyes became enraged. He had been tricked. He had been cheated.

“Bosch, that tape is inadmissible. That’s entrapment. I have not been advised. I have not been advised!”

“I’m advising you of your rights now. You weren’t under arrest until now. I wasn’t going to advise you until I arrested you. You know police procedure.”

Bosch was smiling at him, digging it in.

“Let’s go, Bremmer,” he said when he got tired of the victory.

It was an irony that Bosch savored Tuesday morning when he read Bremmer’s above-the-fold story on the killing of Honey Chandler. He had booked the reporter into county jail on a no-bail hold shortly before midnight and had not alerted media relations. The word had not gotten out by the last deadline and now the paper had a front-page story about a murder that was written by the murderer. Bosch liked that. He smiled as he read it.

The one person Bosch had told was Irving. He had the com center patch him through on a phone line and in a half-hour-long conversation he told the assistant chief every step he had taken and described every building block of evidence that led to the arrest. Irving said nothing congratulatory, nor did he chastise Bosch for making the arrest alone. Either or both would come later, after it was seen whether the arrest would stick. Both men knew this.

At 9A.M. Bosch was seated in front of a filing deputy’s desk at the district attorney’s office in the downtown criminal courts building. For the second time in eight hours he carefully went over the details of what happened and then played the tape of his conversation with Bremmer. The deputy DA, whose name was Chap Newell, made notations on a yellow pad while listening to the tape. He often furrowed his brow or shook his head because the sound was not good. The voices in Bremmer’s living room had bounced through the iron radiator coils and had a tinny echo on the tape. Still, the words that were most important were audible.

Bosch just watched without saying a word. Newell looked as if he could be no more than three years out of law school. Because the arrest had not made a splash in the papers or on TV yet, it had not received the attention of one of the senior attorneys in the filings division. It had gone to Newell on the routine rotation.

When the tape was done, Newell made a few more notes to look as if he knew what he was doing and then looked up at Bosch.

“You haven’t said anything about what was in his house.”

“I didn’t find anything on the quick search I made last night. There are others there now, with a warrant, doing a more thorough job.”

“Well, I hope they find something.”

“Why, you’ve got the case right there.”

“And it is a good case, Bosch. Really good work.”

“Coming from you, that means a lot.”

Newell looked at him and narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“But, uh…”

“But what?”

“Well, there’s no question we can file with this. There is a lot here.”

“But what?”

“I’m looking at it from a defense lawyer’s perspective. What really do we have here? A lot of coincidences. He’s left-handed, he smokes, he knew details about the Dollmaker. But those things are not hard evidence. They can apply to a lot of people.”

Bosch started lighting a cigarette.

“Please don’t do-”

He exhaled and blew the smoke across the desk.

“-never mind.”

“What about the note and the postmark?”

“That’s good but it is complicated and difficult to grasp. A good lawyer could make a jury see it as just another coincidence. He could confuse the issue, is what I’m trying to say.”

“What about the tape, Newell? We have him confessing on tape. What more do you-”

“But during the confession he disavows the confession.”

“Not at the end.”

“Look, I’m not planning on using the tape.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. He confessed before you advised him. It brings up the specter of entrapment.”

“There is no entrapment. He knew I was a cop and he knew his rights whether I advised him or not. He had a fucking gun on me . He freely made those statements. When he was formally arrested, I advised him.”

“But he searched you for a wire. That is a clear indication of his desire not to be taped. Plus, he dropped the bomb-his most damaging statement-after you cuffed him but before you advised him. That could be dicey.”

“You’re going to use the tape.”

Newell looked at him a long time. A red blotchiness appeared on his young cheeks.

“You are not in a position to tell me what I’m going to use, Bosch. Besides, if that’s all we go with it will probably be up to the state court of appeals if we use it, because if Bremmer has any kind of a lawyer at all that’s where he’ll take it. We’ll win the question here in superior because half the judges on those benches worked in the DA’s office at one time or another. But when it gets up to appeals or to the state supreme court in San Francisco, it’s anybody’s guess. Is that what you want? To wait a couple years and have it blown out then? Or do you want to get it done correctly right from the get go?”

Bosch leaned forward and looked angrily at the young lawyer.

“Look, we’re still working other angles. We’re not done. There will be more evidence accumulated. But we have to charge this guy or let him go. We’ve got forty-eight hours from last night to file. But if we don’t file right now with no bail, he’ll grab a lawyer and get a bail hearing. The judge won’t honor the no-bail arrest if you haven’t even filed a single charge yet. So file on him now. We’ll get all the evidence you need to back it up.”

Newell nodded as if he agreed but said, “Thing is, I like to have the whole package, everything we can get, when I file a case. That way we know how we are going to work the prosecution, right from the start. We know if we are going to go with a plea bargain or go balls to the wall.”

Bosch got up and walked to the office’s open door. He stepped into the hall and looked at the plastic name plate affixed to the wall outside. Then he came back in.

“Bosch, what are you doing?”

“It’s funny. I thought you were a filing deputy. I didn’t know you were a trial deputy, too.”

Newell dropped his pencil on his pad. His face got redder, the blotches spreading to his forehead.

“Look, I am a filing deputy. But it is part of my responsibility to make sure we have the best case possible from the get go. Every case that comes through that door I could file on, but that’s not the point. The point is to have good, credible evidence and a lot of it. Cases that don’t backfire. So I push, Bosch. I-”

“How old are you?”

“What?”

“How old?”

“Twenty-six. What’s that got to-”

“Listen to me, you little prick. Don’t you ever call me by my last name again. I was making cases like this before you cracked your first law book and I’ll be making them long after you move your convertible Saab and your self-centered white-bread show to Century City. You can call me Detective or Detective Bosch, you can even call me Harry. But don’t you ever call me just Bosch again, understand?”