Michael Connelly - The Concrete Blonde

“Oh, well, what’s the difference? You got one, you got ’ em all. All I need to do is beat the Chandler case and the others fall like dominoes.”

“Except that isn’t going to happen. We got your teeth, Bremmer, just as good as fingerprints. And we got the rest. I just came from the coroner’s. They matched your pubic hair to samples found on victims seven and eleven-the ones we gave the Dollmaker credit for. You ought to think about dealing, Bremmer. Tell where the others are and they’ll probably let you live. That’s why I asked about bridge.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I hear there’s some guys up at Q play a good bridge game. They’re always looking for new blood. You’ll probably like ’em, have a lot in common.”

“Why don’t you leave me alone, Bosch?”

“I will. I will. But just so you know it, man, they’re on death row. But don’t worry about that, when you get there you’ll get a lot of card playing in. What’s the average lead time? Eight, ten years before they gas somebody? That’s not bad. Unless, of course, you talk a deal.”

“There is no deal, Bosch. Get out of here.”

“I’m going. Believe me, it’s nice to be able to walk out of this place. I’ll see you then, okay? You know, in eight or ten years. I’m going to be there, Bremmer. When they strap you in. I’m going to be watching through the glass when the gas comes up. And then I’ll come out and tell the reporters how you died. I’ll tell them you went screaming, that you weren’t much of a man.”

“Fuck you, Bosch.”

“Yeah, fuck me. See you then, Bremmer.”

After Bremmer’s arraignment Tuesday morning, Bosch got permission to take the rest of the week off in lieu of receiving all of the overtime he had built up on the case.

He spent the time hanging around the house, doing odd jobs and taking it easy. He replaced the wood railing on the back porch with new lengths of weather-treated oak. And while he was at Home Depot getting the wood, he also picked up new cushions for the chairs and the chaise lounge on the porch.

He began reading the Times sports pages again, noting the statistical changes in team ranks and player performances.

And, occasionally, he’d read one of the many stories the Times ran in the Metro section about what was becoming known nationwide as the Follower case. But it didn’t really hold his fascination. He knew too much about the case already. The one interest he had in the stories was in the details about Bremmer that were coming out. The Times had sent a staffer to Texas, where Bremmer had been raised in an Austin suburb, and the reporter had returned with a story culled from old children’s-court files and neighborhood gossip. He’d been raised by his mother in a single-parent home; his father, an itinerant blues musician, he saw once or twice a year at the most. The mother was described by former neighbors as a disciplinarian and plain mean-spirited when it came to her son.

The worst thing that the reporter came up with on Bremmer was that he was suspected but never charged in the arson of a neighbor’s toolshed when he was thirteen. It was said by neighbors that his mother punished him as if he had committed the crime anyway, not allowing him to leave their tiny house the rest of the summer. The neighbors said that around the same time the neighborhood began to experience a problem with pets disappearing but this was never attributed to young Bremmer. At least until now. Now the neighbors seemed engaged in blaming Bremmer for any malady that beset their street that year.

A year after the fire Bremmer’s mother died of alcoholism and the boy was raised after that on a state boys’ farm, where the young charges wore white shirts and blue ties and blazers to classes, even when the thermometer went off the chart. The story said he worked as a reporter on one of the farm’s student newspapers, thus beginning a journalism career that would eventually take him to Los Angeles.

His history was all grist for people like Locke to consider, to use as fuel for speculation on how the child Bremmer made the adult Bremmer do the things he did. It just made Bosch feel sad. He couldn’t help, however, but stare for a long time at the photo of the mother the Times had dug up somewhere. In the picture she stood in front of the door to a sun-burned ranch-style house with her hand on a young Bremmer’s shoulder. She had bleached-blonde hair and a provocative figure and large chest. She wore too much makeup, Bosch thought as he stared at the picture.

Aside from the Bremmer articles, the story he read and reread several times was in the Metro section of Thursday’s paper. It was about the burial of Beatrice Fontenot. Sylvia was quoted in the article and it described how the Grant High teacher had read some of the girl’s schoolwork at the memorial service. There was a photo from the service but Sylvia wasn’t in it. It was of Beatrice’s mother’s stoic, tear-lined face at the funeral. Bosch kept the Metro page on the table next to the chaise lounge and read the story again every time he sat down there.

When he grew restless around the house he would drive. Down out of the hills, he’d head across the Valley with no place in particular to go. He’d drive forty minutes to have a hamburger at an In ’N’ Out stand. Having grown up in the city, he liked to drive it, to know every one of its streets and corners. Once on Thursday and again on Friday morning his drives took him past Grant High but he never saw Sylvia through the windows of the classrooms as he went by. He felt sick at heart when he thought of her but he knew the closest he could come to her was to drive by the school. It was her move and he must wait for her to make it.

On Friday afternoon, when he came back from his drive, he saw the message light flashing on his phone machine and his hopes rushed into his throat. He thought maybe she had seen his car and was calling because she knew how his heart hurt. But when he played the message it was just Edgar asking him to call.

Eventually, he did.

“Harry, you’re missing everything?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Well, we had People magazine in here yesterday.”

“I’ll watch for you on the cover.”

“Just kidding. Actually, we’ve got big developments.”

“Yeah, what?”

“All this publicity was bound to do us good. Some lady over in Culver City called up and said she recognized Bremmer, that he had a storage locker at her place, but under the name Woodward. We got a warrant and popped it first thing this morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Locke was right. He videotaped. We found the tapes. His trophies.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. If there was ever a doubt there ain’t now. Got seven tapes and the camera. He must not have taped the first two, the ones we thought were the Dollmaker’s. But we got tapes of seven others including Chandler and Maggie Cum Loudly. Bastard taped everything. Just horrible stuff. They’re working up formal IDs on the other five victims on the tapes, but it looks like it’s going to be the ones on the list Mora came up with. Gallery and the other four porno chicks.”

“What else was in the locker?”

“Everything. We’ve got everything. We’ve got cuffs, belts, gags, a knife and a Glock nine. His whole killing kit. He must’ve used the gun to control them. That’s why there was no sign of a struggle at Chandler’s. He used the gun. We figure he’d hold it on them until he could cuff ’em and gag ’em. From the tapes, it looks like all the kills took place in Bremmer’s house, the rear bedroom. Except Chandler, of course. She got it at home… Those tapes, Harry, I couldn’t watch.”