The Concrete Blonde

19

As with all three of the department’s assistant chiefs, Irving had his own private conference room at Parker Center. It was furnished with a large, round, Formica-topped table and six chairs, a potted plant and a counter that ran along the rear wall. There were no windows. The room could be entered through a door from Irving’s adjutant’s office or from the sixth floor’s main hallway. Bosch was the last one to arrive at the summit meeting called by Irving, taking the last chair. In the others sat the assistant chief, followed counterclockwise by Edgar and three men from Robbery-Homicide Division. Two of them Bosch knew, detectives Frankie Sheehan and Mike Opelt. They had also been attached to the Dollmaker task force four years earlier.

The third man from RHD Bosch knew by name and reputation only. Lieutenant Hans Rollenberger. He had been promoted to RHD sometime after Bosch had been demoted out of it. But friends like Sheehan kept Bosch informed. They told him Rollenberger was another cookie-cutter bureaucrat who avoided controversial and career-threatening decisions the way people avoid panhandlers on the sidewalk, pretending not to see or hear them. He was a climber and, therefore, he couldn’t be trusted. In RHD, the troops already referred to him as “Hans Off,” because that was the kind of commander he was. Morale in RHD, the unit every detective in the police department aspired to, was probably the lowest since the day the Rodney King video hit the TV.

“Sit down, Detective Bosch,” Irving said cordially. “I think you know everybody.”

Before Bosch could answer, Rollenberger sprang from his chair and offered his hand.

“Lieutenant Hans Rollenberger.”

Bosch shook it, then they both sat down. Bosch noticed a large stack of files at the center of the table and immediately recognized them as the Dollmaker task force case files. The murder books Bosch had were his own personal files. What was piled on the table was the entire main file, probably pulled out of the archives warehouse.

“We’re sitting down to see what we can do about this problem that’s come up with the Dollmaker case,” Irving said. “I have-as Detective Edgar has probably told you, I am swinging this case over to RHD. I am prepared to have Lieutenant Rollenberger put as many people on it as needed. I have also arranged for the loan of Detective Edgar to the case and you, as soon as you are free from the trial. I want results quickly. This is already turning into a public relations nightmare with what I understand was revealed during testimony today in your trial.”

“Yeah, well, sorry about that. I was under oath.”

“I understand that. The problem was you were testifying to things only you knew about. I had my adjutant sit in and he informed us of your, uh, theory on what has happened with this new case. Last night, I made the decision to have RHD handle the matter. After hearing the sense of your testimony today, I want to task-force this and get it going.

“Now, I want you to bring us up to speed on exactly what is going on, what you think, what you know. Then, we will plan from there.”

They all looked at Bosch for a moment and he was unsure where to begin. Sheehan stepped in with a question. It was a signal that he believed Irving was playing on the level on this one, that Bosch could feel safe.

“Edgar says it’s a copycat. That there is no problem with Church?”

“That’s right,” Bosch answered. “Church was the man. But he was good for nine of the victims, not eleven. He spawned a follower halfway through his run and we didn’t see it.”

“Tell it,” Irving said.

He did. It took Bosch forty-five minutes to tell it. Sheehan and Opelt asked several questions as he went. The only thing or person he did not mention was Mora.

At the end, Irving said, “When you ran this follower theory by Locke, did he say it’s possible?”

“Yes. With him I think he thinks anything is possible. But he was useful. He made it pretty clear for me. I want to keep him informed. He’s good to bounce stuff off of.”

“I understand there’s a leak. Could it be Locke?”

Shaking his head, Bosch said, “I didn’t go to him until last night and Chandler has known things from the start. She knew I was out at the scene the first day. Today she seemed to know the direction we are going, that there is a follower. She’s got a good source keeping her informed. And Bremmer over at theTimes, who knows. He’s got a lot of sources.”

“Okay,” Irving said. “Well, aside from Dr. Locke being the exception, nothing in this room leaves this room. No one talks to anyone. You two”-he looked at Bosch and Edgar-“don’t even tell your supervisors at Hollywood what you’re doing.”

Without naming Pounds, Irving was postulating his suspicion that Pounds could be a leak. Edgar and Bosch nodded in agreement.

“Now”-Irving looked at Bosch-“where do we go from here?”

Without hesitation, Bosch said, “We have to retrace the investigation. Like I told you, Locke said it was someone who had intimate access to the case. Who knew every detail and then copied them. It was a perfect cover. For a while, at least.”

“You’re talking about a cop,” Rollenberger said, his first words since the briefing began.

“Maybe. But there are other possibilities. The suspect pool is actually pretty large. You got the cops, people who found the bodies, the coroner’s staff, passersby at the crime scenes, reporters, lot of people.”

“Shit,” Opelt said. “We’re going to need more people.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Irving said. “I’ll get more. How do we narrow it down?”

Bosch said, “When we look at the victims we learn things about the killer. The victims and the survivor generally fall into the same archetype. Blonde, well built, worked in porno and did outcall work on the side. Locke thinks that is how the follower picked his victims. He saw them in videos, then found the means of contacting them in the outcall ads in the local adult newspapers.”

“It’s like he went shopping for victims,” Sheehan said.

“Yeah.”

“What else?” Irving said.

“Not a lot. Locke said the follower is very smart, much more so than Church was. But that he could be disassembling, as he calls it. Coming apart. That’s why he sent the note. Nobody would’ve ever known but then he sent the note. He’s moved into a phase where he wants the attention that the Dollmaker had. He got jealous that this trial threw attention on Church.”

“What about other victims?” Sheehan asked. “Ones we don’t know about yet? It’s been four years.”

“Yeah, I’m working on that. Locke says there’s gotta be others.”

“Shit,” Opelt said. “We need more people.”

Everyone was quiet while they thought about this.

“What about the FBI, shouldn’t we contact their behavioral science people?” Rollenberger asked.

Everyone looked at Hans Off as if he were the kid who came to the sandlot football game wearing white pants.

“Fuck them,” Sheehan said.

“We seem to have a handle on this-initially, at least,” Irving said.

“What else do we know about the follower?” Rollenberger said, hoping to immediately deflect attention from his miscue. “Do we have any physical evidence that can give us any insight into him?”

“Well, we need to track down the survivor,” Bosch said. “She gave a composite drawing that everyone dismissed after I nailed Church. But now we know her drawing was probably of the follower. We need to find her and see if there is anything else that she has, that she can still remember, that will help.”

As he said this Sheehan dug through the stack of files on the table and found the composite. It was very generic and didn’t look like anyone Bosch recognized, least of all Mora.

“We have to assume he wore disguises, same as Church, so the composite might not help. But she might remember something else, something about the suspect’s manners that might let us know if it was a cop.

“Also, I’m having Amado at the coroner’s office compare the rape kits between the two victims we now attribute to the follower. There’s a good chance the follower may have made a mistake here.”

“Explain,” Irving said.

“The follower did everything the Dollmaker did, right?”

“Right,” Rollenberger said.

“Wrong. He only did what was known at the time about the Dollmaker. What we knew. What we didn’t know was that Church had been smart. He had shaved his body so he would not leave trace hair evidence behind. We didn’t know that until after he was dead, so neither did the follower. And by then he had already done two of the victims.”

“So there is a chance those two rape kits hold physical evidence to our guy,” Irving said.

“Right. I’m having Amado cross-check between the two kits. He should know something by Monday.”

“That’s very good, Detective Bosch.”

Irving looked at Bosch and their eyes met. It was as if the assistant chief was sending him a message and taking one at the same time.

“We’ll see,” Bosch said.

“Other than that, that’s all we’ve got, right?” Rollenberger said.

“Right.”

“No.”

It was Edgar, who up until now had been silent. Everyone looked at him.

“In the concrete we found-actually, Harry found it-a cigarette pack. It went in when the concrete was wet. So there’s a good chance they were the follower’s. Marlboro regulars. Soft pack.”

“They also could have been the vic’s, right?” Rollenberger asked.

“No,” Bosch said. “I talked to her manager last night. He said she didn’t smoke. The smokes were in all likelihood the follower’s.”

Sheehan smiled at Bosch and Bosch smiled back. Sheehan held his hands together as if waiting for handcuffs.

“Here I am boys,” he said. “That’s my brand.”

“Mine, too,” Bosch said. “But I’ve got you beat. I’m left-handed, too. I better get an alibi working.”

The men at the table smiled. Bosch dropped his smile when he suddenly thought of something but knew he could not say anything yet. He looked at the files stacked at the center of the table.

“Shit, every cop smokes Marlboros or Camels,” Opelt said.

“It’s a dirty habit,” Irving said.

“I agree,” said Rollenberger, a little too quickly.

It brought silence back to the table.

“Who’s your suspect?”

It was Irving who asked it. He was looking at Bosch again with those eyes Harry couldn’t decipher. The question shocked Bosch. Irving knew. Somehow he knew. Harry didn’t answer.

“Detective, it is clear you’ve had a handle on what’s going on for a day. You’ve also been on this case from the start. I think you’ve got someone in mind. Tell us. We need to start somewhere.”

Bosch hesitated again but finally said, “I’m not sure… and I don’t want…”

“To ruin someone’s career if you’re wrong? To set the dogs on a possibly innocent man? That’s understood. But we can’t have you pursuing this on your own. Haven’t you learned anything from this trial? I believe ‘cowboying’ was the term Money Chandler used to describe it.”

They were all looking at him. He was thinking of Mora. The vice cop was strange but was he that strange? Over the years Bosch had often been investigated by the department and did not want to bring that kind of weight down on the wrong person.

“Detective?” Irving prompted. “Even if all you have is a hunch, then you must tell us. Investigations start with hunches. You want to protect one person but what are we going to do? We are about to go out and investigate cops. What difference is it if we start with this person or come to him in time? Either way we will get to him. Give us the name.”

Bosch thought about everything Irving had said. He wondered what his own motive was. Was he protecting Mora or simply keeping him for himself? He thought a few more moments and finally said, “Give me five minutes alone in here with the files. If there is something there that I think is there, then I’ll tell you.”

“Gentlemen,” Irving said, “let’s go get some coffee.”

After the room was cleared, Bosch looked at the files for nearly a minute without moving. He felt confused. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to find something that would convince him Mora was the follower or convince him he was not. He thought about what Chandler had said to the jury about monsters and the black abyss where they dwell. Whoever fights monsters, he thought, should not think too hard about it.

He lit a cigarette and pulled the stack close to him and began looking for two files. The chronologies file was near the top. It was thin. It was basically a quick guide to important dates in the investigation. He found the task force personnel file at the bottom of the stack. It was thicker than the first he pulled out because it contained the weekly shifts schedule for the detectives assigned to the task force and the overtime approval forms. As the detective-three in charge of the B squad, Bosch had been in charge of keeping the personnel file up to date.

From the chronologies file, Bosch quickly looked up the times and dates that the first two porno actresses were murdered and other pertinent information about the way they were lured to their death. Then he looked up the same information about the lone survivor. He wrote it all down in order on a page of his pocket notebook.

– June 17, 11P.M.

Georgia Stern aka Velvet Box

survivor

– July 6, 11:30P.M.

Nicole Knapp aka Holly Lere

W. Hollywood

– Sept. 28, 4A.M.

Shirleen Kemp aka Heather Cumhither

Malibu

Bosch opened the personnel file and pulled the shift schedules for the weeks the women were attacked or murdered. June seventeenth, the night Georgia Stern was attacked, was a Sunday, which was the B squad’s night off. Mora could’ve done it, but so could anyone else who was on the squad.

On the Knapp case, Bosch got a hit and his fingers trembled a little as he held the schedule for the week of July 1. His adrenaline was moving faster now. July sixth, the day Knapp was sent on an outcall request at 9P.M. and was found dead on the sidewalk on Sweetzer in West Hollywood at 11:30P.M., was a Friday. Mora was on the schedule to be working the three-to-midnight shift with the B squad, but there next to his name in Bosch’s own writing was the word “sick.”

Bosch quickly pulled out the schedule for the week of September twenty-second. The nude body of Shirleen Kemp had been found at the side of the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu at four in the morning on Friday, September twenty-eighth. He realized that wasn’t enough information and looked for the file that contained the investigation of her death.

He quickly read through the file and learned that Kemp had a phone service that had logged a call for her services at the Malibu Inn at 12:55A.M. When detectives went there they learned from phone records that at 12:55A.M. a call had been placed by the occupant of room 311. The front desk staff could not provide a good description of the man in 311 and the identification he gave proved to be false. He had paid in cash. The one thing the desk people could say with absolute accuracy was that he checked in at 12:35A.M. Each registration card was punched with the time. The man had called for Heather Cumhither twenty minutes after he checked in.

Bosch referred back to the work schedule. On the Thursday night before Kemp was murdered, Mora had worked. But he had apparently come in and left early. He had signed in at 2:40P.M. and out at 11:45P.M.

That gave him fifty minutes to get from the Hollywood station to the Malibu Inn and checked into room 311 at 12:35A.M., Friday. Bosch knew that it could be done. Traffic would be light on the PCH that late at night.

It could be Mora.

He noticed that the cigarette he had set on the edge of the table had burned down to the butt and it had discolored the Formica edge. He quickly dropped the cigarette into a pot containing a ficus plant in the corner of the room and turned the table around so the burn mark was positioned at the spot where Rollenberger had been sitting. He waved one of the files in the air to disperse the smoke and then opened the door to Irving’s office.

“Raymond Mora.”

Irving had said the name out loud apparently to see how it sounded. He said nothing else when Bosch was finished telling what he knew. Bosch watched him and waited for more but the assistant chief only sniffed at the air, identified the cigarette smoke and frowned.

“Another thing,” Bosch said. “Locke wasn’t the only one I talked to about the follower. Mora knows just about everything I just told you. He was on the task force and we went to him this week for help on the ID of the concrete blonde. I was over at Ad-Vice when you paged me. He had called me last night.”

“What did he want?” Irving asked.

“He wanted to let me know that he thought the follower might’ve done the two porno queens from the original eleven. He said it had just come to him, that maybe the follower had started way back then.”

“Shit,” Sheehan said, “this guy is playing with us. If he-”

“What did you tell him?” Irving interrupted.

“I told him I was thinking that, too. And I asked him to check with his sources to see if he could find out if there were other women who disappeared or dropped out of the business like Becky Kaminski did.”

“You asked him to go to work on this?” Rollenberger said, his eyebrows arched in astonishment and outrage.

“I had to. It was the obvious thing for me to ask him. If I didn’t, he’d know I was suspicious.”

“He’s right,” Irving said.

Rollenberger’s chest seemed to deflate a little bit. He couldn’t get anything right.

“Yes, now I see,” he dutifully responded. “Good work.”

“We’re going to need more people,” Opelt said, since everybody was being so agreeable.

“I want to begin surveillance on him by tomorrow morning,” Irving said. “We’re going to need at least three teams. Sheehan and Opelt will be one. Bosch, you’re involved in court and Edgar, I want you working on tracking down the survivor, so you two are out. Lieutenant Rollenberger, who else can you spare?”

“Well, Yde is sitting around since Buchert is on vacation. And Mayfield and Rutherford are in court on the same case. I can shake one of them loose to pair with Yde. That’s all I’ve got, unless you want to pull back on some ongoing-”

“No, I don’t want that. Get Yde and Mayfield in on this. I’ll go to Lieutenant Hilliard and see what she can spare from the Valley. She’s had three teams on the catering truck case for a month and they’re at the wall. I’ll take a team off of that.”

“Very good, sir,” Rollenberger said.

Sheehan looked at Harry and made a face like he was going to puke with this guy in charge. Bosch held back his smile. There was always this giddiness that detectives felt when they received their marching orders and were about to go out into the hunt.

“Opelt, Sheehan, I want you on Mora tomorrow morning at eight,” Irving said. “Lieutenant, I want you to set up a meeting with the new people tomorrow morning. Bring them up to date on what we have and have one team take over surveillance from Opelt and Sheehan at fourP.M. They stay with Mora until lights out. If overtime is needed, I’m authorizing it. The other pair will take the surveillance at eightA.M. Saturday and Opelt and Sheehan will take it back at four. Rotate like that. The night-shift watchers have to stay with him until they are sure he is in his home in bed for the night. I want no mistakes. If this guy pulls off something while we’re watching him, we can all kiss our careers good-bye.”

“Chief?”

“Yes, Bosch.”

“There is no guarantee that he is going to do something. Locke said he thinks the follower has a lot of control. He doesn’t think he is out there hunting every night. He thinks he controls the urge and lives pretty normally, then strikes at irregular intervals.”

“There is no guarantee that we’ll even be watching the right man, Detective Bosch, but I want to watch him anyway. I am sitting here hoping we are dreadfully wrong about Detective Mora. But the things you have said here are convincing in a circumstantial way. Nothing near being usable in court. So we watch him and hope if it’s him we’ll see the sign before he hurts anybody else. My-”

“I agree, sir,” Rollenberger said.

“Don’t interrupt me, Lieutenant. My forte is neither detective work nor psychoanalysis, but something tells me that whoever the follower is, he’s feeling the pressure. Sure, he brought it on himself with that note. And he may think this is a cat-and-mouse game he can master. Nevertheless, he is feeling the pressure. And one thing I know, just from being a cop, when the pressure is on these people, the edge-dwellers I call them, then they react. Sometimes they crack, sometimes they act out. So what I am saying is, knowing what I know about this case, I want Mora covered if he even walks outside to get the mail.”

They sat there in silence. Even Rollenberger, who seemed cowed by his misstep in interrupting Irving.

“Okay, then, we have our assignments. Sheehan, Opelt, surveillance. Bosch, you are freelancing until you get done with the trial. Edgar, you have the survivor and when you have the time do some checking on Mora. Nothing that will get back to him.”

“He’s divorced,” Bosch offered. “Got divorced right before the Dollmaker task force was put together.”

“All right, there’s your start. Go to court, pull his divorce. Who knows, we might get lucky. Maybe his wife dropped him because he liked making her up like a doll. Things have been hard enough on this case, we could use a break like that.”

Irving looked around the table at each man’s face.

“The potential for embarrassment to the department on this case is huge. But I don’t want anybody holding back. Let the stones fall where they will… Okay, then, everybody has their assignments. Go to it. Everyone is excused with the exception of Detective Bosch.”

As the others filed out of the room, Bosch thought Rollenberger’s face showed his disappointment at not getting a chance for a private ass-kissing conference with Irving.

After the door closed, Irving was quiet for a few moments as he composed what he wanted to say. Throughout most of Bosch’s career as a detective, Irving had been a nemesis of sorts, always trying to control him and bring him into the fold. Bosch had always resisted. Nothing personal, it just wasn’t Bosch’s gig.

But now Bosch sensed a softening in Irving. In the way he had treated Bosch during the meeting, in the way he testified earlier in the week. He could have hung Bosch out to dry but didn’t. Yet, it wasn’t something Bosch could or would acknowledge. So he sat there silently and waited.

“Good work on this, Detective. Especially with the trial and everything going on.”

Bosch nodded but knew that wasn’t what this was about.

“Uh, that’s why I held you here. The trial. I wanted to-let’s see, how do I say this… I wanted to tell you, and excuse the language, but I don’t give a flying fuck what that jury decides or how much money they give those people. That jury has no idea what it’s like to be out there on the edge. To have to make the decisions that may cost or save lives. You can’t take a week to accurately examine and judge the decision you had to make in a second.”

Bosch was trying to think of something to say and the silence seemed to drag on too long.

“Anyway,” Irving finally said, “I guess it’s taken me four years to come to that conclusion. But better late than never.”

“Hey, I could use you for closing arguments tomorrow.”

Irving’s face cringed, the muscular jaws flexing as if he had just taken a mouthful of cold sauerkraut.

“Don’t get me started on that, either. I mean, what is this city doing? The city attorney’s office is nothing but a school. A law school for trial lawyers. And the taxpayers pay the tuition. We get these greenhorn, uh, uh, preppies, who don’t know the first thing about trial law. They learn from the mistakes they make in court when it counts-for us. And when they finally get good and know what the hell they’re doing, they quit and then they’re the lawyers suing us!”

Bosch had never seen Irving so animated. It was as if he had taken off the starched public persona he always wore like a uniform. Harry was entranced.

“Sorry about that,” Irving said. “I get carried away. Anyway, good luck with this jury but don’t let it worry you.”

Bosch said nothing.

“You know, Bosch, it only takes a half-hour meeting with Lieutenant Rollenberger in the room for me to want to take a good look at myself and this department and where it’s headed. He’s not the LAPD I joined or you joined. He’s a good manager, yes, and so am I, at least I think so. But we can’t forget we’re cops…”

Bosch didn’t know what to say, or if he should say anything. It seemed that Irving was almost rambling now. As if there was something he wanted to say, but was looking for anything else to say instead.

“Hans Rollenberger. What a name, huh? I can guess, the detectives in his crew must call him ‘Hans Off,’ am I right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Yes, well, I guess that’s expected. He-uh, you know, Harry, I’ve got thirty-eight years in the department.”

Bosch just nodded. This was getting weird. Irving had never even called him by his first name before.

“And, uh, I worked Hollywood patrol for a lot of years right out of the academy… That question Money Chandler asked me about your mother. That really came out of the blue and I’m sorry about that, Harry, sorry for your loss.”

“It was a long time ago.” Bosch waited a beat. Irving was looking down at his hands, which were clasped on the table. “If that’s it, I think I’ll-”

“Yes, that’s basically it, but, you know, what I wanted to tell you is that I was there that day.”

“What day?”

“That day that your mother-I was the RO.”

“The reporting officer?”

“Yes, I was the one that found her. I was walking a foot beat on the Boulevard and I ducked into that alley off of Gower. I usually hit it once a day and, uh, I found her… When Chandler showed me those reports I recognized the case right away. She didn’t know my badge number-it was there on the report-or she would’ve known I was the one who found her. Chandler would’ve had some kind of a field day with that, I guess…”

This was hard for Bosch to sit through. Now he was glad Irving wasn’t looking at him. He knew, or thought he knew, what it was that Irving wasn’t saying. If he had worked the Boulevard foot beat, then he had known Bosch’s mother before she was dead.

Irving glanced up at him and then looked away, toward the corner of the room. His eyes fell on the ficus plant.

“Somebody put a cigarette butt in my pot,” he said. “That yours, Harry?”