The Concrete Blonde

29

Getting to the freeway was so frustrating that Bosch believed he could actually feel his blood pressure rising. His skin began to feel tight around his eyes, his face grew warm. There was some kind of Sunday morning performance at the Hollywood Bowl and traffic on Highland was backed up to Fountain. Bosch tried taking some side streets but so were many of the people going to the Bowl. He was deep into this quagmire before he cursed himself for not remembering that he had the bubble and siren. Working homicide, it had been so long since he had to race to get anywhere that he had forgotten.

After he slid the bubble onto the roof and hit the siren, the cars began to part in front of him and he remembered how easy it could be. He had just gotten onto the Hollywood Freeway and was speeding north through the Cahuenga Pass when Jerry Edgar’s voice came up on the rover on the seat next to him.

“Harry Bosch?”

“Yeah, Edgar, listen. I want you to call the sheriff’s department, Valencia station, and tell them to get a car to Sylvia’s house code three. Tell them to make sure she’s okay.”

Code three meant lights and siren, an emergency. He gave Edgar her address.

“Make the call now and then come back up.”

“Okay, Harry. What’s going on?”

“Make the call now!”

Three minutes later Edgar was back on the radio.

“They’re on the way. What’ve you got?”

“I’m on my way, too. What I want you to do is go in to the division. I left a note on my desk. It’s from the Follower. Secure it and then call Rollenberger and Irving and tell ’em what’s happening.”

“What is happening?”

Bosch had to swerve into the median to avoid hitting a car that pulled into the lane in front of him. The driver hadn’t seen Bosch coming and Bosch knew he was going too fast-a steady ninety-three-for the siren to give much of a warning to the cars ahead of him.

“The note’s another poem. He says he is going to take the blonde off my hands. Sylvia. There’s no answer at her house but there still may be time. I don’t think I was supposed to find the note until Monday, when I came in for work.”

“On my way. Be careful, buddy. Stay cool.”

Stay cool, Bosch thought. Right. He thought of what Locke had told him about the Follower being angry, wanting to get back at him for putting down the Dollmaker. Not Sylvia, he hoped. He wouldn’t be able to live with it.

He picked the radio back up.

“Team One?”

“Yo,” Sheehan replied.

“Go get him. If he’s there, bring him in.”

“You sure?”

“Bring him in.”

There was a lone sheriff’s car in front of Sylvia’s house. When Bosch pulled to a stop, he saw a uniform deputy standing on the front step, back to the door. It looked as if he was guarding the place. As if he was protecting a crime scene.

As he started to get out, Bosch felt a sharp stabbing pain on the left side of his chest. He held still for a moment and it eased. He ran around the car and across the lawn, working his badge out of his pocket as he went.

“LAPD, what’ve you got?”

“It’s locked. I walked around, all windows and doors secured. No answer. Looks like nobody’s-”

Bosch pushed past him and used his key to open the door. He ran from room to room, making a quick search for obvious signs of foul play. There were none. The deputy had been right. Nobody was home. Bosch looked in the garage and Sylvia’s Cherokee was not there.

Still, Bosch made a second sweep of the house, opening closets, looking under beds, looking for any indication that something was amiss. The deputy was standing in the living room when Bosch finally came out of the bedroom wing.

“Can I go now? I was pulled off a call that seems a little more important than this.”

Bosch noted the annoyance in the deputy’s voice and nodded for him to go. He followed him out and got the rover out of the Caprice.

“Edgar, you up?”

“What do you have there, Harry?”

There was the sound of genuine dread in his voice.

“Nothing here. No sign of her or anything else.”

“I’m at the station, you want me to put a BOLO out?”

Bosch described Sylvia and her Cherokee for the Be On Look Out dispatch that would go out to all patrol cars.

“I’ll put it out. We got the task force coming in. Irving, too. We’ll be meeting here. There’s nothing else to do but wait.”

“I’m going to wait here a while. Keep me posted… Team One, you up?”

“Team One,” Sheehan said. “We went up to the door. Nobody home. We’re standing by. If he shows, we’ll bring him in.”

Bosch sat in the living room, his arms folded in front of him, for more than an hour. He now knew why Georgia Stern had held herself this way at Sybil Brand. There was comfort in it. Still, the silence of the house was nerve-racking. He was staring at the portable phone he had put on the coffee table, waiting for it to ring, when he heard a key hit the lock on the front door. He jumped up and was moving toward the entry when the door opened and a man stepped in. It wasn’t Locke. It wasn’t anyone Bosch knew, but he had a key.

Without hesitating Bosch moved into the entrance and slammed the man up against the door as he turned to close it.

“Where is she?” he shouted.

“What? What?” the man cried out.

“Where is she?”

“She couldn’t come. I’m going to watch it for her. She’s got another open in Newhall. Please!”

Bosch realized what was happening just as the pager on his belt sounded its shrill tone. He stepped away from the man.

“You’re the Realtor?”

“I work for her. What are you doing? Nobody’s supposed to be here.”

Bosch pulled the pager off his belt and saw the readout was his home phone number.

“I have to make a call.”

He went back to the living room. Over his shoulder he heard the real estate man say, “Yeah, you do that! What the hell is going on here?”

Bosch punched the number into the phone and Sylvia picked up after one ring.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, Harry, where are you?”

“At your place. Where have you been?”

“I picked up a pie at Marie Callendar’s and took it and the flowers I cut to the Fontenots. I just felt like doing-”

“Sylvia, listen to me. Is the door locked?”

“What? I don’t know.”

“Put the phone down and go make sure. Make sure the sliding door to the porch is locked, too. And the door to the carport. I’ll wait.”

“Harry, what is-”

“Go do it now!”

She was back in a minute. Her voice sounded very timid.

“Okay, everything’s locked.”

“Okay, good. Now listen, I’m coming there right now and it will only take me half an hour. In the meantime, no matter who comes to the door, don’t answer it and don’t make any sound. Understand?”

“You’re scaring me, Harry.”

“I know that. Do you understand what I said?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Bosch thought for a moment. What else could he tell her?

“Sylvia, after we are done here. I want you to go to the closet near the front door. On the shelf there is a white box. Take it down and take out the gun. There are bullets in the red box in the cabinet over the sink. The red box, not the blue. Load the gun.”

“I can’t do-what are you telling me?”

“Yes, you can, Sylvia. Load the gun. Then wait for me. If anybody comes through the door and it’s not me, protect yourself.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’m on my way. I love you.”

While Bosch was on the freeway going south, Edgar came up on the radio and told him Sheehan and Opelt still had made no sighting of Locke. The presidents had been dispatched to USC but Locke was not at his office, either.

“They’re going to sit on both locations. I’m working on a warrant for the house now. But I don’t think the PC is there.”

Bosch knew he was probably right. Mora’s identification of Locke as the man hanging around porno sets and the names of three of the victims in his book were not probable cause to search his house.

He told Edgar that he had located Sylvia and was headed to her now. After signing off, he realized that her trip to the Fontenot house might have saved her life. He saw a symbiotic grace in that. A life taken, a life saved.

Before opening the door to his house he loudly announced he was there, then turned the key and walked into Sylvia’s trembling arms. He held her to his chest and said into the radio, “We’re all safe here,” then turned it off.

They sat down on the couch and Bosch told her everything that had happened since they had last been together. He could tell by her eyes that it scared her more knowing what was going on than not.

She, in turn, explained that she had to get out of the house because the Realtor was holding an open house. That was why she had gone to Bosch’s house after visiting the Fontenots. He explained that he had forgotten about the open house.

“You might need to get a new Realtor after today,” he said.

They laughed together to let some of the tension go.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This should never have involved you.”

They sat in silence for a while after that. She leaned against him as if she was weary of everything.

“Why do you do this, Harry? You deal with so much-the most awful people and the things they do. Why do you keep going?”

He thought about that but knew there was no real answer and that she wasn’t expecting one.

“I don’t want to stay here,” he said after a while.

“We can go back to my house at four.”

“No, let’s just get out of here.”

The two-room suite at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica gave them a sweeping view of the ocean across a wide beach. It was the kind of room that came with two full-length terrycloth robes and gold foil-wrapped chocolates left on the pillow. The suite’s front door was off the fourth landing of a five-story atrium with a wall of glass that faced the ocean and would capture the entire arc of the sunset.

There was a porch with two chaise lounges and a table and they had lunch delivered by room service there. Bosch had brought the rover in with him but it was turned off. He would keep in touch as the search for Locke went on, but he was out of it for the day.

He had called in and talked to Edgar and then Irving. He told them he would stay with Sylvia, though it seemed unlikely that the Follower would make a move now. He was not needed anyway because the task force was in a holding pattern, waiting for Locke to turn up or something else to break.

Irving had said the presidents had contacted the dean of the psychology department at USC who, in turn, contacted one of Locke’s graduate assistants. She reported that Locke had mentioned on Friday that he would be in Las Vegas for the weekend, staying at the Stardust. He taught no classes on Mondays, so he would not be back at the school until Tuesday.

“But we checked the Stardust,” Irving said. “Locke had a reservation but never checked in.”

“What about the warrant?”

“We’ve had three turn-downs from three judges. You know it’s pretty weak when a judge won’t rubber-stamp a search warrant for us. We’re going to have to let that jell for a while. In the meantime, we’ll be watching his house and his office. I’d like to leave it that way until he surfaces and we can talk to him.”

Bosch heard the doubt in Irving’s voice. He wondered how Rollenberger had explained the leap in the investigation from Mora to Locke as the suspect.

“You think we’re wrong?”

He realized there was a quiver of doubt in his own voice.

“I don’t know. We traced the note. Partially. It was left at the front desk sometime Saturday night. The deskman went back for coffee about nine, got sidetracked by the watch commander and when he came back out it was there on the counter. He had an Explorer put it in your slot. The only thing it means for sure is that we were wrong about Mora. Anyway, the point is, we could be wrong again. Right now all we have are hunches. Good hunches, mind you, but that’s all. I want to proceed a little more carefully this time.”

The translation was, you screwed us up with your hunch on Mora. We are going to be more skeptical this time. Bosch understood this.

“What if the Vegas trip was a cover? The note says something about moving on. Maybe Locke’s running.”

“Maybe.”

“Should we put out a BOLO, get an arrest warrant?”

“I think we’re going to wait until at least Tuesday, Detective. Give him a chance to come back. Just two more days.”

It was clear Irving wanted to sit tight. He was going to wait for events to control what he would do next.

“Okay, I’ll check in later.”

They napped in the king-size bed until it was dark and then Bosch turned on the news to see if any of what had happened in the last twenty-four hours had leaked.

It hadn’t, but midway through the newscast on 2, Bosch stopped flipping through the channels with the selector. The story that stopped him was an update on the Beatrice Fontenot killing. A photo of the girl, her hair in corn-rows, appeared on the right side of the screen.

The blonde anchor said, “Police announced today that they have identified a suspected gunman in the death of sixteen-year-old Beatrice Fontenot. The man they are looking for is an alleged drug dealer who was a rival of Beatrice’s older brothers, Detective Stanley Hanks said. He said the shots fired at the Fontenot house were in all probability meant for the brothers. Instead, a bullet struck Beatrice, an honor student at Grant High in the Valley, in the head. Her funeral is scheduled for later this week.”

Bosch turned off the television and looked back at Sylvia, who was propped up on two pillows against the wall. They didn’t say anything.

After a room service dinner, which they ate with almost no conversation in the front room of the suite, they took turns in the shower. Bosch went second and as the coarse water stung his scalp, he decided that it was time for him to lose all his baggage, to come clean. He trusted his faith in her, in her desire to know all of him. And he knew that if he did nothing, he was risking what they had each day he kept the secrets of his life inside. Somehow, he knew facing her was facing himself. He had to accept what he was, where he had come from and what he had become if he was to be accepted by her.

They were in their bleached white bathrobes, she in the chair by the sliding door, he standing near the bed. Beyond her through the door, he could see the full moon casting a shifting reflection on the Pacific. He didn’t know how to start.

She had been leafing through a hotel magazine filled with suggestions for tourists on what to do in the city. None of them were things that people who lived here ever did. She closed it and put it on the table. She looked at him and then looked away. She started before he could say a word.

“Harry, I want you to go home.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, put his elbows on his knees and ran his hands through his hair. He had no idea what was going on.

“What do you mean?”

“Too much death.”

“Sylvia?”

“Harry, I’ve done so much thinking this weekend that I can’t think anymore. But I know this, we have to be apart for a while. I have to sort things out. Your life, it’s…”

“Two days ago you said our problem was that I held things back from you. Now you’re saying you don’t want to know about me. Your-”

“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about what you do.”

He shook his head.

“Same thing, Sylvia. You should know that.”

“Look, it’s been a rough couple of days. I just need some time to decide if this is right for me. For us. Believe me, I’m thinking about you, too. I’m not sure I’m the right one for you.”

“I am, Sylvia.”

“Please don’t say that. Don’t make it any more difficult. I-”

“I don’t want to go back to being without you, Sylvia. That’s all I know right now. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Harry, I don’t want to hurt you and I would never ever ask you to change for me. I know you and I don’t think you could change even if you wanted to. So… what I have to decide is whether I can live with that and live with you… I do love you, Harry, but I need some time…”

She was crying now. Bosch could see it in the mirror. He wanted to get up to hold her but he knew it was the wrong move. He was the cause of her tears. There was a long silence, both of them sitting in private pain. She was looking down into her lap where her hands held each other. He looked out at the ocean and saw a drift-fishing boat cut across the reflected path of the moon on its way toward the Channel Islands.

“Say something to me,” she finally said.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said. “You know that.”

“I’ll go into the bathroom until you get dressed and leave.”

“Sylvia, I want to know that you are safe. I would like to ask you to let me sleep in the other room. In the morning, we’ll figure something out. I’ll leave then.”

“No. We both know nothing will happen. That man, Locke, he’s probably far away, running from you, Harry. I’ll be safe. I’ll take a taxi to school tomorrow and I’ll be safe. Just give me some time.”

“Time to decide.”

“Yes. To decide.”

She got up and walked quickly by him to the bathroom. He put his arm out but she brushed by it. After the door closed he could hear her pull tissues from the dispenser. Then he could hear her crying.

“Please leave, Harry,” she said after a while. “Please.”

He heard her turn the water on, so she wouldn’t hear him if he said anything. Bosch felt like a fool to be sitting there in his luxury bathrobe. It ripped when he pulled it off.

That night he took a blanket from the trunk of the Caprice and made a bed on the sand about a hundred yards from the hotel. But he didn’t sleep. He sat with his back to the ocean and his eyes on the curtained sliding door on the fourth-floor balcony next to the atrium. Through the glass wall of the atrium he could also see her front door and would know if anyone approached. It was cold on the beach but he didn’t need the sea wind’s chill to stay awake.