The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,158

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.”

33

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