The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,8

in life. What was left of the hair was shoulder length and looked as if it had been bleached blonde. Bosch could see the powdery remains of makeup on the skin of the face. His eyes were drawn to the breasts because they were shockingly large in comparison to the rest of the shrunken corpse. They were full and rounded and the skin was stretched taut across them. It somehow seemed to be the most grotesque feature of the corpse because it was not as it should have been.

“Implants,” Sakai said. “They don't decompose. Could probably take 'em out and resell them to the next stupid chick that wants 'em. We could start a recycling program.”

Bosch didn't say anything. He was suddenly depressed at the thought of the woman—whoever she was—doing that to her body to somehow make herself more appealing, and then to end up this way. Had she only succeeded, he wondered, in making herself appealing to her killer?

Sakai interrupted his thoughts.

“If the Dollmaker did this, that means she's been in the concrete at least four years, right? So if that's the case, de-comp isn't that bad for that length of time. Still got the hair, eyes, some internal tissues. We'll be able to work with it. Last week, I picked up a piece of work, a hiker they found out in Soledad Canyon. They figure it was a guy went missing last summer. Now he was nothing but bones. 'Course out in the open like that, you got the animals. You know they come in through the ass. It's the softest entry and the animals—”

“I know, Sakai. Let's stay on this one.”

“Anyway, with this woman, the concrete apparently slowed things down for us. Sure didn't stop it, but slowed it down. It must've been like an airtight tomb in there.”

“You people going to be able to establish just how long she's been dead?”

“Probably not from the body. We get her ID'd, then you people might find out when she went missing. That'll be the way.”

Bosch looked at the fingers. They were dark sticks almost as thin as pencils.

“What about prints?”

“We'll get 'em, but not from those.”

Bosch looked over and saw Sakai smiling.

“What? She left them in the concrete?”

Sakai's glee was smashed like a fly. Bosch had ruined his surprise.

“Yeah, that's right. She left an impression, you could say. We're going to get prints, maybe even a mold of her face, if we can get what's left of that slab out of there. Whoever mixed this concrete used too much water. Made it very fine. That's a break for us. We'll get the prints.”

Bosch leaned over the gurney to study the knotted strip of leather that was wrapped around the corpse's neck. It was thin black leather and he could see the manufacturer's seam along the edges. It was a strap cut away from a purse. Like all the others. He bent closer and the cadaver's smell filled his nose and mouth. The circumference of the leather strap around the neck was small, maybe about the size of a wine bottle. Small enough to be fatal. He could see where it had cut into the now darkened skin and choked away life. He looked at the knot. A slipknot pulled tight on the right side with the left hand. Like all the others. Church had been left-handed.

There was one more thing to check. The signature, as they had called it.

“No clothes? Shoes?”

“Nothing. Like the others, remember?”

“Open it all the way. I want to see the rest.”

Sakai pulled the zipper on the black bag down all the way to the feet. Bosch was unsure if Sakai knew of the signature but was not going to bring it up. He leaned over the corpse and looked down, acting as if he was studying everything when he was only interested in the toenails. The toes were shriveled, black and cracked. The nails were cracked, too, and completely missing from a few toes. But Bosch saw the paint on the toes that were intact. Hot pink dulled by decomposition fluids, dust and age. And on the large toe on the right foot he saw the signature. What was still left of it to be seen. A tiny white cross had been carefully painted on the nail. The Dollmaker's sign. It had been there on all the bodies.

Bosch could feel his heart pounding loudly. He looked around the van's interior and began to feel claustrophobic. The first sense of paranoia was poking into