The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,9
his brain. His mind began churning through the possibilities. If this body matched every known specification of a Dollmaker kill, then Church was the killer. If Church was this woman's killer and is now dead himself, then who left the note at the Hollywood station front desk?
He straightened up and took in the body as a whole for the first time. Naked and shrunken, forgotten. He wondered if there were others out there in the concrete, waiting to be discovered.
“Close it,” he said to Sakai.
“It's him, isn't it? The Dollmaker.”
Bosch didn't answer. He climbed out of the van, pulled the zipper on his jumpsuit down a bit to let in some air.
“Hey, Bosch,” Sakai called from inside the van. “I'm just curious. How'd you guys find this? If the Dollmaker is dead, who told you where to look?”
Bosch didn't answer that one either. He walked slowly back underneath the tarp. It looked like the others still hadn't figured out what to do about removing the concrete the body had been found in. Edgar was standing around trying not to get dirty. Bosch signaled to him and Pounds and they gathered together at a spot to the left of the trench, where they could talk without being overheard.
“Well?” Pounds asked. “What've we got?”
“It looks like Church's work,” Bosch said.
“Shit,” Edgar said.
“How can you be sure?” Pounds asked.
“From what I can see, it matches every detail followed by the Dollmaker. Including the signature. It's there.”
“The signature?” Edgar asked.
“The white cross on the toe. We held that back during the investigation, cut deals with all the reporters not to put it out.”
“What about a copycat?” Edgar offered hopefully.
“Could be. The white cross was never made public until after we closed the case. After that, Bremmer over at the Times wrote that book about the case. It was mentioned.”
“So we have a copycat,” Pounds pronounced.
“It all depends on when she died,” Bosch said. “His book came out a year after Church was dead. If she got killed after that, you probably got a copycat. If she got put in that concrete before, then I don't know …”
“Shit,” said Edgar.
Bosch thought a moment before speaking again.
“We could be dealing with one of a lot of different things. There's the copycat. Or maybe Church had a partner and we never saw it. Or maybe … I popped the wrong guy. Maybe whoever wrote this note we got is telling the truth.”
That hung out there in the momentary silence like dog-shit on the sidewalk. Everybody walks carefully around it without looking too closely at it.
“Where's the note?” Bosch finally said to Pounds.
“In my car. I'll get it. What do you mean, he may have had a partner?”
“I mean, say Church did do this, then where'd the note come from, since he is dead? It would obviously have to be someone who knew he did it and where he had hidden the body. If that's the case, who is this second person? A partner? Did Church have a killing partner we never knew about?”
“Remember the Hillside Strangler?” Edgar asked. “Turned out it was stranglers. Plural. Two cousins with the same taste for killing young women.”
Pounds took a step back and shook his head as if to ward off a potentially career-threatening case.
“What about Chandler, the lawyer?” Pounds said. “Say Church's wife knows where he buried bodies, literally. She tells Chandler and Chandler hatches this scheme. She writes a note like the Dollmaker and drops it off at the station. It's guaranteed to fuck up your case.”
Bosch replayed that one in his mind. It seemed to work, then he saw the fault lines. He saw that they ran through all the scenarios.
“But why would Church bury some bodies and not others? The shrink who advised the task force back then said there was a purpose to his displaying of the victims. He was an exhibitionist. Toward the end, after the seventh victim, he started dropping the notes to us and the newspaper. It doesn't make sense that he'd leave some of the bodies to be found and some buried in concrete.”
“True,” Pounds said.
“I like the copycat,” Edgar said.
“But why copy someone's whole profile, right down to the signature, and then bury the body?” Bosch asked.
He wasn't really asking them. It was a question he'd have to answer himself. They stood there in silence for a long moment, each man beginning to see that the most plausible possibility might be that the Dollmaker was still alive.