The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

Believe me, during those seven months the impulses to act out, to go out and kill, do not lie dormant. They are there. They are always there. Remember the erotic mold? I testified about it?”
    “I remember.”
    “Okay, well, he is going to need to satisfy that erotic mold. To fulfill it. How does he do it? How does he last six or seven or eight months? The answer is, he has trophies. These are reminders of past conquests. By conquests I mean kills. He has things that remind him and help bring the fantasy alive. It’s not the real thing by a long shot but he can still use the reminders to widen the cycle, to stave off the impulse to act. He knows the less he kills, the less chance there is that he will be caught.
    “If you’re right about him, he is now nearly eight months into a cycle. It means he is pushing the edge of the envelope, all the while trying to maintain his control. Yet at the same time we have this note and his strange compulsion to not be overlooked. To stand up and say, I’m better than the Dollmaker. I go on! And if you don’t believe me, check out what I left in the concrete at such and such a place. The note shows severe disassembling at the same time he is locked in this tremendous battle to control the impulses. He has gone seven months plus!”
    Bosch pressed his cigarette against the side of the trash can and dropped it in. He took out his notebook. He said, “The clothing of the victims, both the Dollmaker’s and the Follower’s, was never found. These could be the trophies he uses?”
    “They could be, but put the notebook away, Harry. It’s easier than that. Remember, what you have here is a man who chose his victims after seeing them in videos. So what better way to keep his fantasies alive than through videos. If you get free of him in the house, look for videos, Harry. And a camera.”
    “He videotaped the killings,” Bosch said.
    It wasn’t a question. He was just repeating Locke, preparing himself for what was ahead with Mora.
    “Of course, we can’t say for sure,” Locke said. “Who knows? But I’d put my money on it. You remember Westley Dodd?”
    Bosch shook his head no.
    “He was the one they executed a couple of years ago in Washington. Hanged him-a perfect example of what goes around comes around. He was a child-killer. Liked to hang kids in his closet, on coat hangers. And he also had a Polaroid camera he liked to use. After his arrest the police found a carefully kept photo album, complete with Polaroids of the little boys he killed-hanging in the closet. He had taken the time to carefully label each picture with a caption. Very sick stuff. But as sick as it was, I guarantee you that that photo album saved the lives of other little boys. Absolutely. Because he could use it to indulge his fantasy and not act it out.”
    Bosch nodded his understanding. Somewhere in Mora’s house he would find a video or maybe a photographic gallery that would turn most people’s stomachs. But for Mora it was what kept him out of the black place for as long as eight months at a time.
    “What about Jeffrey Dahmer?” Locke said. “Remember him, in Milwaukee? He was a cameraman, too. Liked taking pictures of corpses, parts of corpses. Helped him go undetected by the police for years and years. Then he started keeping the corpses. That was his mistake.”
    They were silent for a few moments after that. Bosch’s head filled with horrible images of the dead he had seen. He rubbed his eyes as if that might erase them.
    “What’s that they say about photos?” Locke asked then. “On the TV commercials? Something like ‘the gift that keeps on giving.’ Then what’s that make videotape to a serial killer?”

    * * *

    Before leaving campus, Bosch dropped by the student union and went into the bookstore. He found a stack of copies of Locke’s book on the porno business in the section on psychology and social studies. The top one on the stack was well worn around the edges from being thumbed through. Bosch took the one below it.
    When the girl at the register opened the book to get the price it flopped open to a black-and-white photo of a woman performing fellatio on a man. The girl’s face turned red but not as scarlet as Bosch’s.
    “Sorry,” was all he could think to say.
    “That’s okay, I’ve seen it before. The book, I mean.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Are you teaching a class with it next semester?”
    Bosch realized that since he was too old to look like a student,