The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

back.”
    Outside, they decided it might be worth booking her on an under-the-influence charge into Sybil Brand and trying her again when she came off the high. Bosch noted that Edgar was eager to do this and volunteered to drive her downtown to Sybil. Bosch knew this was because it would make Edgar’s OT envelope thicker, not because he wanted to get the woman into the narco unit at Sybil and get her straightened out for a while. Compassion had nothing to do with it.

Chapter 26
    Sylvia had pulled the bedroom’s heavy curtains across the blinds and the room stayed dark until well after the sun was up on Saturday morning. When Bosch awoke alone in her bed, he pulled his watch off the nightstand and saw it was already eleven. He had dreamed but when he woke the dream receded into the darkness and he couldn’t reach back to grasp it. He lay there for nearly fifteen minutes trying to bring it back, but it was gone.
    Every few minutes he would hear Sylvia make some kind of household noise. Sweeping the kitchen floor, emptying the dishwasher. He could tell she was trying to be quiet but he heard it anyway. There was the back door being opened and the splashing of water in the potted plants that lined the porch. It hadn’t rained in at least seven weeks.
    At 11:20 the phone rang and Sylvia got to it after one ring. But Bosch knew it was for him. His muscles tensed as he waited for the bedroom door to open and for her to summon him to the call. He had given Sylvia’s phone number to Edgar when they were leaving the Van Nuys Division seven hours earlier.
    But Sylvia never came and when he relaxed again he could hear parts of her conversation on the phone. It sounded like maybe she was counseling a student. After a while it sounded like she was crying.
    Bosch got up, pulled on his clothes and walked out of the bedroom while trying to smooth his hair. She was at the table in the kitchen, holding the cordless phone to her ear. She was drawing circles on the tabletop with her finger and he had been right, she was crying.
    “What?” he whispered.
    She held her hand up, signaling him not to interrupt. He didn’t. He just watched her on the phone.
    “I’ll be there, Mrs. Fontenot, just call me with the time and address... yes... yes, I will. Once again, I am so very sorry. Beatrice was such a fine young woman and student. I was very proud of her. Oh, my gosh...”
    A strong gush of tears came as she hung up. Bosch came to her and put his hand on her neck.
    “A student?”
    “Beatrice Fontenot.”
    “What happened?”
    “She’s dead.”
    He leaned down and held her. She cried.
    “This city...,” she began but didn’t finish. “She’s the one who wrote what I read to you the other night about
Day of the Locust
.”
    Bosch remembered. Sylvia had said she worried about the girl. He wanted to say something but he knew there was nothing to say. This city. It seemed to say it all.

    * * *

    They spent the day around the house, doing odd jobs, cleaning up. Bosch cleared the charred logs out of the fireplace and then joined Sylvia in the backyard, where she was working in the garden, pulling weeds and cutting flowers for a bouquet she was going to take to Mrs. Fontenot.
    They worked side by side but Sylvia spoke very little. Every now and then she would offer a sentence. She said it had been a drive-by shooting on Normandie. She said it happened the night before and that the girl was taken to Martin Luther King, Jr., Hospital, where she was determined to be brain-dead. They turned the machine off in the morning and harvested the organs for donating.
    “That’s weird, that they call it harvesting,” she said. “Sounds like a farm or people growing on trees or something.”
    In the midafternoon she went into the kitchen and made an egg salad sandwich and a tuna fish sandwich. She cut them in half and they each had a half of both sandwiches. He made iced tea with slices of orange in the glass. She said that after the huge steaks they’d eaten the night before, she never wanted beef again. It was the day’s only attempt at humor, but nobody smiled. She put the dishes in the sink afterward but didn’t bother to rinse them. She turned and leaned on the counter and stared down at the floor.
    “Mrs. Fontenot said the funeral would be sometime next week, probably Wednesday. I think I’m going to bring the class down. Get a bus.”
    “I think that’d be nice. Her family would appreciate it.”
    “Her two older brothers