The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

didn’t see it right away.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Got a TOD yet?”
    “Yeah, an estimate. Coroner’s tech says time of death was at least forty-eight hours ago.”
    Bosch nodded. It meant she was dead before he even found the note. It made it a little easier.
    “Hear anything on Locke?”
    “Nada.”
    “You and Johnson on point on this one?”
    “Yeah, Hans Off put us on it. Edgar discovered it but he’s primary on last week’s case. I know it was your tumble but I guess Hans Off figured with court and-”
    “Don’t worry about it. What do you need me to do?”
    “You tell me. What do you want to do?”
    “I want to stay out of there. I didn’t like her but I liked her, you know what I mean?”
    “I think so. Yeah, this one’s bad. You notice he’s changing? He’s biting now. Burning.”
    “Yeah, I noticed. Anything else new?”
    “Not that we can tell.”
    “I’m going to have a look around the rest of the house. Is it clean?”
    “We haven’t had time to dust. Just a quick look through. Use gloves and let me know what you find.”
    Bosch went to one of the equipment boxes lined along the wall in the hallway and pulled a pair of plastic gloves from a dispenser that looked like a Kleenex box.
    Irving passed by him wordlessly on the staircase, their eyes barely holding each other’s for a second. When he got down to the entry, he saw two deputy chiefs standing out on the front steps. They weren’t doing anything, just standing where they would be sure to be seen on the TV footage looking serious and concerned. Bosch could see that a growing number of reporters and cameramen were gathering at the plastic line.
    He looked around and found Chandler’s home office in a small room off the living room. Two of the walls contained built-in shelves that were lined with books. The room had one window that looked out onto the commotion just beyond the front lawn. He pulled on the gloves and began looking through the drawers of the desk. He didn’t find what he was looking for but he could tell the desk had been rifled by someone else. Things were scattered in the drawers, papers from files were outside of files. It wasn’t as neat as Chandler had kept her things on the plaintiff’s table.
    He checked underneath the blotter. The note from the Follower wasn’t there. There were two books on the desk,
Black’s Law Dictionary
and the
California Penal Code
. He fanned the pages of both but there was no note. He leaned back in the leather desk chair and looked up at the two walls of books.
    He figured it would take two hours to go through all the books and he still might not find the note. Then he noticed the cracked green spine of a book on the second-to-the-top shelf nearest the window. He recognized the book. It was the one Chandler had read from during closing arguments.
The Marble Faun.
He got up and pulled the book out of its slot.
    The note was there, folded into the center of the book. So was the envelope it came in. And Bosch quickly learned he had guessed correctly about her. The note was a photocopy of the page dropped at the police station last Monday, the day of opening statements. What was different about this one was the envelope. It hadn’t been dropped off. It had been mailed. The envelope was stamped and then canceled in Van Nuys on the Saturday before opening statements.
    Bosch looked at the postmark and knew it would be impossible to try any kind of trace on it. There would also be numerous prints on it from the many postal employees who handled it. He decided the note would be of little evidentiary value.
    He left the office, carrying the note and envelope by the corners with his gloved hands. He had to go upstairs to find a tech with plastic evidence bags to place them in. He looked through the doorway into the bedroom and saw the coroner’s tech and two body movers spreading open a plastic bag on a gurney. The public display of Honey Chandler was about to end. Bosch stepped back so he did not have to watch. Edgar walked over after reading the note, which the tech was labeling.
    “He sent the same note to her? How come?”
    “Guess he wanted to make sure we didn’t sit on the one he dropped off for us. If we did, he could count on her bringing it up.”
    “If she had the note all along, how come she wanted to subpoena ours? She could’ve just taken this one into court.”
    “I think maybe she thought she’d get more mileage out of ours. Making the police turn it over gave it