The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

makeup, Bosch thought as he stared at the picture.

    * * *

    Aside from the Bremmer articles, the story he read and reread several times was in the Metro section of Thursday’s paper. It was about the burial of Beatrice Fontenot. Sylvia was quoted in the article and it described how the Grant High teacher had read some of the girl’s schoolwork at the memorial service. There was a photo from the service but Sylvia wasn’t in it. It was of Beatrice’s mother’s stoic, tear-lined face at the funeral. Bosch kept the Metro page on the table next to the chaise lounge and read the story again every time he sat down there.

    * * *

    When he grew restless around the house he would drive. Down out of the hills, he’d head across the Valley with no place in particular to go. He’d drive forty minutes to have a hamburger at an In ‘N’ Out stand. Having grown up in the city, he liked to drive it, to know every one of its streets and corners. Once on Thursday and again on Friday morning his drives took him past Grant High but he never saw Sylvia through the windows of the classrooms as he went by. He felt sick at heart when he thought of her but he knew the closest he could come to her was to drive by the school. It was her move and he must wait for her to make it.
    On Friday afternoon, when he came back from his drive, he saw the message light flashing on his phone machine and his hopes rushed into his throat. He thought maybe she had seen his car and was calling because she knew how his heart hurt. But when he played the message it was just Edgar asking him to call.
    Eventually, he did.
    “Harry, you’re missing everything?”
    “Yeah, what?”
    “Well, we had
People
magazine in here yesterday.”
    “I’ll watch for you on the cover.”
    “Just kidding. Actually, we’ve got big developments.”
    “Yeah, what?”
    “All this publicity was bound to do us good. Some lady over in Culver City called up and said she recognized Bremmer, that he had a storage locker at her place, but under the name Woodward. We got a warrant and popped it first thing this morning.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Locke was right. He videotaped. We found the tapes. His trophies.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Yeah. If there was ever a doubt there ain’t now. Got seven tapes and the camera. He must not have taped the first two, the ones we thought were the Dollmaker’s. But we got tapes of seven others including Chandler and Maggie Cum Loudly. Bastard taped everything. Just horrible stuff. They’re working up formal IDs on the other five victims on the tapes, but it looks like it’s going to be the ones on the list Mora came up with. Gallery and the other four porno chicks.”
    “What else was in the locker?”
    “Everything. We’ve got everything. We’ve got cuffs, belts, gags, a knife and a Glock nine. His whole killing kit. He must’ve used the gun to control them. That’s why there was no sign of a struggle at Chandler’s. He used the gun. We figure he’d hold it on them until he could cuff ‘em and gag ‘em. From the tapes, it looks like all the kills took place in Bremmer’s house, the rear bedroom. Except Chandler, of course. She got it at home... Those tapes, Harry, I couldn’t watch.”
    Bosch could imagine. He envisioned the scenes and felt an unexpected flutter in his heart, as if it had torn loose inside of him and was banging against his ribs like a bird trying to break out of its cage.
    “Anyway, the DA’s got it and the big development is Bremmer’s going to talk.”
    “He is?”
    “Yeah, he heard we had the tapes and everything else. I guess he told his lawyer to deal. He’s going to get life without the possibility of parole in exchange for leading us to the bodies and letting the shrinks have at him, study what makes him tick. My vote is they squash him like a fly, but I guess they are considering the families and science.”
    Bosch was silent. Bremmer would live. At first he didn’t know what to think. Then he realized he could live with the deal. It had bothered him that those women might never be found. That was why he had visited Bremmer at the jail the day charges were first filed. Whether the victims had families who cared or not, he didn’t want to leave them down there in the black chasm of the unknown.
    It wasn’t a bad deal, Bosch decided. Bremmer would be alive, but he wouldn’t be living. It might even be worse for him than the gas chamber. And that would be justice, he thought.
    “Anyway,” Edgar