The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

correct.”
    “When did the book come out?”
    “Just last year.”
    “That would be three years after the end of the Dollmaker case?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, having been part of the Dollmaker task force and obviously becoming familiar with the crimes, why didn’t you include Norman Church in your study? It would seem to be an obvious choice.”
    “It would seem that way but it wasn’t. First of all, Norman Church was dead. I wanted subjects that were alive and cooperative. But incarcerated, of course. I wanted people that I could interview.”
    “But of the five subjects you wrote about, only four are alive. What about the fifth, a man named Alan Karps, who was executed in Texas before you even began your book? Why not Norman Church?”
    “Because, Ms. Chandler, Karps had spent much of his adult life in institutions. There were voluminous public records on his treatment and psychiatric study. With Church there was nothing. He had never been in trouble before. He was an anomaly.”
    Chandler looked down at her yellow pad and flipped a page, letting the point she just scored hang in the quiet courtroom like a cloud of cigarette smoke.
    “But you did at least make preliminary inquiries about Church, didn’t you?”
    Locke hesitated before answering.
    “Yes, I made a very preliminary inquiry. It amounted to contacting his family and asking his wife if she would grant me an interview. She turned me down. Since the man himself was dead and there were no records about him-other than the actual details of the murders, which I was already familiar with-I didn’t pursue it. I went with Karps in Texas.”
    Bosch watched Chandler cross several questions off on her legal pad and then flip several pages to a new set. He guessed that she was changing tack.
    She said, “While you were working with the task force you drew up a psychological profile of the killer, correct?”
    “Yes,” Locke said slowly. He adjusted himself in the chair, straightening up for what he knew was coming.
    “What was that based on?”
    “An analysis of the crime scenes and method of homicide filtered through what little we know about the deviant mind. I came up with common attributes that I thought might be part of our suspect’s makeup-no pun intended.”
    No one in the courtroom laughed. Bosch looked around and saw that the spectator rows were becoming crowded. This must be the best show in the building, he thought. Maybe all of downtown.
    “You were not very successful, were you? If Norman Church was the Dollmaker, that is.”
    “No, not very successful. But that happens. It’s a lot of guesswork. Rather than a testimonial to my failure, it is more a testimonial to how little we know about people. This man’s behavior did not make so much as a blip on anybody’s radar screen-not counting, of course, the women he killed-until the night he was shot.”
    “You speak as if it is a given that Norman Church was the killer, the Dollmaker. Do you know that to be true based on indisputable facts?”
    “Well, I know it to be true because it is what the police told me.”
    “If you take it backwards, doctor. If you start with what you know about Norman Church now and leave out what the police have told you about the supposed evidence, would you ever believe him capable of what he has been accused of?”
    Belk was about to stand up to object but Bosch strongly put his hand on his arm and held him down. Belk turned and looked angrily at him but by then Locke was answering.
    “I wouldn’t be able to count him in or out as a suspect. We don’t know enough about him. We don’t know enough about the human mind in general. All I know is, anybody is capable of anything. I could be a sexual killer. Even you, Ms. Chandler. We all have an erotic mold and for most of us, it is quite normal. For some it may be a bit unusual but still only playful. For the others, on the extreme, who find they can only reach erotic excitement and fulfillment through administering pain, even killing their partners, it is buried deep and dark.”
    Chandler was looking down at her pad and writing when he finished. When she didn’t ask another question immediately, he continued unbidden.
    “Unfortunately, the black heart is not worn on the sleeve. The victims who see it usually don’t live to talk about it.”
    “Thank you, Doctor,” Chandler said. “I have nothing further.”
    Belk plowed in without any preliminary softball questions, a look of concentration on