The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)
homosexuals. In most of these killings he emasculated his victims.”
The courtroom had become so quiet during Locke’s testimony that Bosch heard the slight bump of one of the rear doors opening. He glanced back and saw Jerry Edgar taking a seat in the rear row. Edgar nodded at Harry, who looked up at the clock. It was 4:15; the trial would be recessed for the day in fifteen minutes. Bosch figured Edgar was on his way back from the autopsy.
“Would the childhood trauma that’s at the root of a person’s criminal activities as an adult need to be so overt? In other words, as traumatic as molestation?”
“Not necessarily. It could be rooted in more traditional emotional stress placed on a child. The awesome pressure to succeed in a parent’s eyes, coupled with other things. It is hard to discuss this in a hypothetical context because there are so many dimensions of human sexuality.”
Belk followed up with a few more general questions about Locke’s studies before ending. Chandler asked a couple more questions on redirect but Bosch had lost interest. He knew that Edgar would not have come to the courtroom unless he had something important. Twice he glanced back at the clock on the wall and twice he looked at his watch. Finally, when Belk said he had nothing further on cross, Judge Keyes called it a day.
Bosch watched Locke step down and head out through the gate and toward the door. A couple of the reporters followed him. Then the jury stood and filed out.
Belk turned to Bosch as they watched and said, “Better be ready tomorrow. My guess is that it’s going to be your turn in the sun.”
* * *
“What’ve you got, Jerry?” Bosch asked when he caught up with Edgar in the hallway leading to the escalator.
“Your car over at Parker Center?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m there, too. Let’s walk that way.”
They got on the escalator but didn’t talk because it was crowded with spectators from the courtroom. Out on the sidewalk, when they were alone, Edgar pulled a folded white form out of his coat pocket and handed it to Bosch.
“All right, we got it confirmed. The prints Mora dug up on Rebecca Kaminski match the hand mold we made on the concrete blonde. I also just came from the autopsy and the tattoo is there, above the ass. Yosemite Sam.”
Bosch unfolded the paper. It was a photocopy of a standard missing person report.
“That’s a copy of the report on Rebecca Kaminski, also known as Magna Cum Loudly. Missing twenty-two months and three days.”
Bosch was looking at the report.
“Doesn’t look like any doubt to me,” he said.
“Nope, no doubt. It was her. The autopsy also confirms manual strangulation as the cause. The knot pulled tight on the right side. Most likely a lefty.”
They walked without talking for half a block. Bosch was surprised by how warm it was for so late in the day. Finally, Edgar spoke.
“So, obviously, we’ve got it confirmed; this may look like one of Church’s dolls but there’s no way in the world he did it unless he came back from the dead...
“So I did some checking at the bookstore over by Union Station. Bremmer’s book,
The Dollmaker,
with all the details a copycat would need, was published in hardback seventeen months after you put Church in the dirt. Becky Kaminski goes missing about four months after the book came out. So our killer could’ve bought the book and then used it as a sort of blueprint on what to do to make it look like that Dollmaker.”
Edgar looked over at him and smiled.
“You’re in the clear, Harry.”
Bosch nodded, but didn’t smile. Edgar didn’t know about the videotape.
They walked down Temple to Los Angeles Street. Bosch didn’t notice the people around him, the homeless shaking their cups on the corners. He almost crossed Los Angeles in front of traffic until Edgar put a hand on his arm. While waiting for the walk sign, he looked down and scanned the report again. It was bare bones. Rebecca Kaminski had simply gone out on a “date” and not returned. She was meeting the unnamed man at the Hyatt on Sunset. That was it. No follow-up, no additional information. The report had been made by a man named Tom Cerrone, who was identified in the report as Kaminski’s roommate in Studio City. The light changed and they walked across Los Angeles Street and then right toward Parker Center.
“You going to talk to this Cerrone guy, the roommate?” he asked Edgar.
“I don’t know. Probably get around to it. I’m
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher