The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

deal with the dirtbags and, consequently, Bosch knew, it had created a police culture in which everybody not in blue was seen as a dirtbag and was treated as such. Everybody. You ended up with your Andre Galtons and your Rodney Kings. You ended up with a riot the dog soldiers couldn’t control. You ended up with a mural on a station house wall that was a damnable lie.

    * * *

    He badged his way past the front desk and took the stairs up to the Administrative Vice offices. At the door to the squad room he stood for a half minute and watched Ray Mora sitting at his desk on the other side of the room. It looked as if Mora was writing a report, rather than typing it. That probably meant it was a Daily Activity Report, which required little attention-just a few lines-and wasn’t worth the time it took to get up and find a working typewriter.
    Bosch noticed that Mora wrote with his right hand. But he knew this did not eliminate the vice cop as possibly being the follower. The follower knew the details and would have known about pulling the ligature around his victim’s neck from the left side, thereby emulating the Dollmaker. Just as he knew about painting the white cross on the toe.
    Mora looked up and saw him.
    “What’re you doing over there, Harry?”
    “Didn’t want to interrupt.”
    Bosch walked over.
    “What, interrupt a day report? Are you kidding?”
    “Thought it might be something important.”
    “It’s important for me to get my paycheck. That’s about it.”
    Bosch dragged a chair away from an empty desk and pulled it up and sat down. He noticed the statue of the Infant of Prague had been moved. Turned, actually. Its face was no longer looking at the nakedness of the actress on the porn calendar. Bosch looked at Mora and realized he was not sure how to proceed here.
    “You left a message last night.”
    “Yeah, I was thinking...”
    “About what?”
    “Well, we know Church didn’t kill Maggie Cum Loudly because of the timing, right? He was already dead when she got her ass dropped in the concrete.”
    “That’s right.”
    “So, we’ve gotta copycat.”
    “Right again.”
    “So I was thinking: what if the copycat who did her started earlier?”
    Bosch felt his throat start to tighten. He tried not to show Mora anything. Just gave him the deadpan look.
    “Earlier?”
    “Yeah. What if the two other porno chicks who were killed were actually done by the copycat? Who says he had to start after Church was dead?”
    Bosch felt the full chill now. If Mora was the follower, was he so confident that he would risk laying the whole pattern out for Bosch? Or could his hunch-after all, that’s all it was, a guess-be completely out of line? Regardless, it felt creepy sitting with Mora, his desk covered by magazines with sex acts depicted on the covers, the calendar girl leering from the vertical file. The statue’s clay face turned away. Bosch realized that Delta Bush, the actress on the calendar Mora had displayed, was blonde-haired and buxom. She fit the pattern. Was that why Mora had put up the calendar?
    “You know, Ray,” he said, after composing his voice into a monotone, “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It fits better that way, all the evidence, I mean, if the follower did all three of them... What made you think of it?”
    Mora put the report he was working on away in a desk drawer and leaned onto his desk. Subconsciously he brought his left hand up and pulled the Holy Spirit medal from his open collar. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger as he leaned back in his seat again, elbows on the arm rests.
    He dropped the medal and said, “Well, I remembered something is what I did. It was a tip that I got right before you nailed Church. See, I dropped it when you dropped Church.”
    “You’re talking about four years ago.”
    “Yeah. We all thought that was it, end of case, when you got Church.”
    “Get to it, Ray, what’d you remember?”
    “Yeah, right, well, I remember a couple days, maybe a week before you got Church, I was given one of the call-in tips. It was given to me ‘cause I was the resident expert on porno and it was a porno chick who called it in. She used the name Gallery. That’s it, just Gallery. She was in the bottom-line stuff. Loops, live shows, peep booths, nine hundred phone call stuff. And she was just beginning to move up, get her name on some video boxes.
    “Anyway, she called the task force-this was right before you nailed Church-and said