The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

figure it was a guy went missing last summer. Now he was nothing but bones. ‘Course out in the open like that, you got the animals. You know they come in through the ass. It’s the softest entry and the animals-”
    “I know, Sakai. Let’s stay on this one.”
    “Anyway, with this woman, the concrete apparently slowed things down for us. Sure didn’t stop it, but slowed it down. It must’ve been like an airtight tomb in there.”
    “You people going to be able to establish just how long she’s been dead?”
    “Probably not from the body. We get her ID’d, then you people might find out when she went missing. That’ll be the way.”
    Bosch looked at the fingers. They were dark sticks almost as thin as pencils.
    “What about prints?”
    “We’ll get ‘em, but not from those.”
    Bosch looked over and saw Sakai smiling.
    “What? She left them in the concrete?”
    Sakai’s glee was smashed like a fly. Bosch had ruined his surprise.
    “Yeah, that’s right. She left an impression, you could say. We’re going to get prints, maybe even a mold of her face, if we can get what’s left of that slab out of there. Whoever mixed this concrete used too much water. Made it very fine. That’s a break for us. We’ll get the prints.”
    Bosch leaned over the gurney to study the knotted strip of leather that was wrapped around the corpse’s neck. It was thin black leather and he could see the manufacturer’s seam along the edges. It was a strap cut away from a purse. Like all the others. He bent closer and the cadaver’s smell filled his nose and mouth. The circumference of the leather strap around the neck was small, maybe about the size of a wine bottle. Small enough to be fatal. He could see where it had cut into the now darkened skin and choked away life. He looked at the knot. A slipknot pulled tight on the right side with the left hand. Like all the others. Church had been left-handed.
    There was one more thing to check. The signature, as they had called it.
    “No clothes? Shoes?”
    “Nothing. Like the others, remember?”
    “Open it all the way. I want to see the rest.”
    Sakai pulled the zipper on the black bag down all the way to the feet. Bosch was unsure if Sakai knew of the signature but was not going to bring it up. He leaned over the corpse and looked down, acting as if he was studying everything when he was only interested in the toenails. The toes were shriveled, black and cracked. The nails were cracked, too, and completely missing from a few toes. But Bosch saw the paint on the toes that were intact. Hot pink dulled by decomposition fluids, dust and age. And on the large toe on the right foot he saw the signature. What was still left of it to be seen. A tiny white cross had been carefully painted on the nail. The Dollmaker’s sign. It had been there on all the bodies.
    Bosch could feel his heart pounding loudly. He looked around the van’s interior and began to feel claustrophobic. The first sense of paranoia was poking into his brain. His mind began churning through the possibilities. If this body matched every known specification of a Dollmaker kill, then Church was the killer. If Church was this woman’s killer and is now dead himself, then who left the note at the Hollywood station front desk?
    He straightened up and took in the body as a whole for the first time. Naked and shrunken, forgotten. He wondered if there were others out there in the concrete, waiting to be discovered.
    “Close it,” he said to Sakai.
    “It’s him, isn’t it? The Dollmaker.”
    Bosch didn’t answer. He climbed out of the van, pulled the zipper on his jumpsuit down a bit to let in some air.
    “Hey, Bosch,” Sakai called from inside the van. “I’m just curious. How’d you guys find this? If the Dollmaker is dead, who told you where to look?”
    Bosch didn’t answer that one either. He walked slowly back underneath the tarp. It looked like the others still hadn’t figured out what to do about removing the concrete the body had been found in. Edgar was standing around trying not to get dirty. Bosch signaled to him and Pounds and they gathered together at a spot to the left of the trench, where they could talk without being overheard.
    “Well?” Pounds asked. “What’ve we got?”
    “It looks like Church’s work,” Bosch said.
    “Shit,” Edgar said.
    “How can you be sure?” Pounds asked.
    “From what I can see, it matches every detail followed by the Dollmaker. Including the