Part 18 (1/2)
”I'm sorry, Sylvia,” Bosch said. ”I should've warned you not to come in.”
”Those are the women?”
He nodded.
”What are you doing?”
”I'm not sure. Trying to make something happen, I guess. I thought if I looked at them all again I might get an idea, figure out what's happening.”
”But how can you look at those? You were just standing there looking.”
”Because I have to.”
She looked down at the paper in her hand.
”What is it?” he asked.
”Nothing. Uh, one of my students wrote something. I was going to read it to you.”
”Go ahead.”
He stepped over to the wall and turned off the light that hung over the table. The photos and Bosch became shrouded in darkness. Sylvia stood in the light cast from the dining room through the kitchen entrance.
”Go ahead.”
She held up the paper and said, ”It's a girl. She wrote, 'West foreshadowed the end of Los Angeles's halcyon moment. He saw the city of angels becoming a city of despair, a place where hopes get crushed under the weight of the mad crowd. His book was the warning.'”
She looked up.
”She goes on but that was the part I wanted to read. She's only a tenth-grader taking advanced cla.s.ses but she seemed to grasp something so strong there.”
He admired her lack of cynicism. Bosch's first thought was that the kid had plagiarized-where'd she get a word like halcyon? But Sylvia saw past that. She saw the beauty in things. He saw the darkness.
”It's good,” he said.
”She's African-American. She comes up on the bus. She's one of the smartest I have and I worry about her on the bus. She said the trip is seventy-five minutes each way and that is the time when she reads the a.s.signments I give. But I worry about her. She seems so sensitive. Maybe too much so.”
”Give her time and she'll grow a callous on her heart. Everybody does.”
”No, not everybody, Harry. That's what I worry about with her.”
She looked at him there in the darkness for a long moment.
”I'm sorry I intruded.”
”You never intrude on me, Sylvia. I am sorry I brought this home. I can leave if you want, take it to my place.”
”No, Harry, I want you here. You want me to put on some coffee?”
”No, I'm fine.”
She went back to the living room and he turned the light back on. He looked over the gallery again. Though they looked the same in death because of the makeup applied by each one's killer, the women fell into numerous physical categories according to race, size, coloring, and so on.
Locke had told the task force that this meant that the killer was simply an opportunistic predator. Not concerned with body type, only the acquisition of a victim which he could then place into his erotic program. He did not care if they were black or white as long as he could s.n.a.t.c.h them with as little notice as possible. He was a bottom feeder. He moved on a level where the women he encountered were victims long before he got to them. They were women who had already given up their bodies to the unloving hands and eyes of strangers. They were out there waiting for him. The question, Bosch now knew, was whether the Dollmaker was still out there, too.
He sat down and from the pocket of the binder he pulled a map of West L.A. Its creases cracked and split in some sections as he unfolded it and put it down on top of the photos. The round black stickers that represented locations where bodies had been found were still in place. The victim's name and date of discovery were written next to each black dot. Geographically, the task force had found no significance until after Church was dead. The bodies were found in locations stretching from Silverlake to Malibu. The Dollmaker littered the entire Westside. Still, for the most part, the bodies were cl.u.s.tered in Silver-lake and Hollywood, with only one found in Malibu and one in West Hollywood.
The concrete blonde was found farther south in Hollywood than any of the previous bodies. She was also the only one that had been buried. Locke had said location of disposal was probably a choice of convenience. After Church was dead this seemed true. Four of the bodies had been dumped within a mile of his Silverlake apartment. Another four were in eastern Hollywood, not a long drive, either.
The dates had done nothing for the investigation. No pattern. Initially there was a decreasing-interval pattern between discoveries of victims, then it began to vary widely. The Dollmaker would go five weeks between strikes, then two weeks, then three. Nothing to make of this; the detectives on the task force simply let it go.
Bosch moved on. He began reading the background packets that had been drawn up on each victim. Most of these were short-two to three pages about their sad lives. One of the women who worked Hollywood Boulevard at night was going to beautician school by day. Another had been sending money to Chihuahua, Mexico, where her parents believed she had a good job as a tour guide at the famous Disneyland. There were odd matches between some of the victims, but nothing that ever amounted to anything.
Three of the Boulevard wh.o.r.es went to the same doctor for weekly clap shots. Members of the task force put him under surveillance for three weeks. But one night while they were watching him, the real Dollmaker picked up a prost.i.tute on Sunset and her body was found in Silverlake the next morning.
Two of the other women also shared a doctor. The same Beverly Hills plastic surgeon had performed breast-implant surgery on them. The task force had rallied on this discovery, for a plastic surgeon remakes images, similarly after a fas.h.i.+on to the way the Dollmaker used makeup. The plastic man, as he was called by the cops, was also placed under surveillance. But he never made a suspicious move and seemed to be the picture of domestic bliss with a wife whose physical features he had sculpted to his own liking. They were still watching him when Bosch took the telephone tip that led to the shooting of Norman Church.
As far as Bosch knew, neither doctor ever knew he had been watched. In the book Bremmer wrote, they were identified by pseudonyms.
Nearly two-thirds through the background packets, as he read about Nicole Knapp, the seventh victim, Bosch saw the pattern within the pattern. He had somehow missed it before. All of them had. The task force, Locke, the media. They had put all the victims into the same cla.s.sification. A wh.o.r.e is a wh.o.r.e is a wh.o.r.e. But there were differences. Some were streetwalkers, some were higher up the scale as escorts. Within these two groups, some were also dancers; one was a telegram stripper. And two made livings in the p.o.r.nography trade-as had the latest victim, Becky Kaminski-while taking outcall hooking a.s.signments on the side.
Bosch took the packets and photos of Nicole Knapp, the seventh victim, and s.h.i.+rleen Kemp, the eleventh victim, off the table. These were the two p.o.r.n actresses, known on video as Holly Lere and Heather c.u.mhither, respectively.
He then paged through one of the binders until he found the package on the lone survivor, the woman who had gotten away. She, too, was a p.o.r.n actress who took outcall s.e.x jobs. Her name was Georgia Stern. Her video name was Velvet Box. She had gone to the Hollywood Star Motel to meet a date arranged through the outcall service she advertised in the local s.e.x tabloids. After she arrived, her client asked her to undress. She turned her back to do this, offering a show of modesty in case that was a turn-on for the client. She then saw the leather strap of her purse come over her head and he began choking her from behind. She fought, as probably all the victims had, but she was able to get free by driving an elbow into her attacker's ribs, then turning and delivering a kick to his genitals.
She ran naked from the room, all thought of modesty long gone. By the time police went back in, the attacker was gone. It was three days before the reports on the incident filtered their way to the task force. By then the hotel room had been used dozens of times-the Hollywood Star offered hourly rates-and it was useless as far as gathering physical evidence went.
Reading the reports on it now, Bosch realized why the composite drawing that Georgia Stern had helped a police artist sketch was so different from the appearance of Norman Church.
It had been a different man.
An hour later, he turned one of the binders to the last page, where he had kept a listing of phone numbers and addresses of the princ.i.p.als involved in the investigation. He went to the wall phone and dialed the home of Dr. John Locke. He hoped the psychologist had not changed his number in four years.
Locke picked up after five rings.
”Sorry, Dr. Locke, I know it's getting late. It's Harry Bosch.”
”Harry, how are you? I am sorry we didn't get to talk today. It was not the best circ.u.mstance for you, I'm sure, but I-”
”Yes, Doctor, listen, something's come up. It's related to the Dollmaker. I have some things I want to show you and talk about. Would it be possible for me to come there?”
There was a lengthy silence before Locke answered.
”Would that be about this new case I've read about in the paper?”
”Yes, that and some other things.”