Michael Connelly (139 page)

“What?”

“Take me along. It would be the rarest of opportunities in the field of psychosexual studies. To observe the stalking pattern
of a sexual sadist as it is actually taking place. Unbelievable. Harry, this could get me a grant from Hopkins. It could …
it could” — his eyes lit up as he looked at the casement window — “get me out of this fucking dungeon!”

Bosch stood up. He was thinking he had made a mistake. Locke’s vision of his own future was obscuring everything else. He
had come for help, not to make Locke shrink of the year.

“Look, we’re talking about a killer here. Real people. Real blood. I’m not going to do anything that might compromise the
investigation. A surveillance is a delicate operation. When you add that it is a cop we are watching, then it makes it even
harder. I can’t bring you along. Don’t even ask. I can tell you things here and fill you in whenever I can but there is no
way I or my commander on this would approve bringing a civilian along for the ride.”

Locke’s eyes dropped and he looked like a chastised boy. He took a quick glance at the window again and walked around behind
the desk. He sat down and his shoulders dropped.

“Yes, of course,” he said quietly. “I completely understand, Harry. I got carried away there. The important thing is that
we stop this man. We’ll worry about studying him later. Now, a seven-month cycle. Wow, that’s impressive.”

Bosch flicked his ashes and sat back down.

“Well, we don’t know for sure, considering the source. There still could be others.”

“I doubt it.”

Locke pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes. He did not move for several seconds.

“Harry, I’m not sleeping. Just concentrating. Just thinking.”

Bosch watched him for a few moments. It was weird. He then noticed that lined on a shelf just above Locke’s head were the
books the psychologist had written. There were several, all with his name on the spine. There were several duplicates, too.
Maybe, Bosch thought, so he could give them away. He saw five copies of
Black Hearts,
the book Locke had mentioned during his testimony, and three copies of a book called
The Private Sex Life of the Public Porn Princess
.

“You wrote about the porno business?”

He opened his eyes.

“Why, yes. That was the book I did before
Black Hearts
. Did you read it?”

“Uh, no.”

He closed his eyes again.

“Of course not. Despite the sexy title it really is a textbook. Used at the university level. Last I checked with my publisher,
it was being sold in the bookstores at a hundred and forty-six universities, including Hopkins. It’s been out two years, fourth
printing, still haven’t seen a royalty check. Would you like to read it?”

“I would.”

“Well, if you go by the student union on your way out of here, they sell it there. It’s steep, I should warn you. Thirty bucks.
But I’m sure you can expense it. I should also warn you, it’s quite explicit.”

Bosch was annoyed that Locke didn’t give him one of the extra copies on the shelf. Perhaps, it was Locke’s childlike way of
getting back at him for nixing the surveillance ride-along. He wondered what Melissa, the child-psych major, would make of
such behavior.

“There is something else about this suspect. I don’t know what it means.”

Locke opened his eyes but didn’t move.

“He was divorced about a year before the Dollmaker killings began. In the divorce record there’s mention by the wife that
there was a loss of consortium. Would that still fit?”

“They stopped doing it, huh?”

“I guess. It was in the court file.”

“It could fit. But to be honest, we shrinks could find a way to make any activity fit into any prognosis we make. That’s the
field for you. But it could be a case where your suspect simply became impotent with his wife. He was moving toward the erotic
mold, and she had no part in it. In effect, he was leaving her behind.”

“So it is not seen by you to be a cause for rethinking our suspicions of this man?”

“On the contrary. My view is that it is more evidence that he has gone through major psychological changes. His sexual persona
is evolving.”

Bosch gave this some thought while trying to envision Mora. The vice cop spent every day in the tawdry milieu of pornography.
After a while, he couldn’t get it up for his own wife.

“Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything about this suspect that might help us? We don’t have anything on him. No
probable cause. We can’t arrest him. All we can do is watch. And that gets dangerous. If we lose him —”

“He could kill.”

“Right.”

“And then you are still left with no probable cause, no evidence.”

“What about trophies? What do I look for?”

“Where?”

“In his home.”

“Ah, I see. You plan to continue your professional interaction with him, to visit him at home. On a ruse, perhaps. But you
won’t be able to move about freely.”

“I might be able to, if someone else keeps him occupied. I’ll go with somebody else.”

Locke leaned forward in his chair, his eyes wide. It was starting again, his excitement.

“What if you kept him busy and I had a look around? I am the expert on this, Harry. You would be better at keeping him busy.
You could talk detective talk, I’d ask to use the bathroom. I would have a better grasp of —”

“Forget it, Dr. Locke. Listen to me, there is no way it’s going to happen that way. Okay? It’s too dangerous. Now, do you
want to help me here or not?”

“Okay, okay. Again, I’m sorry. The reason I am so excited by the prospect of being inside this man’s house and mind is that
I think that this man, who is on a killing cycle of seven months plus, would almost certainly have trophies that would help
him feed into his fantasy and recreate his kills, thereby dulling urges to physically act out.”

“I understand.”

“You’ve got a man with an unusually long cycle. Believe me, during those seven months the impulses to act out, to go out and
kill, do not lie dormant. They are there. They are always there. Remember the erotic mold? I testified about it?”

“I remember.”

“Okay, well, he is going to need to satisfy that erotic mold. To fulfill it. How does he do it? How does he last six or seven
or eight months? The answer is, he has trophies. These are reminders of past conquests. By conquests I mean kills. He has
things that remind him and help bring the fantasy alive. It’s not the real thing by a long shot but he can still use the reminders
to widen the cycle, to stave off the impulse to act. He knows the less he kills, the less chance there is that he will be
caught.

“If you’re right about him, he is now nearly eight months into a cycle. It means he is pushing the edge of the envelope, all
the while trying to maintain his control. Yet at the same time we have this note and his strange compulsion to not be overlooked.
To stand up and say, I’m better than the Dollmaker. I go on! And if you don’t believe me, check out what I left in the concrete
at such and such a place. The note shows severe disassembling at the same time he is locked in this tremendous battle to control
the impulses. He has gone seven months plus!”

Bosch pressed his cigarette against the side of the trash can and dropped it in. He took out his notebook. He said, “The clothing
of the victims, both the Dollmaker’s and the Follower’s, was never found. These could be the trophies he uses?”

“They could be, but put the notebook away, Harry. It’s easier than that. Remember, what you have here is a man who chose his
victims after seeing them in videos. So what better way to keep his fantasies alive than through videos. If you get free of
him in the house, look for videos, Harry. And a camera.”

“He videotaped the killings,” Bosch said.

It wasn’t a question. He was just repeating Locke, preparing himself for what was ahead with Mora.

“Of course, we can’t say for sure,” Locke said. “Who knows? But I’d put my money on it. You remember Westley Dodd?”

Bosch shook his head no.

“He was the one they executed a couple of years ago in Washington. Hanged him — a perfect example of what goes around comes
around. He was a child-killer. Liked to hang kids in his closet, on coat hangers. And he also had a Polaroid camera he liked
to use. After his arrest the police found a carefully kept photo album, complete with Polaroids of the little boys he killed
— hanging in the closet. He had taken the time to carefully label each picture with a caption. Very sick stuff. But as sick
as it was, I guarantee you that that photo album saved the lives of other little boys. Absolutely. Because he could use it
to indulge his fantasy and not act it out.”

Bosch nodded his understanding. Somewhere in Mora’s house he would find a video or maybe a photographic gallery that would
turn most people’s stomachs. But for Mora it was what kept him out of the black place for as long as eight months at a time.

“What about Jeffrey Dahmer?” Locke said. “Remember him, in Milwaukee? He was a cameraman, too. Liked taking pictures of corpses,
parts of corpses. Helped him go undetected by the police for years and years. Then he started keeping the corpses. That was
his mistake.”

They were silent for a few moments after that. Bosch’s head filled with horrible images of the dead he had seen. He rubbed
his eyes as if that might erase them.

“What’s that they say about photos?” Locke asked then. “On the TV commercials? Something like ‘the gift that keeps on giving.’
Then what’s that make videotape to a serial killer?”

• • •

Before leaving campus, Bosch dropped by the student union and went into the bookstore. He found a stack of copies of Locke’s
book on the porno business in the section on psychology and social studies. The top one on the stack was well worn around
the edges from being thumbed through. Bosch took the one below it.

When the girl at the register opened the book to get the price it flopped open to a black-and-white photo of a woman performing
fellatio on a man. The girl’s face turned red but not as scarlet as Bosch’s.

“Sorry,” was all he could think to say.

“That’s okay, I’ve seen it before. The book, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you teaching a class with it next semester?”

Bosch realized that since he was too old to look like a student, seemingly the only valid reason for him to be buying the
book was if he was a teacher. He thought that explaining that his interest was as a police officer would sound phony and get
him more attention than he wanted.

“Yes,” he lied.

“Really, what’s it called? Maybe I’ll take it.”

“Uh, well, I haven’t decided yet. I’m still formulating a —”

“Well, what’s your name? I’ll look for it in the catalog.”

“Uh …Locke. Dr. John Locke, psychology.”

“Oh, you wrote the book. Yeah, I’ve heard of you. I’ll look the class up. Thanks and have a good day.”

She gave him his change. He thanked her and left with the book in a bag.

Bosch was back in the federal courthouse shortly after four. While they waited for Judge Keyes to come out and dismiss the
jury for the weekend, Belk whispered that he had called Chandler’s office during the afternoon and offered the plaintiff fifty
grand to walk away from the case.

“She told you to shove it.”

“She wasn’t that polite, actually.”

Bosch smiled and looked over at Chandler. She was whispering something to Church’s wife but must have felt Bosch’s stare.
She stopped speaking and looked over at him. For nearly half a minute they engaged in an adolescent stare-down contest, with
neither backing down until the door to the judge’s chambers opened and Judge Keyes bounded out and up to his place on the
bench.

He had the clerk buzz in the jury. He asked if there was anything anybody needed to talk about and, when there wasn’t, he
instructed the jurors to avoid reading newspaper accounts of the case or watching the local TV news. He then ordered the jurors
and all other parties to the case to be back by 9:30
A.M.
, Monday, when deliberations would begin again.

Bosch stepped on the escalator right behind Chandler to go down to the lobby exit. She was standing about two steps up from
Deborah Church.

“Counselor?” he said in a low voice so the widow would not hear. Chandler turned around on the step, grabbing the handrail
for balance.

“The jury is out, there is nothing that can change the case now,” he said. “Norman Church himself could be waiting for us
in the lobby and we wouldn’t be able to tell the jury. So, why don’t you give me the note? This case might be over, but there
is still an investigation.”

Chandler said nothing the rest of the way down. But in the lobby she told Deborah Church to go on out to the sidewalk and
she’d be along soon. Then she turned to Bosch.

“Again, I deny there is a note, okay?”

Bosch smiled.

“We’re already past that, remember? You slipped up yesterday. You said —”