Michael Connelly (153 page)

His history was all grist for people like Locke to consider, to use as fuel for speculation on how the child Bremmer made
the adult Bremmer do the things he did. It just made Bosch feel sad. He couldn’t help, however, but stare for a long time
at the photo of the mother the
Times
had dug up somewhere. In the picture she stood in front of the door to a sun-burned ranch-style house with her hand on a
young Bremmer’s shoulder. She had bleached-blonde hair and a provocative figure and large chest. She wore too much makeup,
Bosch thought as he stared at the picture.

• • •

Aside from the Bremmer articles, the story he read and reread several times was in the Metro section of Thursday’s paper.
It was about the burial of Beatrice Fontenot. Sylvia was quoted in the article and it described how the Grant High teacher
had read some of the girl’s schoolwork at the memorial service. There was a photo from the service but Sylvia wasn’t in it.
It was of Beatrice’s mother’s stoic, tear-lined face at the funeral. Bosch kept the Metro page on the table next to the chaise
lounge and read the story again every time he sat down there.

• • •

When he grew restless around the house he would drive. Down out of the hills, he’d head across the Valley with no place in
particular to go. He’d drive forty minutes to have a hamburger at an In ’N’ Out stand. Having grown up in the city, he liked
to drive it, to know every one of its streets and corners. Once on Thursday and again on Friday morning his drives took him
past Grant High but he never saw Sylvia through the windows of the classrooms as he went by. He felt sick at heart when he
thought of her but he knew the closest he could come to her was to drive by the school. It was her move and he must wait for
her to make it.

On Friday afternoon, when he came back from his drive, he saw the message light flashing on his phone machine and his hopes
rushed into his throat. He thought maybe she had seen his car and was calling because she knew how his heart hurt. But when
he played the message it was just Edgar asking him to call.

Eventually, he did.

“Harry, you’re missing everything?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Well, we had
People
magazine in here yesterday.”

“I’ll watch for you on the cover.”

“Just kidding. Actually, we’ve got big developments.”

“Yeah, what?”

“All this publicity was bound to do us good. Some lady over in Culver City called up and said she recognized Bremmer, that
he had a storage locker at her place, but under the name Woodward. We got a warrant and popped it first thing this morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Locke was right. He videotaped. We found the tapes. His trophies.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. If there was ever a doubt there ain’t now. Got seven tapes and the camera. He must not have taped the first two, the
ones we thought were the Dollmaker’s. But we got tapes of seven others including Chandler and Maggie Cum Loudly. Bastard taped
everything. Just horrible stuff. They’re working up formal IDs on the other five victims on the tapes, but it looks like it’s
going to be the ones on the list Mora came up with. Gallery and the other four porno chicks.”

“What else was in the locker?”

“Everything. We’ve got everything. We’ve got cuffs, belts, gags, a knife and a Glock nine. His whole killing kit. He must’ve
used the gun to control them. That’s why there was no sign of a struggle at Chandler’s. He used the gun. We figure he’d hold
it on them until he could cuff ’em and gag ’em. From the tapes, it looks like all the kills took place in Bremmer’s house,
the rear bedroom. Except Chandler, of course. She got it at home…. Those tapes, Harry, I couldn’t watch.”

Bosch could imagine. He envisioned the scenes and felt an unexpected flutter in his heart, as if it had torn loose inside
of him and was banging against his ribs like a bird trying to break out of its cage.

“Anyway, the DA’s got it and the big development is Bremmer’s going to talk.”

“He is?”

“Yeah, he heard we had the tapes and everything else. I guess he told his lawyer to deal. He’s going to get life without the
possibility of parole in exchange for leading us to the bodies and letting the shrinks have at him, study what makes him tick.
My vote is they squash him like a fly, but I guess they are considering the families and science.”

Bosch was silent. Bremmer would live. At first he didn’t know what to think. Then he realized he could live with the deal.
It had bothered him that those women might never be found. That was why he had visited Bremmer at the jail the day charges
were first filed. Whether the victims had families who cared or not, he didn’t want to leave them down there in the black
chasm of the unknown.

It wasn’t a bad deal, Bosch decided. Bremmer would be alive, but he wouldn’t be living. It might even be worse for him than
the gas chamber. And that would be justice, he thought.

“Anyway,” Edgar said, “thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a weird fuckin’ thing, you know? It being Bremmer. It’s weirder than if it was Mora, man. A reporter! And, man, I knew
the guy, too.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of us did. I guess nobody knows anybody like they think.”

“Yeah. Seeya, Harry.”

• • •

Late that afternoon, he stood on the back deck, leaning forward on his new oak railing, looking out into the pass and thinking
about the black heart. Its rhythm was so strong it could set the beat of a whole city. He knew it would always be the background
beat, the cadence, of his own life. Bremmer would be banished now, hidden away forever, but he knew there would be another
after him. And another after him. The black heart does not beat alone.

He lit a cigarette and thought about Honey Chandler, crowding his last view of her from his mind with the vision of her holding
forth in court. That would always be her place in his mind. There had been something so pure and distilled about her fury
— like the blue flame on a match before it burns out on its own. Even directed at him he could appreciate it.

His mind wandered to the statue at the courthouse steps. He still couldn’t think of her name. A concrete blonde, Chandler
had called her. Bosch wondered what Chandler had thought about justice at the end. At her end. He knew there was no justice
without hope. Did she still have any hope left at the end? He believed that she did. Like the pure blue flame dimming to nothing,
it was still there. Still hot. It was what allowed her to beat Bremmer.

• • •

He did not hear Sylvia until she stepped out onto the porch. He looked up and saw her there and wanted to go to her immediately,
but held back. She was wearing blue jeans and a dark blue denim shirt. He’d bought the shirt for her birthday and he took
that as a good sign. He guessed she had probably come from school, it having recessed for the weekend only an hour earlier.

“I called your office and they told me you were off. I thought I would come by to see how you were. I’ve been reading all
about the case.”

“I’m okay, Sylvia. How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“How are we?”

She smiled a little at that.

“Sounds like one of those bumper stickers you see. ‘How’m I driving?’ …Harry, I don’t know how we are. I guess that’s why
I’m here.”

There was an uneasy silence as she looked around the porch and out into the pass. Bosch crushed his cigarette out and dropped
it in an old coffee can he kept by the door.

“Hey, new cushions.”

“Yeah.”

“Harry, you have to understand why I needed some time. It’s —”

“I do.”

“Let me finish. I rehearsed this enough times, I’d like to get a chance to actually say it to you. I just wanted to say that
it is going to be very hard for me, for us, if we go on. It is going to be hard to deal with our pasts, our secrets, and most
of all what you do, what you bring home with you…”

Bosch waited for her to continue. He knew she wasn’t done.

“I know I don’t have to remind you, but I’ve been through it before with a man I loved. And I saw it all go bad and — you
know how it ended. There was a lot of pain for both of us. So you have to understand why I needed to take a step back and
take a look at this. At us.”

He nodded but she wasn’t looking at him. Her not looking concerned him more than her words. He couldn’t bring himself to speak,
though. He didn’t know what he could say.

“You live a very hard struggle, Harry. Your life, I mean. A cop. Yet with all your baggage I see and know there are still
very noble things about you.”

Now she looked at him.

“I do love you, Harry. I want to try to keep that alive because it’s one of the best things about my life. One of the best
things I know. I know it will be hard. But that might make it all the better. Who knows?”

He went to her then.

“Who knows?” he said.

And they held each other for a long time, his face next to hers, smelling her hair and skin. He held the back of her neck
as though it was as fragile as a porcelain vase.

After a while they broke apart but only long enough to get on the chaise lounge together. They sat silently, just holding
each other, for the longest time — until the sky started to dim and turn red and purple over the San Gabriels. Bosch knew
there were still the secrets he carried, but they would keep for now. And he would avoid that black place of loneliness for
just a while longer.

“Do you want to go away this weekend?” he asked. “Get away from the city? We could take that trip up to Lone Pine. Stay in
a cabin tomorrow night.”

“That would be wonderful. I could — We could use it.”

A few minutes later she added, “We might not be able to get a cabin, Harry. There’s so few of them and they’re usually booked
by Friday.”

“I already have one on reserve.”

She turned around so she could face him. She smiled slyly and said, “Oh, so you knew all the time. You were just hanging around
waiting for me to come back. No sleepless nights, no surprise.”

He didn’t smile. He shook his head and for a few moments he looked out at the dying light reflected on the west wall of the
San Gabriels.

“I didn’t know, Sylvia,” he said. “I hoped.”