“Any recent photos?”
“Yeah.”
Edgar reached into his sport coat and pulled out a stack of photos. They were copies of a booking photo. Georgia Stern certainly looked used up. Her bleached-blonde hair showed at least an inch of dark roots. There were circles under her eyes so deep they looked as though they had been cut into her face with a knife. Her cheeks were gaunt and she was glassy-eyed. Lucky for her she had fixed before she was busted. It meant less time in the cage hurting, waiting and craving the next fix.
“This is three months old. Under the influence. She did two in Sybil and out.”
Sybil Brand Institute was the county’s holding jail for women. Half of it was equipped to handle narcotics addicts.
“Get this,” Edgar said. “I forgot about this. This guy Dean up in Valley Vice says he was the one who made this bust on her and when he was booking her he found a bottle of powder and was just about ready to run her ticket up to possession when he realized the bottle was a legit scrip. He said the powder was AZT. You know, for AIDS. She’s got the virus, man, and she’s out there on the street. On Sepulveda. He asked her if she makes ’em use rubbers and her answer was, ‘Not if they don’t want to.’”
Bosch just nodded. The story was not unusual. It had been Bosch’s experience that most prostitutes despised the men they waved down and serviced for money. Those who became sick got it either from their customers or from dirty needles, which also sometimes came from customers. Either way, he believed it was part of the psychology to not care about passing it on to the population that may have given it to you. It was the belief that what goes around comes around.
“Not if they don’t want to,” Edgar said again, shaking his head. “I mean, man, that’s cold.”
Bosch finished his coffee and pushed his chair back. There was no smoking in the cafeteria so he wanted to go down to the lobby and out by the fallen-officers memorial to smoke. As long as Rollenberger was camped out in the conference room, smoking there was out.
“So-”
Bosch’s pager went off and he visibly flinched. He had always subscribed to the theory that a quick verdict was a bad verdict was a stupid verdict. Hadn’t they given the evidence careful consideration? He pulled it off his belt and looked at the number on the display. He breathed easier. It was an LAPD exchange.
“I think Mora is calling me.”
“Better be careful. What were you going to say?”
“Uh, oh, yeah, I was just wondering if Stern will be any good to us if we find her. It’s been four years. She’s on the spike and sick. I wonder if she’ll even remember the Follower.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that, too. But my only alternatives are to go back to Hollywood and report to Pounds or volunteer for one of the surveillance shifts on Mora. I’m sticking on this. I’m going up there to Sepulveda tonight.”
Bosch nodded.
“Hans Off said you pulled the divorce. Nothing there?”
“Not really. She filed but then Mora didn’t contest it. File’s about ten pages, that’s it. Only one thing of note in it, and I don’t know if it means anything or not.”
“What?”
“She filed on the usual grounds. Irreconcilable differences, mental cruelty. But in the records, she also mentions the loss of consortium. You know what that is?”
“No sex.”
“Yeah. What do you think that means?”
Bosch thought for a few moments and said, “I don’t know. They split just before the Dollmaker stuff. Maybe he was into some strange stuff, building up to the killings. I can ask Locke.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Anyway, I had DMV run the wife and she’s still alive. But I was thinking we shouldn’t approach her. Too dangerous. She might tip him.”
“Yeah, don’t go near her. Did DMV fax her DL?”
“Yeah. She’s blonde. Five-foot-four, hundred and ten. It was only a face shot on the driver’s license but I’d say she fits.”
Bosch nodded and stood up.
After taking one of the rovers from the conference room, Bosch drove over to Central Division and parked in the back lot. He was still within the fifteen-minute radius of the federal courthouse. He left the rover in the car and walked out to the sidewalk and around front to the public entrance. He did this so he could see if he could spot Sheehan and Opelt. He assumed they would have to be parked within sight of the lot’s exit so they would see Mora leaving, but he did not see them or any car that looked suspicious.
A pair of headlights briefly flashed from a parking lot behind an old gas station that was now a taco stand, featuring a sign that said HOME OF THE KOSHER BURRITO-PASTRAMI! He saw two figures in the car, which was a gray Eldorado, and just looked away.
Mora was at his desk eating a burrito that looked disgusting to Bosch because he could see it was filled with pastrami. It looked unnatural.
“Harry,” he said with his mouth full.
“How is it?”
“It’s okay. I’ll go back to plain beef after this. I just tried it ’cause I saw a couple guys from RHD over across the street. One of ’em said they come all the way over from Parker to get these kosher things there. Thought I’d give it a try.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve heard of that place.”
“Well, you ask me, it ain’t worth coming over from Parker Center for.”
He wrapped what was left in the oil-stained paper it came in and then got up and walked out of the squad room. Bosch heard the package hit the bottom of a trash can in the hallway and then Mora was back.
“Don’t want it to stink up my trash can.”
“So, you buzzed?”
“Yeah, that was me. How’s the trial?”
“Waiting on a verdict.”
“Shit, that’s scary.”
Bosch knew from experience that if Mora wanted to tell you something, he would tell you in his own time. It would do him no good to keep asking the vice cop why he beeped him.
Back in his chair, Mora swiveled around to the filing cabinets behind him and began opening drawers. Over his shoulder, he said, “Hang on, Harry. I gotta get some stuff together for you here.”
It took him two minutes during which Bosch saw him open several different files, take out photos and create a short stack. Then he turned back around.
“Four,” he said. “I’ve come up with four more actresses that dropped out under what might be termed suspicious circumstances.”
“Only four.”
“Yeah. Actually, there were more than four chicks that people mentioned. But only four fit that profile we talked about. Blonde and built. There is also Gallery, who we already knew about, and your concrete blonde. So we’ve got six altogether. Here are the new ones.”
He handed the group of photos across the desk to Bosch. Harry slowly looked through them. They were color publicity glossies with each woman’s name printed in the white border at the bottom of the photo. Two of the women were naked and posing indoors on chairs, their legs apart. The other two were photographed at the beach and were wearing bikinis that would probably be illegal on most public beaches. To Bosch, the women in the photos almost looked interchangeable. Their bodies were similar. Their faces had the same fake pouts that were intended to show mystery and sexual abandonment at the same time. Each of the women had hair so blonde
