“I mem’er.”
“Now, do you remember the night the man tried to kill you? More than four years ago? A night like this? June seventeenth. Remember?”
She nodded dreamily and Bosch wondered if she knew what he was talking about.
“The Dollmaker, remember?”
“He’s dead.”
“That’s right, but we need to ask you some questions about the man anyway. You helped us draw this picture, remember?”
Bosch unfolded the composite drawing he had taken from the Dollmaker files. The drawing looked like neither Church nor Mora, but the Dollmaker was known to wear disguises so it was reasonable to believe the Follower did as well. Even so, there was always the chance a physical feature, like maybe Mora’s penetrating eyes, would poke through the memory.
She looked at the composite for a long time.
“He was killed by the cops,” she said. “He deserved it.”
Even coming from her, it felt reassuring to Bosch to hear someone say the Dollmaker got what he deserved. But he knew what she didn’t, that they weren’t dealing with the Dollmaker here.
“We’re going to show you some pictures. You got the six-pack, Jerry?”
She looked up abruptly and Bosch realized his mistake. She thought he was referring to beer, but a six-pack in cop terminology was a package of six mugshots which are shown to victims and witnesses. They usually contain photos of five cops and one suspect with the hope that the wit will point to the suspect and say that’s the one. This time the six-pack contained photos of six cops. Mora’s was the second one.
Bosch lined them up on the table in front of her and she looked for a long time. She laughed.
“What?” Bosch asked.
She pointed to the fourth photo.
“I think I fucked him once. But I thought he was a cop.”
Bosch saw Edgar shake his head. The photo she had pointed to was of an undercover Hollywood Division narcotics officer named Arb Danforth. If her memory was correct, then Danforth was probably venturing off his beat into the Valley to extort sex from prostitutes. Bosch guessed that he was probably paying them with heroin stolen from evidence envelopes or suspects. What she had just said should be forwarded in a report to Internal Affairs, but both Edgar and Bosch knew without saying a word that neither of them would do that. It would be like committing suicide in the department. No street cop would ever trust them again. Still, Bosch knew Danforth was married and that the prostitute carried the AIDS virus. He decided he would drop Danforth an anonymous note telling him to get a blood test.
“What about the others, Georgia?” Bosch said. “Look at their eyes. Eyes don’t change when somebody’s in a disguise. Look at the eyes.”
While she bent down to look closer at the pictures Bosch looked at Edgar, who shook his head. This was going nowhere, he was saying, and Bosch nodded that he knew. After a minute or so, her head jerked as she stopped herself from nodding off.
“Okay, Georgia, nothing there, right?”
“No.”
“You don’t see him?”
“No. He’s dead.”
“Okay, he’s dead. You stay here. We’re going out into the hall to talk for a minute. We’ll be right back.”
Outside, they decided it might be worth booking her on an under-the-influence charge into Sybil Brand and trying her again when she came off the high. Bosch noted that Edgar was eager to do this and volunteered to drive her downtown to Sybil. Bosch knew this was because it would make Edgar’s OT envelope thicker, not because he wanted to get the woman into the narco unit at Sybil and get her straightened out for a while. Compassion had nothing to do with it.
26
Sylvia had pulled the bedroom’s heavy curtains across the blinds and the room stayed dark until well after the sun was up on Saturday morning. When Bosch awoke alone in her bed, he pulled his watch off the nightstand and saw it was already eleven. He had dreamed but when he woke the dream receded into the darkness and he couldn’t reach back to grasp it. He lay there for nearly fifteen minutes trying to bring it back, but it was gone.
Every few minutes he would hear Sylvia make some kind of household noise. Sweeping the kitchen floor, emptying the dishwasher. He could tell she was trying to be quiet but he heard it anyway. There was the back door being opened and the splashing of water in the potted plants that lined the porch. It hadn’t rained in at least seven weeks.
At 11:20 the phone rang and Sylvia got to it after one ring. But Bosch knew it was for him. His muscles tensed as he waited for the bedroom door to open and for her to summon him to the call. He had given Sylvia’s phone number to Edgar when they were leaving the Van Nuys Division seven hours earlier.
But Sylvia never came and when he relaxed again he could hear parts of her conversation on the phone. It sounded like maybe she was counseling a student. After a while it sounded like she was crying.
Bosch got up, pulled on his clothes and walked out of the bedroom while trying to smooth his hair. She was at the table in the kitchen, holding the cordless phone to her ear. She was drawing circles on the tabletop with her finger and he had been right, she was crying.
“What?” he whispered.
She held her hand up, signaling him not to interrupt. He didn’t. He just watched her on the phone.
“I’ll be there, Mrs. Fontenot, just call me with the time and address… yes… yes, I will. Once again, I am so very sorry. Beatrice was such a fine young woman and student. I was very proud of her. Oh, my gosh…”
A strong gush of tears came as she hung up. Bosch came to her and put his hand on her neck.
“A student?”
“Beatrice Fontenot.”
“What happened?”
“She’s dead.”
He leaned down and held her. She cried.
“This city…,” she began but didn’t finish. “She’s the one who wrote what I read to you the other night about
Bosch remembered. Sylvia had said she worried about the girl. He wanted to say something but he knew there was nothing to say. This city. It seemed to say it all.
They spent the day around the house, doing odd jobs, cleaning up. Bosch cleared the charred logs out of the fireplace and then joined Sylvia in the backyard, where she was working in the garden, pulling weeds and cutting flowers for a bouquet she was going to take to Mrs. Fontenot.
They worked side by side but Sylvia spoke very little. Every now and then she would offer a sentence. She said it had been a drive-by shooting on Normandie. She said it happened the night before and that the girl was taken to Martin Luther King, Jr., Hospital, where she was determined to be brain-dead. They turned the machine off in the morning and harvested the organs for donating.
