losing.”
Bremmer raised the gun so that its muzzle pointed to Bosch’s heart. He pulled the trigger.
Bosch watched his eyes as the metallic click sounded. Bremmer pulled the trigger again and again. The same result, the growing terror in his eyes.
Bosch reached into his sock and pulled the extra clip, the one that was loaded with fifteen XTP bullets. He wrapped his fist around the cartridge and in one swift motion came off the couch and swung his fist into Bremmer’s jaw. The impact of the blow knocked the reporter backward in his chair. His weight made the chair crash backward and he spilled to the floor. He dropped the Smith and Bosch quickly gathered it up, ejected the empty clip and put in the live ammunition.
“Get up! Get the fuck up!”
Bremmer did as he was told.
“Are you going to kill me now? Is that it, another kill for the gunslinger?”
“That’s up to you, Bremmer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how I want to blow your head off, but for me to do that you have to make the first move, Bremmer. Just like with the Dollmaker. It was his play. Now it’s yours.”
“Look, Bosch, I don’t want to die. Everything I said-I was just playing a game. You’re making a mistake here. I just want to get it cleared up. Please, just take me to county and it will all get cleared up. Please.”
“Did they plead like that when you had the strap around their necks? Did they? Did you make them plead for their lives, or for their deaths? What about Chandler? At the end, did she beg you to kill her?”
“Take me to county. Arrest me and take me to county.”
“Then get against that wall, you fat fuck, and put your hands behind your back.”
Bremmer obeyed. Bosch dropped his cigarette into an ashtray on the table and followed Bremmer to the wall. When he closed the handcuffs over the reporter’s wrists, Bremmer’s shoulders dropped as he apparently felt safe. He started squirming his arms, chafing his wrists on the cuffs.
“See that?” he said. “You see that, Bosch? I’m making marks on my wrists. You kill me now, they’ll see the marks and know it was an execution. I’m not some dumb fuck like Church that you can slaughter like an animal.”
“No, that’s right, you know all the angles, don’t you?”
“All of them. Now take me down to county. I’ll be out before you wake up tomorrow. Know what all this is, what you’ve got? Just the wild speculation of a rogue cop. Even a federal jury agreed you go too far, Bosch. This won’t work. You’ve got no evidence.”
Bosch turned him away from the wall so that their faces were no more than two feet apart, their beer breath mixing.
“You did it, didn’t you? And you think you’re going to walk, don’t you?”
Bremmer stared at him and Bosch saw the gleam of pride in his eyes again. Locke had been right about him. He was gloating. And he couldn’t shut up even though he knew his life might depend on it.
“Yes,” he said in a low, strange voice. “I did it. I’m the man. And, yes, I will walk. You wait and see. And when I’m out there you’ll think of me every night for the rest of your life.”
Bosch nodded.
“But I never said that, Bosch. It will be your word against mine. A rogue cop-it will never get to court. They couldn’t afford to put you on the stand against me.”
Bosch leaned closer to him and smiled.
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I taped it.”
Bosch walked over to the radiator and pulled the microrecorder from between two of the iron coils. He held it up on his palm for Bremmer to see. Bremmer’s eyes became enraged. He had been tricked. He had been cheated.
“Bosch, that tape is inadmissible. That’s entrapment. I have not been advised. I have not been advised!”
“I’m advising you of your rights now. You weren’t under arrest until now. I wasn’t going to advise you until I arrested you. You know police procedure.”
Bosch was smiling at him, digging it in.
“Let’s go, Bremmer,” he said when he got tired of the victory.
32
It was an irony that Bosch savored Tuesday morning when he read Bremmer’s above-the-fold story on the killing of Honey Chandler. He had booked the reporter into county jail on a no-bail hold shortly before midnight and had not alerted media relations. The word had not gotten out by the last deadline and now the paper had a front-page story about a murder that was written by the murderer. Bosch liked that. He smiled as he read it.
The one person Bosch had told was Irving. He had the com center patch him through on a phone line and in a half-hour-long conversation he told the assistant chief every step he had taken and described every building block of evidence that led to the arrest. Irving said nothing congratulatory, nor did he chastise Bosch for making the arrest alone. Either or both would come later, after it was seen whether the arrest would stick. Both men knew this.
At 9A.M. Bosch was seated in front of a filing deputy’s desk at the district attorney’s office in the downtown criminal courts building. For the second time in eight hours he carefully went over the details of what happened and then played the tape of his conversation with Bremmer. The deputy DA, whose name was Chap Newell, made notations on a yellow pad while listening to the tape. He often furrowed his brow or shook his head because the sound was not good. The voices in Bremmer’s living room had bounced through the iron radiator coils and had a tinny echo on the tape. Still, the words that were most important were audible.
Bosch just watched without saying a word. Newell looked as if he could be no more than three years out of law school. Because the arrest had not made a splash in the papers or on TV yet, it had not received the attention of one of the senior attorneys in the filings division. It had gone to Newell on the routine rotation.
When the tape was done, Newell made a few more notes to look as if he knew what he was doing and then looked up at Bosch.
“You haven’t said anything about what was in his house.”
“I didn’t find anything on the quick search I made last night. There are others there now, with a warrant, doing a more thorough job.”
“Well, I hope they find something.”
“Why, you’ve got the case right there.”
“And it is a good case, Bosch. Really good work.”
“Coming from you, that means a lot.”
Newell looked at him and narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“But, uh…”
“But what?”
“Well, there’s no question we can file with this. There is a lot here.”
“But what?”
“I’m looking at it from a defense lawyer’s perspective. What really do we have here? A lot of coincidences. He’s left-handed, he smokes, he knew details about the Dollmaker. But those things are not hard evidence. They can apply to a lot of people.”
Bosch started lighting a cigarette.
