The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online

on Hyperion Street. They had locked eyes. The eyes Bosch had seen were killer's eyes, as dark as the stone at Chandler's throat.
    “… even if he was reaching for a gun, would that matter?” Chandler was saying. “A man had kicked the door open. A man with a gun. Who could blame someone for reaching, according to police, for a weapon for protection. The fact that he was reaching for something seemingly as laughable as a hairpiece makes this episode all the more repugnant. He was killed in cold blood. Our society cannot accept that.”
    Bosch tuned her out again and thought of the new victim, entombed for what was likely years in a concrete floor. He wondered if a missing-person report was ever taken, if there was a mother or father or husband or child wondering all this time about her. After returning from the scene he had started to tell Belk about the discovery. He asked the lawyer to ask Judge Keyes for a continuance, to delay the trial until the new death could be sorted out. But Belk had cut him off, telling him that the less he knew the better. Belk seemed so frightened of the implications of the new discovery that he determined that the best tack was to do the opposite of what Bosch suggested. He wanted to hurry the trial through before news of the discovery and its possible connection to the Dollmaker became public.
    Chandler was now near the end of the one-hour allotment for her opener. She had gone on at length about the police department's shooting policy and Bosch thought she might have lost the grip she had on the jury in the beginning. For a while she had even lost Belk, who sat next to Bosch paging through his own yellow pad and rehearsing his opener in his head.
    Belk was a large man—almost eighty pounds overweight, Bosch guessed—and prone to sweating, even in the overly cooled courtroom. Bosch had often wondered during the jury selection if the sweating was Belk's response to the burden of weight he carried or the burden of trying a case against Chandler and before Judge Keyes. Belk couldn't be over thirty, Bosch guessed. Maybe five years max out of a middle-range law school and in over his head going up against Chandler.
    The word “justice” brought Bosch's attention back. He knew that Chandler had turned it up a notch and was coming down the backstretch when she started using the word in almost every sentence. In civil court, justice and money were interchangeable because they meant the same thing.
    “Justice for Norman Church was fleeting. It lasted all of a few seconds. Justice was the time it took Detective Bosch to kick open the door, point his satin-finished 9mm Smith & Wesson and pull the trigger. Justice was one shot. The bullet Detective Bosch chose to execute Mr. Church with was called an XTP. That is short for extreme terminal performance. It's a bullet that expands to 1.5 times its width on impact and takes out huge portions of tissue and organ in its path. It took out Mr. Church's heart. That was justice.”
    Bosch noticed that many of the jurors were not looking at Chandler but at the plaintiff's table. By leaning forward slightly he could see past the lectern and saw that the widow, Deborah Church, was dabbing at tears on her cheeks with a tissue. She was a bell-shaped woman with short dark hair and small pale blue eyes. She had been the epitome of the suburban housewife and mother until the morning Bosch killed her husband and the cops showed up at her house with their search warrant and the reporters showed up with their questions. Bosch had actually felt sorry for her, even counted her as a victim, until she hired Money Chandler and started calling him a murderer.
    “The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that Detective Bosch is a product of his department,” Chandler said. “A callous, arrogant machine that dispensed justice as he saw it on his own. You will be asked if this is what you want from your police department. You will be asked to right a wrong, to provide