Майкл Коннелли: Two Kinds of Truth

Valdez looked at him. He knew that “downtown” meant from outside the SFPD, from Bosch’s past.

“I heard you had visitors this morning,” he said. “We’ll talk about that later. Where do you want me?”

“Media relations,” Bosch said. “They’ll get wind of this soon enough and will start showing up. ‘Two Dead on Main Street’ will be a story. You need to set up a command post and corral them when they start coming in. We want to control what information gets out there.”

“Understood. What else? You need more bodies for the canvass. I can pull people in from patrol, take one officer out of every car and run solo patrols till we get a handle on this.”

“That would be good. There were people in all of these shops. Somebody saw something.”

“You got it. What if I can get the old Penney’s open and we use that as the CP? I know the guy who owns the building.”

Bosch looked across the street and down half a block at the facade of the long-closed department store.

“We’re going to be out here late. If you can get lights on in there, go for it. What about Captain Trevino? Is he around?”

“I have him covering the shop while I am here. You need him?”

“No, I can fill him in on things later.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it. We really need a quick conclusion to this, Harry. If there is one.”

“Roger that.”

The chief headed off and Lourdes came up to Bosch.

“Let me guess, he didn’t want me as lead,” she said.

“He wanted me,” Bosch said. “But it was no reflection on you. I said no. I said it was your case.”

“Does that have something to do with the three visitors you had this morning?”

“Maybe. And it has to do with you being able to handle it. Why don’t you go in and watch over Gooden and Sanders? I’ll call the sheriff’s lab and get an ETA. First thing we want are photos. Don’t let those guys move the bodies around until we get the full photo spread.”

“Roger that.”

“The bodies belong to the coroner. But the crime scene is ours. Remember that.”

Lourdes headed toward the door of the farmacia and Bosch pulled his phone. The SFPD was so small, it did not have its own forensics team. It relied on the sheriff’s department crime scene unit and that often put it in second position for services. Bosch called the liaison at the lab and was told a team was on the road to San Fernando as they spoke. Bosch reminded the liaison that they were working a double murder and asked for a second team, but he was denied and told there wasn’t a second team to spare. They were getting two techs and a photographer/videographer, and that was it.

As he hung up, Bosch noticed one of the patrol officers he had given orders to earlier was standing at the new crime scene perimeter at the end of the block. Yellow tape had been strung completely across, closing the road through the mall. The patrol officer had his hands on his belt buckle and was watching Bosch.

Bosch put his phone away and walked up the street to the yellow tape and the officer manning it.

“Don’t look in,” Bosch said. “Look out.”

“What?” the officer asked.

“You’re watching the detectives. You should be watching the street.”

Bosch put his hand on the officer’s shoulder and turned him toward the tape.

“Look outward from a crime scene. Look for people watching, people who don’t fit. You’d be surprised how many times the doer comes back to watch the investigation. Anyway, you’re protecting the crime scene, not watching it.”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

The sheriff’s forensics team arrived shortly after that and Bosch ordered everyone out of the pharmacy so the photographer could go in and take a preliminary photo-and-video sweep of the crime scene with only the bodies in view.

While waiting outside, Bosch pulled on gloves and a pair of paper booties. Once the all clear came from the photographer, the whole team entered the farmacia, passing through a plastic crime scene containment curtain that had been hung by the techs over the door.

Gooden and Sanders separated and continued to process the bodies. Lourdes and Bosch first went behind the pharmacy counter, where Gooden and one of the crime scene techs were examining the first body. Lourdes had a notebook out and was writing down a description of what she was seeing. Bosch leaned close to his partner’s ear and whispered.

“Take the time to just observe. Notes are good but clear visuals are good to keep in your mind.”

“Okay. I will.”

When Bosch was a young homicide detective, he worked with a partner named Frankie Sheehan, who always kept an old milk crate in the trunk of their unmarked car. He’d carry it into every scene, find a good vantage point, and put the crate down. Then he’d sit on it and just observe the scene, studying its nuances and trying to take the measure and motive of the violence that had occurred there. Sheehan had worked the Danielle Skyler case with Bosch and had sat on his crate in the corner of the room where the body was left nude and viciously violated on the floor. But Sheehan was long dead now and would not be taking the free fall that was awaiting Bosch on the case.

La Farmacia Familia was a small operation that appeared to Bosch to rely mostly on the business of filling prescriptions. In the front section of the store, there were three short aisles of shelved retail items relating to home remedies and care, almost all of them in Spanish-language boxes imported from Mexico. There were no racks of greeting cards, point-of-purchase candy displays, or cold cases stocked with sodas and water. The business was nothing like the chain pharmacies scattered across the city.

The entire back wall of the store was the actual pharmacy, where there was a counter that fronted the storage area of medicines and a work area for filling prescriptions. The front section of the store seemed completely untouched by the crime that had occurred here.

Bosch moved down the aisle to the left, which brought him to a half door leading to the rear of the pharmacy counter. He saw Gooden squatting down behind the counter next to the first body, that of a man who appeared to be in his early fifties. He was lying on his back just behind the counter, his hands up and palms out by his shoulders. He was wearing a white pharmacist’s jacket with a name embroidered on it.

“Harry, meet José,” Gooden said. “At least he’s José until we confirm it with fingerprints. Through-and-through gunshot to the chest.”

He formed a gun with his thumb and finger as he gave the report and pointed the barrel against his chest.

“Point-blank?” Bosch asked.

“Almost,” Gooden said. “Six to twelve inches. Guy probably had his hands up and they still shot him.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. He was in observation mode. He would form his own impressions about the scene and determine if the victim’s hands were up or down when he was shot. He didn’t need that information from Gooden.

Bosch squatted and looked across the floor around the body and bent down further to look under the counter.

“What is it?” Lourdes asked.

“No brass,” Bosch said.

No ejected bullet casings indicated one of two things to Bosch. Either the killer had taken the time to pick up the casings or he had used a revolver — which did not eject bullet casings. Either way, it was notable to Bosch. Picking up critical evidence showed a cool calculation to the crime. Using a revolver could indicate the same — a weapon chosen because it would not leave critical evidence behind.

He and Lourdes moved into the hallway to the left of the pharmacy counter. The twenty-foot passageway led to the work and storage areas and a restroom. There was a door at the end of the hall with double locks and an exit sign as well as a peephole. It presumably led to the back alley from which deliveries would come.