Michael Connelly - The Drop

Bosch moved on.

“Tell me something, Clayton. If I catch this guy and he goes on trial, would you be willing to testify to the things you’ve told me today?”

Pell considered the question.

“What would I get?” he asked.

“I told you,” Bosch said. “You’d get satisfaction. You’d help put this guy away for the rest of his life.”

“That’s nothing.”

“Well, I can’t prom—”

“ Look what he did to me! Everything is because of him! ”

He pointed to his chest as he yelled it. The raw emotion in his outburst was full of an animal ferocity that belied his diminutive frame. And it got through to Bosch. He realized how powerful it might be if it was put on exhibit in a trial. If he yelled out the same way and the same thing in front of a jury, it would be devastating for the defense.

“Clayton, I’m going to find this guy,” he said. “And you’ll get the chance to tell him that to his face. It may help you with the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my life? Well, that’s great. Thanks for that.”

The sarcasm was unmistakable. Bosch was about to offer a comeback when there was a sharp knock on the interview room door. Stone got up to open it, and another therapist stood there. She whispered to Stone and then Stone turned to Bosch.

“There are two police officers at the front gate, asking for you.”

Bosch thanked Pell for his time and said he would be in touch about the investigation. He headed out to the gate, pulling his phone as he went. He saw that he had ignored four calls, one from his partner, two from a 213 number he didn’t recognize and the last from Kiz Rider.

The two uniformed cops were from Van Nuys Division. They said they had been sent by the OCP.

“You’re not answering your phone or the radio in your car,” the older one said. “You’re supposed to contact a Lieutenant Rider in the chief’s office. She says it’s urgent.”

Bosch thanked them and explained that he was in an important interview with his phone turned off. As soon as they walked away he called Rider and she answered right away.

“Harry, why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“Because I was in the middle of an interview. I usually don’t stop to take calls. How’d you find me?”

“Through your partner, who is answering his phone. What does that halfway house have to do with the Irving case?”

There was no getting around the answer.

“Nothing. It’s another case.”

There was silence while she worked to contain her frustration and fury with him.

“Harry, the chief of police told you to work the Irving matter as a priority. Why would you—”

“Look, I’m waiting on the autopsy. There’s nothing I can do about Irving until I get the autopsy and get going from there.”

“Well, guess what?”

Bosch now understood where those two 213 calls he missed had come from.

“What?”

“The autopsy started a half hour ago. If you leave now, you might catch the end of it.”

“Is Chu there?”

“As far as I know he is. He’s supposed to be.”

“I’m on my way.”

Embarrassed, he disconnected with no further discussion.

By the time Bosch was gowned and gloved and had entered the autopsy suite, George Irving’s body was already being sewn closed with thick waxed twine.

“Sorry I’m late,” he announced.

Dr. Borja Toron Antons pointed to the microphone hanging from the ceiling over the autopsy table, and Bosch realized his mistake. The details of the autopsy were being recorded and now it would be formally noted that Bosch had all but missed the postmortem medical examination. If the case ever came to a point that there was a trial, a defense attorney would be able to insinuate much from that to the jury. It didn’t matter that Chu was in attendance. The fact that the lead investigator was not where he was supposed to be could take on a sinister, even corrupt, connotation in the hands of the right attorney.

Bosch took a position next to Chu, who had his arms folded and was leaning against a worktable across from the foot of the autopsy table. It was about as far from the autopsy as you could get and still say you were there. Even through the plastic germ guard Bosch could tell Chu was not happy. He had once confided to Bosch that he wanted to be in the Open-Unsolved Unit because he wanted to investigate murders but had trouble viewing autopsies. He couldn’t stand the sight of the human body being mutilated. That made working cold cases a perfect assignment. He reviewed autopsy reports but didn’t actually attend them, and he still got to work murders.

Harry wanted to ask him if anything of interest had come up during the cut but decided to wait to ask Antons directly, and off the tape. Instead, he checked the worktable at the pathologist’s back and counted the vials in the tox rack. He saw that Antons had filled five tubes with Irving’s blood, meaning he was requesting a full toxicological screening. On a routine autopsy, blood is screened for twelve baseline drug groups. When the county is sparing no expense or there is suspicion of a drug involvement that is off the usual trail, then a full screen widens the net to twenty-six groups. And that takes five vials of blood.

Antons ended the autopsy by describing his closing of the Y incision and then took one of his gloves off to turn off the microphone.

“Glad you could make it, Detective,” he said. “How were you hitting ’em?”

Off the tape his Spanish accent seemed to grow thicker with his sarcasm.

“I was two under at the turn,” Bosch said, rolling with it. “But hey, I knew my partner could handle things here. Right, partner?”

He gave Chu a rough clap on the shoulder. By referring to him directly as partner , Bosch was sending a coded message to Chu. They had agreed when they first became a team that if ever a play was on or one of them was running a bluff, the tip-off would be to call the other one partner . The code word meant that the receiver should play along.

But this time Chu ignored the routine.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “I tried calling you, man. You didn’t answer.”

“I guess you didn’t try hard enough.”

Bosch gave Chu a look that almost melted his plastic face guard. He then turned his attention back to Antons.

“I see you’re doing the full scan, Doc. Good call. Anything else I should know about?”

“It wasn’t my call. I was told to run a full scan by the powers that be. I did, however, point out to your partner an issue that bears further scrutiny.”

Bosch looked at Chu and then at the body on the table.

“An issue? Further scrutiny? Is he talking about detective work?”

“The body’s got like a scratch or a bruise or something on the back of the right shoulder,” Chu said. “It didn’t come from the fall because he landed facedown.”

“Antemortem injury,” Antons added.

Bosch stepped closer to the table. He realized that because he had arrived late to the death scene, he had never seen the victim’s back. Irving had already been turned over by Van Atta and the crime scene team by the time Bosch had arrived. No one from Van Atta to Crate and Barrel had mentioned anything about an antemortem injury on the shoulder.

“Can I see it?” he asked.

“If you must,” Antons said grumpily. “If you had been here on time you would have already seen it.”

He reached over a worktable to a shelf and pulled a new set of gloves out of a box.

Bosch helped turn the body over on the table. The back was coated in bloody fluid that had accumulated on the table, which had raised sides like a tray. Antons pulled down an overhead nozzle and sprayed the fluid off the body. Bosch saw the injury immediately. It was about five inches long and included minor surface scratching and slight bruising. There was a discernible pattern that was almost circular. It looked like a series of four crescent moons, repeating about an inch apart, scratched onto the shoulder above the scapula line. Each crescent was about two inches high.