Michael Connelly - The Drop

The dread of recognition came over Bosch. He knew Chu was too young and new to the job to be familiar with the pattern. And Antons wouldn’t recognize it either. He had only been around a decade or so after coming from Madrid to attend UCLA’s med school and never going back.

“Did you check for petechial hemorrhaging?” Bosch asked.

“Of course,” Antons said. “There was none.”

Petechial hemorrhaging occurred in the blood vessels around the eyes during suffocation.

“Why do you ask about petechial hemorrhaging after seeing this abrasion on the back of the shoulder?” Antons asked.

Bosch shrugged.

“Just covering all the bases.”

Antons and Chu were both staring at him, expecting more. But he didn’t give it. They stood there silently for a long moment before Bosch moved on. He pointed to the abrasion on the body’s back.

“You said antemortem. How close to death are we talking about?”

“You see that the skin is broken. I took a culture. The histamine levels in the wounds indicate the injury occurred very close to death. I was telling Detective Chu, you need to go back to the hotel. He may have scratched his back on something while climbing over the balcony. You can see there is a pattern to the wound.”

Bosch knew the pattern already but wasn’t going to say anything yet.

“Climbing over the balcony? So you’re calling this a suicide?”

“Of course not. Not yet. It could be suicide. It could be accidental. There is follow-up needed. We’ll do the full toxicological scan, and this injury needs to be explained. You see the pattern. That should help you narrow it down at the hotel.”

“Did you check the hyoid?” Bosch asked.

Antons put his hands on his hips.

“Why would I check the hyoid on a jumper?”

“I thought you just said you weren’t ready to call him a jumper.”

Antons didn’t answer. He grabbed a scalpel from a rack.

“Help me turn him back over.”

“Wait,” Bosch said. “Can I get a picture of this first?”

“I took photos. They should be in the printer by now. You can pick them up on the way out.”

Bosch helped him turn the body back over. Antons used the scalpel to open the neck and remove the small U-shaped bone that guarded the windpipe. He carefully cleaned it in a sink and then studied it for fractures under a lighted magnifying lens on the counter.

“Hyoid’s intact,” he said.

Bosch nodded. It didn’t prove anything one way or the other. An expert could have choked Irving out without cracking the bone or causing bleeding in the eyes. It didn’t prove anything at all.

But the marks on the back of the shoulder were something. Bosch felt things changing about the case. Changing rapidly. And it was bringing new meaning to high jingo .

Chu waited until they were halfway through the parking lot before erupting.

“Okay, Harry, what’s going on? What was that all about in there?”

Bosch pulled his phone. He had to make a call.

“I’ll tell you when I can tell you. I want you to go back to—”

“That’s not good enough, Harry! We’re partners, man, and you’re constantly doing the lone wolf number on me. You can’t do that anymore.”

Chu had stopped and turned to him, his arms spread. Bosch stopped as well.

“Look, I’m trying to protect you. I need to talk to somebody first. Let me do that and then we’ll talk.”

Unsatisfied, Chu shook his head.

“You’re killing me with this shit, man. What do you want me to do, go back to the office and just sit on my thumbs?”

“No, there’s a lot I want you to do. I want you to go to Property and pull out Irving’s shirt. Have somebody in SID check the inside shoulder for blood. It’s a dark shirt and nobody noticed anything on it yesterday.”

“So if there’s blood, we’ll know he got those marks while wearing the shirt.”

“That’s right.”

“And what will that tell us?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He was thinking about the shirt button found on the floor in the hotel suite. There could have been a struggle with Irving being choked out and the button being pulled loose.

“When you’re finished with the shirt, get the search warrant going.”

“The search warrant for what?”

“Irving’s office. I want to have a warrant before we go in and start looking at files.”

“They’re his files and he’s dead. What do we need a warrant for?”

“Because the guy was a lawyer and I don’t want to trip over any attorney-client privilege bullshit when we go in there. I want everything clean on this.”

“You know, it’s going to be hard for me to write up a warrant with you keeping me in the dark about shit.”

“No, it’s going to be easy. You say you are conducting an open-ended investigation into this man’s death. You say that there were signs of a possible struggle — the button torn from the shirt, the antemortem wound on the back — and you want access to his business papers and product so you can determine if there was any bad blood involving clients or adversaries. Simple. If you can’t do it, I’ll write it up when I get back.”

“No, I can do it. I’m the writer.”

It was true. In their usual division of labor and responsibilities, Chu always did the warrant work.

“Okay, then go do it and stop moping about it.”

“Hey, Harry, fuck you. I’m not moping. You wouldn’t like it if this was how I was treating you.”

“I’ll tell you what, Chu. If I had a partner who had a lot more years and experience than me and who said trust me on this until the time is right, then I think I would. And I would thank him for watching out for me.”

Bosch let that sink in for a moment before dismissing Chu.

“I’ll see you back there. I gotta go.”

They started walking to their separate cars. Bosch glanced back at his partner and saw him walking with his head down, a hangdog expression on his face. Chu didn’t understand the complexities of high jingo. But Bosch did.

By the time he was behind the wheel, Harry had Kiz Rider on the phone.

“Meet me at the academy in fifteen minutes. In the video room.”

“Harry, there’s no way. I’m about to go into a budget meeting.”

“Then don’t complain to me about not knowing what’s going on with the Irving case.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

“No, you have to be shown. When can you meet?”

There was a long pause before she responded.

“Not before one. Go get yourself something to eat and I’ll meet you then.”

Bosch was reluctant to slow things down but it was important that Rider know the direction the case was heading.

“See you then. By the way, did you put somebody on Irving’s office like I asked you yesterday?”

“Yes, I did. Why?”

“Just wanted to be sure.”

He disconnected before she rebuked him for his lack of confidence in her.

It took Bosch fifteen minutes to get over to Elysian Park and the police academy complex. He stopped in at the café in the Revolver and Athletic Club and took a stool at the counter. He ordered a coffee and a Bratton Burger, named after the prior chief of police, and spent the next hour going over his notes and adding to them.

After paying the tab and checking out some of the police memorabilia hanging on the café wall, he walked through the old gymnasium, the place where he had received his badge on a rainy day more than thirty years before, and into the video room. There was a library here that contained all the training videos used by the department for as long as there had been video. He told the civilian custodian what he was looking for and waited while the man searched for the old tape.