Michael Connelly: The Overlook

He opened the glove box next and several more clip-on IDs like the one found on the body fell to the floorboard. He picked them up one by one and saw that each access badge had been issued by a different local hospital. But the swipe cards all bore the same name and photo. Stanley Kent, the man (Bosch presumed) who was lying dead in the clearing.

He noticed that on the back of several of the tags there were handwritten notations. He looked at these for a long moment. Most were numbers with the letters L or R at the end and he concluded that they were lock combinations.

Bosch looked farther into the glove box and found even more IDs and access key cards. As far as he could tell, the dead man-if he was Stanley Kent -had clearance access to just about every hospital in Los Angeles County. He also had the combinations to security locks at almost every one of the hospitals. Bosch briefly considered that the IDs and key cards might be counterfeits used by the victim in some sort of hospital scam.

Bosch returned everything to the glove box and closed it. He then looked under and between the seats and found nothing of interest. He backed out of the car and went to the open trunk.

The trunk was small and empty. But in the beam of his flashlight he noted that there were four indentations in the carpet lining the bottom. It was clear that something square and heavy with four legs or wheels had been carried in the trunk. Because the trunk was found in the open position it was likely that the object-whatever it was-had been taken during the killing.

“Detective?”

Bosch turned and put the beam of his light into the face of a patrolman. It was the officer who had taken his name and badge number at the perimeter. He lowered the light.

“What is it?”

“There’s an FBI agent here. She’s asking permission to enter the crime scene.”

“Where is she?”

The officer led the way back to the yellow tape. As Bosch got close he saw a woman standing next to the open door of a car. She was alone and she wasn’t smiling. Bosch felt the thud of uneasy recognition hit his chest.

“Hello, Harry,” she said when she saw him.

“Hello, Rachel,” he said.

IT HAD BEEN ALMOST SIX MONTHS since he had seen Special Agent Rachel Walling of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As he approached her at the tape, Bosch was sure that not a day had gone by in that time when he hadn’t thought about her. He had never imagined, however, that they would be reunited-if they ever were reunited-in the middle of the night at a murder scene. She was dressed in jeans, an oxford shirt and a dark blue blazer. Her dark hair was unkempt but she still looked beautiful. She obviously had been called in from home, just as Bosch had. She wasn’t smiling and Bosch was reminded of how badly things had ended the last time.

“Look,” he said, “I know I’ve been ignoring you but you didn’t have to go to all the trouble of tracking me down at a crime scene just to-”

“It’s not really a time for humor,” she said, cutting him off. “If this is what I think it might be.”

They’d last had contact on the Echo Park case. He had found her at the time working for a shadowy FBI unit called Tactical Intelligence. She had never explained what exactly the unit did and Bosch had never pushed it, since it wasn’t important to the Echo Park investigation. He had reached out to her because of her past tenure as a profiler-and their past personal history. The Echo Park case had gone sideways and so had any chance for another romance. As Bosch looked at her now, he knew she was all business and he had a feeling he was about to find out what the Tactical Intelligence Unit was all about.

“What is it you think it might be?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you when I can tell you. Can I please see the scene?”

Reluctantly, Bosch lifted the crime scene tape and returned her perfunctory attitude with his standard sarcasm.

“Come on in, then, Agent Walling,” he said. “Why don’t you just make yourself at home?”

She stepped under and stopped, at least respecting his right to lead her to his crime scene.

“I actually might be able to help you here,” she said. “If I can see the body I might be able to make a formal identification for you.”

She held up a file that she had been carrying down at her side.

“This way, then,” Bosch said.

He led her to the clearing, where the victim was cast in the sterilizing fluorescent light from the mobile units. The dead man was lying on the orange dirt about five feet from the drop-off at the edge of the overlook. Beyond the body and over the edge the moonlight reflected off the reservoir below. Past the dam the city spread out in a blanket of a million lights. The cool evening air made the lights shimmer like floating dreams.

Bosch put out his arm to stop Walling at the edge of the light circle. The victim had been rolled over by the medical examiner and was now faceup. There were abrasions on the dead man’s face and forehead but Bosch thought he could recognize the man in the photos on the hospital tags in the glove box. Stanley Kent. His shirt was open, exposing a hairless chest of pale white skin. There was an incision mark on one side of the torso where the medical examiner had pushed a temperature probe into the liver.

“Evening, Harry,” said Joe Felton, the medical examiner. “Or I guess I should say, good morning. Who’s your friend there? I thought they teamed you with Iggy Ferras.”

“I am with Ferras,” Bosch responded. “This is Special Agent Walling from the FBI’s Tactical Intelligence Unit.”

“Tactical Intelligence? What will they think of next?”

“I think it’s one of those Homeland Security-type operations. You know, don’t ask, don’t tell, that sort of thing. She says she might be able to confirm an ID for us.”

Walling gave Bosch a look that told him he was being juvenile.

“All right if we come in, Doc?” Bosch asked.

“Sure, Harry, we’re pretty much squared away here.”

Bosch started to step forward but Walling moved quickly in front of him and walked into the harsh light. Without hesitation she took a position over the body. She opened the file and took out a color 8 × 10 face shot. She bent down and held it next to the dead man’s face. Bosch stepped in close at her side to make a comparison himself.

“It’s him,” she said. “ Stanley Kent.”

Bosch nodded his agreement and then offered his hand to her so that she could step back over the body. She ignored it and did it without help. Bosch looked down at Felton, who was squatting next to the body.

“So, Doc, you want to tell us what we’ve got here?”

Bosch stooped down on the other side of the body to get a better look.

“We’ve got a man who was brought here or came here for whatever reason and was made to get down on his knees.”

Felton pointed to the victim’s pants. There were smudges of orange dirt on both knees.

“Then somebody shot him twice in the back of the head and he went down face first. The facial injuries you see came when he hit the ground. He was already dead by then.”

Bosch nodded.

“No exit wounds,” Felton added. “Probably something small like a twenty-two with the ricochet effect inside the skull. Very efficient.”

Bosch realized now that Lieutenant Gandle had been speaking figuratively when he mentioned that the victim’s brains had been blown across the view from the overlook. He would have to remember Gandle’s tendency toward hyperbole in the future.

“Time of death?” he asked Felton.

“Going by the liver temp I would say four or five hours,” the medical examiner replied. “Eight o’clock, give or take.”