“Okay.”
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 strewn nude and viciously violated on the floor. But Sheehan was long dead now and would not be taking the free fall awaiting Bosch.
4
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 it in Spanish-language boxes imported from Mexico. There were no racks of greeting cards or point-of-purchase candy displays. There was no cold case 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 an aisle to the left, which brought him to a half door leading to the rear of the pharmacy counter. Immediately he saw blood spatter on the white plastic drawers behind the counter. He then saw Gooden squatting behind the counter next to the first body. It was a man on his back, 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.
“We’re talking point-blank,” he added. “Maybe 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.
He moved into a hallway to the left and came up behind Lourdes. The passageway led to the work and storage areas and a restroom. There was a door marked Exit that presumably led to a back alley. In the hallway, Sanders, the second coroner’s tech, was on his knees next to a second body, also a male. He wore a pale blue pharmacist’s coat. He was facedown, one arm reaching out toward the door. There were blood smears on the floor, leading to the body. Lourdes walked down the side edge of the hallway, careful not to step in the blood.
“And here we have José Jr.,” Sanders said. “We have three points of impact: the back, the rectum, the head—most likely in that order.”
Bosch stepped away from Lourdes and crossed over the blood smears to the other side of the hallway so he could get an unobstructed view of the body. José Jr. was lying with his right cheek against the floor. He looked like he was in his midtwenties, a meager growth of whiskers on his chin.
The blood and bullet wounds told the tale. At the first sign of trouble, José Jr. had made a break for the rear door, running for his life down the hallway. He was knocked down with the first shot to the upper back. On the floor, he turned to look behind him, spilling his blood on the floor. He saw the shooter coming and turned to try to crawl toward the door. The shooter had come up and shot him again, this time in the rectum, then stepped up and ended it with the shot to the back of the head.
Bosch had seen the rectum shot in prior cases, and it drew his attention.
“The shot up the pipe—how close?” he asked.
Sanders reached over and used one gloved hand to pull the seat of the victim’s pants out and taut so the bullet entry could be clearly seen. With the other hand he pointed to where the cloth had been burned.
“He got up in there,” Sanders said. “Point-blank.”
Bosch nodded. His eyes tracked up to the wounds on the back and head. It appeared to him that the two entrance wounds he could see were neater and smaller than the one shot to José Sr.’s chest.
“You thinking two different weapons?” he asked.
Sanders nodded.
“If I were betting,” he said.
Bosch nodded in reply.
“Okay, do what you have to do,” he said.
He carefully stepped back down the hallway and moved into the pharmacy’s work and drug-storage area. He started by looking up and immediately saw the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling over the door.
Lourdes entered the room behind him. He pointed up and she saw the camera.
“Need the feed,” he said. “Hopefully off-site or to a website.”
“I can check that,” she said.
Bosch surveyed the room. Several of the drawers where stores of pills were kept were pulled out and dropped to the floor, and loose pills were scattered across it. He knew the difficult task of inventorying what had been in the pharmacy and what was taken lay ahead. Some of the drawers on the floor were larger than others and he guessed that they had contained more commonly prescribed drugs.
On the worktable, there was a computer. There were also tools for measuring out and bottling pills in plastic vials as well as a label printer.
“Let’s get the photographer in here before we start stepping on pills and crunching them,” he said.
“I’ll go get him,” Lourdes said.
After Lourdes went out, Bosch moved into the hallway again. He knew they would be here until late into the night. The whole place needed to be photographed and videoed, and then the forensics team would gather and document every pill and piece of evidence in the place. A homicide case moved slowly from the center out.
In the old days he would have stepped out at this point to smoke a cigarette and contemplate things. This time he went out through the front door to just think. Almost immediately his phone vibrated in his pocket. The caller ID was blocked.
“That wasn’t cool, Harry,” Lucia Soto said when he answered.
“Sorry, we had an emergency,” he said. “Had to go.”
“You could have told us. I’m not your enemy on this. I’m trying to run interference for you.”
“Are they with you right now?”
“No, of course not. This is just you and me.”
“Can you get me a copy of the report you turned in to Kennedy?”
“Harry …”
“I thought so. Lucia, don’t say you’re on my side, running interference for me if you’re not. You know what I mean?”