Read Angels Flight for Free Online

He had been thinking the same thing, that the shooter was someone with some expertise in firearms.
    “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sally Tam.”
    She put out her hand and Bosch shook it. It felt weird. They were both wearing rubber gloves. He told her his name.
    “Oh,” she said. “Somebody was just talking about you. About the hard-boiled eggs case.”
    “It was just luck.”
    Bosch knew he was getting a longer ride out of that case than he deserved. It was all because a Times reporter had heard about it and written a story that exaggerated Bosch’s skills to the point where he seemed like a distant relative of Sherlock Holmes.
    Bosch pointed past Tam and said he needed to get by to take a look at the other body. She stepped to the side and leaned back and he slid by, careful not to allow himself to rub against her. He heard her introducing herself to Rider and Edgar. He dropped into a crouch so he could study the body of Howard Elias.
    “Is this still as is?” he asked Hoffman, who was squatting next to his tackle box near the feet of the dead man.
    “Pretty much. We turned him to get into his pockets but then put him back. There are some Polaroids over on that seat behind you if you want to double-check. Coroner’s people took those before anybody touched him.”
    Bosch turned and saw the photos. Hoffman was right. The body was in the same position in which it had been found.
    He turned back to the body and used both hands to turn the head so that he could study the wounds. Garwood’s interpretation had been correct, Bosch decided. The entry wound at the back of the head was a contact wound. Though partially obscured by blood that had matted the hair, there were still powder burns and stippling visible in a circular pattern around the wound. The face shot, however, was clean. This did not refer to the blood – there was a good amount of that. But there were no powder burns on the skin. The bullet to the face had come from a distance.
    Bosch picked up the arm and turned the hand so he could study the entry wound in the palm. The arm moved easily. Rigor mortis had not yet begun – the cool evening air was delaying this process. There was no discharge burn on the palm. Bosch did some computing. No powder burns on the palm meant the firearm was at least three to four feet away from the hand when the bullet was discharged. If Elias had his arm extended with his palm out, then that added another three feet.
    Edgar and Rider had made their way to the second body. Bosch could feel their presence behind him.
    “Six to seven feet away, through the hand and still right between the eyes,” he said. “This guy can shoot. Better remember that when we take him down.”
    Neither of them answered. Bosch hoped they picked up on the confidence in his last line as well as the warning. He was about to place the dead man’s hand down on the floor when he noticed the long scratch mark on the wrist and running along the side of the palm. He guessed the wound had occurred when Elias’s watch had been pulled off. He studied the wound closely. There was no blood in the track. It was a clean white laceration along the surface of the dark skin, yet it seemed deep enough to have drawn blood.
    He thought about this for a moment. There were no shots to the heart, only to the head. The blood displacement from the wounds indicated the heart had continued to pump for at least several seconds after Elias had gone down. It would seem that the shooter would have yanked the watch off Elias’s wrist very quickly after the shooting – there was obviously no reason to hang around. Yet, the scratch on the hand had not bled. It was as if it had occurred well after the heart had stopped pumping.
    “What do you think about the lead enema?” Hoffman asked, interrupting Bosch’s thoughts.
    As Hoffman got out of the way, Bosch stood and gingerly stepped around the body until he was down by the feet. He crouched again and looked at the