Read Angels Flight for Free Online Page A

third bullet wound. Blood had soaked the seat of the pants. Still, he could see the tear and tight burn pattern where the bullet went through the cloth and into Howard Elias’s anus. The weapon had been pressed in deep at the point where the seams of the pants were joined and then fired. It was a vindictive shot. More than a coup de grâce, it showed anger and hatred. It contradicted the cool skill of the other shots. It also told Bosch that Garwood had been wrong about the shooting sequence. Whether the captain had been intentionally wrong, he didn’t know.
    He stood up and backed to the rear door of the car so that he was in the spot where the shooter had probably stood. He surveyed the carnage in front of him once more and nodded to no one in particular, just trying to commit it all to memory. Edgar and Rider were still between the bodies and making their own observations.
    Bosch turned around and looked down the tracks to the turnstile station below. The detectives he had seen before were gone. Now a lone cruiser sat down there and two patrol officers guarded the lower crime scene.
    Bosch had seen enough. He made his way past the bodies and carefully around Sally Tam again and up onto the platform. His partners followed, Edgar moving by Tam more closely than he had to.
    Bosch stepped away from the train car so they could huddle together privately.
    “What do you think?” he said.
    “I think they’re real,” Edgar said, looking back toward Tam. “They’ve got that natural slope to them. What do you think, Kiz?”
    “Funny,” Rider said, not taking the bait. “Can we talk about the case, please?”
    Bosch admired how Rider took Edgar’s frequent comments and sexual innuendo without more than a sarcastic remark or complaint fired back at him. Such comments could get Edgar in serious trouble but only if Rider made a formal complaint. The fact that she didn’t indicated either she was intimidated or she could handle it. She also knew that if she went formal, she’d get what cops called a “K-9 jacket,” a reference to the city jail ward where snitches were housed. Bosch had once asked her in a private moment if she wanted him to talk to Edgar. As her supervisor he was legally responsible for resolving the problem but he knew that if he talked to Edgar, then Edgar would know he had gotten to her. Rider knew this as well. She had thought about all of this for a few moments and told Bosch to let things alone. She said she wasn’t intimidated, just annoyed on occasion. She could handle it.
    “You go first, Kiz,” Bosch said, also ignoring Edgar’s comment, even though he privately disagreed with his conclusion about Tam. “Anything catch your eye in there?”
    “Same as everybody else, I guess. Looks like the victims were not together. The woman either got on ahead of Elias or was about to get off. I think it’s pretty clear Elias was the primary target and she was just an also-ran. The shot up the ass tells me that. Also, like you said in there, this guy was a hell of a shot. We’re looking for someone who’s spent some time at the range.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Anything else?”
    “Nope. It’s a pretty clean scene. Nothing much to work with.”
    “Jerry?”
    “Nada. What about you?”
    “Same. But I think Garwood was telling us a story. His sequence was for shit.”
    “How?” Rider said.
    “The shot up the pipe was the last one, not the first. Elias was already down. It’s a contact wound and the entry is in the underside, where all the seams of the pants come together. It would be hard to get a muzzle up there if Elias was standing – even if he was up a step from the shooter. I think he was already down when the shooter popped that cap.”
    “That changes things,” Rider said. “Makes the last one a ‘fuck you’ shot. The shooter was angry at Elias.”
    “So he knew him,” Edgar said.
    Bosch nodded.
    “And you think Garwood knew this and was just trying to steer us wrong by planting the