which would mean it had been fired by a rifle. If so, that would be a significant new piece of information in the case.
“Will you stay for the rest, or was that all you wanted?”
She asked it as if there were something else going on between them. He held up the evidence bag.
“I think I should probably get this going. We’ve got a lot of eyes on this case.”
“Right. Well, then, I’ll just finish up by myself. What happened to your partner anyway? Wasn’t she here with you in the hall?”
“She had to make a call.”
“Oh, I thought maybe she wanted us to have some alone time. Did you tell her about us?”
She smiled and batted her eyelashes and Bosch looked away awkwardly.
“No, Teresa. You know I don’t talk about stuff like that.”
She nodded.
“You never did. You’re a man who keeps his secrets.”
He looked back at her.
“I try,” he said. “Besides, that was a long time ago.”
“And the flame’s gone out, hasn’t it?”
He pushed things back on subject.
“On the cause. You’re not seeing anything different from what the hospital is reporting, right?”
Corazon shook her head, able to move back as well.
“No, nothing different here. Sepsis. Blood poisoning, to use the more common phrase. Put that in your press release.”
“And you have no trouble linking this back to the shooting? You could testify to that?”
She was nodding before Bosch was finished speaking.
“Mr. Merced died because of blood poisoning, but I am listing cause of death as homicide. This was a ten-year murder, Harry, and I will gladly testify to that. I hope that bullet helps you find the killer.”
Bosch nodded and closed his hand around the plastic bag containing the bullet.
“I hope so too,” he said.
2
Bosch took the elevator up to the ground floor. In the past few years the county had spent thirty million dollars renovating the coroner’s office but the elevators moved just as slowly as ever. He found Lucia Soto on the back loading dock, leaning against an empty gurney and looking at her phone. She was short, well-proportioned, and 110 pounds at the most. She wore the kind of stylish suit that was in vogue with female detectives. It let her keep a gun on her hip instead of in a purse. It said power and authority in a way a dress could never say it. This one was dark brown, and she wore it with a cream blouse. It went well with her smooth brown skin.
She glanced up as Bosch approached and then stood up hurriedly like a kid who’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Got it,” Bosch said.
He held up the evidence bag containing the bullet. Soto took it and studied the bullet through the plastic for a moment. A couple of body movers came up behind her and pulled the empty gurney toward the door of what was known as the Big Crypt. It was a new addition to the complex, a refrigerated space the size of a Mayfair Market where all of the bodies that came in were staged before being scheduled for autopsy.
“It’s big,” Soto said.
Bosch nodded.
“And long,” Bosch said. “I’m thinking we’re looking for a rifle.”
“It looks like it’s in pretty bad shape,” Soto said. “Mushroomed.”
She handed the bag back and Bosch put it in his coat pocket.
“There’s enough there for a comparison, I think,” he said. “Enough for us to get lucky.”
The men behind Soto opened the door of the Big Crypt to wheel the gurney in. Cold air carrying a disagreeable chemical scent blasted across the loading dock. Soto turned in time to see a glimpse of the giant refrigerated room. Row after row of bodies stacked four high on a stainless-steel scaffolding system. The dead were wrapped in opaque plastic sheeting, their feet exposed, toe tags flapping in the breeze from the refrigeration vents.
Soto quickly turned away, her face turning white.
“You okay?” Bosch asked.
“Yes, fine,” she said. “That just grosses me out.”
“It’s actually a big improvement. The bodies used to be lined up in the hallways. Sometimes stacked on top of one another after a busy weekend. It got pretty ripe around here.”
She held a hand up to stop him from further description.
“Please, are we done?”
“We’re done.”
He started moving and Soto followed, falling in a step behind him. She tended to walk behind Bosch and he didn’t know if it was some sort of deferential thing to his age and rank or something else, like a confidence issue. He headed to the steps at the end of the dock.