The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(115)

“Roger that.”

Lourdes headed toward the door of the farmacia and Bosch pulled his phone. The SFPD was so small, it did not have its own forensics team. It used the Sheriff’s Department unit and that often put it in second position for services. Bosch called the liaison at the lab and was told a team was on the road to San Fernando as they spoke. Bosch reminded the liaison that they were working a double murder and asked for a second team, but he was denied that request. He was told there wasn’t a second team to spare.

As he hung up, he noticed one of the patrol officers he had given orders to earlier standing at the new crime scene perimeter at the end of the block. Yellow tape had been strung completely across, closing the road through the mall. The patrol officer had his hands on his belt buckle and was watching Bosch.

Bosch put his phone away and walked up the street to the yellow tape and the officer manning it.

“Don’t look in,” Bosch said. “Look out.”

“What?” the officer asked.

“You’re watching the detectives. You should be watching the street.”

Bosch put his hand on the officer’s shoulder and turned him toward the tape.

“Look outward from a crime scene. Look for people watching, people who don’t fit. You’d be surprised how many times the doer comes back to watch the investigation. Anyway, you’re protecting the crime scene, not watching like one of these looky-loos. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

The forensic team of two evidence technicians arrived shortly after that, and it was another thirty minutes before Bosch, Lourdes, and the team entered the farmacia to go to work. They wore gloves and paper booties. As he entered behind Lourdes, Bosch leaned forward and whispered.

“Make sure you take time just to observe.”

“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.