He and Lourdes moved into the hallway to the left of the pharmacy counter. The twenty-foot passageway led to the work and storage areas and a restroom. There was a door at the end of the hall with double locks and an exit sign as well as a peephole. It presumably led to the back alley from which deliveries would come.
Just short of the door, Sanders, the second coroner’s tech, was on his knees next to the other body, also a male wearing a pharmacist’s coat. The body was chest down, one arm reaching out toward the door. There was a trail of 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, eyes partially open. He looked like he was in his early twenties, 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 tiles. He saw the shooter coming and turned to try to crawl toward the door, his knees slipping on and smearing the blood. 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 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.
“And no brass?”
“None evident. We’ll see when we roll the body but that would be a miracle if three shells ended up underneath.”
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 plastic drawers where stores of pills were kept were pulled out and dropped to the floor, and loose pills were scattered across it. He knew a difficult task of inventorying what had been in the pharmacy and what had been 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.
“Can you go out and talk to the photographer?” he asked Lourdes. “Make sure he got all of this stuff in here before we start stepping on pills and crunching them. Tell him he can start videoing the crime scene processing now, too.”
“On it,” Lourdes said.
After Lourdes went out, Bosch moved into the hallway again. He knew they would need to collect and document every pill and piece of evidence in the place. A homicide case always 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 plastic curtain 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, keep it below the radar. If you play this right, the blame will go on the lab or your former partner — the one who’s dead.”
“Are Kennedy and Tapscott 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?”
“I can’t just share active files with—”
“Look, I’m in the middle of things here. Give me a call back if you change your mind. I remember there was a case that meant a lot to you once. We were partners and I was right there for you. I guess things are different now.”
“That’s not fair and you know it.”
“And one other thing? I’d never sell out a partner. Even a dead one.”
He disconnected. He felt a pang of guilt. He was being heavy-handed with Soto but felt he needed to push her toward giving him what he needed.
Since he had finished his career with the LAPD working cold cases, it had been many years since he had worked a live murder scene. With the return of crime scene instincts came the tug of old habits. He felt a deep need for a cigarette. He looked around to see if there was anyone he could borrow a smoke from and saw Lourdes approaching from the short end of the block. She had a troubled look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I came out to talk to the photographer, and got signaled up to the tape. Mrs. Esquivel, the wife and mother of our victims, was stopped at the tape and she was hysterical. I just put her in a car and they’re taking her to the station.”
Bosch nodded. Keeping her away from the crime scene was the right move.
“You up for talking with her?” he asked. “We can’t leave her over there too long.”
“I don’t know,” Lourdes said. “I just ruined her life. Everything that’s important to her is suddenly gone. Husband and her only child.”
“I know, but you have to establish rapport. You never know, this case could go on for years. She’s going to need to trust the person carrying it. You’ve got Spanish and a lot of years ahead of you here. I don’t.”
“Okay, I can do it.”
“Focus on the son. His friends, what he did when he wasn’t working, enemies, all of that stuff. Find out where he lived, whether he had a girlfriend. And ask the mother if José Sr. was having any problems with him at work. The son is going to be the key to this.”
“You get all that from a shot up the ass?”
Bosch nodded.
“I’ve seen it before. On a case where we talked to a profiler. It’s an angry shot. It has payback written all over it.”
“He knew the shooters?”
“No doubt. Either he knew them or they knew him. Or both.”
5
Bosch didn’t get to his home until after midnight. He was beat from a long day working the crime scene and coordinating the efforts of the other detectives as well as the patrol division. He had also been drawn into briefing Chief Valdez on where the investigation stood before the chief faced the cameras and reporters that had gathered on the mall. The update was concise: no suspects, no arrests.
The assessment for the media was accurate but the investigators of the farmacia murders were not without leads. The murders and subsequent looting of the store’s supplies of prescription drugs had indeed been captured on three cameras inside the drugstore, and the full-color videos gave insight into the cold calculation of the crime. There had been two gunmen wearing black ski masks and carrying revolvers. They cut down José Esquivel Sr. and his son with a coldness that implied planning, precision, and intention. Bosch’s first thought after seeing the videos was that they were hit men there to do a job. Stealing pills was simply a cover for the true motive for the crime. Sadly, initial viewings of the video revealed few usable identifiers of either shooter. When one of the men extended his arm to shoot José Sr., his sleeve pulled back to reveal white skin. But nothing else stood out.