9 Dragons

for the photos. Help me turn him.”
    They moved to the autopsy table and carefully rolled the body over. Rigor mortis had come and gone and the procedure was easy. Laksmi pointed to the ankles. Bosch moved down and saw that there were small Chinese symbols tattooed at the back of Li’s feet. It looked like either two or three symbols were on each foot, located on either side of the Achilles tendon.

    “You photographed these?”
    “Yes, they’ll be in the report.”
    “Anybody around here who can translate these?”
    “I don’t think so. Dr. Ming might be able to but he is on a vacay this week.”
    “Okay, can we slide him down a bit so I can hook the feet over the edge and take a picture?”
    She helped him move the body down the table. The feet went over the edge and Bosch positioned the ankles right next to each other so the Chinese symbols were in a line across. He reached under his gown and pulled out his cell phone. He switched it to camera mode and took two photos of the tattoos.
    “Okay.”
    Bosch put the phone down and they turned the body back over and moved it back up into place on the table.
    Bosch took off his gloves and threw them into the medical waste receptacle, then picked his phone up and called Chu.
    “What’s your e-mail? I want to send you a photo.”
    “Of what?”
    “Chinese symbols that were tattooed on Mr. Li’s ankles. I want to know what they mean.”
    “Okay.”
    Chu gave him his department e-mail. Bosch checked his camera work and sent the clearest photo to him, then put the phone away.
    “Dr. Laksmi, is there anything else I need to know here?”
    “I think you got it all, Detective. Except there’s one thing that maybe the family will want to know.”
    “What’s that?”
    She gestured to one of the organ bowls she had spread across the work counter.
    “The bullets only brought about the inevitable. Mr. Li was dying of cancer.”
    Bosch stepped over and looked into the tray. The victim’s lungs had been excised from the body for weighing and examination. Laksmi had opened them up to probe the bullet tracks and both lower lobes were dark gray with cancerous cells.
    “He was a smoker,” Laksmi said.
    “I know,” Bosch said. “How long do you think he had?”
    “Maybe a year. Maybe longer.”
    “Can you tell whether this had been treated?”
    “It doesn’t look like it. Certainly no surgery. And I see no signs of chemotherapy or radiation. It may have been undiagnosed at this point. But he would have known soon enough.”
    Bosch thought about his own lungs. He had not smoked in years but they say the damage is done early. Sometimes in the mornings his lungs felt heavy and full in his chest. He’d had a case a few years before that resulted in his being exposed to a high-level dose of radiation. He’d cleared medical on it but always sort of thought or hoped that the blast had knocked down anything that might be growing in his chest.
    Bosch took out his cell phone again and once more put it on camera function. He leaned over the bowl and shot a photo of the ravaged organs.
    “What are you doing?” Laksmi asked.
    “I want to send it to somebody.”
    He checked the photo and it was clear enough. He then sent it off in an e-mail.
    “Who? Not the family, I hope.”
    “No, my daughter.”
    “Your daughter?”
    There was a tone of outrage in her voice.
    “She needs to see what smoking can do.”
    “Nice.”
    She said nothing else. Bosch put his phone away and checked his watch. It was a double display watch that gave him the time in L.A. and Hong Kong-a present from his daughter after too many miscalculated middle-of-the-night phone calls. It was just past three o’clock in L.A. His daughter was fifteen hours ahead and sleeping. She’d get up for school in about an hour and would get the photo then. He knew it would bring a protest call from her but even a call like that was better than none.
    He smiled at the thought of it and then refocused on the work. He was ready to get moving again.
    “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “For your records, I’m taking the ballistic evidence over to forensics.”
    “Did you sign for it?”
    She pointed to a clipboard on the counter and Bosch found she had already filled out the chain-of-evidence report. Bosch signed the line acknowledging he was now in possession of the evidence listed. He headed toward the autopsy suite’s door.
    “Give me a couple days on the hard copy,” Laksmi said.
    Meaning the formal