Angels Flight

find an all-night liquor store and buy the best Irish whiskey they got. I’m going to have a little celebration, Hieronymus. Because Howard Elias was a motherfucker.”
    Bosch nodded. With cops the word motherfucker was rarely used. It was heard a lot by them but not used. With most cops it was reserved as being the worst thing you could say about someone. When it was said it meant one thing: that the person had crossed the righteous, that the person had no respect for the keepers of the law and therefore the rules and bounds of society. Cop killers were always motherfuckers, no questions asked. Defense lawyers got the call, most of the time. And Howard Elias was on the motherfucker list, too. Right at the top.
    Sheehan gave a little salute and headed off across the plaza. Bosch turned his attention toward the interior of the train while he put on rubber gloves. The lights were back on and the techs were finished with the laser. Bosch knew one of them, Hoffman. He was working with a trainee Bosch had heard about but not met. She was an attractive Asian woman with a large bust. He had overheard other detectives in the squad room discussing her attributes and questioning their authenticity.
    “Gary, is it cool to come in?” Bosch asked, leaning in through the door.
    Hoffman looked up from the tackle box in which he kept his tools. He was organizing things and was about to close it.
    “It’s cool. We’re wrapping up. This one yours, Harry?”
    “It is now. Got anything good for me? Gonna make my day?”
    Bosch stepped into the car, followed by Edgar and Rider. Since the car was on an incline, the floor was actually a series of steps down to the other door. The seats also were on graduated levels on either side of the center aisle. Bosch looked at the slatted bench seats and suddenly remembered how hard they had been on his skinny behind as a boy.
    “ ’Fraid not,” Hoffman said. “It’s pretty clean.”
    Bosch nodded and moved down a few more steps to the first body. He studied Catalina Perez the way someone might study a sculpture in a museum. There was no feeling for the object in front of him as human. He was studying details, gaining impressions. His eyes fell to the bloodstain and the small tear the bullet had made in the T-shirt. The bullet had hit the woman dead center. Bosch thought about this and envisioned the gunman in the doorway of the train twelve feet away.
    “Hell of a shot, huh?”
    It was the tech Bosch didn’t know. He looked at her and nodded. He had been thinking the same thing, that the shooter was someone with some expertise in firearms.
    “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sally Tam.”
    She put out her hand and Bosch shook it. It felt weird. They were both wearing rubber gloves. He told her his name.
    “Oh,” she said. “Somebody was just talking about you. About the hard-boiled eggs case.”
    “It was just luck.”
    Bosch knew he was getting a longer ride out of that case than he deserved. It was all because a Times reporter had heard about it and written a story that exaggerated Bosch’s skills to the point where he seemed like a distant relative of Sherlock Holmes.
    Bosch pointed past Tam and said he needed to get by to take a look at the other body. She stepped to the side and leaned back and he slid by, careful not to allow himself to rub against her. He heard her introducing herself to Rider and Edgar. He dropped into a crouch so he could study the body of Howard Elias.
    “Is this still as is?” he asked Hoffman, who was squatting next to his tackle box near the feet of the dead man.
    “Pretty much. We turned him to get into his pockets but then put him back. There are some Polaroids over on that seat behind you if you want to double-check. Coroner’s people took those before anybody touched him.”
    Bosch turned and saw the photos. Hoffman was right. The body was in the same position in which it had been found.
    He turned back to the body and used both hands to turn the head so that he could study the wounds. Garwood’s interpretation had been correct, Bosch decided. The entry wound at the back of the head was a contact wound. Though partially obscured by blood that had matted the hair, there were still powder burns and stippling visible in a circular pattern around the wound. The face shot, however, was clean. This did not refer to the blood – there was a good amount of that. But there were no powder burns on the skin. The bullet to the face had come from