City Of Bones

the room.
    Stokes was sitting in a closet that had no door. He was leaning back against the rear wall. His hands were in his lap, one holding a small gun, a.25 caliber pocket rocket. He wore black jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt that was covered with his own blood. He had entry wounds on his chest and right below his left eye. His eyes were open but he was clearly dead.
    Edgar was squatted in front of the body. He didn’t touch it. There was no use trying for a pulse and everybody knew it. The smell of burnt cordite invaded Bosch’s nose and it was a welcome relief from the smell outside the room.
    Bosch turned around to take in the whole room. There were too many people in the small space. There were three uniforms, Edgar, and a plainclothes Bosch assumed was a narc. Two of the uniforms were huddled together at the far wall, studying two bullet holes in the plaster. One raised a finger and was about to probe one of the holes.
    “Don’t touch that,” Bosch barked. “Don’t touch anything. I want everybody to back out of here and wait for OIS. Who fired a weapon?”
    “Edge did it,” said the narc. “The guy was waitin’ for us in the closet and we-”
    “Excuse me, what’s your name?”
    “Phillips.”
    “Okay, Phillips, I don’t want to hear your story. Save it for OIS. Go get Edgewood and go back downstairs and wait. When the paramedics get here tell them never mind. Save them a trip up the steps.”
    The cops reluctantly shuffled out of the room, leaving only Bosch and Edgar. Edgar got up and walked over to the window. Bosch went to the corner farthest from the closet and looked back at the body. He then approached the body and squatted down in the same spot where Edgar had been.
    He studied the gun in Stokes’s hand. He assumed that when it was removed from the hand OIS investigators would find the serial number had been burned away by acid.
    He thought about the shots he had heard while on the stairway landing. Two and two. It was hard to judge them by memory, especially considering his position at the time. But he thought the first two rounds had been louder and heavier than the second two. If that was so it would mean Stokes had fired his little popper after Edgewood had fired his service weapon. It would mean Stokes had gotten off two shots after he had been hit in the face and chest-wounds that appeared instantly fatal to Bosch.
    “What do you think?”
    Edgar had come up behind him.
    “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Bosch said. “He’s dead. It’s an OIS case now.”
    “What it is is a closed case, partner. I guess we didn’t have to worry about whether the DA would file the case after all.”
    Bosch nodded. He knew there would be wrap-up investigation and paperwork, but the case was finished. It would ultimately be classified as “closed by other means,” meaning no trial and no conviction but carried in the solved column just the same.
    “Guess not,” he said.
    Edgar swatted him on the shoulder.
    “Our last case together, Harry. We go out on top.”
    “Yeah. Tell me something, did you mention the DA and about it being a juvy case during the briefing in the roll-call room this morning?”
    After a long moment Edgar said, “Yeah, I might’ve mentioned something about it.”
    “Did you tell them we were spinning our wheels, the way you said it to me? That the DA probably wouldn’t even file a case on Stokes?”
    “Yeah, I might’ve said it like that. Why?”
    Bosch didn’t answer. He stood up and walked over to the room’s window. He could see the Capitol Records building and farther past it the Hollywood sign up on the crest of the hill. Painted on the side of a building a few blocks away was an anti-smoking sign showing a cowboy with a drooping cigarette in his mouth accompanied by a warning about cigarettes causing impotence.
    He turned back to Edgar.
    “You going to hold the scene until OIS gets here?”
    “Yeah, sure. They’re going to be pissed off about having to hump the thirteen floors.”
    Bosch headed toward the door.
    “Where are you going, Harry?”
    Bosch walked out of the room without answering. He used the stairwell at the farthest end of the hallway so that he wouldn’t catch up to the others as he was going down.

Chapter 53
    THE living members of what had once been a family stood as points of a hard-edged triangle with the grave in the middle. They stood on a sloping hillside in Forest Lawn, Samuel Delacroix on one side of the coffin while