City Of Bones

humiliation in front of the other reporters. Bosch watched for a moment and then took the press card out of his back pocket and dropped it in the trash can.
    He rejoined Brasher in line. Now they were just two cadets away from being served.
    “What was that all about?” Brasher asked.
    “Health-code violation. Didn’t wash his hands.”
    She started laughing.
    “I’m serious. The law’s the law as far as I’m concerned.”
    “God, I hope I get my sandwich before you see a roach or something and close the whole thing down.”
    “Don’t worry, I think I just got rid of the roach.”
    Ten minutes later, after Bosch lectured the truck owner about smuggling the media into the crime scene, they took their sandwiches and drinks to one of the picnic tables Special Services had set up on the circle. It was a table that had been reserved for the investigative team, but Bosch didn’t mind allowing Brasher to sit there. Edgar was there along with Kohl and one of the diggers from her crew. Bosch introduced Brasher to those who didn’t know her and mentioned she had taken the initial call on the case and helped him the night before.
    “So where’s the boss?” Bosch asked Kohl.
    “Oh, she already ate. I think she went off to tape an interview with herself or something.”
    Bosch smiled and nodded.
    “I think I’m going to get seconds,” Edgar said as he climbed over the bench and left with his plate.
    Bosch bit into his BLT and savored its taste. He was starved. He wasn’t planning to do anything but eat and rest during the break but Kohl asked if it was all right if she gave him some of her initial conclusions on the excavation.
    Bosch had his mouth full. After he swallowed he asked her to wait until his partner came back. They talked in generalities about the condition of the bones and how Kohl believed that the shallow nature of the grave had allowed animals to disinter the remains and scatter the bones-possibly for years.
    “We’re not going to get them all,” she said. “We won’t come close. We’re going to quickly reach a point where the expense and the effort won’t be worth the return.”
    Edgar returned with another plate of fried chicken. Bosch nodded to Kohl, who looked down at a notepad she had on the table to her left. She checked some of her notations and started talking.
    “The things I want you to be mindful of are the grave depth and location terrain. I think these are key things. They’re going to have to play somehow into who this child was and what happened to him.”
    “Him?” Bosch asked.
    “The hip spacing and the waistband of the underwear.”
    She explained that included in the rotten and decomposed clothing was the rubber waistband, which was all that was left of the underwear that had been on the body when it was buried. Decomposition fluids from the body had led to the deterioration of the clothing. But the rubber waistband was largely intact and appeared to have come from a style of underwear made for males.
    “Okay,” Bosch said. “You were saying about grave depth?”
    “Yes, well, we think that the hip assembly and lower spinal column were in undisturbed position when we uncovered them. Going on that, we’re talking about a grave that wasn’t more than six inches to a foot deep. A grave this shallow reflects speed, panic, a host of things indicative of poor planning. But-” she held up a finger “-by the same token, the location-very remote, very difficult-reflects the opposite. It shows careful planning. So you have some kind of contradiction going on here. The location appears to have been chosen because it was damn hard to get to, yet the burial appears to have been fast and furious. This person was literally just covered with loose topsoil and pine needles. I know pointing all of this out isn’t necessarily going to help you catch the bad guy but I want you to see what I’m seeing here. This contradiction.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “It’s all good to know. We’ll keep it in mind.”
    “Okay, good. The other contradiction-the smaller one-is the backpack. Burying it with the body was a mistake. The body decomposes at a much faster rate than the canvas. So if you get identifiers off the bag or its contents, it becomes a mistake made by the bad guy. Again poor planning in the midst of good planning. You’re smart detectives, I’m sure you’ll figure all this out.”
    She smiled at Bosch and then studied her pad again, lifting the top page to look beneath