Suicide Run

said he was just following orders. The transfer of the case wasn’t news to Gunn but Bosch always liked to tread lightly in such situations. He had never worked with Gunn before and she surprised him. She offered her help and said she was awaiting his direction.
    “I could use the help,” Bosch responded. “I’m probably a half hour from the crime scene and my partner lives out in Diamond Bar. He’ll be even longer.”
    “Diamond Bar? You might want to redirect him. He’s closer to Commerce than to Venice.”
    “Commerce? Why Commerce?”
    “According to the vic’s husband, she spent the night playing poker at the card casino in Commerce. He said she called when she was leaving and told him she had won big.”
    “Did he say how much?”
    “He said she won more than six thousand dollars cash. My partner and I, well…”
    “Well, what?”
    “We don’t want to jump your case but we were thinking that it looks a lot like a follow home from the casino.”
    Bosch thought about that for a few seconds before responding.
    “Tell you what, let me call my partner and send him that way, then I’ll get right back to you.”
    He closed the phone and called Ferras, who had not left his home yet. Bosch told him what he had just learned and instructed him to drive to the casino in Commerce and begin his part of the investigation there. He then called Gunn back.
    “What else did the victim’s husband say, Detective Gunn?”
    “He said he fell back asleep after she called. He then woke up when she pulled into the driveway—she’s got a tricked-out Mustang with glass pipes. It makes some noise. He was lying in bed and he heard her kill the engine but then she never came inside the house. He waited a few minutes and then went out to check. He found her in the car, dead. He didn’t see anybody and didn’t see any vehicles. That was it. You can call me Kim, by the way.”
    “Okay, Kim. Anybody put the husband through the box?”
    “My partner. No record.”
    “What about ATF?”
    “We checked that, too. He owns no firearms. Neither did she.”
    Bosch was holding the phone in the crook of his neck while buttoning his shirt.
    “Anybody swab him?”
    “You mean GSR? We figured that was a call you should make. The husband’s cooperating. We didn’t want to mess with that.”
    She was right in waiting for Bosch to make the call. Conducting a gunshot residue test to determine if a person had fired a weapon had become trickier and stickier in recent years. It was in a legal gray area and choices made now by detectives would be questioned and reviewed repeatedly down the line by supervisors, reporters, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and juries.
    The issue at hand was that such testing put the subject on clear notice that he was a suspect. Therefore, he should be treated as a suspect—advised of his constitutional rights and given the opportunity to seek legal counsel. This put a chilling effect on cooperation.
    Additionally, a recent directive from the District Attorney’s Office concluded that GSR testing was an invasive evidence-gathering technique that should only come voluntarily or after a search warrant had been approved by a judge, another move that would clearly put an individual on notice that he was a suspect. So gone were the days when a detective could casually tell an individual of interest to submit to GSR testing as a routine part of an investigation. A GSR test was now an indisputable means of tagging someone as it.
    As Gunn had explained, David Blitzstein was cooperative at the moment. It was too early in the investigation to tag him as it.
    “Okay, we’ll hold that till later,” Bosch said. “Where’s your partner?”
    “He’s driving Blitzstein downtown. He’ll come back after.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Glenn Simmons.”
    Bosch didn’t know him. So far he didn’t know anybody on the case and that was a rub. So much of the work came down to personalities and relationships. It always helped to already know people.
    “Forensics at the scene yet?” he asked.
    “They just rolled in. I’ll keep an eye on things till you’re here.”
    Bosch checked his watch. It was now 6 A.M. and he knew his promise of being there in a half hour was a stretch. He’d have to stop on the way to get coffee.
    “Better yet,” he said, “why don’t you knock on doors before we start losing people to work and school and the day. See if anybody saw or heard anything.”
    He almost heard her