The Black Box

and dark where blood had coagulated. Her hands were almost black and the odor of putrefaction was beginning to permeate the air.
    The woman’s face was largely obscured by the long blond hair that had fallen across it. Dried blood was visible in the hair at the back of the head and was matted in the thick wave that obscured her face. Bosch moved the light up the wall above the body and saw a blood spatter-and-drip pattern that indicated she had been killed here, not just dumped.
    Bosch took a pen out of his pocket and reached forward, using it to lift the hair back from the victim’s face. There was gunshot stippling around the right eye socket and a penetration wound that had exploded the eyeball. She had been shot from only inches away. Front to back, point-blank range. He put the pen back in his pocket and leaned in farther, pointing the light down behind her head. The exit wound, large and jagged, was visible. Death had no doubt been instantaneous.
    “Holy shit, is she white?”
    It was Edgar. He had come up behind Bosch and was lookingover his shoulder like an umpire hovering over a baseball catcher.
    “Looks like it,” Bosch said.
    He moved the light over the victim’s body now.
    “What the hell’s a white girl doing down here?”
    Bosch didn’t answer. He had noticed something hidden under the right arm. He put his light down so he could pull on a set of gloves.
    “Put your light on her chest,” he instructed Edgar.
    Gloves on, Bosch leaned back in toward the body. The victim was on her left side, her right arm extending across her chest and hiding something that was on a cord around her neck. Bosch gently pulled it free.
    It was a bright orange LAPD press pass. Bosch had seen many of them over the years. This one looked new. Its lamination sleeve was still clear and unscratched. It had a mug shot–style photo of a woman with blond hair on it. Beneath it was her name and the media entity she worked for.
    Anneke Jespersen
    Berlingske Tidende
    “She’s foreign press,” Bosch said. “Anneke Jespersen.”
    “From where?” Edgar asked.
    “I don’t know. Germany, maybe. It says Berlin . . . Berlin-something. I can’t pronounce it.”
    “Why would they send somebody all the way over from Germany for this? Can’t they mind their own business over there?”
    “I don’t know for sure if she’s from Germany. I can’t tell.”
    Bosch tuned out Edgar’s chatter and studied the photograph on the press pass. The woman depicted was attractive even in amug shot. No smile, no makeup, all business, her hair hooked behind her ears, her skin so pale as to be almost translucent. Her eyes had distance in them. Like the cops and soldiers Bosch had known who had seen too much too soon.
    Bosch turned the press pass over. It looked legit to him. He knew press passes were updated yearly and a validation sticker was needed for any member of the media to enter department news briefings or pass through media checkpoints at crime scenes. This pass had a 1992 sticker on it. It meant that the victim received it sometime in the last 120 days, but noting the pristine condition of the pass, Bosch believed it had been recently.
    Harry went back to studying the body. The victim was wearing blue jeans and a vest over a white shirt. It was an equipment vest with bulging pockets. This told Bosch that it was likely that the woman had been a photographer. But there were no cameras on her body or nearby. They had been taken, and possibly had even been the motive for the murder. Most news photographers he had seen carried multiple high-quality cameras and related equipment.
    Harry reached to the vest and opened one of the breast pockets. Normally this would be something he would ask a coroner’s investigator to do, as jurisdiction of the body belonged to the County Medical Examiner’s Office. But Bosch had no idea if a coroner’s crew would even show at the crime scene, and he wasn’t going to wait to find out.
    The pocket held four black film canisters. He didn’t know if this was film that had been shot or was unused. He rebut-toned the pocket and in doing so felt a hard surface beneath it. He knew rigor mortis comes and goes in a day, leaving thebody soft and movable. He pulled back the equipment vest and knocked a fist on the chest. It was a hard surface and the sound confirmed this. The victim was wearing a bulletproof vest.
    “Hey, check out the hit list,” Edgar said.
    Bosch looked up from the body. Edgar’s