The Black Echo

Sharkey’s hair.
    When Edgar yelled, “You want to see it?” above the din of the generator Bosch knew that he meant the wound. Because Sharkey’s head was angled forward, the throat wound was not visible. Only the blood. Bosch shook his head no.
    Bosch noticed the blood splatter on the wall and floor about three feet from the body. Porter the lush was comparing the shapes of the drops with those on splatter cards on a steel ring. A crime scene tech named Roberge was also photographing the spots. The blood on the floor was in round spots. The wall splatter drops were elliptical. You didn’t need splatter cards to know the kid had been killed right here in the tunnel.
    “The way it’s looking,” Porter said loudly to no one in particular, “somebody comes up behind him here, cuts him and pushes him down against the wall there.”
    “You only got it half right, Porter,” Edgar said. “How’s somebody come up behind somebody in a tunnel like this? He was with somebody and they did him. It was no sneak job, Porter.”
    Porter put the splatter cards in his pocket and said, “Sorry, partner.”
    He didn’t say anything else. He was fat and broken down the way many cops get when they stay on longer than they should. Porter could still wear a size 34 belt, but above it a tremendous gut bloomed outward like an awning. He wore a tweed sport coat with a frayed elbow. His face was gaunt and as pallid as a flour tortilla, behind a drinker’s nose that was large, misshapen and painfully red.
    Bosch lit a cigarette and put the burnt match in his pocket. He crouched down like a baseball catcher next to the body and lifted the bag containing the paint can and hefted it. It was almost full, and that confirmed what he already knew, already feared. It was he who had killed Sharkey. In a way, at least. Bosch had tracked him down and made him valuable, or potentially valuable, to the case. Someone could not allow this. Bosch squatted there, elbows on knees, holding cigarette to mouth, smoking and studying the body, making sure he would not forget it.
    Meadows had been part of this thing-the circle of connected events that had gotten him killed. But not Sharkey. He was street trash and his death here probably saved someone else’s life down the line. But he did not deserve this. In this circle he was an innocent. And that meant things were out of control and there were new rules-for both sides. Bosch signaled with his hand to Sharkey’s neck and a coroner’s investigator pulled the body away from the wall. Bosch put one hand down on the ground to balance himself and stared for a long time at the ravaged neck and throat. He did not want to forget a single detail. Sharkey’s head lolled back, exposing the gaping neck wound. Bosch’s eyes never wavered.

    ***

    When Bosch finally looked up from the body, he noticed that Eleanor was no longer in the tunnel. He stood up and signaled Edgar to come outside to talk. Harry didn’t want to have to shout over the sound of the generator. When they got out of the tunnel, he saw that Eleanor was sitting alone on the top step. They walked up past her, and Harry put his hand on her shoulder as he went by. He felt it go rigid at his touch.
    When he and his old partner were reasonably away from the noise, Harry said, “So what do the techs have?”
    “Not a damned thing,” Edgar said. “If it was a gang thing, it’s one of the cleanest I’ve ever seen. Not a single print or partial. The spray can is clean. No weapon. No wits.”
    “Sharkey had a crew, used to stay at a motel near the Boulevard until today, but he wasn’t into gangs,” Bosch said. “It’s in the files. He was a scammer. You know, with the Polaroids, rolling homosexuals, stuff like that.”
    “You’re saying he’s in the gang files but he isn’t in a gang?”
    “Right.”
    Edgar nodded and said, “He still could’ve been taken down by somebody who thought he was a gangbanger.”
    Wish walked over to them then but said nothing.
    “You know this isn’t a gang thing, Jed,” Bosch said.
    “I do?”
    “Yeah, you do. If it was, there wouldn’t be a full can of paint in there. No gangbanger’s going to leave something like that behind. Also, whoever painted the wall in there didn’t have the touch. The paint ran. Whoever did it, didn’t know about spraying a wall.”
    “Come here a sec,” Edgar said.
    Bosch looked at Eleanor and nodded that it was okay. He and Edgar walked away a few steps and stood