The Black Ice (hb-2)

else you need to do.”
    Munoz called out the name Marita and a few moments later a small woman peeked through the white plastic shower curtain hung across the doorway. When she saw Munoz and Aguila she came out. Bosch could tell by her face that she already knew the news that the men were there to deliver. Women were always that way. Harry thought of the first night he had seen Sylvia Moore. She knew. They all knew. Bosch handed the file to Aguila, in case the woman demanded to see the photos, and ducked into the room the woman and the Juan Doe had shared.
    It was a room with spare furnishings. No surprise there. A queen-sized mattress lay on top of a wooden pallet. There was a single chair on one side of it and on the other a bureau had been made out of a wood and cardboard shipping crate. A few articles of clothing hung inside the box. The back wall of the room was a large piece of uncut aluminum with the Tecate beer trademark printed on it. Wood-slat shelves went across this, holding coffee cans, a cigar box and other small items.
    Bosch could hear the woman crying quietly outside the shack and Munoz trying to console her. He looked around the room quickly, trying to decide which was a likely spot to lift prints. He was unsure if he even needed to do this. The woman’s tears seemed to confirm the identity.
    He walked to the shelves and used a fingernail to flip open the cigar box. It contained a dirty comb, a few pesos and a set of dominoes.
    “Carlos?” he called out.
    Aguila stuck his head in past the shower curtian.
    “Ask if she has handled this box lately. It looks like it was her husband’s stuff. If it’s his, I’ll try some lifts on it.”
    He heard the questioning in Spanish outside and the woman said she did not touch the box ever because it was her husband’s. Using his nails Harry put the box on top of the makeshift bureau. He opened the print kit and took out a small spray bottle, a vial of black powder, a sable-hair brush, a wide roll of clear tape and a stack of 3? 5 cards. He laid all of these out on the bed and set to work.
    He picked up the spray bottle and pumped four sprays of ninhydrin mist over the box. After the mist settled, he took out a cigarette, lit it and then moved the still-burning match along the edge of the box about two inches from the surface. The heat brought up the ridges of several fingerprints in the ninhydrin. Bosch bent over the table and studied them, looking for complete examples. There were two. He uncapped the vial of black powder and lightly brushed some onto the prints, clearly defining the ridges and bifurcations. He then unrolled a short length of tape, held it down on one of the prints and lifted it. He pressed the tape against a white 3? 5 card. He did it again with the other print. He had two good prints to take back with him.
    Aguila came into the room then.
    “Did you get a print?”
    “A couple. Hopefully they are his and not hers. Doesn’t seem to matter much. Sounded like she made an ID, too. She look at the pictures?”
    Aguila nodded and said, “She insisted. Did you search the room?”
    “For what?”
    “I do not know.”
    “I looked around. Not much here.”
    “Did you take fingerprints from the coffee cans?”
    Bosch looked at the shelves. There were three old Maxwell House cans. He said, “Nah, I figured her prints are on them. I don’t want to have to print her to clear her for comparisons. It’s not worth putting her through that.”
    Aguila nodded but then looked puzzled.
    “Why would a poor man and his wife have three cans of coffee?”
    It was a good point. Bosch went to the shelves and took down one can. It rattled and when he opened it he found a handful of pesos inside the can. The next one he pulled down was about a third full of coffee. The last one was the lightest. Inside he found papers, a baptismal certificate for Gutierrez-Llosa and a marriage license. The couple had been married thirty-two years. It depressed him to think about it. There was also a Polaroid photo of Gutierrez-Llosa and Bosch could see it was Juan Doe #67. Identity confirmed. And there was a Polaroid of his wife. And lastly, there was a stack of check stubs held together in a rubber band. Bosch looked through these, finding them all for small amounts of money from several businesses-the financial records of a day laborer. The businesses that didn’t pay their day laborers in cash paid with checks. The last two in the stack were receipts for sixteen