The Overlook

yet. We were working the scene first.”
    Edgar obviously had decided early that the case would be passed to RHD. It bothered Bosch that nothing had been done but at the same time, he knew it would be his and Ferras’s to work fresh from the start, and that wasn’t a bad thing. There was a long history in the department of cases getting damaged or bungled while in transition from divisional to downtown detective teams.
    He looked at the lighted clearing and counted a total of five men working on or near the body for the forensics and coroner’s teams.
    “Well,” he said, “since you’re working the crime scene first, did anybody look for foot impressions around the body before you let the techs approach?”
    Bosch couldn’t keep the tone of annoyance out of his voice.
    “Harry,” Edgar said, his tone now showing annoyance with Bosch’s annoyance, “a couple hundred people stand around on this overlook every damn day. We coulda been looking at footprints till Christmas if we’d wanted to take the time. I didn’t think we did. We had a body lying out here in a public place and needed to get to it. Besides that, it looks like a professional hit. That means the shoes, the gun, the car, everything’s already long gone by now.”
    Bosch nodded. He wanted to dismiss this and move on.
    “Okay,” he said evenly, “then I guess you’re clear.”
    Edgar nodded and Bosch thought he might be embarrassed.
    “Like I said, Harry, I didn’t expect it to be you.”
    Meaning he would not have dogged it for Harry, only for somebody else from RHD.
    “Sure,” Bosch said. “I understand.”
    After Edgar left, Bosch went back to his car and got the Maglite out of the trunk. He walked back to the Porsche, put on gloves and opened the driver-side door. He leaned into the car and looked around. On the passenger seat was a briefcase. It was unlocked and when he popped the snaps it opened to reveal several files, a calculator and various pads, pens and papers. He closed it and left it in its place. Its position on the seat told him that the victim had likely arrived at the overlook by himself. He had met his killer here. He had not brought his killer with him. This, Bosch thought, might be significant.
    He opened the glove box next and several more clip-on IDs like the one found on the body fell to the floorboard. He picked them up one by one and saw that each access badge had been issued by a different local hospital. But the swipe cards all bore the same name and photo. Stanley Kent, the man (Bosch presumed) who was lying dead in the clearing.
    He noticed that on the back of several of the tags there were handwritten notations. He looked at these for a long moment. Most were numbers with the letters
L
or
R
at the end and he concluded that they were lock combinations.
    Bosch looked farther into the glove box and found even more IDs and access key cards. As far as he could tell, the dead man-if he was Stanley Kent -had clearance access to just about every hospital in Los Angeles County. He also had the combinations to security locks at almost every one of the hospitals. Bosch briefly considered that the IDs and key cards might be counterfeits used by the victim in some sort of hospital scam.
    Bosch returned everything to the glove box and closed it. He then looked under and between the seats and found nothing of interest. He backed out of the car and went to the open trunk.
    The trunk was small and empty. But in the beam of his flashlight he noted that there were four indentations in the carpet lining the bottom. It was clear that something square and heavy with four legs or wheels had been carried in the trunk. Because the trunk was found in the open position it was likely that the object-whatever it was-had been taken during the killing.
    “Detective?”
    Bosch turned and put the beam of his light into the face of a patrolman. It was the officer who had taken his name and badge number at the perimeter. He lowered the light.
    “What is it?”
    “There’s an FBI agent here. She’s asking permission to enter the crime scene.”
    “Where is she?”
    The officer led the way back to the yellow tape. As Bosch got close he saw a woman standing next to the open door of a car. She was alone and she wasn’t smiling. Bosch felt the thud of uneasy recognition hit his chest.
    “Hello, Harry,” she said when she saw him.
    “Hello, Rachel,” he said.

TWO
    IT HAD BEEN ALMOST SIX MONTHS since he had seen Special Agent Rachel