The Reversal

I have to go tell his wife.”
    Branson was on his back. He had bullet entry wounds on the left side of his neck and upper left cheek. There had been a lot of blood. The neck shot appeared to have sliced through the carotid artery.
    Bosch left Wright there and moved past a reception desk and down a hallway on the right side. There was a wall of glass that looked into a boardroom with doors on both ends. The rest of the victims were in here, along with two detectives who wore gloves and booties and were taking notes on clipboards. Roche and Stout. Bosch stood in the first doorway of the room but did not enter. The two detectives looked at him.
    “Who are you?” one asked.
    “Bosch, RHD.”
    “You taking this?”
    “Not exactly. I’m on something related. The others are coming.”
    “Christ, we’re only two blocks from the PAB.”
    “They weren’t there. They were at lunch up in Hollywood. But don’t worry, they’ll get here. It’s not like these people are going anywhere.”
    Bosch looked at the bodies. Clive Royce sat dead in a chair at the head of a long board table. His head was snapped back as if he were looking at the ceiling. There was a bloodless bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Blood from the exit wound at the back of his head had poured down the back of his jacket and chair.
    The investigator, Karen Revelle, was on the floor on the other side of the room near the other door. It appeared that she had tried to make a run for it before being hit by gunfire. She was facedown and Bosch could not see where or how many times she had been hit.
    Royce’s pretty associate counsel, whose name Bosch could not remember, was no longer pretty. Her body was in a seat diagonal to Royce, her upper body down on the table, an entry wound at the back of her head. The bullet had exited below her right eye and destroyed her face. There was always more damage coming out than going in.
    “What do you think?” asked one of the Central guys.
    “Looks like he came in shooting. Hit these two first and then tagged the other as she made a run for the door. Then backed into the hall and opened up on the SIS guys as they came in.”
    “Yeah. Looks that way.”
    “I’m going to check the rest of the place out.”
    Bosch continued down the hall and looked through open doors into empty offices. There were nameplates on the wall outside the doors and he was reminded that Royce’s associate was named Denise Graydon.
    The hallway ended at a break room, where there was a kitchenette with a refrigerator and a microwave. There was another communal table here. And an exit door that was three inches ajar.
    Bosch used his elbow to push the door open. He stepped into an alley lined with trash bins. He looked both ways and saw a pay parking lot a half block down to his right. He assumed it was the lot where Jessup had parked his car and had gone to retrieve the gun.
    He went back inside and this time took a longer look in each of the offices. He knew from experience that he was treading in a gray area here. This was a law office, and whether the lawyers were dead or not, their clients were still entitled to privacy and attorney-client privilege. Bosch touched nothing and opened no drawer or file. He simply moved his eyes over the surface of things, seeing and reading what was in plain sight.
    When he was in Revelle’s office he was joined by McPherson.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Just looking.”
    “We might have a problem going into any of their offices. As an officer of the court I can’t—”
    “Then wait outside. Like I said, I’m just looking. I am making sure the premises are secure.”
    “Whatever. I’ll be out front. The media’s all over the place out there now. It’s a circus.”
    Bosch was leaning over Revelle’s desk. He didn’t look up.
    “Good for them.”
    McPherson left the room at the same moment Bosch read something off a legal pad that was on top of a stack of files on the side of the desk near the phone.
    “Maggie? Come back here.”
    She returned.
    “Take a look at this.”
    McPherson came around the desk and bent over to read the notes on the top page of the pad. The page was covered with what looked like random notes, phone numbers and names. Some were circled, others scratched out. It looked like a pad Revelle jotted on while on the phone.
    “What?” McPherson asked.
    Without touching the pad, Bosch pointed to a notation in the bottom right corner. All it said was Checkers—804 .