Trunk Music

VCR with a cable attachment that led to a foot-long wand with a hand grip on it. From the end of the wand a strong orange beam was emitted.
    Donovan opened a cabinet and took out several pairs of orange-tinted safety glasses which he handed to Bosch and the others. He put the last pair on himself. He gave Bosch a pair of latex gloves to put on as well.
    “I’ll do a quick run around the outside of the trunk and then open her up,” Donovan said.
    Just as Donovan moved to the switch box to cut off the overheads, the phone in Bosch’s pocket buzzed. Donovan waited while Bosch answered. It was Carbone.
    “Bosch, we’re taking a pass.”
    Harry didn’t say anything for a moment and neither did Carbone. Donovan hit the light switch and the room plunged into complete blackness.
    “You’re saying you don’t have this guy.” Bosch finally spoke into the dark.
    “I checked around, made some calls. Nobody seems to know this guy. Nobody’s working him… Clean, as far as we know… You said he was put in his trunk and capped twice, huh?…Bosch, you there?”
    “Yeah, I’m here. Yeah, capped twice in the trunk.”
    “Trunk music.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a wise guy saying outta Chicago. You know, when they whack some poor slob they say, ‘Oh, Tony? Don’t worry about Tony. He’s trunk music now. You won’t see him no more.’ But the thing is, Bosch, this doesn’t seem to fit. We don’t know this guy. People I talked to, they think maybe somebody’s trying to make you think it’s OC connected, know what I mean?”
    Bosch watched as the laser beam cut through the blackness and bombarded the rear of the trunk with searing light. With the glasses on, the orange was filtered out and the light was a bright, intense white. Bosch was ten feet away from the Rolls, but he could see glowing patterns on the trunk lid and the bumper. This always reminded him of those National Geographic shows in which a submersible camera moved through the ocean’s black depths, putting its light on sunken ships or aircraft. It was somehow eerie.
    “Look, Carbone,” he said, “you aren’t even interested in coming out to take a look?”
    “Not at this time. Of course, give me a call back if you come across anything, you know, that shows different than what I told you. And I’ll do some more checking tomorrow. I got your number.”
    Bosch was secretly pleased that he wasn’t going to get bigfooted by the OCID, but he was also surprised at the brush-off. The quickness with which Carbone had dismissed the case seemed unusual.
    “Any other details you want to give me, Bosch?”
    “We’re just starting. But let me ask you, you ever hear of a hitter takes the vic’s shoes with him? Also, he unties the body afterward.”
    “Takes his shoes…unties him. Uh, not offhand, no. Nobody specific. But like I said, I’ll ask around in the morning and I’ll put it on our box. Anything else cute about this one?”
    Bosch didn’t like what was happening. Carbone seemed too interested while saying he wasn’t. He said Tony Aliso wasn’t connected, yet he still wanted the details. Was he just trying to be helpful or was there something more to it?
    “That’s about all we got at the moment,” Bosch said, deciding not to give up anything else for free. “Like I said, we’re just getting going here.”
    “Okay, then, give me the morning and I’ll do some more checking. I’ll call if I come up with anything, okay?”
    “Right.”
    “Check you later. But you know what I think you have there, Bosch? You’ve got a guy, he was probably making sandwiches with somebody’s wife. Lotta times things look like pro hits that aren’t, you know what I mean?”
    “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ll talk to you later.”
    Bosch walked to the rear of the Rolls. Up close he could see the pattern swirls he had noticed in the laser light before appeared to be swipe marks made with a cloth. It looked like the whole car had been wiped down.
    But when Donovan moved the wand over the bumper, the laser picked up a partial shoe print on the chrome.
    “Did anybody-”
    “No,” Bosch said. “Nobody put their foot there.”
    “Okay, then. Hold the wand on the print.”
    Bosch did so while Donovan bent over and took several photos, bracketing the exposure settings to make sure he had at least one clear shot. It was the forward half of the foot. There was a circle pattern at the ball of the foot with lines extending from it like the rays of a sun.