The Overlook - Michael Connelly [5]
She stepped under and stopped, at least respecting his right to lead her to his crime scene.
“I actually might be able to help you here,” she said. “If I can see the body I might be able to make a formal identification for you.”
She held up a file that she had been carrying down at her side.
“This way, then,” Bosch said.
He led her to the clearing, where the victim was cast in the sterilizing fluorescent light from the mobile units. The dead man was lying on the orange dirt about five feet from the drop-off at the edge of the overlook. Beyond the body and over the edge the moonlight reflected off the reservoir below. Past the dam the city spread out in a blanket of a million lights. The cool evening air made the lights shimmer like floating dreams.
Bosch put out his arm to stop Walling at the edge of the light circle. The victim had been rolled over by the medical examiner and was now faceup. There were abrasions on the dead man’s face and forehead but Bosch thought he could recognize the man in the photos on the hospital tags in the glove box. Stanley Kent. His shirt was open, exposing a hairless chest of pale white skin. There was an incision mark on one side of the torso where the medical examiner had pushed a temperature probe into the liver.
“Evening, Harry,” said Joe Felton, the medical examiner. “Or I guess I should say, good morning. Who’s your friend there? I thought they teamed you with Iggy Ferras.”
“I am with Ferras,” Bosch responded. “This is Special Agent Walling from the FBI’s Tactical Intelligence Unit.”
“Tactical Intelligence? What will they think of next?”
“I think it’s one of those Homeland Security–type operations. You know, don’t ask, don’t tell, that sort of thing. She says she might be able to confirm an ID for us.”
Walling gave Bosch a look that told him he was being juvenile.
“All right if we come in, Doc?” Bosch asked.
“Sure, Harry, we’re pretty much squared away here.”
Bosch started to step forward but Walling moved quickly in front of him and walked into the harsh light. Without hesitation she took a position over the body. She opened the file and took out a color 8 × 10 face shot. She bent down and held it next to the dead man’s face. Bosch stepped in close at her side to make a comparison himself.
“It’s him,” she said. “Stanley Kent.”
Bosch nodded his agreement and then offered his hand to her so that she could step back over the body. She ignored it and did it without help. Bosch looked down at Felton, who was squatting next to the body.
“So, Doc, you want to tell us what we’ve got here?”
Bosch stooped down on the other side of the body to get a better look.
“We’ve got a man who was brought here or came here for whatever reason and was made to get down on his knees.”
Felton pointed to the victim’s pants. There were smudges of orange dirt on both knees.
“Then somebody shot him twice in the back of the head and he went down face first. The facial injuries you see came when he hit the ground. He was already dead by then.”
Bosch nodded.
“No exit wounds,” Felton added. “Probably something small like a twenty-two with the ricochet effect inside the skull. Very efficient.”
Bosch realized now that Lieutenant Gandle had been speaking figuratively when he mentioned that the victim’s brains had been blown across the view from the overlook. He would have to remember Gandle’s tendency toward hyperbole in the future.
“Time of death?” he asked Felton.
“Going by the liver temp I would say four or five hours,” the medical examiner replied. “Eight o’clock, give or take.”
That last part troubled Bosch. He knew that by eight it would have been dark and all the sunset worshippers would have been long gone. But the two shots would have echoed from the overlook and into the houses on the nearby bluffs. Yet no one had made a call to the police, and the body wasn’t found until a patrol car happened by three hours later.
“I know what you are thinking,” Felton said. “What about the sound? There is a possible explanation.