Nine Dragons (8 page)

“No, my father had the gun. He was in the bad area.”

“Good. Don’t bring a gun into this. If the guy shows up, just cooperate.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, why did your father buy that gun? He had been there for almost thirty years and then six months ago he buys the gun.”

“The last time he was robbed, they hurt him. Two gangbangers. They hit him with a bottle. I told him if he wouldn’t sell the store, then he had to get a gun. But it didn’t do him any good.”

“They usually don’t.”

The detectives thanked Li and left him in his office, a twenty-six-year-old who somehow seemed a couple decades older now. As they walked through the store Bosch checked his watch and saw it was now after one. He was starving and wanted to grab something before heading to the medical examiner’s office for the autopsy at two. He stopped in front of the hot case and zeroed in on the meatloaf. He pulled a service number out of the dispenser. When he offered to buy Chu a slice, he said he was a vegetarian.

Bosch shook his head.

“What?” Chu asked.

“I don’t think we could make it as partners, Chu,” Bosch said. “I don’t trust a guy who doesn’t eat a hot dog every once in a while.”

“I eat tofu hot dogs.”

Bosch cringed.

“They don’t count.”

He then saw Robert Li approaching them.

“I forgot to ask. When will my father’s body be released to us?”

“Probably tomorrow,” Bosch said. “The autopsy is today.”

Li looked crestfallen.

“My father was a very spiritual man. Do they have to desecrate his body?”

Bosch nodded.

“It’s a law. There’s an autopsy after any homicide.”

“When will they do it?”

“In about an hour.”

Li nodded in acceptance.

“Please don’t tell my mother this was done. Will they call me when I can have his body?”

“I’ll make sure they do.”

Li thanked them and headed back to his office. Bosch heard his number called by the man behind the counter.

9

O
n the way back downtown Chu informed Bosch that after fourteen years on the job he had yet to witness an autopsy and didn’t care to change course. He said he wanted to get back to the AGU office to continue efforts to identify the triad bagman. Bosch dropped him off and then headed over to the county coroner’s office on Mission Road. By the time he checked in, gowned up and got into suite 3, the autopsy of John Li was well under way. The coroner’s office performed six thousand autopsies a year. The autopsy suites were tightly scheduled and managed and the medical examiners didn’t wait for late-arriving cops. A good one could knock off a surgical autopsy in an hour.

All of this was fine with Bosch. He was interested in the findings of the autopsy, not the process.

John Li’s body was lying naked and violated on the cold stainless-steel autopsy table. The chest had been opened and the vital organs removed. Dr. Sharon Laksmi was working at a nearby table where she was putting tissue samples on slides.

“Afternoon, Doctor,” Bosch said.

Laksmi turned from her work and glanced back at him. Because of the mask and hair cap Bosch was wearing, she could not readily identify him. Long gone were the days when the detectives could just walk in and watch. County health regs required the full protection package.

“Bosch or Ferras?”

“Bosch.”

“You’re late. I started without you.”

Laksmi was small and dark. What was most noticeable about her was that her eyes were heavily made-up behind the plastic shield of her mask. It was as if she realized that her eyes were the only feature people saw behind all the safety garb she wore most of the time. She spoke with a slight accent. But who didn’t in L.A.? Even the outgoing chief of police sounded like he was from South Boston.

“Yes, sorry. I was with the victim’s son and it ran kind of long.”

He didn’t mention the meatloaf sandwich that had cost him some time as well.

“Here’s what you are probably looking for.”

She tapped the blade of her scalpel on one of four steel specimen cups lined up to her left on the counter. Bosch stepped over and looked down into them. Each held one piece of evidence extracted from the body. He saw three deformed bullets and a single bullet casing.

“You found a casing? Was it on the body?”

“In it, actually.”

“
In
the body?”

“That’s right. Lodged in the esophagus.”

Bosch thought of what he had discovered while looking at the crime scene pictures. Blood on the victim’s fingers, chin and lips. But not on his teeth. He had been right about his hunch.

“It appears you are looking for a very sadistic killer, Detective Bosch.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because either he shoved a casing down your victim’s throat or the ejected casing somehow landed in his mouth. Since the latter would be a million-to-one shot, I would go with the former.”

Bosch nodded. Not because he subscribed to what she was saying. But because he was thinking of a scenario Dr. Laksmi hadn’t considered. He thought he now had a bead on what had happened behind the counter at Fortune Liquors. One of the ejected casings from the shooter’s gun had landed on or near John Li as he lay dying on the floor behind the counter. Either he saw the shooter collecting the casings or knew they might be valuable evidence in the investigation of his own murder. With his last moment Li had grabbed the casing and tried to swallow it, to keep it from the shooter.

John Li’s final act was to attempt to provide Bosch with an important clue.

“Did you clean the casing, Doctor?” he asked.

“Yes, blood had backed up into the throat and the casing acted like a dam, keeping most of it out of the mouth. I had to clean it to see what it was.”

“Right.”

Bosch knew that the possibility of there being fingerprints on the casing were negligible, anyway. The explosion of gases when a bullet was fired almost always vaporized fingerprints on the casing.

Still the casing could be useful in determining a match to a weapon if the recovered slugs were too damaged. Bosch looked down into the evidence cups containing the slugs. He immediately determined they had been hollow points. They had mushroomed upon impact and were badly deformed. He could not tell if any of them would be useful for comparison purposes. But the casing was most likely a good solid piece of evidence. The marks made by the weapon’s extractor, firing pin and ejector could be useful in identifying and matching the gun if it was ever found. The casing would link the victim to the gun.

“You want to hear my summary and then be on your way?” Laksmi asked.

“Sure, Doctor, run it down.”

While Laksmi gave a preliminary report on her findings, Bosch grabbed clear plastic evidence envelopes off a shelf over the table and bagged the slugs and casing separately. The casing looked like it had come from a 9 millimeter round but he would wait for confirmation from ballistics on that. He marked each envelope with his name as well as Laksmi’s and the case number and then lifted his splatter gown and put them in his coat pocket.

“The first shot was to the upper left chest, the projectile piercing the right ventricle of the heart and impacting the upper vertebrae, severing the spinal cord. The victim would have immediately dropped to the floor. The next two shots were to the right and left lower sternum. It is impossible to place an order on these two shots. Right and left lobes of the lungs were pierced and the projectiles lodged in the back musculature. The result of the three shots was instant loss of cardiopulmonary function and subsequent death. I’d say he lasted no more than thirty seconds.”

The report on the spinal cord damage seemingly put in jeopardy Bosch’s working theory of the victim intentionally swallowing the bullet casing.

“With the spinal cord damage, could he have had any hand and arm movement?”

“Not for very long. Death was almost instantaneous.”

“But he wasn’t paralyzed, right? In those last thirty seconds, could he have picked up the casing and put it in his mouth?”

Laksmi considered the new scenario for a few moments before answering.

“I believe he would have indeed been paralyzed. But the projectile lodged in the fourth thoracic vertebra, cutting the cord there. This would have certainly caused paralysis but it would begin at that point. The arms could still function. It would be a matter of time. As I said, his body would have ceased function inside a minute.”

Bosch nodded. His theory still worked. Li could have quickly grabbed the casing with his last strength and put it in his mouth.

Bosch wondered if the shooter knew this. He most likely had to move around the counter to look for the casings. In that time Li could have grabbed one of them. Blood found underneath Li’s body indicated that it had been moved. Bosch realized that it most likely occurred during the search for the missing shell.

Bosch felt a growing excitement. The casing was a significant evidence find, but the idea that the shooter had made a mistake was even greater. He wanted to get the evidence over to Tool Marks and Ballistics as soon as possible.

“Okay, Doctor, what else is there?”

“There’s something you might want to look at now rather than wait for the photos. Help me turn him.”

They moved to the autopsy table and carefully rolled the body over. Rigor mortis had come and gone and the procedure was easy. Laksmi pointed to the ankles. Bosch moved down and saw that there were small Chinese symbols tattooed at the back of Li’s feet. It looked like either two or three symbols were on each foot, located on either side of the Achilles tendon.

“You photographed these?”

“Yes, they’ll be in the report.”

“Anybody around here who can translate these?”

“I don’t think so. Dr. Ming might be able to but he is on a vacay this week.”

“Okay, can we slide him down a bit so I can hook the feet over the edge and take a picture?”

She helped him move the body down the table. The feet went over the edge and Bosch positioned the ankles right next to each other so the Chinese symbols were in a line across. He reached under his gown and pulled out his cell phone. He switched it to camera mode and took two photos of the tattoos.

“Okay.”

Bosch put the phone down and they turned the body back over and moved it back up into place on the table.

Bosch took off his gloves and threw them into the medical waste receptacle, then picked his phone up and called Chu.

“What’s your e-mail? I want to send you a photo.”

“Of what?”

“Chinese symbols that were tattooed on Mr. Li’s ankles. I want to know what they mean.”

“Okay.”

Chu gave him his department e-mail. Bosch checked his camera work and sent the clearest photo to him, then put the phone away.

“Dr. Laksmi, is there anything else I need to know here?”

“I think you got it all, Detective. Except there’s one thing that maybe the family will want to know.”

“What’s that?”

She gestured to one of the organ bowls she had spread across the work counter.

“The bullets only brought about the inevitable. Mr. Li was dying of cancer.”

Bosch stepped over and looked into the tray. The victim’s lungs had been excised from the body for weighing and examination. Laksmi had opened them up to probe the bullet tracks and both lower lobes were dark gray with cancerous cells.

“He was a smoker,” Laksmi said.

“I know,” Bosch said. “How long do you think he had?”

“Maybe a year. Maybe longer.”

“Can you tell whether this had been treated?”

“It doesn’t look like it. Certainly no surgery. And I see no signs of chemotherapy or radiation. It may have been undiagnosed at this point. But he would have known soon enough.”

Bosch thought about his own lungs. He had not smoked in years but they say the damage is done early. Sometimes in the mornings his lungs felt heavy and full in his chest. He’d had a case a few years before that resulted in his being exposed to a high-level dose of radiation. He’d cleared medical on it but always sort of thought or hoped that the blast had knocked down anything that might be growing in his chest.

Bosch took out his cell phone again and once more put it on camera function. He leaned over the bowl and shot a photo of the ravaged organs.

“What are you doing?” Laksmi asked.

“I want to send it to somebody.”

He checked the photo and it was clear enough. He then sent it off in an e-mail.

“Who? Not the family, I hope.”

“No, my daughter.”

“Your daughter?”

There was a tone of outrage in her voice.

“She needs to see what smoking can do.”

“Nice.”

She said nothing else. Bosch put his phone away and checked his watch. It was a double display watch that gave him the time in L.A. and Hong Kong—a present from his daughter after too many miscalculated middle-of-the-night phone calls. It was just past three o’clock in L.A. His daughter was fifteen hours ahead and sleeping. She’d get up for school in about an hour and would get the photo then. He knew it would bring a protest call from her but even a call like that was better than none.

He smiled at the thought of it and then refocused on the work. He was ready to get moving again.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “For your records, I’m taking the ballistic evidence over to forensics.”

“Did you sign for it?”

She pointed to a clipboard on the counter and Bosch found she had already filled out the chain-of-evidence report. Bosch signed the line acknowledging he was now in possession of the evidence listed. He headed toward the autopsy suite’s door.

“Give me a couple days on the hard copy,” Laksmi said.

Meaning the formal autopsy report.

“You got it,” Bosch said as he went through the door.

10

O
n the way to forensics Bosch called Chu and asked about the tattoos.

“I haven’t translated them yet,” Chu said.

“What do you mean, did you look at them?”