The Black Echo

“You mean give it to somebody else who knows how to figure it?” Bosch asked.

“You’ll get it when you come in for the autopsy, don’t worry, man.”

“Speaking of which, who’s doing the cutting today?”

Sakai didn’t answer. He was busy with the dead man’s legs. He grabbed each shoe and manipulated the ankles. He moved his hands up the legs and reached beneath the thighs, lifting each leg and watching as it bent at the knee. He then pressed his hands down on the abdomen as if feeling for contraband. Lastly, he reached inside the shirt and tried to turn the dead man’s head. It didn’t move. Bosch knew rigor mortis worked its way from the head through the body and then into the extremities.

“This guy’s neck is locked but good,” Sakai said. “Stomach’s getting there. But the extremities still have good movement.”

He took a pencil from behind his ear and pressed the eraser end against the skin on the side of the torso. There was purplish blotching on the half of the body closest to the ground, as if the body were half full of red wine. It was post-mortem lividity. When the heart stops pumping, the blood seeks the low ground. When Sakai pressed the pencil against the dark skin, it did not blanch white, a sign the blood had fully clotted. The man had been dead for hours.

“The po-mo lividity is steady,” Sakai said. “That and the rig makes me estimate that this dude’s been dead maybe six to eight hours. That’s going to have to hold you, Bosch, until we can work with the temps.”

Sakai didn’t look up as he said this. He and the one called Osito began pulling the pockets on the dead man’s green fatigue pants inside out. They were empty, as were the large baggy pockets on the thighs. They rolled the body to one side to check the back pockets. As they did this, Bosch leaned down to look closely at the exposed back of the dead man. The skin was purplish with lividity and dirty. But he saw no scratches or marks that allowed him to conclude that the body had been dragged.

“Nothing in the pants, Bosch, no ID,” Sakai said, still not looking up.

Then they began to gently pull the black shirt back over the head and onto the torso. The dead man had straggly hair that had more gray in it than the original black. His beard was unkempt and he looked to be about fifty, which made Bosch figure him at about forty. There was something in the breast pocket of the shirt and Sakai fished it out, looked at it a moment and then put it into a plastic bag held open by his partner.

“Bingo,” Sakai said and handed the bag up to Bosch. “One set of works. Makes our jobs all a lot easier.”

Sakai next peeled the dead man’s cracked eyelids all the way open. The eyes were blue with a milky caul over them. Each pupil was constricted to about the size of a pencil lead. They stared vacantly up at Bosch, each pupil a small black void.

Sakai made some notes on a clipboard. He’d made his decision on this one. Then he pulled an ink pad and a print card from the tackle box by his side. He inked the fingers of the left hand and began pressing them on the card. Bosch admired how quickly and expertly he did this. But then Sakai stopped.

“Hey. Check it out.”

Sakai gently moved the index finger. It was easily manipulated in any direction. The joint was cleanly broken, but there was no sign of swelling or hemorrhage.

“It looks post to me,” Sakai said.

Bosch stooped to look closer. He took the dead man’s hand away from Sakai and felt it with both his own, ungloved hands. He looked at Sakai and then at Osito.

“Bosch, don’t start in,” Sakai barked. “Don’t be looking at him. He knows better. I trained him myself.”

Bosch didn’t remind Sakai that it was he who had been driving the ME wagon that dumped a body strapped to a wheeled stretcher onto the Ventura Freeway a few months back. During rush hour. The stretcher rolled down the Lankershim Boulevard exit and hit the back end of a car at a gas station. Because of the fiberglass partition in the cab, Sakai didn’t know he had lost the body until he arrived at the morgue.

Bosch handed the dead man’s hand back to the coroner’s tech. Sakai turned to Osito and spoke a question in Spanish. Osito’s small brown face became very serious and he shook his head no.

“He didn’t even touch the guy’s hands in there. So you better wait until the cut before you go saying something you aren’t sure about.”

Sakai finished transferring the fingerprints and then handed the card to Bosch.

“Bag the hands,” Bosch said to him, though he didn’t need to. “And the feet.”