The Black Box Read Free

attractive even in amug shot. No smile, no makeup, all business, her hair hooked behind her ears, her skin so pale as to be almost translucent. Her eyes had distance in them. Like the cops and soldiers Bosch had known who had seen too much too soon.
    Bosch turned the press pass over. It looked legit to him. He knew press passes were updated yearly and a validation sticker was needed for any member of the media to enter department news briefings or pass through media checkpoints at crime scenes. This pass had a 1992 sticker on it. It meant that the victim received it sometime in the last 120 days, but noting the pristine condition of the pass, Bosch believed it had been recently.
    Harry went back to studying the body. The victim was wearing blue jeans and a vest over a white shirt. It was an equipment vest with bulging pockets. This told Bosch that it was likely that the woman had been a photographer. But there were no cameras on her body or nearby. They had been taken, and possibly had even been the motive for the murder. Most news photographers he had seen carried multiple high-quality cameras and related equipment.
    Harry reached to the vest and opened one of the breast pockets. Normally this would be something he would ask a coroner’s investigator to do, as jurisdiction of the body belonged to the County Medical Examiner’s Office. But Bosch had no idea if a coroner’s crew would even show at the crime scene, and he wasn’t going to wait to find out.
    The pocket held four black film canisters. He didn’t know if this was film that had been shot or was unused. He rebut-toned the pocket and in doing so felt a hard surface beneath it. He knew rigor mortis comes and goes in a day, leaving thebody soft and movable. He pulled back the equipment vest and knocked a fist on the chest. It was a hard surface and the sound confirmed this. The victim was wearing a bulletproof vest.
    “Hey, check out the hit list,” Edgar said.
    Bosch looked up from the body. Edgar’s flashlight was now aimed at the wall above. The graffiti directly over the victim was a 187 count, or hit list, with the names of several bangers who had gone down in street battles. Ken Dog, G-Dog, OG Nasty, Neckbone, and so on. The crime scene was in the Rolling 60s territory. The 60s were a subset of the massive Crips gang. They were at endless war with the nearby 7-Treys, another Crips subset.
    The general public was for the most part under the impression that the gang wars that gripped most of South L.A. and claimed victims every night of the week came down to a Bloods versus Crips battle for supremacy and control of the streets. But the reality was that the rivalries between subsets of the same gang were some of the most violent in the city and largely responsible for the weekly body counts. The Rolling 60s and 7-Treys were at the top of that list. Both Crips sets operated under kill-on-sight protocols and the score was routinely noted in the neighborhood graffiti. A RIP list was used to memorialize homies lost in the endless battle, while a lineup of names under a 187 heading was a hit list, a record of kills.
    “Looks like what we’ve got here is Snow White and the Seven-Trey Crips,” Edgar added.
    Bosch shook his head, annoyed. The city had come off its hinges, and here in front of them was the result—a womanput up against a wall and executed—and his partner didn’t seem to be able to take it seriously.
    Edgar must have read Bosch’s body language.
    “It’s just a joke, Harry,” he said quickly. “Lighten up. We need some gallows humor around here.”
    “Okay,” Bosch said. “I’ll lighten up while you go get on the radio. Tell them what we’ve got here, make sure they know it’s a member of the out-of-town media and see if they’ll give us a full team. If not that, at least a photographer and some lights. Tell them we could really use some time and some help on this one.”
    “Why? ’Cause she’s white?”
    Bosch took a moment