in a priority request for copies of all of Billy Meadows's military records. Three days, St. John said. He hung up thinking that he would never see the records. They'd come but he wouldn't be in this office, at this table, on this case. Next he called Donovan at SID and learned there had been no latent prints on the needle kit found in Meadows's shirt pocket and only smears on the can of spray paint. The light-brown crystals found in the straining cotton in the kit came back as 55 percent pure heroin, Asian blend. Bosch knew that most heroin dealt on the street and shot into the vein was about 15 percent pure. Most of it was tar heroin made by Mexicans. Somebody had given Meadows a very hot shot. In Harry's mind, that made the tox tests he was waiting for a formality. Meadows had been murdered.
Nothing else from the crime scene was of much use, except Donovan mentioned that the freshly burned match found in the pipe was not torn from the matchbook in Meadows's kit. Bosch gave Donovan the address of Meadows's apartment and asked him to send a team out to process it. He said to check the matches in an ashtray on the coffee table against the book in the kit. Then he hung up, wondering if Donovan would send somebody before word spread that Bosch was off the case or suspended.
The last call he made was to the coroner's office. Sakai said he had made next-of-kin notification. Meadows's mother was still alive and was reached in New Iberia, Louisiana. She had no money to send for him or bury him. She hadn't seen him in eighteen years. Billy Meadows would not be going home. L.A. County would have to bury him.
"What about the VA?" Bosch asked. "He was a veteran."
"Right. I'll check it out," Sakai said and hung up.
Bosch got up and took a small portable tape recorder from one of his drawers in the file cabinets. The bank of files ran along the wall behind the homicide table. He slipped the recorder into his coat pocket with the 911 tape and walked out of the squad room through the rear hallway. He went past the lockup benches and the jail, down to the CRASH office. The tiny office was more crowded than the detective bureau. Desks and files for five men and a woman were crammed into a room no bigger than a second bedroom in a Venice apartment. Down one wall of the room was a row of four-drawer file cabinets. On the opposite wall was the computer and teletype. In between were three sets of two desks pushed side by side. The back wall had the usual map of the city with black lines detailing the eighteen police divisions. Above the map were the Top 10: color eight-by-tens of the ten top assholes of the moment in Hollywood Division. Bosch noticed one was a morgue shot. The kid was dead but still made the list. Now that's an asshole, he thought. And above the photos, black plastic letters spelled out Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums.
Only Thelia King was in, sitting in front of the computer. That was what Bosch wanted. Also known as The King, which she hated, and Elvis, which she didn't mind, Thelia King was the CRASH computer jockey. If you wanted to trace a gang lineage or were just looking for a juvie floating somewhere around Hollywood, Elvis was the one to see. But Bosch was surprised she was alone. He looked at his watch. Just after two, too early for the gang troops to be on the street.
"Where's everybody at?"
"Hey, Bosch," she said, looking away from the screen. "Funerals. We got two different gangs, and I mean warring tribes, planting homeboys in the same cemetery today up in the Valley. They got all hands up there to make sure things stay cool."
"And so why aren't you out there with the boys?"
"Just got back from court. So, before you tell me why you are here, Harry, why don't you tell me what happened in Ninety-eight Pounds's office today?"
Bosch smiled. Word traveled faster through a police station than it did on the street. He gave her an abbreviated account of his time in the barrel and the expected battle with IAD.
"Bosch, you take things too seriously," she said. "Why don't you get yourself an outside gig? Something to keep yourself sane, moving in the flow. Like your