“The decomposition was extensive,” Teresa said. “I had to take the fingertips off and spray them with a chemical hardening agent. Collins, that’s my lab tech, was able to take prints after that. He made the comparison right there because Irving had brought exemplars. It was a match. It was Moore.”

“What about the teeth?”

“Dental was tough. There wasn’t much left that hadn’t been fragged. We made a comparison between a partial incisor found in the tub and some dental records Irving came up with. Moore had had a root canal and it was there. That was a match, too.”

She said she began the autopsy after confirming the identity and immediately concluded the obvious: that damage from the double-barrel-shotgun blast was massive and fatal. Instantly. But it was while examining the material that had separated from the body that she began to question whether she could rule Moore ’s death a suicide.

“The force of the blast resulted in complete cranial displacement,” she said. “And, of course, the autopsy protocol calls for examination of all vital organs, including the brain.

“Problem was the brain was mostly unmassed due to the wide projectile pattern. I believe I was told the pellets came from a double-barrel, side-by-side configuration. I could see that. The projectile pattern was very wide. Nevertheless, a large portion of the frontal lobe and corresponding skull fragment were left largely intact, though it had been separated.

“You know what I mean? The diagram said this had been charted in the bathtub. Is this… too much? I know you knew him.”

“Not that well. Go on.”

“So I examined this piece, not really expecting anything more than what I was seeing earlier. But I was wrong. There was hemorrhagic demarcation in the lobe along the skull lining.”

She took a hit off his wineglass and breathed heavily, as if casting out a demon.

“And so, you see Harry, that was a big fucking problem.”

“Tell me why.”

“You sound like Irving. ‘Tell me why. Tell me why.’ Well, it should be obvious. For two reasons. First of all you don’t have that much hemorrhage on instant death like that. There is not much bleeding in the brain lining when the brain has been literally disconnected from the body in a split second. But while there is some room for some debate on that-I’ll give that to Irving-there is no debate whatsoever on the second reason. This hemorrhaging was clearly indicative of a contre-coup injury to the head. No doubt in my mind at all.”

Harry quickly reviewed the physics he had learned over the ten years he had been watching autopsies. Contre-coup brain injury is damage that occurs to the side of the brain opposite the insult. The brain, in effect, was a Jell-O mold inside the skull. A jarring blow to the left side often did its worst damage to the right side because the force of impact pushed the Jell-O against the right side of the skull. Harry knew that for Moore to have the hemorrhage Teresa described to the front of the brain, he would have to be struck from behind. A shotgun blast to the face would not have done it.

“Is there any way…,” he trailed off, unclear of what he wanted to ask. He suddenly became aware of his body’s pangs for a cigarette and smacked the end of a fresh pack on his palm.

“What happened?” he asked as he opened it.

“Well, when I started explaining, Irving got all uptight and kept asking, ‘Are you sure? Is that a hundred percent accurate? Aren’t we jumping the gun?’ and on and on like that. I think it was pretty clear. He didn’t want this to be anything other than a suicide. The minute I raised a doubt he started talking about jumping to conclusions and the need to move slowly. He said the department could be embarrassed by what an investigation could lead to if we did not proceed slowly and cautiously and correctly. Those were his words. Asshole.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Bosch said.

“Right. So I just flat-out told them I was not going to rule it a suicide. And then… then they talked me out of ruling it a homicide. So that’s where the inconclusive comes from. A compromise. For now. It makes me feel like I am guilty of something. Those bastards.”

“They’re just going to drop it,” Bosch said.

He couldn’t figure it out. The reluctance had to be because of the IAD investigation. Whatever Moore was into, Irving must believe it either led him to kill himself or got him killed. And either way Irving didn’t want to open that box without knowing first what was in it. Maybe he never wanted to know. That told Bosch one thing: he was on his own. No matter what he came up with, turning it over to Irving and RHD would get it buried. So if Bosch went on with it, he was freelancing.

“Do they know that Moore was working on something for you?” Teresa asked.

“By now they do, but they probably didn’t when they were with you. Probably won’t make any difference.”

“What about the Juan Doe case? About him finding the body.”

“I don’t know what they know on that.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. What will you do?”

She was silent for a long time, then she got up and walked to him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the lips. She whispered, “Let’s forget about all of this for a while.”

He conceded to her in their lovemaking, letting her lead and direct him, use his body the way she wanted. They had been together often enough so that they were comfortable and knew each other’s ways. They were beyond the stages of curiosity or embarrassment. At the end, she was straddled over him as he leaned back, propped on pillows, against the headboard. Her head snapped back and her clipped nails dug painlessly into his chest. She made no sound at all.

In the darkness he looked up and saw the glint of silver dripping from her ears. He reached up and touched the earrings and then ran his hands down her throat, over her shoulders and breasts. Her skin was warm and damp. Her slow methodical motion drew him further into the void where everything else in the world could not go.

When they were both resting, she still huddled on top of him, a sense of guilt came over him. He thought of Sylvia Moore. A woman he had met only the night before, how could she intrude on this? But she had. He wondered where the guilt came from. Maybe it was for what was still ahead of them.

He thought he heard the short, high-pitched bark of the coyote in the distance behind the house. Teresa raised her head off his chest and then they heard the animal’s lonesome baying.

“Timido,” he heard her say quietly.

Harry felt the guilt pass over him again. He thought of Teresa. Had he tricked her into telling him? He didn’t think so. Maybe, again, it was guilt over what he had not yet done. What he knew he would do with the information she had given.

She seemed to know his thoughts were away from her. Perhaps a change in his heartbeat, a slight tensing in his muscles.

“Nothing,” she said.

“What?”

“You asked what I was going to do. Nothing. I’m not going to get involved in this bullshit any further. If they want to bury it, let them bury it.”

Harry knew then that she would make a good permanent chief medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles.

He felt himself falling away from her in the dark.

Teresa rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the three-quarter moon. They had left the curtain open. The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance.

“Are you like him?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.”

“Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.”

“Yes, but you like it, don’t you?”

“Not always.”

“Not always…”

He thought about what to say. The wrong word and she’d be gone.