Hoffman looked up from the tackle box in which he kept his tools. He was organizing things and was about to close it.

“It’s cool. We’re wrapping up. This one yours, Harry?”

“It is now. Got anything good for me? Gonna make my day?”

Bosch stepped into the car, followed by Edgar and Rider. Since the car was on an incline, the floor was actually a series of steps down to the other door. The seats also were on graduated levels on either side of the center aisle. Bosch looked at the slatted bench seats and suddenly remembered how hard they had been on his skinny behind as a boy.

“ ’Fraid not,” Hoffman said. “It’s pretty clean.”

Bosch nodded and moved down a few more steps to the first body. He studied Catalina Perez the way someone might study a sculpture in a museum. There was no feeling for the object in front of him as human. He was studying details, gaining impressions. His eyes fell to the bloodstain and the small tear the bullet had made in the T-shirt. The bullet had hit the woman dead center. Bosch thought about this and envisioned the gunman in the doorway of the train twelve feet away.

“Hell of a shot, huh?”

It was the tech Bosch didn’t know. He looked at her and nodded. He had been thinking the same thing, that the shooter was someone with some expertise in firearms.

“Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sally Tam.”

She put out her hand and Bosch shook it. It felt weird. They were both wearing rubber gloves. He told her his name.

“Oh,” she said. “Somebody was just talking about you. About the hard-boiled eggs case.”

“It was just luck.”

Bosch knew he was getting a longer ride out of that case than he deserved. It was all because a Times reporter had heard about it and written a story that exaggerated Bosch’s skills to the point where he seemed like a distant relative of Sherlock Holmes.

Bosch pointed past Tam and said he needed to get by to take a look at the other body. She stepped to the side and leaned back and he slid by, careful not to allow himself to rub against her. He heard her introducing herself to Rider and Edgar. He dropped into a crouch so he could study the body of Howard Elias.

“Is this still as is?” he asked Hoffman, who was squatting next to his tackle box near the feet of the dead man.

“Pretty much. We turned him to get into his pockets but then put him back. There are some Polaroids over on that seat behind you if you want to double-check. Coroner’s people took those before anybody touched him.”

Bosch turned and saw the photos. Hoffman was right. The body was in the same position in which it had been found.