He turned back to the body and used both hands to turn the head so that he could study the wounds. Garwood’s interpretation had been correct, Bosch decided. The entry wound at the back of the head was a contact wound. Though partially obscured by blood that had matted the hair, there were still powder burns and stippling visible in a circular pattern around the wound. The face shot, however, was clean. This did not refer to the blood — there was a good amount of that. But there were no powder burns on the skin. The bullet to the face had come from a distance.

Bosch picked up the arm and turned the hand so he could study the entry wound in the palm. The arm moved easily. Rigor mortis had not yet begun — the cool evening air was delaying this process. There was no discharge burn on the palm. Bosch did some computing. No powder burns on the palm meant the firearm was at least three to four feet away from the hand when the bullet was discharged. If Elias had his arm extended with his palm out, then that added another three feet.

Edgar and Rider had made their way to the second body. Bosch could feel their presence behind him.

“Six to seven feet away, through the hand and still right between the eyes,” he said. “This guy can shoot. Better remember that when we take him down.”

Neither of them answered. Bosch hoped they picked up on the confidence in his last line as well as the warning. He was about to place the dead man’s hand down on the floor when he noticed the long scratch mark on the wrist and running along the side of the palm. He guessed the wound had occurred when Elias’s watch had been pulled off. He studied the wound closely. There was no blood in the track. It was a clean white laceration along the surface of the dark skin, yet it seemed deep enough to have drawn blood.

He thought about this for a moment. There were no shots to the heart, only to the head. The blood displacement from the wounds indicated the heart had continued to pump for at least several seconds after Elias had gone down. It would seem that the shooter would have yanked the watch off Elias’s wrist very quickly after the shooting — there was obviously no reason to hang around. Yet, the scratch on the hand had not bled. It was as if it had occurred well after the heart had stopped pumping.

“What do you think about the lead enema?” Hoffman asked, interrupting Bosch’s thoughts.