She eventually found space for her feet on the floor of the bin and was better able to brace herself to lift the heavier debris. She focused on an open crate in the corner. It held a sculpture of a woman and child that had a one-inch-wide crack running through the plaster. She attempted to lift it but realized it would be too heavy to raise over the rim to Bosch. She instead lifted it slightly and swung it to her left to reposition it. When she turned back to the corner, she saw a crushed cardboard box that had been beneath the sculpture crate.

“Harry,” she said. “Take a look.”

She heard his feet clunk on the steps of the ladder, and then he was leaning over the rim.

“Be careful with that knee,” she said.

She pointed to the crushed box in the corner.

“Same size box as the one in the BMW trunk,” she said.

She took off her gloves and tucked them under an arm. She then pulled her phone out of a zippered pocket in her overalls and opened the camera. She took three photos from three different angles by leaning one way and then the other. Then she opened the video camera and handed the phone to Bosch.

“I’m going to open it,” she said. “You run video.”

“Got it,” Bosch said.

Ballard put her gloves back on and squatted down next to the crushed box while Bosch hit the record button on the phone.

Other than having its dimensions—16 x 16 x 6—stamped on its side, it was an unmarked cardboard box that appeared to be a match for the one recovered from Rawls’s BMW that Ballard had carried into the homicide archives that morning. It was unsealed, but the top had been crushed, and this forced Ballard to rip its flaps to get it open. Inside, at the top, was a folded piece of clothing. Ballard leaned back on her heels to make sure Bosch got a clear view with the video.

“It looks like a nightgown,” she said. “Let’s get it out of here before we start looking through it. You can kill the video.”

Bosch did so and handed the phone back to Ballard. She then stood up with the box and handed it over the lip to Bosch.

“I’m going to make sure there’s nothing else in here,” she said.

Bosch took the box over to Ballard’s city car and put it down on the hood.

Ballard spent the next five minutes moving debris around in the dumpster so she could determine that nothing else had been deposited by Rawls. After climbing back over the rim and down the ladder, she helped Bosch throw the debris they had removed back into the bin.