The Drop

here,” Chu said, nodding toward the media vans.
    It was impossible to keep a secret in this town, especially a secret like this. A neighbor would call, a hotel guest or a patrol officer, maybe somebody down at the coroner’s office trying to impress a blond TV reporter. News traveled fast.
    They got out of the car and approached the barricades. Bosch signaled one of the uniformed officers away from the two camera crews so they could speak without the media hearing.
    “Where is it?” Bosch asked.
    The cop looked like he had at least ten years on the job. His shirt plate said R AMPONE .
    “We have two scenes,” he said. “We’ve got the splat around back here on the side. And then the room the guy was using. That’s the top floor, room seventy-nine.”
    It was the routine way of police officers to dehumanize the daily horrors that came with the job. Jumpers were called splats.
    Bosch had left his rover in the car. He nodded to the mike on Rampone’s shoulder.
    “Find out where Glanville and Solomon are.”
    Rampone cocked his head toward his shoulder and pressed the transmit button. He quickly located the initial investigative team in room seventy-nine.
    “Okay, tell them to stay put. We’re going to check out the lower scene and then head up.”
    Bosch went back to his car to grab the rover out of the charging dock and then walked with Chu around the barricade and up the sidewalk.
    “Harry, you want me to go up and talk to those guys?” Chu asked.
    “No, it always starts with the body and goes from there. Always.”
    Chu was used to working cold cases, where there was never a crime scene. Only reports. Also, he had issues with seeing dead bodies. It was the reason he’d opted for the cold case squad. No fresh kills, no murder scenes, no autopsies. This time things would be different.
    Marmont Lane was a steep and narrow road. They came to the death scene at the northwestern corner of the hotel. The forensics team had put up a canopy over the scene to guard against visual intrusion from media choppers and the houses that terraced the hills behind the hotel.
    Before stepping under the canopy, Bosch looked up the side of the hotel. He saw a man in a suit leaning over the parapet, looking down from a balcony on the top floor. He guessed it was Glanville or Solomon.
    Bosch went under the canopy and found a bustle of activities involving forensic techs, coroner’s investigators and police photographers. At the center of it all was Gabriel Van Atta, whom Bosch had known for years. Van Atta had spent twenty-five years working for the LAPD as a crime scene tech and supervisor before retiring and taking a job with the coroner. Now he got a salary and a pension and still worked crime scenes. That counted as a break for Bosch. He knew that Van Atta wouldn’t be cagey about anything. He would tell Harry exactly what he thought.
    Bosch and Chu stood under the canopy but stayed on the periphery. The scene belonged to the techs at the moment. Bosch could tell that the body had been turned over from the impact point and that they were far along. The body would soon be removed and transported to the medical examiner’s office. This bothered him but it was the cost of coming into a case so late.
    The gruesome extent of the injuries from seven floors of gravity was on full display. Bosch could almost feel his partner’s revulsion at the sight. Harry decided to give him a break.
    “Tell you what, I’ll handle this and meet you upstairs.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. But you’re not getting out of the autopsy.”
    “That’s a deal, Harry.”
    The conversation had drawn Van Atta’s attention.
    “Harry B.,” he said. “I thought you were still working cold cases.”
    “This one’s a special, Gabe. All right if I step in?”
    Meaning the inner circle of the death scene. Van Atta waved him in. As Chu ducked out from under the canopy, Bosch grabbed a pair of paper booties from a dispenser and put them on over his shoes. He then put on rubber gloves and worked his way as best he could around the coagulated blood on the sidewalk and squatted down next to what was left of George Thomas Irving.
    Death takes everything, including one’s dignity. George’s naked and battered body was surrounded on all sides by technicians who viewed it as a piece of work. His earthly vessel had been reduced to a ripped bag of skin containing shattered bones and organs and blood vessels. His body had bled out through every natural