Bosch saw another yellow marker on the front hood of the car. It marked the location of a bullet casing that had been found in the crack between the hood and the car’s front right fender. It was most likely the shell ejected from the killer’s gun. Bullet casings were usually ejected from the gun’s chamber in an arc to the right rear of the weapon. This was by design because almost all automatics were manufactured for right-handed shooters and a right-rear ejection arc would take the casing away from the shooter.

But a shell could easily be redirected forward after rebounding off another object. And if a left-hander was firing the weapon, that object could be the shooter himself. Bosch was left-handed and had personal experience with this-one time a red-hot shell had hit him in the eye after being ejected during range practice. He knew that, depending on the shooter’s stance and how the weapon was held, there was a possibility in this case that the ejected shell hit the shooter and then caromed forward-perhaps to land on the front hood of the car the killer had just fired into.

Bosch nodded to himself. He had a hunch that he was looking for a left-handed gun.

“What is it?” Gunn asked.

“Nothing yet. Just a theory.”

An assistant coroner named Puneet Pram was working the scene along with a forensics team from the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division. While some coroners kept up a running commentary of what they were doing and seeing at a crime scene, Pram was a very quiet worker. Bosch had been at murder scenes with him before and knew that he would not be getting a lot from him until the autopsy. Donald Dussein, the head of the forensics team, was another matter. He was a known character in the department. Known by a variety of nicknames ranging from Donald Duck to D-Squared, he was usually overly forthcoming-to the point of bending facts into theory and confusing his role at a crime scene. Bosch had worked with him as well and knew he would have to rein him in and keep him on point.