“Bingo,” Sakai said and handed the bag up to Bosch. “One set of works. Makes our jobs all a lot easier.”

Sakai next peeled the dead man’s cracked eyelids all the way open. The eyes were blue with a milky caul over them. Each pupil was constricted to about the size of a pencil lead. They stared vacantly up at Bosch, each pupil a small black void.

Sakai made some notes on a clipboard. He’d made his decision on this one. Then he pulled an ink pad and a print card from the tackle box by his side. He inked the fingers of the left hand and began pressing them on the card. Bosch admired how quickly and expertly he did this. But then Sakai stopped.

“Hey. Check it out.”

Sakai gently moved the index finger. It was easily manipulated in any direction. The joint was cleanly broken, but there was no sign of swelling or hemorrhage.

“It looks post to me,” Sakai said.

Bosch stooped to look closer. He took the dead man’s hand away from Sakai and felt it with both his own, ungloved hands. He looked at Sakai and then at Osito.

“Bosch, don’t start in,” Sakai barked. “Don’t be looking at him. He knows better. I trained him myself.”

Bosch didn’t remind Sakai that it was he who had been driving the ME wagon that dumped a body strapped to a wheeled stretcher onto the Ventura Freeway a few months back. During rush hour. The stretcher rolled down the Lankershim Boulevard exit and hit the back end of a car at a gas station. Because of the fiberglass partition in the cab, Sakai didn’t know he had lost the body until he arrived at the morgue.

Bosch handed the dead man’s hand back to the coroner’s tech. Sakai turned to Osito and spoke a question in Spanish. Osito’s small brown face became very serious and he shook his head no.