“We need the kit and the stove printed as soon as we can,” Bosch said. Donovan nodded and carried his burden of plastic bags toward the police van. Bosch turned his attention back to the ME’s men.

“No knife on him, right?” Bosch said.

“Right,” Sakai said. “Why?”

“I need a knife. Incomplete scene without a knife.”

“So what. Guy’s a hype. Hypes steal from hypes. His pals probably took it.”

Sakai’s gloved hands rolled up the sleeves of the dead man’s shirt. This revealed a network of scar tissue on both arms. Old needle marks, craters left by abscesses and infections. In the crook of the left elbow was a fresh spike mark and a large yellow-and-purplish hemorrhage under the skin.

“Bingo,” Sakai said. “I’d say this guy took a hot load in the arm and, phssst, that was it. Like I said, you got a hype case, Bosch. You’ll have an early day. Go get a Dodger dog.”

Bosch crouched down again to look closer.

“That’s what everybody keeps telling me,” he said.

And Sakai was probably right, he thought. But he didn’t want to fold this one away yet. Too many things didn’t fit. The missing tracks in the pipe. The shirt pulled over the head. The broken finger. No knife.

“How come all the tracks are old except the one?” he asked, more of himself than Sakai.

“Who knows?” Sakai answered anyway. “Maybe he’d been off it awhile and decided to jump back in. A hype’s a hype. There aren’t any reasons.”

Staring at the tracks on the dead man’s arms, Bosch noticed blue ink on the skin just below the sleeve that was bunched up on the left bicep. He couldn’t see enough to make out what it said.