“Not really. About as well as anybody got to know somebody there. You learned to trust people with your life, then when it’s over you realize you didn’t really even know most of them. I never saw him once I got back here. Talked to him once on the phone last year, that’s all.”

“How’d you make him?”

“I didn’t, at first. Then I saw the tattoo on his arm. That brought the face back. I guess you remember guys like him. I do, at least.”

“I guess…”

They let the silence sit there awhile. Bosch was trying to decide what to do, but could only wonder about the coincidence of being called to a death scene to find Meadows. Edgar broke the reverie.

“So you want to tell me what you’ve got that looks hinky here? Donovan over there looks like he’s getting ready to shit his pants, all the work you’re putting him through.”

Bosch told Edgar about the problems, the absence of distinguishable tracks in the pipe, the shirt pulled over the head, the broken finger and that there was no knife.

“No knife?” his partner said.

“Needed something to cut the can in half to make a stove-if the stove was his.”

“Could’ve brought the stove with him. Could have been that somebody went in there and took the knife after the guy was dead. If there was a knife.”

“Yeah, could have been. No tracks to tell us anything.”

“Well, we know from his sheet he was a blown-out junkie. Was he like that when you knew him?”

“To a degree. A user and seller.”

“Well, there you go, longtime addict, you can’t predict what they’re going to do, when they’re going to get off the shit or on it. They’re lost people, Harry.”

“He was off it, though-at least I thought he was. He’s only got one fresh pop in his arm.”

“Harry, you said you hadn’t seen the guy since Saigon. How do you know whether he was off or on?”

“I hadn’t seen him, but I talked to him.