Mrs. Li would look through gang books in the morning in an effort to find a photo of the threatening youth. If he was associated with the Hoover Street Criminals, then chances were they had his photo in the books.

But Bosch wasn’t fully convinced it was a viable lead or that the kid was a valid suspect. There were things about the crime scene that didn’t add up to a revenge killing. There was no doubt that they had to run the lead down and talk to the kid but Bosch wasn’t expecting to close the case with him. That would be too easy and there were things about the case that defied easy.

Off the captain’s office, there was a meeting room with a long wooden table. This was primarily used as a lunchroom and occasionally for staff meetings or for private discussions of investigations involving multiple detective teams. With the squad empty, Bosch had commandeered the room and had spread several crime scene photographs, fresh from forensics, across the table.

He had laid the photos out in a disjointed mosaic of overlapping images that in a whole created the entire crime scene. It was much like the photo work of the English artist David Hockney, who had lived in Los Angeles for a while and had created several photo collages as art pieces that documented scenes in Southern California. Bosch became familiar with the photo mosaics and the artist because Hockney had been his neighbor for a time in the hills above the Cahuenga Pass. Though Bosch had never met Hockney, he drew a connection to the artist because it had always been Harry’s habit to spread crime scene photos out in a mosaic that allowed him to look for new details and angles. Hockney did the same with his work.

Looking at the photos now while sipping from a mug of black coffee he had brewed, Bosch was first drawn to the same things that had hooked him while he had been at the scene. Front and center were the bottles of Hennessy standing untouched in a row just across the counter. Harry had a hard time believing that the killing could be gang related because he doubted that a gangbanger would take the money and not a single bottle of Hennessy. The cognac would be a trophy. It was right there within reach, especially if the shooter had to lean over or go around the counter to grab bullet casings. Why not take the Hennessy, too?