Bosch’s conclusion was that they were looking for a shooter who didn’t care about Hennessy. A shooter who was not a gangbanger.

The next point of interest was the victim’s wounds. For Bosch, these alone excluded the mystery shoplifter as a suspect. Three bullets in the chest left no doubt that the intention was to kill. But there was no face shot and that seemed to put the lie to this being a killing motivated by anger or revenge. Bosch had investigated hundreds of murders, most of them involving the use of firearms, and he knew that when he had a face shot, the killing was most likely personal and the killer was someone known to the victim. Therefore, the opposite could be held true. Three in the chest was not personal. It was business. Bosch was sure that the unknown shoplifter was not their killer. Instead, they were looking for someone who was possibly a complete stranger to John Li. Someone who had coolly walked in and put three slugs into Li’s chest, then calmly emptied the cash register, picked up his brass and gone to the back room to grab the disc out of the camera-recorder.

Bosch knew it was likely that this was not a first-time crime. In the morning he would need to check for similar crimes in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

Looking at the image of the victim’s face, Bosch suddenly noticed something new. The blood on Li’s cheek and chin was smeared. Also, the teeth were clean. There was no blood on them.

Bosch held the photo up closer and tried to make sense of it. He had assumed the blood on Li’s face was expectorant. Blood that had come up from his destroyed lungs in his last fitful gasps for air. But how could that happen without getting blood on his teeth?