Page 18 of Resurrection Walk

“It’s closed?” Haller asked. “You mean permanently?”

There was surprise and disappointment in Haller’s tone. There weren’t many quick and reliable lunch places near the CCB, especially since the pandemic.

“Last year,” Bosch said. “After fifty years.”

He realized that he had probably been going to Chinese Friends all fifty of those years. Until he went one day in August and there was a sign on the locked glass door that saidALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END — like a message from a fortune cookie. He had never spoken to the man who ran the restaurant and was always posted at the cash register. Bosch had always just nodded to him when he paid, assuming there was a language barrier.

“Anyway,” Haller said. “What did you find in the basement?”

Bosch pushed himself back on track with the case.

“Okay, a few things bother me on this one,” he said, “to the point that I want to take it further. First off, Silver. I think he talked Sanz into accepting a plea. He probably knew they would get the full-court press if he took it to trial. The victim was a deputy, after all. So he pushed for a deal and then he pushed her into taking it.”

“I get that,” Haller said. “What else?”

“The PSR was in the basement file. It contained the autopsy report and some crime reports and there’s some stuff that just doesn’t add up for me.”

“Like what?”

“Well, first of all, the weapon. Never found. This was painted as a crime of passion, like an argument that went too far, but they never found the gun. And then they let her plea nolo without turning it in.”

“Maybe she didn’t have it. She got rid of it and it was destroyed or otherwise irretrievable.”

“Maybe. But I read the plea agreement everybody signed, and it was not mentioned as lost or acknowledged at all. She was not required to reveal what she’d done with it.”

“Okay, noted. What else?”

“The choreography of it.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Lucinda Sanz was not the registered owner of a firearm. So the gun had to be hot. That would indicate she bought this gun illegally, and the only reason to do that was —”

“Premeditation — she got it to kill him.”

“Yeah. Like she had a plan. But the way it goes down doesn’t jibe with that. He goes storming out of the house, she grabs the gun and, in a fit of anger, shoots him when he’s outside the house and walking to his car. Right on the front lawn. Then she shoots him again when he’s down.”

Haller leaned back in his pink plastic chair and gazed at the top of City Hall.

“Vultures,” he said. “There are always vultures up there.”

Bosch looked up and could see birds flying around the top of the spire.

“How can you tell they’re vultures?” he asked. “They’re so far up.”

“Because they’re circling,” Haller said. “Vultures always circle.”

“I’ve got one more thing, if you’re interested. On the case.”

“Go ahead.”

“The autopsy. Roberto Sanz was hit twice in the back. Now look at this.”

Bosch pulled out his phone and opened the photo of the body diagram from the autopsy. He handed the phone to Haller.

“What am I looking at?” Haller said.

“That’s the diagram that shows the impacts,” Bosch said. “Two shots in the upper back, perfectly placed. Small grouping, only five point seven inches apart.”

---