Trunk Music Read Online Free PDF Page B

make a couple calls. Where you going to be?”
    “The print shed. He’s here with us and I’ll be here a while.”
    “What do you mean, you got the guy’s body there in the shed?”
    “It’s a long story. When do you think you can get back to me?”
    “As soon as I make the calls. You been over to his office?”
    “Not yet. We’ll get there sometime tonight.”
    Bosch gave him the number of his cellular phone, then closed it and put it in his coat pocket. For a moment he thought about Carbone’s reaction to the victim’s name. He finally decided he could not read anything into it.
    After the Cloud was rolled into place in the shed and the doors shut, Donovan pulled the curtains closed. There was fluorescent lighting overhead which he left on while he got his equipment ready. Matthews, the coroner’s tech, and his two assistants-the body movers-huddled over a workbench getting the tools they would need out of a case.
    “Harry, I’m going to take my time with this, okay? First I’ll laser the trunk with the guy in it. Then we take him out. Then we glue it and laser it again. Then we worry about the rest of it.”
    “Your show, man. Whatever time you need.”
    “I’ll need your help with the wand when I shoot pictures. Roland had to go to shoot another scene.”
    Bosch nodded and watched as the SID tech screwed an orange filter onto a Nikon camera. He put the camera strap over his head and turned on the laser. It was a box about the size of a VCR with a cable attachment that led to a foot-long wand with a hand grip on it. From the end of the wand a strong orange beam was emitted.
    Donovan opened a cabinet and took out several pairs of orange-tinted safety glasses which he handed to Bosch and the others. He put the last pair on himself. He gave Bosch a pair of latex gloves to put on as well.
    “I’ll do a quick run around the outside of the trunk and then open her up,” Donovan said.
    Just as Donovan moved to the switch box to cut off the overheads, the phone in Bosch’s pocket buzzed. Donovan waited while Bosch answered. It was Carbone.
    “Bosch, we’re taking a pass.”
    Harry didn’t say anything for a moment and neither did Carbone. Donovan hit the light switch and the room plunged into complete blackness.
    “You’re saying you don’t have this guy.” Bosch finally spoke into the dark.
    “I checked around, made some calls. Nobody seems to know this guy. Nobody’s working him… Clean, as far as we know… You said he was put in his trunk and capped twice, huh?…Bosch, you there?”
    “Yeah, I’m here. Yeah, capped twice in the trunk.”
    “Trunk music.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a wise guy saying outta Chicago. You know, when they whack some poor slob they say, ‘Oh, Tony? Don’t worry about Tony. He’s trunk music now. You won’t see him no more.’ But the thing is, Bosch, this doesn’t seem to fit. We don’t know this guy. People I talked to, they think maybe somebody’s trying to make you think it’s OC connected, know what I mean?”
    Bosch watched as the laser beam cut through the blackness and bombarded the rear of the trunk with searing light. With the glasses on, the orange was filtered out and the light was a bright, intense white. Bosch was ten feet away from the Rolls, but he could see glowing patterns on the trunk lid and the bumper. This always reminded him of those National Geographic shows in which a submersible camera moved through the ocean’s black depths, putting its light on sunken ships or aircraft. It was somehow eerie.
    “Look, Carbone,” he said, “you aren’t even interested in coming out to take a look?”
    “Not at this time. Of course, give me a call back if you come across anything, you know, that shows different than what I told you. And I’ll do some more checking tomorrow. I got your number.”
    Bosch was secretly pleased that he wasn’t going to get bigfooted by the OCID, but he was also surprised at the brush-off. The quickness with which