THE DROP

Coup de pouce pour vous aider à bien comprendre el début de l'histoire...LOS ANGELES - SERVICE DES AFFAIRES NON RÉSOLUESCe service enquête sur des meurtres qui ont été commis à Los Angeles au cours des cinquante dernières années. Les 10 000 affaires non résolues sont classées par année et réparties entre cinq équipes de deux détectives. Leur tâche consiste à réétudier chaque affaire avec les moyens techniques et scientifiques dont la police dispose aujourd'hui. Harry Bosch et son partenaire David Chu constituent la sixième équipe, appelée «équipe volante», et s'occupent, quant à eux, du surplus d'affaires et des enquêtes spéciales. Harry Bosch, qui attend avec impatience de se voir confier une nouvelle affaire, est appelé dans le bureau de sa supérieure hiérarchique qui lui communique des résultats d'analyse surprenants concernant un meurtre qui date de 1989...1Christmas came once a month in the Open-Un-solved Unit. That was when the lieutenant made her way around the squad room like Santa Claus, parceling out the assignments like presents to the squad's six detective teams. The cold hits were the lifeblood of the unit. The teams didn't wait for callouts and fresh kills in Open-Unsolved. They waited for cold hits.The Open-Unsolved Unit investigated unsolved murders going back fifty years in Los Angeles. There were twelve detectives, a secretary, a squad room supervisor, known as the whip, and the lieutenant. And there were ten thousand cases. The first five detective teams split up the fifty years, each pair taking ten randomly chosen years. Their task was to pull ail the unsolved homicide cases from their assigned years out of archives, evaluate them and submit long-stored and forgotten evidence for reanalysis with contemporary technology. Ail DNA submissions were handled by the new regional lab out at Cal State. When DNA from an old case was matched to an individual whose genetic profile was carried in any of the nation's DNA data-bases, it was called a cold hit. The lab put cold hit notices in the mail at the end of every month. They would arrive a day or two later at the Police Administration Building in downtown Los Angeles. Usually by 8 a.m. that day, the lieutenant would open the door of her private office and enter the squad room. She carried the envelopes in her hand. Each hit sheet was mailed individually in a yellow business envelope. Generally, the envelopes were handed to the same detectives who had submitted the DNA evidence to the lab. But sometimes there were too many cold hits for one team to handle at once. Sometimes detectives were in court or on vacation or on leave. And sometimes the cold hits revealed circumstances that required the utmost finesse and experience. That was where the sixth team came in. Detectives Harry Bosch and David Chu were the sixth team. They were floaters. They handled overflow cases and special investigations.(...)