The Black Box hb-18

by Michael Connelly

  There were more names here, and Bosch continued copying them into his notebook, thinking that the chances were good that the 237th’s personnel did not change much between the Gulf War and the Los Angeles riots. Men listed in the war photos were most likely part of the unit sent to L.A. a year later.

  He came to a set of photos that showed several members of the 237th on a ship called the Saudi Princess during R&R leave. There were shots of a volleyball team competing in a poolside tournament, but most of the pictures were of obviously drunk men holding up bottles of beer and posing for the camera.

  Bosch stopped dead when he read the names under one of the photos. It was a shot of four men on the wood decking surrounding the ship’s swimming pool. They were shirtless, holding up bottles of beer and shooting peace signs at the camera. Their wet bathing suits were cutoff camouflage pants. They looked very drunk and very sunburned. The names listed were Carl Cosgrove, Frank Dowler, Chris Henderson, and Reggie Banks.

  Bosch now had another connection. Reggie Banks was the salesman who sold Alex White his tractor mower ten years before. He wrote the new names down on his list and underlined Banks’s name three times.

  Bosch expanded the photo on his screen and studied it again. Three of the men—all except Cosgrove—had matching tattoos on their right shoulders. Bosch could tell it was the Keep on Truckin’ man in camouflage—the unit’s logo. Bosch then noticed that behind them and to the right was an overturned trash can that had spilled bottles and cans across the deck. As Bosch stared at the photo, he realized he had seen it before. Same scene, different angle.

  Harry quickly opened up a new window on his screen and went to the Anneke Jespersen memorial site. He then opened the file containing her photos from Desert Storm. He quickly went through them until he got to the portfolio she had taken on the cruise ship. The third shot in the set of six was taken on the pool deck. It showed a ship’s houseman righting an upended trash can.

  By flipping from one window to the other, and from photo to photo, Bosch was able to match the combination of bottles, cans, and brands strewn on the deck. The configuration of the spilled containers was exactly the same. It meant without a doubt that Anneke Jespersen had been on the cruise ship at the same time as members of the 237th Company. To confirm this Bosch compared other markers in the photos. In both he noted the same lifeguard on a poolside perch, wearing the same floppy hat and zinc-coated nose in each photo. A woman in a bikini lounging on the edge of the pool, her right hand dipped into the water. And finally, the bartender behind the counter of the tiki hut. Same bent cigarette behind his ear.

  There was no doubt. Anneke’s photo was taken within minutes of the photo on the 237th Company’s website. She had been there with them.

  The saying is that law enforcement work is ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent adrenaline—screaming high-intensity moments of life-and-death consequence. Bosch didn’t know if there was life-and-death consequence attached to this discovery, but he could feel the intensity of the moment. He quickly opened his desk drawer and pulled out his magnifying glass. He then turned the pages of the murder book until he found the sleeve containing the proof sheets and 8 × 10 photos that were developed from the four rolls of film found in Anneke Jespersen’s vest.

  There were only sixteen 8 × 10 photos, and each was marked on the back with the number of the film roll it came from. Bosch guessed that investigators randomly selected and processed four shots from each of the rolls of film. Harry urgently looked through these now, comparing the soldiers in each one to the photo of the four men on the Saudi Princess. He drew a blank until he got to the four shots from roll three. All four of the shots showed several soldiers lining up to climb into a troop transport truck outside the Coliseum. But clearly at center and in focus in each shot was a tall, well-built man who looked like the man identified as Carl Cosgrove in the cruise ship shot.

  Bosch used the magnifying glass to fine-tune the comparison but he could not be sure. The man in the Jespersen shot wore a helmet and was not looking directly at the camera. Bosch knew that he would need to turn the photos, proof sheets, and film negative strips over to the photo unit for comparison using better means than a handheld magnifying glass.

  As Bosch took a final glance at the 237th photo, he noticed the photographer credit running in small letters along the right edge.

  PHOTO BY J.J. DRUMMOND

  Bosch now underlined Drummond’s name on his list and paused as he considered the coincidence he was staring at. Three names he already knew from the investigation—Banks, Dowler, and Drummond—belonged to men who had been on the pool deck of the Saudi Princess on the same day and time as photojournalist Anneke Jespersen. A year later, one of them would find her body in a back alley in riot-torn Los Angeles. Another would lead Bosch to the body, and the third presumably would call to check on the case a decade later.

  Another connection involved Carl Cosgrove. He was on the ship in 1991 and appeared to have been in Los Angeles the year after. His name was on the fax ID on Francis Dowler’s statement and on the John Deere dealership where Reggie Banks worked.

  In every case, there comes a moment when things start tumbling together and the focus becomes white-hot in its intensity. Bosch was there now. He knew what he had to do and where he had to go.

  “David?” he said, his eyes still holding on the image on his computer screen. Four men drunk and happy in the burning sun and away from the fear and randomness of war.

  “Yeah, Harry.”

  “Stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop what you’re doing.”

  “What do you mean? Why?”

  Bosch turned his screen so his partner could see the photo. He then looked at Chu.

  “These four men,” he said. “Start with them. Run them down. Find them. Find out everything you can about them.”

  “Okay, Harry. What about Sheriff Drummond? Should we contact him about these guys?”

  Bosch thought for a moment before answering.

  “No,” he finally said. “Add him to the list.”

  Chu seemed surprised.

  “You want me to background him?”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Yeah, and keep it quiet.”

  Bosch got up and left the cubicle. He walked down the middle aisle to the lieutenant’s office. The door was open and he saw O’Toole working at his desk with his head down as he wrote something in an open file. Harry knocked on the doorframe and O’Toole looked up. He hesitated, then signaled Bosch in.

  “Let the record show that you came in here of your own volition,” he said as Bosch stepped in. “No harassment, no coercion.”

  “So noted.”

  “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “I want to put in for some vacation time. I think I need some time to think about things.”

  O’Toole paused as though considering whether he was walking into a trap.

  “When do you want to go?” he finally asked.

  “I was thinking next week,” Bosch said. “I know it’s Friday and this is short notice, but my partner can cover anything we have open and he’s already working on a pickup trip with Trish Allmand.”

  “What about the Snow White case? Weren’t you telling me not two days ago that nothing was going to hold you up on it?”

  Bosch nodded contritely.

  “Yeah, well, it’s sort of cooled down at the moment. I’m waiting on developments.”

  O’Toole nodded like he knew all along that Bosch would hit a wall on the case.

  “You know this isn’t going to change the internal investigation,” he said.

  “I know,” Bosch said. “I just need to get away, think about priorities for a little bit.”

  Bosch saw O’Toole trying to hold back a self-congratulatory smile. He couldn’t wait to call the tenth floor and report that Bosch was not going to be a problem, that the prodigal detective had finally seen the light and returned to the fold.

 
“So, you’re taking the week, then?” he asked.

  “Yeah, just a week,” Bosch replied. “I’ve got about two months banked.”

  “I normally want a little more notice, but I’ll allow the exception this time. You’re good to go, Detective. I’ll mark it down.”

  “Thanks, L-T.”

  “Do you mind closing the door when you leave?”

  “Gladly.”

  Bosch left him there to quietly make his call to the chief. Before Harry got back to his cubicle, he already had a plan for taking care of things at home while he was gone.

  22

  Ca’ Del Sole had become their place. They met there more often than anywhere else in the city. This was a choice based on romance, taste—they agreed on Italian—and price, but most of all it was based on convenience. The North Hollywood restaurant was equidistant in time and traffic from both their homes and jobs, with a little bit of an edge to Hannah Stone.

  Edge or no edge, Bosch got there first and was shown to the booth that had become their regular table. Hannah had told him she might arrive late because her appointments at the halfway house in Panorama City had backed up domino-style after the unscheduled interview with Mendenhall. Bosch had brought a file with him and was content to work while he waited.

  Before the day ended in the Open-Unsolved Unit, David Chu had compiled short preliminary bios on the five men Bosch wanted to focus on. Drawing from both public and law enforcement databases, Chu was able to put together in two hours what would have taken Bosch two weeks to gather twenty years ago.

  Chu had printed out several pages of data on each of the men. Bosch had those pages in the file along with printouts of the photos taken by both Drummond and Jespersen on the Saudi Princess, as well as a translation of the story Anneke Jespersen had submitted to the BT with her photos.

  Bosch opened the file and reread the story. It was dated March 11, 1991, almost two weeks after the war had ended and the troops had become peacekeepers. The story was short, and he guessed that it was just a copy block that went with her photos. The Internet translation program he used was basic. It did not translate grammatical nuance and style, leaving the story choppy and awkward in English.

  It is called “Love Boat,” but no mistake this is a war ship. Luxury liner Saudi Princess never leaves port but always has maximum security and capacity. The British vessel has been chartered and temporarily used by the U.S. Pentagon as a rest and recreation retreat for American troops from in Operation Desert Storm.

  Men and women with service in Saudi Arabia are allowed occasional three-day rest and relaxation leave and since the cease-fire the demand for it is very big. The Princess is only destination in the conservative Persian Gulf where the soldiers can drink alcohol, make the friends and not bring the camouflage equipment.

  The ship stays in port and is well guarded by armed Marines in uniform. (The Pentagon asks journalists who visit cannot reveal the ship’s exact location.) But on board there are no uniforms and life is a party. Has two disco, ten 24-hour bars and three pools. Soldiers who stationed in the region for weeks and months and dodged SCUD missile and bullets of Iraqi have 72 hours to have fun, taste their alcohol and flirt with the opposite sex—all of the things forbidden in camp.

  “For three days we are civilians once more,” said Beau Bentley, a 22-year-old soldier from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Last week I was in a firefight in Kuwait City. Today I sip a cold one with my friends. You cannot beat that.”

  The alcohol flows freely in the bars and at the pool edge. Celebrations of the Allied victory are many. Men on board the ship are more than women by fifteen to one—reflecting the composition of the U.S. troops in the Gulf. It is not just men on the Saudi Princess who wish the sides were more even.

  “I haven’t had to buy a drink for the time I’ve been here,” said Charlotte Jackson, a soldier from Atlanta, Georgia. “But the guys constantly hitting on you gets olden. I wish I had brought a good book to read. I’d be in my cabin right now.”

  Based on the comment from Beau Bentley about being in a firefight only a week before, Bosch figured the story had been written and then held almost a week by the BT before publication. That meant Anneke Jespersen had probably been on board the ship sometime during the first week of March.

  Bosch had initially not viewed the Saudi Princess story as significant. But now with the connection established between Jespersen and the members of 237th Company on the ship, things were different. He realized he was looking at the names of two potential witnesses. He pulled his phone and called Chu. The call went to message. Chu was off duty and had probably shut down for the night. Bosch left a message in a low voice so he wouldn’t disturb the other patrons in the restaurant.

  “Dave, it’s me. I’m going to need you to take a stab at a couple names. I got them out of a nineteen ninety-one news story, but what the hell, give it a try. The first name is Beau Bentley and he is or was from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The second is Charlotte Jackson. She was listed as from Atlanta. Both were soldiers in Desert Storm. I don’t know what branch. The story didn’t say. Bentley was twenty-two then, so he’s forty-two or forty-three now. I’ve got no age on Jackson, but she could be anywhere from, I’d say, thirty-nine to maybe fifty years old. See what you can do and let me know. Thanks, partner.”

  Bosch disconnected and looked toward the front door of the restaurant. Still no sign of Hannah Stone. He went back to his phone and shot a quick text to his daughter to ask if she had gotten something to eat, then went back to the file folder.

  He leafed through the biographical material his partner had drawn up on the five men. Four of the reports contained a driver’s license photo at the top. Drummond’s DL was not included, because his law enforcement status kept him out of the DMV computer. Bosch stopped on the sheet for Christopher Henderson. Chu had handwritten DECEASED in large letters next to the photo.

  Henderson had survived Desert Storm and the L.A. riots as a member of the Fighting 237th, but he didn’t survive an encounter with an armed robber at a restaurant he managed in Stockton. Chu had included a 1998 newspaper account reporting that Henderson had been accosted while he was alone and locking up at a popular steakhouse called the Steers. An armed man wearing a ski mask and a long coat forced him back inside the restaurant. A passing motorist saw the incident and called 9-1-1, but when police arrived shortly after the emergency call came in, they found the front door unlocked and Henderson dead inside. He had been shot execution-style while kneeling in the kitchen’s walk-in refrigerator. A safe where the restaurant’s operating cash was kept at night was found open and empty in the manager’s office.

  The newspaper report said that Henderson had been planning to leave his job at the Steers to open up his own restaurant in Manteca. He never got the chance. According to what Chu could find on the computer, the murder was never solved and no suspects were ever identified by the Stockton police.

  Chu’s bio on John James Drummond was extensive because Drummond was a public figure. He joined the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department in 1990 and rose steadily through the ranks until he challenged the incumbent sheriff in 2006 and won an upset election. He successfully ran for reelection in 2010 and was now setting his sights on Washington, DC. He was campaigning for Congress, hoping to represent the district that encompassed both Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.

  A political biography that was circulated online during his first run for sheriff described Drummond as a local kid who made good. He grew up in a single-parent family in the Graceada Park neighborhood of Modesto. As a deputy he served in all capacities in the Sheriff’s Department, even as pilot of the agency’s one helicopter, but it was his superior management skills that accelerated his climb. The biography also called him a war hero, crediting him with serving with the National Guard in Desert Storm, as well as noting that he was injured during the 1992 Los Angeles riots while protecting a dress shop from being looted.

  Bosch realized that Drummond accounted
for the one injury the 237th Company sustained during the riots. A bottle thrown back then could be one of the little things that got him to Washington now. He also noted that Drummond was already a law officer when called out with the guard to the Persian Gulf and then Los Angeles.

  The self-serving material in the campaign biography also noted how crime across the board in Stanislaus County had dropped during Drummond’s watch. It was all canned stuff and Bosch moved on, next looking at the sheet on Reginald Banks, who was forty-six years old and a lifelong resident of Manteca.

  Banks had been employed for eighteen years as a salesman at the John Deere dealership in Modesto. He was married and the father of three kids. He had a degree from Modesto Junior College.

  On this deeper dig, Chu had also found that in addition to his DUI conviction, Banks also had two other DUI arrests that did not result in conviction. Bosch noted that the one conviction came from an arrest in San Joaquin County, where Manteca was located. But two DUI stops in neighboring Stanislaus County never resulted in charges being filed. Bosch wondered if being foxhole buddies with the Stanislaus County sheriff might have had something to do with that.

  He moved on to Francis John Dowler and read a bio not too different from his pal Banks’s curriculum vitae. Born, raised, and still living in Manteca, he attended San Joaquin Valley College in Stockton but didn’t stick around for the two-year degree.

  Bosch heard a low snickering sound and looked up to see Pino, their usual waiter, smiling.

  “What?” Bosch asked.

  “I read your paper, I am sorry.”

  Bosch looked down at the data sheet on Dowler and then back at Pino. He was Mexican-born but posed as Italian since he worked in an Italian restaurant.

  “That’s okay, Pino. But what’s so funny?”

  The waiter pointed at the top line of the data sheet.

  “It say there he was born in Manteca. That is funny.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you speak Spanish, Mr. Bosch.”

  “Just a little. What is Manteca?”