“Didn’t she see your tattoo?”
The tunnel rat on his shoulder would have been a dead giveaway.
“No, we hadn’t gotten that far or anything. I’d never had my shirt off with her. But one day we were walking after class through the commons and she sort of asked me out of the blue why I was so quiet . . . . And I don’t know, I just sort of decided that was the opening, that I could let the cat out of the bag. I thought she would accept it, you know?”
“But she didn’t.”
“No, she didn’t. I said something like, ‘Well, I’ve spent the last few years in the military,’ and she right away asked if that meant I was in Vietnam, and I told her—I said yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything. She just did one of those pirouette moves like a dancer and walked away. She didn’t say a thing.”
“Oh my God! How mean!”
“That was when I really knew what I had come back to.”
“Well, what happened when you went to class the next day? Did you say anything to her?”
“No, because I didn’t go back. I never went back to that school, because I knew that’s how it was going to be. So that’s a big part of why a week later I joined the cops. The department was full of military vets, and a lot had been over there in Southeast Asia. So I knew there would be people like me and I could be accepted. It was like somebody coming out of prison and going to a halfway house first. I wasn’t inside anymore, but I was with people like me.”
His daughter seemed to have forgotten about killing a flight attendant. Bosch was glad for that but wasn’t too happy about pushing his own memory buttons.
He suddenly smiled.
“What?” Maddie asked.
“Nothing, I just sort of jumped to another memory from back then. A crazy thing.”
“Well, tell me. You just told me a super-sad story, so tell me the crazy story.”
He waited while the waitress put down their food. She had been working there since Bosch had been a cadet nearly forty years before.
“Thanks, Margie,” Bosch said.
“You’re welcome, Harry.”
Madeline put ketchup on her Bratton Burger, and they took a few bites of food before Bosch began his story.
“Well, when I graduated and got my badge and was put out on the street, it was sort of the same thing all over again. You know, counterculture, the war-protest movement, crazy stuff like that going on.”
He pointed to the framed front page on the wall next to them.
“The police were viewed by a lot of people out there as maybe just a slight level above the baby killers coming back from Vietnam. You know what I mean?”
“I guess.”
“So my first job out on the street as a slick sleeve was to walk—”
“What’s that, a ‘slick sleeve’?”
“A rookie, a boot. No stripes on my sleeves yet.”
“Okay.”
“My first assignment out of the academy was a foot beat on Hollywood Boulevard. And back then it was pretty grim on the boulevard. Really run down.”
“It’s still pretty sketchy in some parts.”
“That’s true. But anyway, I was assigned to a partner who was an old guy named Pepin, and he was my training officer. I remember everybody called him the French Dip because on the beat he stopped every day for an ice cream at this place called Dips near Hollywood and Vine. Like clockwork. Every day. Anyway, Pepin had been around a long time, and I walked the beat with him. We’d do the same routine. Walk up Wilcox from the station, go right on Hollywood till we got to Bronson, then turn around and walk all the way down to La Brea and then back to the station. The French Dip had a built-in clock, and he knew just what pace to keep so that we were back at the station by end of watch.”
“Sounds boring.”
“It was, unless we got a call or something. But even then it was all small-time shit—I mean, stuff. Shoplifting, prostitution, drug dealing—little stuff. Anyway, almost every day we’d get yelled at by somebody passing in a car. You know, they’d call us fascists and pigs and other stuff. And the French Dip hated being called a pig. You could call him a fascist or a Nazi or almost anything else, but he hated being called a pig. So, what he would do when a car went by and they called us pigs was he’d get the make and model and plate number off the car and he’d pull out his ticket book and write the car up for a parking violation. Then he’d tear out the copy you were supposed to leave under the windshield wiper and he’d just crumple it up and throw it away.”
Bosch laughed again as he took a bite of his grilled cheese with tomato and onion.
“I don’t get it,” Maddie said. “Why is that so funny?”
“Well, he would turn in his copy of the ticket, and, of course, the car owner wouldn’t know anything about it and the ticket would go unpaid and then to warrant. So the guy who called us pigs would eventually someday get stopped and there’d be a warrant for his arrest, and that was the French Dip’s way of getting the last laugh.”
He ate a French fry before finishing.
“What I was laughing about was the first time I was on the beat with him when he did it. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he told me. And I said, ‘That’s not in policy, is it?’ and he said, ‘It’s in my policy!’”
Bosch laughed again but his daughter only shook her head. Harry decided the story was funny only to him and went back to finishing his sandwich. He soon got down to telling her what he had been putting off all weekend.
“So listen, I have to go out of town for a few days. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Where to?”
“Just up to the Central Valley, the Modesto area, to talk to some people on a case. I’ll be back either Tuesday night or maybe have to stay till Wednesday. I won’t know until I get there.”
“Okay.”
He braced himself.
“And so I want Hannah to stay with you.”
“Dad, no one has to stay with me. I’m sixteen and I have a gun. I’m fine.”
“I know that but I want her to stay. It will just make me feel better. Can you do that for me?”
She shook her head but agreed halfheartedly.
“I guess. I just don’t—”
“She’s very excited about staying. And she won’t get in your way or tell you when to go to bed or anything like that. I already talked to her about all of that.”
She put her half-eaten hamburger down in a manner that Bosch had come to learn meant that she was finished with her meal.
“How come she never stays over when you’re there?”
“I don’t know. But that’s not what we’re talking about.”
“Like last night. We had a great time and then you dropped her off at her house.”
“Maddie . . . that stuff’s private.”
“Whatever.”
All such conversations universally ended with whatever. Bosch looked around and tried to think of something else to talk about. He felt he had fumbled the Hannah situation.
“Why did you suddenly ask me before why I became a cop?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to know.”
He thought about that for a moment before responding.
“You know, if you’re thinking about whether it’s the right choice for you, you’ve got plenty of time.”
“I know. It’s not that.”
“And you know that I want you to do whatever you want to do in life. I want you happy and that will make me happy. Never think you have to do this for me or follow in my footsteps. It’s not about that.”
“I know, Dad. I just asked you a question, that’s all.”
He nodded.
“Okay, then. But for what it’s worth, I already know you would be a damn good cop and a damn good detective. It’s not about how you shoot, it’s about how you think and your basic understanding of fairness. You got what it takes, Mads. You just have to decide if it’s w
hat you want. Either way, I got your back.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“And just getting back to the simulator for a second, I’m really proud of you. Not just because of the shooting. I’m talking about how cool you were, how confident you were with your commands. It was all good.”
She seemed to take the encouragement well, and then he watched the line of her mouth turn down in a frown.
“Tell that to the flight attendant,” she said.
Part Three
THE PRODIGAL DETECTIVE
26
Bosch left in darkness Monday morning. It was at least a five-hour drive to Modesto, and he didn’t want to waste the day just getting there. He had rented a Crown Victoria from Hertz at the airport in Burbank the night before because LAPD regulations didn’t allow him to use his department car while on vacation. Normally that would be one of the rules Bosch would bend, but with O’Toole checking his every move these days, he decided to play it safe. He did, however, bring the mobile strobe light from the work car and transfer his equipment boxes from trunk to trunk. There were no regulations about that, as far as he knew. With the rented Crown Vic he would look the part if he needed to.
Modesto was pretty much a straight shot north from Los Angeles. Bosch took I-5 out of the city and up over the Grapevine before splitting off on California 99, which would take him through Bakersfield and Fresno on the way. As he drove, he continued through the catalog of Art Pepper’s music that Maddie had given him. He was now up to volume five, which was a concert that happened to be recorded in Stuttgart in 1981. It contained a kick-ass version of Pepper’s signature song “Straight Life,” but it was the soulful “Over the Rainbow” that made Bosch hit the replay button on the dash.
He got to Bakersfield during the morning rush hour and dropped below sixty miles per hour for the first time. He decided to wait out the traffic and pulled over for breakfast at a place called the Knotty Pine Cafe. He knew of it because it was just a few blocks from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, where he had had business on occasion over the years.
After he ordered eggs, bacon, and coffee, he unfolded the map he had printed Saturday on two sheets of paper and then taped together. The map showed the forty-mile stretch of the Central Valley that had become important to the Anneke Jespersen case. All the points he had marked hugged CA-99, beginning with Modesto at the south end and moving north through Ripon, Manteca, then Stockton.
What was noteworthy to Bosch was that the map he had taped together stretched across two counties, Stanislaus to the south and San Joaquin to the north. Modesto and Salida were in Stanislaus County, where Sheriff Drummond held power and jurisdiction. But Manteca and Stockton fell under the jurisdiction of the sheriff of San Joaquin County. To Bosch it seemed no wonder that Reggie Banks, who lived in Manteca, preferred to do his drinking down in Modesto. Same, too, with Francis Dowler.
Bosch circled the locations he wanted to check out before the day was over. The John Deere dealership where Reggie Banks worked, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, Cosgrove Ag’s operation center in Manteca, as well as the homes of the men he was coming to observe. His plan for the day was to immerse himself as much as possible in the world where these men now lived. From there he would map out his next move—if there was a move to be made.
Once he was back on CA-99 and moving north again, he propped a printout of a Sunday night email from Dave Chu on his right thigh. Chu had searched for Beau Bentley and Charlotte Jackson, the two soldiers quoted in Anneke Jespersen’s story on the Saudi Princess.
Bentley was a quick dead end. Chu found a 2003 obituary for a Brian “Beau” Bentley, Gulf War veteran, in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that stated that he had succumbed to cancer at the age of thirty-four.
Chu had only modestly better luck with the other soldier. Using the age parameters Bosch had given him, he had come up with seven Charlotte Jacksons living in Georgia. Five of them were listed in Atlanta and its suburbs. Using the department’s TLO account and other various Internet databases, Chu had managed to come up with telephone numbers for six of the seven women. As Bosch drove, he started calling.
It was early afternoon in Georgia. He connected on his first two calls. They were answered by a Charlotte Jackson, but neither woman was the Charlotte Jackson he was trying to reach. The third and fourth calls went unanswered, and he left voice mails stating that he was an LAPD detective working on a murder case and urgently needed a return call.
He got through on the next two calls but neither woman he talked to was the Charlotte Jackson who served her country during the first Gulf War.
Bosch disconnected the last call, reminding himself that pursuing Charlotte Jackson was probably not the best use of his time. It was a common name and twenty-one years had passed. There was no guarantee that she was still in Atlanta or Georgia or that she was even still alive. She also could have gotten married and changed her name. He knew he could go to the U.S. military records archive in St. Louis and request a search, but as with all things steeped in bureaucracy, getting answers could take forever.
He folded the printout and put it back inside his coat pocket.
The land opened up after Fresno. The climate was arid from the beating sun and dusty from the dry fields. The highway, too, was rough. Its asphalt was thin and the concrete seams had become disjointed by time and disrepair. The surfaces were crumbling and the Crown Vic’s tires banged hard, sometimes making the music inside jump. It wasn’t how Art Pepper would have wanted it.
The state was sixteen billion in debt, and the news always talked about the deficit’s effect on the infrastructure. Out in the middle of the state the theory was a fact.
Bosch got to Modesto by midday. First on his agenda was a cursory drive by the Public Safety Center, where Sheriff J.J. Drummond held sway. It looked like a fairly new building, with the attendant jail next door. Out front, there was a statue of a police dog fallen in the line of duty, and Bosch wondered why there was apparently no human deserving of the same treatment.
Normally when Bosch followed a case out of Los Angeles, he checked in at the Police or Sheriff’s Department at his destination. It was a courtesy, but it was also like leaving bread crumbs behind should anything go wrong. But not this time. He didn’t know if Sheriff J.J. Drummond had been involved in any way with Anneke Jespersen’s death. But there was too much smoke and there were too many coincidences and connections for Bosch to take the chance of alerting Drummond to the investigation.
As if to underline those coincidences, he found Cosgrove Tractor, the John Deere dealership where Reginald Banks worked, only five blocks away from the sheriff’s complex. Bosch cruised it, made a U-turn, and came back to it, stopping at a curb along the front sidewalk.
There was a line of green tractors arranged small to large in front of the dealership. Behind them was a single-row parking lot and then the dealership with floor-to-ceiling glass windows running along the entire face of the building. Bosch hopped out of his car and grabbed a pair of small but powerful binoculars from one of the equipment boxes in the trunk. Returning to the front seat, he used the binos to look into the dealership. At each front corner was a desk with a salesman behind it. Between them ran another line of tractors and ATVs, all of them grass-green and shining.
Bosch opened his file and checked the DMV photo of Banks that Chu had provided. Looking back at the dealership, he easily identified Banks as the balding man with a drooping mustache at the desk in the corner closest to Bosch. He watched the man, studying him in profile because of the angle of the desk. While Banks looked like he was studiously engaged with something on his computer screen, Bosch could tell he was playing solitaire. He had angled the screen so that it could not be seen from within the showroom, most likely by his boss.
After a while Bosch got bored watching Banks, started the car, and pulled away from the curb. As he did so, he checked the rearview and saw a blue compact pulling away from the curb five parked cars back. He made
his way on Crows Landing Road back to the 99, intermittently checking the mirror and seeing the car trailing in traffic behind him. It didn’t concern him. He was on a major traffic artery, and lots of cars were going the way he was going. But when he eased up on the accelerator and started letting cars go by him, the blue car slowed to match his speed and continued to hang back. Finally, Bosch pulled to the curb in front of an auto parts store and watched his mirror. Half a block back, the blue car turned right and disappeared, leaving Bosch to wonder if he was being followed or not.
Bosch pulled back into traffic and continued to check his mirror as he headed to the CA-99 entrance. Along the way, he passed what seemed like an unending parade of Mexican food joints and used-car lots, the visual only broken up by the tire stores and auto repair and parts shops. The street was almost like one-stop shopping: buy a junker here and get it fixed up over there. Grab a fish taco at the mariscos truck while you’re waiting. It depressed Bosch to think about all the road dust on those tacos.
Just as he spotted the entrance ramp to CA-99, he also saw his first “Drummond for Congress” sign. It was 4 × 6 and posted on a safety fence that crossed the overpass. The sign, which had Drummond’s smiling face on it, could be seen by all who headed north on the freeway below. Bosch noticed that someone had drawn a Hitler mustache on the candidate’s upper lip.
As he came down the ramp to the freeway, Bosch checked the rearview and thought he saw the blue compact coming down behind him. Once he merged into traffic, he checked again, but traffic now obscured his view. He dismissed the sighting as paranoia.
He headed north again, and just a few miles outside Modesto, he saw the exit for Hammett Road. He left the freeway again and followed Hammett west and deep into a grove of almond trees planted in perfect lines, their dark trunks rising from the flooded irrigation plain. The water was so still that it looked like the trees were growing out of a vast mirror.
The Black Box hb-18 Page 22