The Black Box

10

Chu was at his computer working on a Word document when Bosch got back to the squad room.

“What’s that?”

“Parole letter on the Clancy case.”

Bosch nodded. He was glad Chu was getting the letter done. The department was notified whenever a murderer convicted in one of its cases was coming up for a parole hearing. It was not required but the investigators who worked the case were invited to send letters of objection or recommendation to the parole board. The workload often prevented this from getting done but Bosch was usually a stickler about it. He liked to write letters that described the brutality of the murder in detail, hoping that the horror of the crimes would help sway the board to deny parole. He was attempting to pass this practice on to his partner and had given Chu the task of writing the letter on the Clancy murder, a particularly heinous sexually motivated stabbing.

“I should have something for you to read tomorrow.”

“Good,” Bosch said. “Did you run those names I gave you?”

“Yeah, not much there. Jimenez was totally clean and Banks just has a DUI conviction.”

“You sure?”

“That’s all I found, Harry. Sorry.”

Disappointed, Bosch pulled his chair out and sat down at his desk. It wasn’t that he expected the Alex White mystery to be solved on the spot, but he had been hoping for something more than a drunk driving conviction. Something he could chew on.

“You’re welcome,” Chu said.

Bosch looked back at him and turned his disappointment into annoyance.

“If you want to be thanked all the time for just doing your job, then you picked the wrong career.”

Chu didn’t respond. Bosch fired up his computer and was greeted with an email from Mikkel Bonn of the Berlingske Tidende. It had come in almost an hour earlier.

Detective Bosch: I have inquired further. Jannik Frej was the editor who worked with Anneke Jespersen because he was in charge of freelance projects. Mr. Frej did not speak directly to Los Angeles investigators and reporters in 1992 because his English skills were considered poor. Arne Haagan spoke at the time because his English skills were very high and he was editor of the newspaper.

I have made contact with Mr. Frej and his English is not good. I offer my services as go-between if you have questions for him. If this is of help to you I am happy to do this. Please just let me know your answer.

Bosch considered the offer. He knew there was an unspoken quid pro quo in Bonn’s seemingly innocent offer to help. He was a newspaperman and he was always looking for the story. Plus Bosch’s use of him as a go-between would give Bonn information that might be vital to the investigation. It was not a good place to be but Bosch felt the need to keep momentum going. He started typing a reply.

Mr. Bonn, I would like to take you up on your offer if you can promise me that the information Mr. Frej provides will be kept confidential until I tell you it is okay to use in a newspaper story. If you can agree to that, here is what I would like to ask:

Do you know if Anneke Jespersen flew to the United States to pursue a story?

If yes, what was the story about? What was she doing here?

What can you tell me about her destinations in the United States? She went to Atlanta and San Francisco before coming to L.A. Why? Do you know if she went to any other cities in the USA?

Before her U.S. trip she went to Stuttgart, Germany, and stayed in a hotel near the U.S. military base. Do you know why?

I think this is a good start and I would appreciate any information you can get in regard to Anneke’s trip here. Thank you for your help and once again please keep this information confidential.

Bosch reread the email before sending it. He tapped the send button and immediately felt a sense of regret about involving Bonn, a journalist he had never met and had had only one conversation with.

He turned away from the computer screen and checked the wall clock. It was almost four, which made it almost seven in Tampa. Bosch opened the murder book and got the number he had written on the inside cover for Gary Harrod, the now-retired detective who had run the Jespersen case for the Riot Crimes Task Force back in 1992. He had talked to Harrod when he had reopened the case. There had not been much to ask then but now there was.

Bosch wasn’t sure if the number he had for Harrod was a home, cell, or work phone. He had retired as a young man at twenty years in, moved to Florida, where his wife was from, and now ran a successful real-estate firm.

“This is Gary.”

“Uh, hey, Gary, this is Harry Bosch in L.A. Remember we talked about the Jespersen case last month?”

“Sure, Bosch, yes, of course.”

“Do you have a couple minutes to talk or are you eating dinner?”

“Dinner’s not for a half hour. Until then I’m all yours. Don’t tell me you solved the Snow White case already.”

Bosch had told him in their first call that Anneke had been nicknamed Snow White by his partner on the night of the murder.

“Not quite. I’m still fishing around on things. But a couple things have come up that I wanted to ask you about.”

“Go ahead, shoot.”

“Okay, the first thing is, the paper Jespersen worked for. Were you the one who made contact with the people in Denmark?”

There was a long pause as Harrod probed his memory of the case. Bosch had never worked directly with Harrod but he knew of him back when he was with the department. He had a reputation as a solid investigator. It was the reason Bosch had chosen to contact him out of all of the investigators who’d had a piece of the case in those early years. He knew Harrod would help if he could and that he wouldn’t hold back information.

Bosch always made the effort to touch base with the original investigators on cold cases. It was surprising how many were still infected with professional pride, reluctant to help another investigator solve a case they were unable to close themselves.

Not so with Harrod. In their very first conversation, he revealed his guilt over not closing out the Jespersen case and many of the other riot murders he was assigned to. He said the task force was overwhelmed by too many cases with too little evidence to pursue. Like the Jespersen case, most RCTF investigations were based on incomplete or almost nonexistent crime scene investigations. The lack of forensic evidence was crippling.

“Most cases, we didn’t know where to start,” Harrod had told Bosch. “We were running around in the dark. So we put up billboards and offered rewards and primarily that’s what we worked off of. But we didn’t get much, and at the end of the day we didn’t break any new ground. I don’t remember a single case that we closed. So frustrating. It was one of the reasons I pulled the pin at twenty. I had to get away from L.A.”

Bosch couldn’t help but think that the city and the department had lost a good man. His hope was that if he was able to close out the Jespersen case, then Harrod would find a measure of solace in that.

“I remember talking to somebody over there,” Harrod said. “It wasn’t her direct boss, because that person couldn’t speak English. So it was more of a general supervisor and I just got general info. I remember there was a uniform up in Devonshire who spoke the language—Danish—and we used him to make some calls over there.”

This was news to Bosch. There were no reports in the murder book about a phone interview with anyone other than Arne Haagan, the newspaper’s editor in chief.

“Who was interviewed, do you remember?”

“I think it was just other people on the newspaper staff, maybe family members, too.”

“Her brother?”

“Maybe, but I don’t remember, Harry. It was twenty years ago and a different life for me.”

“I understand. Do you remember who it was in Devonshire Division that you used on the calls?”

“It’s not in the book?”

“No, nothing in the book about any Danish-language interviews. It was just somebody in Devonshire patrol?”

“Yeah, some guy that was born over there and grew up here and knew the language. I don’t remember the name. Personnel found him for us. But look, if there are no reports in the book, then it didn’t add up to anything, Harry. I would’ve put it in.”

Bosch nodded. He knew Harrod was right. But it always bothered him when he heard about an investigative move that was not chronicled in the official record, the murder book.

“Okay, Gary, I’ll let you go. I just wanted to check that out with you.”

“You sure? Nothing else? Since you called me I’ve been thinking about the case all the time. That one and another one that still sticks, you know?”

“Which one was that? Maybe I can take a look if nobody’s gotten to it yet.”

Harrod paused again as his memory jumped from one case to another.

“I don’t remember the name,” he said. “It was a guy up in Pacoima. He was from Utah, staying in a shitty motel up there. He was part of a construction crew that traveled around the west, building strip malls. He was a tile setter, I remember that.”

“What happened?”

“We never knew. He was found head shot in the middle of the street about a block from his motel. I remember the TV was on in his room. He must have been watching on TV. You know, the city coming apart like that. And for whatever reason, he went outside to look. And that’s what always bothered me about that one.”

“That he went outside?”

“Yeah, that he went out. Why? The city was burning. There were no rules, just anarchy, and he left safety to go see it. As far as we could ever tell, somebody just drove by and popped him from a car. No witnesses, no motive, no evidence. It was a loser the day I got the case and I knew it. I remember talking to his parents on the phone. They were up in Salt Lake City. They couldn’t understand how this could’ve happened to their boy. They viewed L.A. like it was some other planet that he had gone to. It was beyond their concept.”

“Yeah,” Bosch said.

There was nothing else to say.

“Anyway,” Harrod said, shaking off the memory. “I better wash up, Harry. My wife’s making pasta tonight.”

“Sounds good, Gary. Thanks for your help.”

“What help?”

“You helped. Let me know if you think of anything else.”

“You got it.”

Bosch hung up and tried to think if he knew anybody who would have worked in Devonshire twenty years ago. Back then it was the quietest yet geographically largest police division, covering the entire northwest corner of the city in the San Fernando Valley. It was known as Club Dev because the station was new and the workload light.

Bosch realized that Larry Gandle, a former Open-Unsolved Unit lieutenant, had spent time in Devonshire in the nineties and might know who the Danish-speaking patrol officer was. Bosch called Gandle’s office. He was now the captain in charge of RHD.

Bosch’s call was put through without delay. Harry explained what and who he was looking for, and Gandle gave him the bad news.

“Yeah, you’re talking about Magnus Vestergaard, but he’s dead at least ten years now. Motorcycle accident.”

“Damn.”

“What did you need him for?”

“He did some Danish translation work on a case I’m looking at. I wanted to see what he remembered that’s not in the book.”

“Sorry about that, Harry.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

As soon as Bosch put down the phone, it rang while still in his hand. It was Lieutenant O’Toole.

“Detective, can you come into my office for a moment?”

“Sure thing.”

Bosch killed his computer screen and got up. A summons to O’Toole’s office was not a good thing. He felt several eyes in the squad room following him as he made his way to the corner office. It was bright inside. The blinds over the windows that looked out on the squad were open as well as the exterior windows that had a view of the Los Angeles Times Building. The previous lieutenant always kept these closed out of fear that the reporters were watching.

“What’s up, L-T?” Bosch asked.

“I’ve got something I want you to run with.”

“What do you mean?”

“A case. I got a call from an analyst named Pran in the Death Squad. He linked an open case from ’oh-six with a case from ’ninety-nine. I want you to handle it. It sounded good. Here’s his direct.”

O’Toole proffered a yellow Post-it with a phone number jotted on it. The Death Squad was the unofficial acronym of the new Data Evaluation and Theory Unit. It was part of a new form of cold case investigating called data synthesizing.

For the prior three years, the Death Squad had been digitizing archived murder books, creating a massive database of easily accessible and comparable information about unsolved killings. Suspects, witnesses, weapons, locations, word constructions—any and all of the myriad details of crime scenes and investigations—were constantly churning through the squad’s telephone booth–size IBM computer. It had provided a whole new line of investigation of cold cases.

Bosch didn’t reach out for the Post-it but his curiosity got the better of him.

“What’s the connection between the cases?”

“A witness. Same witness happened to see the shooter running away. Two contract hits, one in the Valley, one downtown, no seeming connection but the same witness both times. Sounds to me like this witness needs to be looked at from a whole new angle. Take the number.”

Bosch didn’t.

“What going on, Lieutenant? I’ve got momentum going on the Jespersen case. Why are you giving me this?”

“You told me yesterday that Jespersen was stalled.”

“I didn’t say it was stalled. I said it wasn’t a CBO case.”

Bosch suddenly realized what was going on. Something Jordy Gant had said connected with what O’Toole was trying to do. Plus he knew that the afternoon before, O’Toole had attended the weekly command staff meeting on the tenth floor. He turned and headed out of the office.

“Harry, don’t walk out, where are you going?”

Bosch spoke without turning back to look.

“Give it to Jackson. He needs a case.”

“I’m giving it to you. Hey!”

Bosch strode down the center aisle and out the door to the elevator lobby. O’Toole didn’t follow him, and that was a good thing. The two things Bosch had the least patience for were politics and bureaucracy. And he believed O’Toole was engaged in both—but not necessarily by his own choice.

He rode the elevator to the tenth floor and then strode through the open door of the chief of police’s suite. There were four desks in the front room. Uniformed officers sat behind three of them. Behind the fourth was Alta Rose, who was arguably the most powerful civilian working in the police department. She had been guarding the entrance to the chief of police’s office for nearly three decades. She was part pit bull and part sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Anybody who dismissed her as simply a secretary was mistaken. She kept the chief’s schedule and more often than not told him where to be and when.

Bosch had been summoned to the chief’s office enough times over the years that Rose recognized him on sight. She smiled sweetly at him as he approached her desk.

“Detective Bosch, how are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine, Ms. Rose. How are things up here?”

“I’m not sure they could be any better. But I am sorry, I don’t have you on the chief’s calendar today. Have I made a mistake?”

“No, no mistake, Ms. Rose. I was just hoping to see if Marty—I mean, if the chief—has five minutes for me.”

Her eyes flitted down for a moment to the multiple-line telephone on her desk. One of the line buttons was glowing red.

“Oh, dear, he’s on a call.”

But Bosch knew that line was always lit, just so Alta Rose could turn people away if need be. Harry’s former partner Kiz Rider had spent time working in the chief’s office and had told Bosch the secret.

“He also has an evening appointment he’s going to have to leave for as soon as—”

“Three minutes, Ms. Rose. Just ask him. I think he’s probably even expecting me.”

Alta Rose frowned but got up from her desk and disappeared behind the big door to the inner sanctum. Bosch stood waiting.

Chief Martin Maycock had come up through the ranks. Twenty-five years before, he had been an RHD detective assigned to Homicide Special. So was Bosch. They had never partnered but they had worked task-force cases together, most notably on the Dollmaker investigation, which ended when Bosch shot the infamous serial killer to death in his Silver Lake kill pad. Maycock was handsome and more than competent, and he had a name that was easily if awkwardly remembered. He used the media attention and celebrity from those big cases to launch his rise through the command structure of the department, culminating in his appointment by the police commission as chief.

The rank and file was at first buoyed by the elevation of a homegrown badge to the tenth floor. But three years into his appointment, the honeymoon was over. Maycock presided over a department crippled by a hiring freeze, a devastating budget crunch, and the various and sundry scandals that came along every few months. Crime had plummeted but it wasn’t garnering him any credit or political traction. Worse than that was that the rank and file had begun to view him as a politician more interested in getting on the six-o’clock news than showing up at roll calls and the scenes of cop shootings. An old nickname for the chief—Marty MyCock—had found a renaissance in the locker rooms, parking lots, and bars where cops gathered on or off duty.

For a long time Bosch had kept the faith, but the year before, he had inadvertently helped the chief win a treacherous political battle with a city councilman who was the department’s top critic. It was a setup in which Bosch had been used by Kiz Rider. She got a promotion out of it—she was now a captain running West Valley Division. But Bosch had not spoken to her or the chief since.

Alta Rose returned through the inner sanctum door and held it open for Bosch.

“You have five minutes with the chief, Detective Bosch.”

“Thank you, Ms. Rose.”

Bosch entered and found Maycock sitting behind a large desk festooned with police and sports tchotchkes and memorabilia. The office was large and included a large private balcony, an adjoining boardroom with a twelve-foot-long meeting table, and a sweeping view of the civic center.

“Harry Bosch, I had a feeling I might hear from you today.”

They shook hands. Bosch stayed standing in front of the great wide desk. He couldn’t deny that he liked his old colleague. He just didn’t like what he was doing and what he had become.

“Then, why did you use O’Toole? Why didn’t you just call me up? You called me up last year on that Irving thing.”

“Yeah, but that got messy. I went with O’Toole and now it’s messy again.”

“What do you want, Marty?”

“Do I have to say it?”

“She was executed, Marty. Put up against a wall and shot in the eye. And because she was white, you don’t want me to clear it?”

“It’s not like that. Of course I want you to clear it. But it’s a sensitive situation. If it comes out big that the only riot killing we clear during the twentieth-anniversary year is the white girl murdered by some gangbanger, then we’re going to have to deal with some ugly shit. It’s been twenty years but we haven’t come that far, Harry. You never know what could light the match again.”

Bosch turned from the desk and looked out through the glass at City Hall.

“You’re talking about public relations,” he said. “I’m talking about murder. What happened to everybody counting, no matter who they are? Or were. Do you even remember that from Homicide Special?”

“Of course I do and it still stands, Harry. I’m not asking you to drop the case. Just put some space in it. Wait a month, till after the first, clear it then and clear it quietly. And we’ll tell the family and leave it at that. If we’re lucky, the suspect will be dead and we won’t have to worry about a trial. Meantime, O’Toole told me he had a hot shot from the Death Squad that you can run with. Maybe that one will bring us the kind of attention we want.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I have a case I’m running with now.”

Maycock was losing patience with Bosch. His ruddy complexion was turning a deeper red.

“Put it on hold and go with the hot shot.”

“Did O’Toole tell you that if I clear this one, I may clear five or six others?”

Maycock nodded but dismissed the news with a wave of the hand.

“Yeah, gangbangers all, and none during the riots.”

“This was your idea, to go into these cases.”

“How was I to know that you’d be the only one to get some traction on a case and it would happen to be Snow White? Jesus Christ, the name alone, Harry. In fact, no matter what happens, stop calling her that.”

Bosch took a few steps around the room. He found an angle where the spire of City Hall was doubled in the reflection of the glass skin of the PAB’s northern wing. Fresh kills or cold cases, the pursuit of killers had to be relentless. It was the only way to go and the only way Bosch knew how to go. But when political and social considerations intruded, his patience always stretched thin.

“Goddamn it, Marty,” he said.

“I know how you feel,” the chief said.

Bosch finally looked back at him.

“No, you don’t. Not anymore.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion.”

“But not to work my case.”

“Again, that is not what I’m saying. You keep putting it in a way that is not—”

“It’s too late, Marty. It’s about to break.”

“Break how?”

“I needed information about my victim. I went to the paper she worked for and traded information. I’m working with a reporter on it. If I blow it off now, he’ll know why and it will be a bigger story for that than for me closing it.”

“You son of a bitch. What paper? In Sweden?”

“Denmark. She was from Denmark. But don’t think it’ll stay in Denmark. The media is global. The story may break over there but it will ping-pong right back here—eventually. And you’ll have to answer to why you killed the investigation.”

Maycock grabbed a baseball off his desk and started working it with his fingers like a pitcher breaking in a new ball.

“You can go now,” he said.

“Okay. And?”

“And just get the hell out. We’re done.”

Bosch paused, then started moving toward the door.

“I will keep all public relations issues in mind as I proceed,” he said.

It was his meager offering.

“Yes, you do that, Detective,” the chief said.

As he left the suite, Bosch thanked Alta Rose for getting him in.