The Black Box

19

Wingo opened the file and read her own notes before going any farther.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said.

“Do I need to take notes or are you eventually going to give me that file?” Bosch asked.

“It’s all yours. Just let me use it to tell the story.”

“Then, go ahead.”

Bosch tried to remember exactly what he had told Rachel Walling about the case. Had he told her that Anneke Jespersen had covered Desert Storm? Had she told Wingo? Even if Wingo had known, it wouldn’t have changed the trace and she couldn’t have known how this one piece of information—that the gun went missing in Iraq—turned things in a new direction for Bosch.

“Let’s begin at the start,” Wingo said. “The ten serial numbers you gave me belong to a lot manufactured in Italy in nineteen eighty-eight. Those ten weapons were among three thousand weapons manufactured and sold to the Government of Iraq’s Ministry of Defense. Delivery of the weapons cache was on February first, nineteen eighty-nine.”

“Don’t tell me, the trail disappears after that?”

“No, actually not quite yet. The Iraqi Army kept some limited records that we have gotten access to since the second Persian Gulf War. A little benefit that came from the distribution of records confiscated from Saddam Hussein’s palaces and military bases. Remember the search for weapons of mass destruction? Well, they might not have found any WMDs but they found a shit pile of records involving lesser weapons. We eventually got access to it.”

“Good for you. What did they tell you about my gun?”

“The entire shipment of guns from Italy was distributed to the Republican Guard. The RG were the elite soldiers. Do you know the history of what happened back then?”

Bosch nodded.

“I know the basics. Saddam invaded Kuwait, and after the atrocities started, the Allied forces said, enough.”

“Right, Saddam invaded in nineteen ninety, right after receiving these weapons. So I think the obvious conclusion is that he was outfitting for the invasion.”

“So the gun went to Kuwait.”

Wingo nodded.

“Most likely, but we can’t be sure. That’s where the records stop.”

Bosch leaned back and looked up at the sky. He suddenly remembered he’d asked Rick Jackson to watch over him. He didn’t think it was necessary anymore and his eyes searched the glass surface of the PAB. The reflection of the sun on the glass coupled with Bosch’s tight angle prevented him from seeing anything. He held his hand up and made the okay sign. He hoped Jackson would get the message and stop wasting his time.

“What’s that?” Wingo asked. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I had some guy checking on me because you were so spooky about me coming alone and everything. I just told him it was okay.”

“Thanks a lot.”

Bosch smiled at her sarcasm. She handed him the file. Her report was complete.

“Look, I’m a paranoid guy, and you hit the right buttons,” Bosch said.

“Sometimes paranoia is a good thing,” Wingo replied.

“Sometimes. So what do you think happened to the gun? How did it get over here?”

Bosch was working on his own answers to those questions but wanted to hear Wingo’s take before she left. After all, she worked for the federal agency charged with monitoring firearms.

“Well, we know what happened in Kuwait during Desert Storm.”

“Yeah, we went over there and kicked the shit out of Saddam’s soldiers.”

“Right, the actual war lasted less than two months. The Iraqi Army first retreated to Kuwait City and then tried to make a run back across the border to Basra. Lots were killed and even more were captured.”

“I think that route was called the Highway of Death,” Bosch said, remembering the story and photos filed by Anneke Jespersen.

“That’s right. I Googled all of this yesterday. There were hundreds of casualties and thousands of captives on that one road alone. They put the captives in buses and their weapons in trucks and shipped both out to Saudi Arabia, where they had set up the POW camps.”

“So my gun could have been on one of those trucks.”

“That’s right. Or it could’ve belonged to a soldier who didn’t make it out alive, or who did make it to Basra. There is no way to tell.”

Bosch thought about this for a few moments. Somehow a gun from the Iraqi Republican Guard ended up in Los Angeles the following year.

“What happened to the captured weapons?” he asked.

“The weapons were stockpiled and destroyed.”

“And nobody recorded serial numbers?”

Wingo shook her head.

“It was war. There were too many weapons and not enough time to stand there and mark down serial numbers or anything like that. We’re talking truckloads of guns. So they were simply destroyed. Thousands of weapons at a time. They would haul them out into the middle of the desert, dump them in a hole, and then blow them to bits with high-grade explosives. They’d let ’em burn for a day or two and then push sand over the hole. Done deal.”

Bosch nodded.

“Done deal.”

He continued grinding on it. Something was out on the periphery of his thoughts. Something that connected, that would help bring it all into focus. He was sure of it but he just couldn’t see it clearly.

“Let me ask you something,” he finally said. “Have you seen this before? I mean a gun from over there showing up over here in a case. A gun that was supposedly seized and destroyed.”

“I checked on that very question this morning, and the answer is that we have seen it. At least one time that I could find. Just not exactly in this way.”

“Then in what way?”

“There was a murder at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in ’ninety-six. A soldier killed another soldier in a drunken rage over a woman. The gun he used was also a Beretta model ninety-two that had belonged to Saddam’s army. The soldier in question had served in Kuwait during Desert Storm. During his confession, he said that he had taken it off a dead Iraqi soldier and later smuggled it home as a souvenir. I couldn’t find in the records I reviewed how that was done, however. But he did get it stateside.”

Bosch knew that there were many different ways to get souvenir weapons home. The practice was as old as the army itself. When he had served in Vietnam, the easy way was to break the gun down and mail the parts home separately over the course of several weeks.

“What are you thinking, Detective?”

Bosch chuckled.

“I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking that I have to figure out who brought that gun over here. My victim was a journalist and photographer. She covered that war. I read a story she wrote on the Highway of Death. I saw her photos . . .”

Bosch had to consider that Anneke Jespersen had brought the gun she was killed with to Los Angeles. It seemed unlikely, but he could not discount the fact that she had been in the same place the gun was last accounted for.

“When did they start using metal detectors at airports?” he asked.

“Oh, that goes way back,” Wingo said. “That started with all the hijackings in the seventies. But scanning checked baggage is different. That is much more recent and it’s not very consistent either.”

Bosch shook his head.

“She traveled light. I don’t think she was the type who checked bags.”

He couldn’t see it. It didn’t make sense that Anneke Jespersen had somehow picked up a dead or captured Iraqi soldier’s gun and smuggled it home and then again into the United States, only to be killed with it.

“That doesn’t sound promising,” Wingo said. “But if you could put together a census of the neighborhood where your victim was killed, you could find out who served in the military and in the Persian Gulf War. If there was someone living in the vicinity of the murder who had just come back . . .

“You know a lot was said back then about Gulf War Syndrome, exposure to chemicals and heat. A lot of incidents of violence back home were attributed to that war. The soldier at Fort Bragg—that was his defense.”

Bosch nodded but he was no longer listening to Wingo. Things were suddenly coming together, words and pictures and memories . . . visions of that night in the alley off Crenshaw. Of soldiers lining the street. Of black-and-white photos of soldiers on the Highway of Death . . . the blown-up barracks in Dhahran and the smoking hulk of an army Humvee . . . the lights on the Humvee they brought into the alley . . .

Bosch leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and ran his hands back through his hair.

“Are you all right, Detective Bosch?” Wingo asked.

“I’m fine. I’m good.”

“Well, you don’t look it.”

“I think they were there . . .”

“Who was where?”

His hands still on top of his head, he realized he had spoken out loud. He turned to look at Wingo over his shoulder. He didn’t answer her question.

“You did it, Agent Wingo. I think you opened the black box.”

He stood up and looked down at her.

“Thank you and thank you to Rachel Walling. I need to go now.”

He turned and headed back toward the doors of the PAB. Wingo called after him.

“What’s the black box?”

He didn’t answer. He kept moving.