The Black Box (17 page)

“See you later, Pistol Pete.”

Bosch went to his computer as soon as he got to his desk. He had set an alarm at home for 4
A.M.
to check for email from Denmark, but there had been none. Now, as he opened his email, he saw a message from Mikkel Bonn, the journalist he had talked to.

Detective Bosch, I have spoken with Jannik Frej now and I have these answers in bold to your questions. 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?
Frej said she was on a story involving Desert Storm war crimes but it was her practice not to reveal fully her stories until she was sure. Frej does not know exactly who she was seeing or where she was going in the US. His last message from her was that she was going to LA for the story and she would report on riots if the BT would pay her separately. I asked many questions on this point and Frej insisted that she told him she was already going to LA on the war story but would report on the riots if the newspaper would pay. Does this help you?

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?
Frej does not have answers here.

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?
This was the start of the story but Frej does not know who Anneke went to see. He believes there may have been a war crimes investigation unit at the military base there.

The email seemed to be of little help. Bosch leaned back restlessly in his seat and stared at the computer screen. The barriers of distance and language were frustrating. Frej’s answers were tantalizing but incomplete. Bosch had to compose a response that led to more information. He leaned forward and started typing.

Mr. Bonn, thank you for this. Is it possible for me to speak directly to Jannik Frej? Can he speak English at all? The investigation is gathering speed and this particular process is moving too slowly, taking a whole day to receive answers to my questions. If I cannot speak directly to him, can we set up a conference call so that you can translate? Please respond as soon as

The phone on Bosch’s desk rang and he grabbed it without taking his eyes off his computer screen.

“Bosch.”

“This is Lieutenant O’Toole.”

Bosch turned and glanced toward the corner office. He could see through the open blinds that O’Toole was at his desk, looking directly back at him.

“What’s up, L-T?”

“Did you not see my note telling you I needed to see you immediately?”

“Yes, I got it last night but you were already gone. Today I didn’t realize you were here yet. I had to send an important email to Denmark. Things are—”

“I want you in my office.
Now
.”

“On my way.”

Bosch quickly finished typing the email and sent it. He then got up and went to the lieutenant’s office, surveying the squad room as he went. No one else was in yet, just O’Toole and him. Whatever was about to happen, there would be no independent witnesses.

As Bosch entered the office, O’Toole told him to sit down. Bosch did so.

“Is this about the Death Squad case? Because I—”

“Who is Shawn Stone?”

“What?”

“I said who is Shawn Stone?”

Bosch hesitated, trying to figure out what O’Toole was trying to do. He instinctively knew that the best move was to play it wide open and honest.

“He’s a convicted rapist serving a sentence at San Quentin.”

“And what is your business with him?”

“I don’t have any business with him.”

“Did you speak to him Monday when you were up there?”

O’Toole was looking at a single-page document that he held in both hands, elbows on his desk.

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you deposit one hundred dollars in his prison canteen account?”

“Yes, I did that, too. What’s—”

“Since you say you have no business with him, what is your relationship with him?”

“He’s the son of a friend of mine. I had some extra time up there, so I asked to see him. Previously, I had never met him before.”

O’Toole frowned, his eyes still on the paper he held between his two hands.

“So at taxpayers’ expense, you paid a visit to your friend’s son and dropped a hundred into his canteen account. Do I have that right?”

Bosch paused as he sized up the situation. He knew what O’Toole was doing.

“No, you don’t have anything right, Lieutenant. I went up there—at taxpayers’ expense—to interview a convict with vital information in the Anneke Jespersen case. I got that information and with time left before I had to return to the airport, I checked on Shawn Stone. I also made the deposit in his account. The whole thing took less than a half hour and it caused me no delay in my return to Los Angeles. If you are going to take a run at me, Lieutenant, you are going to need something more than that.”

O’Toole nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, we’ll let the PSB decide that.”

Bosch wanted to reach over and yank O’Toole across the desk by his tie. The PSB was the Professional Standards Bureau, the new name for Internal Affairs. A black rose by any other name smelled just as rotten to Bosch. He stood up.

“You are filing a one-twenty-eight on me?”

“I am.”

Bosch shook his head. He could not believe the shortsightedness of the move.

“Do you realize you are going to lose the entire room if you go ahead with this?”

He was talking about the squad room. As soon as the rest of the detectives learned that O’Toole was making a move on Bosch for something as trivial as a fifteen-minute conversation at San Quentin, the meager level of respect O’Toole enjoyed would collapse like a bridge made of toothpicks. Oddly, Bosch was more worried about O’Toole and his standing in the unit than about the PSB investigation that would follow his ill-advised move.

“That’s not my concern,” O’Toole said. “My concern is the integrity of the unit.”

“You are making a mistake, Lieutenant, and for what? For this? Because I wouldn’t let you kill my investigation?”

“I can assure you, one has nothing to do with the other.”

Bosch shook his head again.

“I can assure
you
that I will walk away from this, but you won’t.”

“Is that some kind of a threat?”

Bosch didn’t dignify that with a response. He turned and headed out of the office.

“Where are you going, Bosch?”

“I have a case to work.”

“Not for long.”

Bosch went back to his desk. O’Toole didn’t have the authority to suspend him. Police Protective League regulations were clear. A PSB investigation must lead to a formal finding and complaint before that could happen. But what O’Toole was doing would wind the clock tighter. He had a greater need than ever to keep his momentum.

When he got back to the cubicle, Chu was there at his desk with his coffee.

“How’s it going, Harry?”

“It’s going.”

Bosch sat down heavily in his desk chair. He hit the spacebar on his keyboard and the computer screen came back to life. He saw that he already had a reply from Bonn. He opened the email.

Detective Bosch, I will make contact with Frej and set up the phone call. I will get back to you with the details as soon as possible. I think at this point we should make our intentions clear. I am promising you confidentiality on this matter as long as you can assure me that I will have the exclusive first story when you make an arrest or wish to seek the public’s help, whichever comes first.

Are we agreed?

Bosch had known that his interaction with the Danish journalist would eventually come to this. He hit the return button
and told Bonn that he agreed to provide him with an exclusive once there was something in the case worth reporting.

He fired off the email with a hard strike on the send button, then swiveled his chair and looked back toward the squad lieutenant’s office. He could see O’Toole in there, still at his desk.

“What’s wrong, Harry?” Chu asked. “What did the Tool do now?”

“Nothing,” Bosch said. “Don’t worry about it. But I gotta go.”

“Go where?”

“To see Casey Stengel.”

“Well, you want some backup?”

Bosch stared momentarily at his partner. Chu was Chinese-American, and as far as Bosch could tell, he knew nothing about sports. He had been born long after Casey Stengel was dead. He seemed sincere in not knowing who the Hall of Fame baseball player and manager was.

“No, I don’t think I need backup. I’ll check in with you later.”

“I’ll be here, Harry.”

“I know.”

14

B
osch spent an hour roaming around Forest Lawn while waiting to pick up sandwiches at Giamela’s. Out of respect for his former partner Frankie Sheehan, he started at Casey Stengel’s last resting spot and then took the celebrity tour, passing stones etched with names like Gable and Lombard, Disney, Flynn, Ladd, and Nat King Cole as he made his way to the Good Shepherd section of the vast cemetery. Once there, he paid respects to the father he never knew. The stone said “J. Michael Haller, Father and Husband,” but Bosch knew that he was never accounted for in that family equation.

After a while he walked down the hill a bit to where it was flatter and the graves were closer together. It took him a while because he was working off a twelve-year-old memory, but eventually he found the stone that marked the grave of Arthur Delacroix, a boy whose case Bosch had once worked. A cheap plastic vase containing the dried stems of long-dead flowers sat next to the stone. They seemed to be a reminder of how the boy had been forgotten in life before being forgotten in death. Bosch picked up the vase and found a trash can for it on his way out of the cemetery.

He arrived at the Firearm Analysis Unit at 11
A.M.,
two still-warm submarine sandwiches from Giamela’s in a bag with sauce on the side. They went into a break room to eat, and Pistol Pete moaned after taking his first bite of meatball sub—so loudly that he drew two other firearm analysts to the room to see what was going on. Sargent and Bosch grudgingly shared their sandwiches with them, Bosch making friends for life.

When they got to Sargent’s worktable, Bosch saw that the Beretta he had brought in was already held in a vise with the left side angled up. The frame had already been polished smooth with steel wool in preparation for Sargent’s effort to raise the serial number.

“We’re ready to go,” Sargent said.

He pulled on a pair of heavy rubber gloves and a plastic eye shield and took his place on the stool in front of the vise. He then pulled the mounted magnifying glass over by its arm and snapped on the light.

Bosch knew that every gun legally manufactured in the world carried a unique serial number through which ownership as well as theft could be traced. People who wanted to hinder the tracing of a gun often filed the serial number off with a variety of tools or attempted to burn it off with acids.

But the manufacturing of the weapon and the stamping procedure involved in placing the serial number on it in the first place gave law enforcement a better-than-good chance of recovering the number. When a serial number is stamped on a gun’s surface during manufacture, the procedure compresses the metal below the letters and numbers. The surface may later be filed or acid burned, but it very often still leaves the compression pattern beneath. Various methods can be used
to draw the serial number out. One involves the application of a mixture of acids and copper salts that reacts to the compressed metal, revealing the numbers. Another involves the use of magnets and iron residue.

“I want to start with Magnaflux because if it works it’s quicker and it doesn’t damage the weapon,” Sargent said. “We still have ballistics work to do with this baby and I want to keep it in working order.”

“You’re the boss,” Bosch said. “And as far as I’m concerned, quicker is better.”

“Well, let’s see what we get.”

Sargent attached a large, round magnet on the underside of the gun, directly below the slide.

“First we magnetize . . .”

He then reached up to a shelf over the table and took down a plastic spray bottle. He shook it and then pointed it at the weapon.

“Now we go with Pistol Pete’s patented iron-and-oil recipe . . .”

Bosch leaned in close as Sargent sprayed the gun.

“Iron and oil?”

“The oil is thick enough to keep the magnetized iron suspended. You spray it on and then the magnet will draw the iron to the surface of the gun. Where the serial number was stamped and the metal is denser, the magnetic pull is greater. The iron should eventually line up as the number. In theory, anyway.”

“How long?”

“Not long. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we go with acid, but that will most likely damage the gun. So we don’t
want to do that until the ballistics work is finished. You have somebody lined up for that?”

“Not yet.”

Sargent was talking about the analysis that would confirm that the bullet that killed Anneke Jespersen was fired from the gun in front of them. Bosch was confident that it was, but it was necessary to have forensic confirmation. Bosch was knowingly going about this backwards to maintain his speed. He wanted that serial number so he could trace the gun, but he also knew that if Sargent’s oil-and-iron process didn’t work, he would have to slow things down and proceed in proper order. With O’Toole making his PSB complaint, the delay could effectively kill the forward progression of the case—just what O’Toole was hoping to do so that he could bask in the glow of approval from the chief.

“Well, then, let’s hope this works,” Sargent said, bumping Bosch out of these thoughts.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “So should I wait, or do you want to call me?”

“I like to give it about forty minutes. You can wait if you want.”

“Tell you what, call me as soon as you know.”