The Black Box (18 page)

“You got it, Harry. Thanks for the sub.”

“Thanks for the work, Pete.”

There had been times in Bosch’s career when he knew the phone number of the Police Protective League’s Defense Assistance Office by heart. But back in his car, Bosch opened his phone to talk with a defense rep in regard to the O’Toole matter and realized that he had forgotten the number. He thought
for a moment, hoping it would come to him. Two young criminalists moved through the parking lot, the wind lifting their white lab coats. He guessed that they were crime scene specialists, because he didn’t know them. He rarely worked live crime scenes anymore.

Before the League number came back to him, his phone started to buzz in his hand. The ID showed a procession of numbers following a plus sign. He knew it was an international call.

“Harry Bosch.”

“Yes, Detective, it is Bonn. I have Mr. Jannik on the line. Can you talk with him? I can translate.”

“Yes, hold on for a moment.”

Bosch put the phone down on the seat while he pulled out a notebook and pen.

“Okay, I’m back. Mr. Jannik, are you there?”

There was what he assumed was a repeat of his question in Danish and then a new voice responded.

“Yes, good evening, Inspector.”

There was a heavy accent but Jannik was understandable.

“You must forgive my words. My English is very poor.”

“Better than my Danish. Thank you for talking to me, sir.”

Bonn translated, beginning a halting thirty-minute conversation that provided Bosch with little in the way of information that helped make Anneke Jespersen’s journey to Los Angeles any clearer. Jannik did provide details about the photojournalist’s character and skills, her determination to follow stories, no matter the risk and opposition. But when Bosch tried to key in on the war crimes she was investigating, Jannik could provide no knowledge of what the crimes were, who
committed them, or where the story came from. He reminded Bosch that Anneke was a freelancer, and therefore she would always be on guard against revealing her story to a newspaper editor. She had been burned too often by editors who listened to her story pitches, said no thanks, and then assigned their own salaried reporters and photographers to the story.

Bosch grew increasingly frustrated with the slow-paced translation process as well as with what he was hearing when Jannik’s answers were turned into English. He ran out of questions and realized he had written nothing in his notebook. As he tried to think about what else to ask, the two other men continued talking in their native language.

“What is he saying?” Bosch finally asked. “What are you two talking about?”

“He is frustrated, Detective Bosch,” Bonn said. “He liked Anneke very much and would like to be of great help to you. But he does not have the information you need. He is frustrated because he knows you are frustrated also.”

“Well, tell him not to take it personally.”

Bonn translated and Jannik started giving a long answer in return.

“Let’s work backwards,” Bosch said, cutting them off. “I know a lot of reporters over here. They’re not war correspondents but I’m sure reporters work the same way. Usually one story leads to another. Or, if they find somebody they trust, then they keep going back to the well. That means that they go back to that same person for other stories. So, see if he remembers the last few stories he worked on with Anneke. I know she was in Kuwait the year before but ask him . . . just see if he remembers what stories she worked on.”

Bonn and Jannik then started a long back-and-forth. Bosch could hear one of them typing and guessed it was Bonn. While he waited for the translation into English, he got a call-waiting beep on his phone. He checked the ID and saw the call was coming from the Firearms Analysis Unit. Pistol Pete. Bosch wanted to take the call immediately but decided to finish the interview with Jannik first.

“Okay, I have it,” Bonn said. “I looked it up in our digital archives. In the year previous to her death, as you say, Anneke was reporting and sending photos from Kuwait during Desert Storm. Several stories and photos we bought at the
BT
.”

“Okay. Anything about war crimes or atrocities, things like that?”

“Uh . . . no, I see nothing that is like that. She wrote stories about the people’s side of it. The people in Kuwait City. She had three photo essays . . .”

“What do you mean, ‘the people’s side’?”

“Life under fire. About the families who lost members. Stories like that.”

Bosch thought for a moment.
Families who lost members
. . . He knew that war crimes were so often atrocities committed against the innocents caught in the middle.

“I’ll tell you what,” he finally said. “Can you send me the links to the stories you’re looking at there?”

“Yes, I will do that. You will have to translate them.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How far back do you want me to go from her last story?”

“How about a year?”

“A year. Okay. That will be many stories.”

“That’s okay. Does Mr. Jannik have anything else? Can he remember anything else?”

He waited for the final question to be translated. He wanted to go. He wanted to get back to Pistol Pete.

“Mr. Jannik will think more about this,” Bonn said. “He makes a promise to check the website to see if he remembers more.”

“What website?”

“For Anneke.”

“What do you mean? There’s a website?”

“Yes, of course. It was made by her brother. He made this as a memorial for Anneke and he has many of her photographs and stories on there, you see.”

Bosch was silent a moment because he was embarrassed. He could blame it on Anneke’s brother for not telling him about the website but that would be passing the buck. He should have been savvy enough to ask.

“What is the web address?” he asked.

Bonn told him, spelling it out, and now Bosch finally had something to write down.

It was faster calling than going back in and having to get through security. Pistol Pete answered in two rings.

“It’s Bosch. Did you get something?”

“I told you on the message,” Sargent said.

His voice was flat. Bosch took it as bad news.

“I didn’t listen to it. I just called you back. What happened?”

Bosch held his breath.

“It’s pretty good news, actually. Got it all except for one digit. That narrows it down to ten possibilities.”

Bosch had worked previous gun cases where he had a lot less to go with. He still had his notebook out and he told Sargent to give him what he’d come up with off the gun. He wrote it down and read it back to confirm.

BER0060_5Z

“It’s that eighth digit, Harry,” Sargent said. “It wouldn’t come up. I’ve got a slight crescent at the top, so I’m leaning toward it being another zero or a three, eight, or nine. Something with a crescent on top.”

“Got it. I’m on my way back to the office and will run it through the box. Pistol Pete, you came through. Thank you, man.”

“Anytime, Harry. Anytime you bring the Giamela’s!”

Bosch disconnected the call and started the car. He then called his partner, who took the call at his desk. Bosch read him the Beretta serial number and told him to start tracing all ten possibilities for the full number. The place to start was the California DOJ database because Chu could access it and it would track all weapons sold in the state. If there was no hit there, they would have to request the trace through the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That would slow things down. The feds weren’t the fastest movers and the ATF had been rocked by a series of scandals and blunders that had also served to slow down action on requests from local law enforcement.

But Bosch stayed positive. He’d gotten lucky with Pistol Pete and the serial number. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t hold.

He pulled into heavy traffic on San Fernando Road and started south. He wasn’t sure how long it would take him to get back to the PAB.

“Hey, Harry?” Chu said, his voice low.

“What?”

“Somebody from IA came around looking to talk to you.”

So much for his luck holding. O’Toole must’ve hand-delivered the complaint to the PSB—still called IA or IAD by most cops, despite the official name change.

“What was his name? Is he still there?”

“It was a she and she said her name was Detective Mendenhall. She went in with O’Toole and closed the door for a little bit and then I think she left.”

“Okay, I’ll deal with it. Run that number.”

“Will do.”

Bosch disconnected. His lane was not moving and he could not see ahead because the Humvee in front of him blocked his view. He blew out his breath and honked the car horn in frustration. He felt that more than his luck was suddenly ebbing away. His momentum and positive attitude were eroding. It suddenly felt like it was getting dark out.

15

C
hu was not in the cubicle when Bosch got back to the PAB. He checked the clock on the wall and saw that it was only 3
P.M.
If his partner had left for the day early to make up for the long hours the day before and without running the serial numbers through the DOJ computer, Bosch would be livid. He stepped over and hit the space bar on Chu’s keyboard. The screen lit but it was his password gateway. He scanned Chu’s desk for a printout of a DOJ gun registry form but saw nothing. Rick Jackson’s cubicle was on the other side of the four-foot separation wall.

“You seen Chu?” Bosch asked him.

Jackson straightened up in his chair and looked around the squad room as if he would be able to recognize Chu, whereas Bosch could not.

“No . . . he was here. I think he might’ve gone to the head or something.”

Bosch glanced into the lieutenant’s office just to make sure Chu wasn’t closeted with O’Toole. He wasn’t. O’Toole was hunched over his desk, writing something.

Bosch moved over to his own desk. There were no printouts
left for him but he did see a card left by Nancy Mendenhall, detective III, of the Professional Standards Bureau.

“So, Harry . . .,” Jackson said in a low voice. “I hear the Tool filed a beef on you.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it bullshit?”

“Yeah.”

Jackson shook his head.

“I figured. What an ass.”

Jackson had been around longer than anybody in the squad except Bosch. He knew that the play by O’Toole would ultimately hurt him more than it would Bosch. Now nobody in the squad would trust him. Nobody would tell him more than the minimum required. Some supervisors inspired their squad’s best work. Now the detectives of the Open-Unsolved Unit would give their best effort in spite of the man in charge.

Bosch pulled his chair out and sat down. He looked at Mendenhall’s card and considered calling her, confronting the bullshit beef head-on and dealing with it. He opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out the old leather address book he’d had for going on three decades. He found the number he could not remember before and called the League’s Defense Assistance line. He gave his name, rank, and assignment within the department and said he needed to speak to a defense rep. The unit’s supervisor told him there wasn’t a rep available at the moment but that he would get a call back without delay. He almost pointed out that there was already a delay but just thanked the supervisor and disconnected.

Almost immediately a shadow loomed over his desk, and
Bosch looked up to see O’Toole hovering. He had his suit jacket on, and that told Bosch he was probably heading up to the tenth floor.

“Where have you been, Detective?”

“At the gun shop running ballistics.”

O’Toole paused as if committing the answer to memory so he could check on Bosch’s veracity later.

“Pete Sargent,” Bosch said. “Call him. We had lunch, too. Hope that wasn’t against the rules.”

O’Toole shrugged off the shot and leaned forward, tapping his finger on Mendenhall’s card on the desk.

“Call her. She needs to set up an interview.”

“Sure. When I get to it.”

Bosch saw Chu come through the doorway from the exterior hallway. He stopped when he saw O’Toole in the cubicle, acted like he had suddenly forgotten something, and pirouetted and went back out through the door.

O’Toole didn’t notice.

“It was not my intention to have a situation like this,” he said. “My hope had been to promote strong and trusting relationships with the detectives in my squad.”

Bosch replied without looking up at O’Toole.

“Yeah, well, that didn’t last long, did it?” he said. “And it’s not
your
squad, Lieutenant. It’s just the squad. It was here before you came and it will be here after you’re gone. Maybe that’s where it turned south on you, when you didn’t understand that.”

He said it loud enough for some of the others in the squad to hear it.

“If that sentiment had come from someone without a file
drawer full of past complaints and internal investigations, I might be insulted.”

Bosch leaned back in his chair and finally looked up at O’Toole.

“Yeah, all of those complaints and yet I’m still sitting here. And I’ll still be sitting here after they’re finished with yours.”

“We’ll see.”

O’Toole was about to walk away but he couldn’t help himself. He put a hand on Bosch’s desk and leaned down to speak in a low, venomous voice.

“You are the worst kind of police officer, Bosch. You are arrogant, you are a bully, and you think the laws and regulations simply don’t apply to you. I’m not the first to attempt to rid this department of you. But I will be the last.”

Finished having his say, O’Toole took his hand off the desk and rose to his full height. He straightened his jacket by pulling it down from the bottom with a sharp tug.

“You left something out, Lieutenant,” Bosch said.

“What was that?” O’Toole asked.

“You forgot that I close cases. Not for the stats you send up to the tenth-floor PowerPoint shows. For the victims. And their families. And that’s something you’ll never understand because you’re not out there like the rest of us.”