The Black Box (10 page)

I hope you can find killer. It means very much to me. My sister was a twin of mine. I miss very much.

Henrik

PS: Anneke Jespersen was not on vaction. She was on th story.

Bosch stared at the last line for a good long while. He assumed that Henrik had meant
vacation
instead of
vaction
. His postscript seemed to be a direct response to something in Bosch’s original email, which was copied at the bottom of the message.

Dear Mr. Jespersen, I am a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. I have been assigned to continue the investigation of your sister Anneke’s murder on May 1, 1992. I do not wish to disturb you or cause you any further grief, but it is part of my duty as investigator to inform you that I am actively pursuing new leads in the case. I apologize for not knowing your language. If you are able to communicate in English, please respond to this message or call me at any of the numbers below.

It has been 20 years since your sister came to this country for a vacation and lost her life when she diverted to Los Angeles to cover a city in flames for her newspaper in Copenhagen. It is my hope and obligation to finally put this case to rest. I will do my
best and look forward to communicating with you as I go.

It seemed to Bosch that Henrik’s reference to
vaction
and
th story
was not necessarily a reference to the riots. Henrik could have been saying that his sister had come to the United States to pursue a story and had diverted from that to the riots in Los Angeles.

It was all semantics and conjecture until Bosch actually talked to Henrik directly. He looked up at the wall clock and did some calculating. It was shortly after 4
P.M.
in Copenhagen. He had a good chance of catching Henrik at the hotel.

His call was answered right away by a front-desk clerk who told him that he had missed Henrik, who had just gone home for the day. Bosch left his name and number but no message. After hanging up he sent an email to Henrik asking him to call as soon as possible, day or night.

Bosch pulled the case records out of his battered briefcase and started a fresh read-through, this time with everything filtered through a new hypothesis—that Anneke Jespersen was already working a story when she came to the United States.

Soon things started to fall into place. Jespersen had packed light because she
wasn’t
on vacation. She was working and she brought work clothes. One backpack and that was it. So she could travel quickly and easily. So she could keep moving, chasing the story—whatever the story was.

Tilting the angle brought to light other things he had missed. Jespersen was a photographer and journalist. She shot stories. She wrote stories. But no notebook was found with the body or among the belongings from her motel room. If she
was on a story, shouldn’t there be notes? Shouldn’t there be a notebook in one of the pockets of her vest or in her backpack?

“What else?” Bosch said out loud, then looked around the squad room to make sure he was still alone.

What else was missing? What should she have been carrying? Bosch carried out a mental exercise. He envisioned himself in a motel room. He was leaving, pulling the door locked behind him. What would he have in his pockets?

He thought about this for a while and then something came to him. He quickly turned pages in the file until he found the coroner’s property list. It was a handwritten list of all items found on the body or in the victim’s clothing. It listed the clothing items as well as a wallet, loose money, and jewelry consisting of a watch and a modest silver neck chain.

“No room key,” he said aloud.

This meant one of two things to Bosch. One was that she had left her room key in her rental car and it had been taken when the car was broken into. The other, more likely conclusion was that someone had murdered Jespersen and taken her motel room key from her pocket.

He double-checked the list and then went to the plastic sleeves containing the Polaroid photos he had taken himself twenty years before. The faded photos showed various angles of the crime scene, the body as it had been found. Two of the shots were close-ups of the torso and clearly showed the victim’s pants. The top of the left pocket showed the white lining. Bosch had no doubt that the pocket had been pulled out when someone had rifled the victim’s pockets and taken her motel-room key while leaving behind jewelry and cash.

The motel room had then most likely been searched. For
what was not clear. But not a single notebook or even a piece of paper had been found among the belongings turned over by the motel staff to the police.

Bosch stood up because he was too tense to keep sitting. He felt he was onto something but he had no idea what and whether it ultimately had anything to do with Anneke Jespersen’s murder.

“Hey, Harry.”

Bosch turned from his desk and saw his partner arriving at the cubicle.

“Morning.”

“You’re in early.”

“No, the usual time. You’re in late.”

“Hey, did I miss your birthday or something?”

Bosch looked at Chu for a moment before answering.

“Yeah, yesterday. How’d you know that?”

Chu shrugged.

“Your tie. Looks brand-new and I know you’d never have gone for bright colors like that.”

Bosch looked down at his tie and smoothed it on his chest.

“My daughter,” he said.

“She’s got good taste, then. Too bad you don’t.”

Chu laughed and said he was going to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. It was his routine to report to the squad room each morning and then immediately take a coffee break.

“You want anything, Harry?”

“Yeah, I need you to run a name for me on the box.”

“I mean, do you want a coffee or something?”

“No, I’m good.”

“I’ll run the name when I get back.”

Bosch waved him off and sat back down at his desk. He decided not to wait. He went on the computer and started with the DMV database. Using two fingers to type, he plugged in the name Alex White and learned there were nearly four hundred licensed drivers with the name Alex, Alexander, or Alexandra White in California. Only three of them were in Modesto, and they were all men ranging in age from twenty-eight to fifty-four. He copied down the information and ran those three through the NCIC data bank, but none of them carried criminal records.

Bosch checked the clock on the wall of the squad and saw it was only eight-thirty. The John Deere franchise where the Alex White call had originated ten years earlier didn’t open for a half hour. He called directory assistance for the 209 area code but there were no listed numbers for an Alex White.

Chu came back and, entering the cubicle, placed his coffee cup on the same spot where Lieutenant O’Toole had sat the day before.

“Okay, Harry, what’s the name?” he asked.

“I already ran it,” Bosch said. “But you could run it through TLO and maybe get me phone numbers.”

“No problem. Give it to me.”

Bosch rolled his chair over to Chu’s side and gave him the page where he had written down the info on the three Alex Whites. TLO was a database the department subscribed to that collated information from numerous public and private sources. It was a useful tool and often provided unlisted phone numbers, even cell numbers, that had been provided on loan and employment applications. There was an expertise involved in using the database, knowing just how to
frame the request, and that was where Chu’s skills far exceeded Bosch’s.

“Okay, give me a few minutes here,” Chu said.

Bosch moved back to his desk. He noticed the pile of photos stacked on the right side. They were 3 × 5 shots of Anneke Jespersen’s press pass photo that he had ordered from the photo unit so that he could distribute them where needed. He held one up now and studied her face again, his eyes drawn to hers and their distant stare.

He then slid the photo under the sheet of glass that topped his desk. It joined the others. All women. All victims. Cases and faces he wanted always to be reminded of.

“Bosch, what are you doing here?”

Bosch looked up and saw it was Lieutenant O’Toole.

“I work here, Lieutenant,” he said.

“You have qualifying today and you can’t delay it again.”

“Not till ten, and they’ll be backed up anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll get it done.”

“No more excuses.”

O’Toole walked off in the direction of his office. Bosch watched him go, shaking his head.

Chu turned from his desk, holding out the page Bosch had given him.

“That was easy,” he said.

Bosch took the paper and checked it. Chu had written phone numbers under all three names. Bosch immediately forgot about O’Toole.

“Thanks, partner.”

“So, who’s the guy?”

“Not sure, but ten years ago somebody named Alex White
called from Modesto to ask about the Jespersen case. I want to find out why.”

“There’s no summary in the book?”

“No, just an entry in the chrono. Probably lucky somebody even took the time to put that in there.”

Bosch went to work on the phone, calling the three Alex Whites. He was both lucky and unlucky. He was able to connect with all three of the men but none of them acknowledged being the Alex White who had called about the Jespersen case. They all seemed thoroughly confused by the call from Los Angeles. With each call, he had asked not only about Jespersen but also about what the men did for a living, as well as whether they were familiar with the John Deere dealership where the call supposedly originated. The closest Bosch got to a connection was the last call.

The eldest Alex White, an accountant who owned several plots of undeveloped land, said he had purchased a tractor mower from the Modesto dealership about ten years earlier but could not provide the exact date without searching through his records at home. He happened to be golfing when Bosch called him but promised to get back to Harry with a date of purchase later in the day. Being an accountant, he was sure he still had the records.

Bosch hung up. He had no idea whether he was just spinning his wheels but the Alex White call was a detail that bothered him. It was now after nine and he called the dealership from where the 2002 call had come.

Blind calling was always a delicate skill. Bosch wanted to proceed cautiously here and not blunder into something or give a potential suspect a heads-up that he was on the case. He
decided to run a play instead of being up-front about who he was and where he was calling from.

The call was answered by a receptionist and Bosch simply asked for Alex White. There was a pause at first.

“I don’t seem to have an Alex White on the employee list. Are you sure you want Cosgrove Tractor?”

“Well, this is the number he gave me. How long have you been in business?”

“Twenty-two years. Please hold.”

She didn’t wait for his reply. Bosch was placed on hold while she presumably handled another call. Soon she was back.

“We don’t have an Alex White. Can anyone else help you?”

“Can I speak to the manager?”

“Yes, who should I say is calling?”

“John Bagnall.”

“Hold please.”

John Bagnall was the phony name used by all members of the Open-Unsolved Unit when they were working phone plays.

The call transfer went through quickly.

“This is Jerry Jimenez. How can I help you?”

“Yes, sir, this is John Bagnall and I am just checking an employment application that says Alex White was an employee of Cosgrove Tractor from two thousand to two thousand four. Is that something I can get confirmed?”

“Not through me. I was here then but I don’t remember any Alex White. Where did he work?”

“That’s just the thing. It doesn’t say specifically where he worked.”

“Well, I don’t see how I can help you. Back then I was sales manager. I knew everybody who worked here—just like now—and there was no Alex White. This isn’t that big an operation, you know. We’ve got sales, service, parts, and management. It only adds up to twenty-four people, including myself.”

Bosch repeated the phone number Alex White had called from and asked how long the dealership had had it.

“Since forever. Since we opened in nineteen ninety. I was here.”

“I appreciate your time, sir. Have a good day.”

Bosch hung up, more curious than ever about the Alex White call of 2002.

Bosch lost the rest of the morning to his prescheduled semiannual weapon qualification and policy training. He first sat through an hour of classroom work where he was updated on the latest court rulings pertaining to police work and the LAPD policy changes that resulted. The hour also included reviews of recent police shootings with discussion of what went wrong or right in each incident. He then made his way to the range, where he had to shoot in order to keep his weapon qualification. The range sergeant was an old friend who asked about Harry’s daughter. It gave Bosch an idea for something to do with Maddie over the weekend.

Bosch was crossing back through the parking lot, heading to his car and thinking about where he would grab lunch, when Alex White called him back from Modesto with information on his tractor purchase. He told Bosch that he had become so intrigued by the out-of-the-blue call that morning
that he quit his golf game after just nine holes. He also noted that his score of fifty-nine was also a factor in the decision.

According to the accountant’s records, White had purchased the tractor-mower at Cosgrove Tractor on April 27, 2002, and picked it up May 1, the tenth anniversary of Anneke Jespersen’s murder and the same day someone claiming to be Alex White had called the LAPD from the dealership number to inquire about the case.

“Mr. White, I need to ask you again, on the day you picked up your tractor, did you call down here from the dealership to ask about a murder case?”

White laughed uneasily before answering.

“This is the craziest thing,” he said. “No, I did not call the LAPD. I have never called the LAPD in my life. Someone must have used my name and I can’t explain why, Detective. I’m at a loss.”