The Black Box (30 page)

The dog trotted behind the pilot for a few yards but then suddenly stopped and turned directly toward the spot where Bosch was hiding. It was a big dog, but it was too dark for Bosch to identify a breed. He heard it growl first and then it started running toward him.

Bosch froze as the animal quickly covered the ground between them. He knew there was nowhere he could move. The mud was behind him. He wouldn’t make it two steps. He crouched lower and closer to the embankment, thinking that maybe the angry dog would jump over him and get mired in the mud.

And he pulled his weapon off his belt. If the dog didn’t stop, Bosch would be ready to stop it.

“Cosmo!”

The man had shouted from the pathway to the house. The dog stopped in midstride, its hind legs sliding out from beneath as it struggled to respond to the command.

“Get over here!”

The dog looked back at Bosch, and for a moment Harry thought he saw its eyes glowing red. It then took off, heading back to its master. It was chastised anyway.

“Bad boy! You don’t run off! And no barking!”

The man clapped the dog on the haunch as it ran by him. The dog moved ahead on the path and then crouched into a pose of submission. A moment ago it was going to tear Bosch’s throat out. Now Bosch felt sorry for it.

Harry waited until the man and his dog were inside the château before he headed back into the grove, hoping he would not get lost on the way back to his car.

Bosch got back to the Blu-Lite Motel by eleven. He went straight into the bathroom and stripped off his wet and muddy clothes, throwing them into the bathtub. He was about to step into the tub and turn on the shower when he heard his phone buzzing—he had turned the ringer setting down after the incident at the Steers.

He walked out of the bathroom with a towel as stiff as cardboard wrapped around his waist. The caller ID was blocked. Bosch sat down on the bed and took the call.

“Bosch.”

“Harry, it’s me. Are you all right?”

Chu.

“I’m fine. Why?”

“’Cause I haven’t heard from you and you didn’t respond to my emails.”

“I’ve been on the road all day and haven’t looked at email. I just got to the motel and am not sure about the Wi-Fi yet.”

“Harry, you get email on your phone.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s a pain with the password and all of that. It’s too small and I don’t like doing that. I text.”

“Whatever. You want me to tell you what I sent?”

Bosch was dead tired. The exhaustion of the day and the slog back and forth through the almond grove had set into his bones. The muscles in his thighs ached from what felt like ten thousand steps through the sucking mud. He wanted to take a shower and go to sleep, but he told Chu to go ahead.

“Basically two things,” his partner said. “First, I made a pretty solid connection between two of the names on the list you gave me.”

Bosch looked around for his notebook and realized he had left it in the car. He couldn’t go out for it now.

“Go ahead, what?”

“Well, you know how Drummond is running for Congress?”

“Yeah, I saw one sign today but nothing else.”

“That’s because the election is next year. So it’s not going to get hot and heavy for a while. In fact, he doesn’t even have an opponent yet. The incumbent is retiring and Drummond probably announced early to scare away the competition.”

“Yeah, whatever. What’s the connection?”

“It’s Cosgrove. Cosgrove personally and Cosgrove Agriculture are two of the biggest donors to his campaign. I pulled the initial campaign report that he filed when he announced.”

Bosch nodded. Chu was right, a good solid connection between two members of the conspiracy. Now all he needed was the conspiracy.

“Harry, you there? You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”

“Just about to. But that was good work, Dave. If he’s backing him now, he probably backed his two runs for sheriff as well.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too, but those records aren’t accessible online. You might be able to pull them from the county clerk’s office up there.”

Bosch shook his head.

“No,” he said. “This is a small town. I do that and word will get back to both of them. I don’t want that yet.”

“I get you. How is it going up there?”

“It’s going. Today was just a recon day. Tomorrow I’m going to start pushing things. What was the other thing? You said two things.”

There was a pause before Chu spoke, so Bosch knew the second bit of news was not going to be good.

“The Tool called me into his office today.”

Of course, Bosch thought. O’Toole.

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to know what I was working on, but I could also tell he was worried that you weren’t really on vacation. He asked if I knew where you went, stuff like that. I told him that as far as I knew, you were home painting the house.”

“Painting the house. Okay, I’ll remember that. You warned me about this in an email?”

“Yeah, right after lunch.”

“Don’t put stuff like that in an email. Just call me. Who knows how far O’Toole will go if he’s trying to blow somebody out of the unit.”

“Okay, Harry, I won’t. Sorry.”

Bosch got a call-waiting beep. He looked at his screen and saw it was his daughter.

“Don’t worry about it, Dave, but I gotta go now. My daughter’s calling. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Okay, Harry, get some sleep.”

Bosch switched over to his daughter. She spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper.

“How was your day, Dad?”

Bosch thought for a moment about what to say. “Actually, it was kind of boring,” he said. “How was yours?”

“Mine was boring, too. When are you coming home?”

“Well . . . let’s see, I have a little more work up here tomorrow. A couple interviews. So maybe not till Wednesday. Are you in your room?”

“Uh-huh.”

Meaning she was alone and hopefully out of earshot of Hannah. Bosch leaned back on the pillows. They were thin and hard but it felt like the Ritz-Carlton to him.

“So how’s it going with Hannah?” he asked.

“It’s okay, I guess,” she said.

“You sure?”

“She was trying to get me to go to bed early. Like ten o’clock or something.”

Bosch smiled. He knew the score. The inverse law of waking a teenage girl too early was to suggest she go to bed too early.

“I told her before I left to let you do your own thing. I can talk to her again, remind her that you know your own body clock.”

It was the argument she had put to him when he had made the same mistake as Hannah.

“No, it’s okay. I can deal.”

“What about dinner? Don’t tell me you ordered in pizza.”

“No, she made dinner and it was really good.”

“What was it?”

“It was chicken with like a yogurt sauce. And mac and cheese.”

“Gotta have mac and cheese.”

“She made it different from me.”

Meaning Maddie liked her own better. Bosch could feel himself falling off. He tried to rally.

“Yeah, well, the chef gets to choose. If you do the cooking, then you make it your way.”

“I know. I told her I’d cook tomorrow if I don’t have much homework.”

“Good, and maybe I’ll cook Wednesday.”

That made him smile and he guessed she was smiling, too.

“Yeah, ramen noodles. Oh boy, can’t wait.”

“Me neither. I gotta go to sleep now, baby. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She disconnected and Bosch heard the three beeps as the line went dead. He lay there, unable to get up. The lights were still on but he closed his eyes. In seconds he was asleep.

Bosch dreamed of an endless march through the mud. But the almond trees were gone and replaced by burned-off stumps with jagged black branches reaching out to him like hands. In the distance, there was the sound of an angry dog barking. And no matter how quickly Bosch moved, the dog was getting closer.

28

B
osch was dragged from a deep sleep by his phone buzzing on his chest. His first thought was that it was his daughter, either in trouble or upset about Hannah for some reason. The bedside clock said 4:22
A.M.

He grabbed the phone but didn’t see the photo of Maddie, tongue sticking out at him, which came up on screen when she called. He checked the number on the screen and saw the 404 area code. Atlanta.

“This is Detective Bosch.”

He pulled himself up and looked around for his notebook, remembering again that it was in the car. He realized he was naked except for the towel wrapped around his waist.

“Yes, my name is Charlotte Jackson and you left a message for me yesterday. I didn’t get it until late last night. Is it too early there?”

Bosch’s head cleared. He remembered the call he got at the restaurant from Charlotte Jackson number four. This had to be Charlotte Jackson number three. It was the only outstanding callback. He remembered she lived on Ora Avenue in East Atlanta.

“That’s okay, Ms. Jackson,” he said. “I’m glad you called me back. As my message said, I’m a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. I work in the Open-Unsolved Unit, which is a cold-case squad, if that makes any sense to you.”

“I used to watch
Cold Case
on TV. It was a good show.”

“Okay, well, I’m working on an old homicide case and I’m trying to reach a Charlotte Jackson who served in the military during Desert Storm in nineteen ninety-one.”

There was a silence but Bosch waited for a response.

“Well . . . I did. I was there but I don’t know anybody in Los Angeles or anybody that got murdered. This is very strange.”

“Yes, I understand and I know this whole thing may seem confusing. If you would bear with me for a few questions, I think I’ll be able to make things a little clearer.”

He waited again for a response. None came.

“Ms. Jackson? Are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Go ahead with your questions. I don’t have a lot of time. I need to get going to work soon.”

“Okay, then, I’ll try to move quickly. First of all, is this your home number or a cell?”

“It’s a cell. It’s my only number.”

“Okay, and you said you were in the armed services and served during Desert Storm. What branch of the military was that?”

“U.S. Army.”

“Are you still in the army?”

“No.”

She said it like he had asked a stupid question.

“Where were you based stateside, Ms. Jackson?”

“Benning.”

Bosch had spent time at Fort Benning himself when he was in the military. It had been his last stop before Vietnam. He knew it was a two-hour drive from Atlanta, Anneke Jespersen’s first stop after flying to the United States. Bosch started feeling like he was getting close to something. Some hidden truth was about to come into the open. He tried to keep his voice at a constant measured tone.

“How long were you in the Persian Gulf?”

“About seven months total. First in Saudi for Desert Shield and then we moved into Kuwait for the ground war. Desert Storm. I was never actually in Iraq.”

“During that time did you ever go on leave and spend any time on the cruise ship called the
Saudi Princess
?”

“Of course,” Jackson said. “Practically everybody did at some point. What’s this have to do with a murder in L.A.? I really don’t understand why you called me, and like I said, I got work today, so—”

“Ms. Jackson, I assure you that this is a very legitimate call and you may be able to help us solve a murder. Can I ask, what do you do for a living now?”

“I work at the Justice Center of Atlanta. It’s in Inman Park.”

“Okay. Are you a lawyer?”

“No. God, no.”

That same tone, as if Bosch had asked a stupid or obvious question about her when he had never even spoken to her before.

“What do you do then at the Justice Center?”

“I work in mediation, and my boss doesn’t like it when I come in late. I should go now.”

Somehow Bosch had gone far afield from the central purpose of the interview. It rankled him whenever a step-by-step interview went off the pathway. He chalked it up to being yanked from sleep and thrown into the conversation.

“Just a few more questions. It’s very important. Let’s go back to the
Saudi Princess
. Do you remember when you were on the ship?”

“It was in March, right before my unit got sent home. I remember thinking I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known I’d be back in Georgia a month later. But the army didn’t tell me that, so I went on a seventy-two-hour leave.”

Bosch nodded. He was back on the path. He just needed to stay there.

“Do you remember being interviewed by a journalist? A woman named Anneke Jespersen?”

There was only a short pause before Jackson answered.

“The Dutch girl? Yes, I remember her.”

“Anneke was Danish. Are we talking about the same woman? A Caucasian blond, pretty, about thirty?”

“Yes, yes, I only did one interview. Dutch, Danish—I remember that name and I remember her.”

“Okay, where did she interview you, do you remember?”

“I was in a bar. I don’t remember which one, but it was near the pool. That’s where I hung out.”

“Do you remember anything about the interview besides that?”

“The interview? Not really. It was just a few quick questions.
She interviewed a bunch of us. And it was loud in there and people were drunk, you know?”

“Right.”

Now was the moment. The only question he really had to ask.

“Did you ever see Anneke again after that day?”

“Well, first I saw her the next night in the same place. Only she wasn’t working. She said she filed her story or sent her pictures in or something and now she had her own leave. She had two more days on the boat and she was off the clock.”

Bosch paused. That wasn’t what he had been expecting to hear. He was thinking about Jespersen’s trip to Atlanta.

“Why are you asking about her?” Jackson asked. “Is she the one that’s dead?”

“Yes, she’s dead, I’m afraid. She was murdered twenty years ago in L.A.”

“Oh, dear Lord.”