The Black Box hb-18 Page 7
Chu came up next to him and studied the opening.
“Somebody small could easily slide through there and have access to the alley,” he said.
“What I was thinking,” Bosch replied.
It was stating the obvious. The question was whether the plank had come loose over time or had been a hidden portal back when Charles “2 Small” Washburn had lived here as a sixteen-year-old baby G looking for a shot at being real G.
Bosch told Chu to take a photo of the opening in the fence with his phone. He’d print it later and put it in the book. He then pushed the plank back into place and turned to survey the rest of the yard once more. He saw Latitia Settles standing in the open back door of the house, watching him through another iron gate. He knew that she had to be guessing that they weren’t really looking for Charles because he hadn’t paid child support.
6
Bosch came home to a birthday cake on the table and his daughter in the kitchen making dinner with instructions from a cookbook.
“Wow, smells good,” he said.
He had the Jespersen murder book under his arm.
“Stay out of the kitchen,” she said. “Go out on the deck till I tell you it’s ready. And put that work on the shelf—at least until after dinner. Turn on the music, too.”
“Yes, boss.”
The dining-room table was set for two. After putting the murder book literally on a shelf in the bookcase behind it, he turned on the stereo and opened the CD drawer. His daughter had already loaded the tray with five of his favorite discs. Frank Morgan, George Cables, Art Pepper, Ron Carter, and Thelonious Monk. He set it on random play and stepped out onto the deck.
Outside on the table, there was a bottle of Fat Tire waiting for him in a clay flowerpot filled with ice. This puzzled him. Fat Tire was one of his favorite beers, but he rarely kept alcohol in the house and knew he had not purchased any beer recently. His daughter, at sixteen, looked older than her years but not old enough to buy beer without getting her driver’s license checked.
He cracked open the bottle and took a long pull. It felt good going down, burning the back of his throat with its cold bite. It was a welcome relief after a day of walking the gun and narrowing in on Charles Washburn.
A plan had been set with the help of Jordy Gant. By the last roll call the next day, all patrol officers and gang units in South Bureau would have seen Washburn’s photo and been told he was a high-priority pickup. The legal cause would be the child-support warrant, but once Washburn was in custody, Bosch would be alerted and he would go see him with something else to talk about entirely.
Still, Bosch could not rest on a BOLO. He had work to do. Forgetting it was his birthday, he had brought the murder book home with the plan of combing through every page, looking for any reference to Washburn and anything else he had missed or not followed up on.
But now he was rethinking that plan. His daughter was making him a birthday dinner and that would be his priority. There could be nothing better in the world than to have her full attention.
Beer in hand, Bosch looked out across the canyon where he had lived for more than twenty years. He knew its colors and contours by heart. He knew the sound of the freeway from down at the bottom. He knew the trail the coyotes took into the deeper vegetation. And he knew he never wanted to leave this place. He was here till the end.
“Okay, it’s ready. I hope it’s good.”
Bosch turned. Maddie had slid the door open without him hearing it. He smiled. She had also slipped out of the kitchen and put on a dress for the sit-down meal.
“Can’t wait,” he said.
The food was already on the table. Pork chops and applesauce and roasted potatoes. A handmade cake had been placed to the side of the table.
“I hope you like it,” she said as they sat down.
“Smells great and looks great,” he said. “I’m sure I will.”
Bosch smiled broadly. She had not gone to such lengths on the previous two birthdays during which she had lived with him.
She held up her wineglass filled with Dr Pepper.
“Cheers, Dad.”
He held up his beer. It was almost empty.
“To good food and music, and most of all to good company.”
They clinked glasses.
“There’s more beer in the fridge if you want more,” she said.
“Yeah, where did that come from?”
“Don’t worry, I have ways.”
She narrowed her eyes like a schemer.
“That’s what I am worried about.”
“Dad, don’t start. Can you please enjoy the dinner I made?”
He nodded, letting it go—for the moment.
“I sure can.”
He started to eat, noticing as they began that “Helen’s Song” was coming from the stereo. It was a wonderful song and he could feel the love George Cables put into it. Bosch had always assumed that Helen was a wife or a girlfriend.
The blend of the perfectly sautéed pork with the apple was wonderful. But he had been wrong about it being simply applesauce. That would have been too easy. This was a warm apple reduction that Maddie had cooked on the stove. Like the filling of the apple pie from Du-par’s.
His smile came back.
“This is really delicious, Mads. Thank you.”
“Wait till you taste the cake. It’s marble, like you.”
“What?”
“Not like marble marble but, you know, the dark and light mixed together. Because of what you do and what you’ve seen.”
Bosch thought about that.
“I guess that’s the most profound food thing anybody’s ever said about me. I’m like a marble cake.”
They both laughed.
“I also have presents!” Maddie exclaimed. “But I didn’t have time to wrap them yet, so that comes later.”
“You really went all out. Thank you, baby.”
“You go all out for me, Dad.”
That made him feel good and somber at the same time.
“I hope I do.”
After the meal they decided to digest a bit before they attacked the marble cake. Madeline retreated to her bedroom to wrap gifts and Bosch took the murder book off the shelf. He sat down on the couch and noticed his daughter’s school backpack had been left on the floor by the coffee table.
He thought for a few moments about it, trying to decide whether he should wait till the end of the night, when she was in bed. He knew, however, she might take the backpack into her room then and the door would be closed.
He decided not to wait. He reached over and unzipped the smaller front compartment of the backpack. His daughter’s wallet was sitting right at the top. He knew it would be there because she didn’t carry a purse. He quickly opened the wallet—it had a peace sign embroidered on the outside—and checked its contents. She had a credit card he had given her for emergency use and her newly acquired driver’s license. He checked the DOB on it and it was legit. There were a couple receipts and gift cards from Starbucks and iTunes as well as a punch card for recording purchases of smoothies at a place in the mall. Buy ten, get the next one free.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
Bosch looked up. His daughter stood there. In each hand she was holding a wrapped gift for him. She had kept the marble motif going. The paper was black and white swirls.
“I, uh, wanted to see if you had enough money, and you don’t have any.”
“I spent my money on dinner. This is about the beer, isn’t it?”
“Baby, I don’t want you to get in trouble. When you apply to the academy, you can’t have any—”
“I don’t have a fake ID, okay? I got Hannah to get me the beer. Happy now?”
She dropped the presents on the table, whirled around, and disappeared down the hall. Bosch heard her bedroom door close hard.
He waited a moment and then got up. He went down the hall and knocked gently on her door.
“Hey, Maddie, come on, I’m sorr
y. Let’s have cake and forget about this.”
There was no reply. He tried the knob but the door was locked.
“Come on, Maddie, open up. I’m sorry.”
“Go eat your cake.”
“I don’t want to eat the cake without you. Look, I’m sorry. I’m your father. I have to watch out for you and protect you and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to get yourself in some kind of a jam.”
Nothing.
“Look, ever since you got your license, your freedom has expanded. I used to love taking you to the mall—now you drive yourself. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t making any kind of mistake that could hurt you down the line. I’m sorry I went about it the wrong way. I apologize. Okay?”
“I’m putting on my earphones now. I’m not going to hear anything else you say. Good night.”
Bosch restrained himself from shouldering the door open. He leaned his forehead against it instead and listened. He could hear the tinny sound of music coming from her earphones.
He walked back into the living room and sat on the couch. He took out his phone and texted an apology to his daughter using the LAPD alphabet. He knew she could decipher it.
Sam
Ocean
Robert
Robert
Young
Frank
Robert
Ocean
Mary
Young
Ocean
Union
Robert
David
Union
Mary
Boy
Adam
Sam
Sam
David
Adam
David
He waited for her return, but when there was no response, he took up the murder book and went to work, hoping immersion in the Snow White case would take him away from the parenting mistake he had just made.
The thickest report in the murder book was the investigators’ chronology, because it was a line-by-line accounting of every move made by detectives as well as every phone call and inquiry from the public about the case. The Riot Crimes Task Force had put up three billboards on the Crenshaw Boulevard corridor as a means of stirring public response to the unsolved Jespersen murder. The boards promised a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the killing. The boards and the prospect of a reward brought in hundreds of phone calls ranging from legitimate to completely bogus tips to complaints from citizens about the police department’s effort to solve the murder of a white woman when so many blacks and Latinos were the victims of unsolved murders during the riots. RCTF detectives dutifully noted each call in the chronology and cited any follow-up that was conducted. Bosch had moved quickly through these pages on his first survey of the murder book, but now he had names attached to the case and he wanted to study every page in the book to see if any names had come up before.
Over the next hour, Bosch combed through dozens of pages of the chronology. There was no mention of Charles Washburn or Rufus Coleman or Trumont Story. Most of the tips seemed useless at face value and Bosch understood why they’d been dismissed. Several callers gave other names but those suspects were dismissed upon follow-up investigation. In many instances, anonymous callers fingered innocent people, knowing that the police would investigate them and make their lives difficult until they were cleared, the whole exercise payback for something unrelated to the murder.
The calls noted in the chronology began to thin by 1993 and the closing of the task force and removal of the billboards. Once the Jespersen case was shifted to 77th Street Division homicide, the notations in the chronology became few and far between. Primarily, only Jespersen’s brother, Henrik, and a number of different reporters checked in on the case’s status from time to time. But one of the very last entries finally caught Bosch’s eye.
On May 1, 2002, the tenth anniversary of the murder, a call was noted in the chronology from someone named Alex White. The name meant nothing to Bosch but its entry in the chrono was followed by a phone number with a 209 area code. It was listed as a status inquiry. The caller wanted to know if the case had ever been closed.
There was nothing further noted in the entry as to what White’s interest in the case was. Bosch had no idea who White was but was intrigued by the area code. It wasn’t one of L.A.’s codes and Bosch couldn’t place it.
Harry opened his laptop, Googled the area code, and soon learned that it was assigned to Stanislaus County in the state’s Central Valley—250 miles from Los Angeles.
Bosch checked his watch. It was late but not that late. He called the number that followed Alex White’s name in the chrono. The line rang once and then went to a recording of a woman’s pleasant voice.
“You have reached Cosgrove Tractor, the Central Valley’s number-one John Deere dealership, located at nine-twelve Crows Landing Road in Modesto. We are convenient to the Golden State Highway and are open Monday through Saturday from nine to six. If you would like to leave a message, a member of our sales team will call you back as soon as possible.”
Bosch hung up before the beep, deciding that he would call back the next day during business hours. He also knew that Cosgrove Tractor might have nothing to do with the call. The number could have been assigned to a different business or individual back in 2002.
“Are you ready for your cake?”
Bosch looked up. His daughter had come out of her bedroom. She was wearing a long sleep shirt now, the dress probably hung in her closet.
“Sure.”
He closed the murder book and, getting up, put it on the coffee table. As he approached the dining-room table, he attempted to hug his daughter, but she gently ducked away and turned toward the kitchen.
“Let me get a knife and some forks and plates.”
From the kitchen she called for him to open his two gifts, starting with the obvious one, but he waited for her return.
As she cut the cake, he opened the long thin box that he knew contained a tie. She often remarked on how old and colorless his ties were. She once even suggested he got his ideas about ties from the old Dragnet television show, from the black-and-white years.
He opened the box to find a tie with a tie-dyed pattern of blues and greens and purples.
“It’s beautiful,” he proclaimed. “I’ll wear it tomorrow.”
She smiled and he moved on to the second gift. He unwrapped it to find a box containing a stack of six CD cases. It was a collection of recently released live recordings of Art Pepper.
“‘Unreleased Art,’” Bosch read. “‘Volumes one to six.’ How did you find these?”
“Internet,” Maddie said. “His widow puts them out.”
“I never heard of this stuff before.”
“She has her own label: Widow’s Taste.”
Bosch saw that some of the cases contained multiple discs. It was a lot of music.
“Should we listen?”
She handed him a plate with a piece of marble cake on it.
“I still have some homework,” she said. “I’m going to go back to my room, but you go ahead.”
“I might start the first one.”
“I hope you like it.”
“Pretty sure I will. Thanks, Maddie. For everything.”
He put the plate and the CDs down on the table and reached to hug his daughter. This time she allowed it, and he was the most thankful for that.
7
Bosch got to the cubicle early Wednesday morning and before anyone in the squad had arrived. He poured coffee out of the take-out cup he’d brought with him into the mug he kept in his desk drawer. He put on his readers and checked for messages, hoping he had gotten lucky and would find that Charles Washburn had been picked up overnight and was waiting for him in a holding cell at 77th Street Division. But there was nothing on the phone or in email about 2 Small. He was still in the wind. There was, however, a return email from Anneke Jespersen’s brother. Bosch felt a trill of excitement when he re
cognized the words in the subject line: “The investigation of your sister’s murder.”
A week earlier, when Bosch was notified by the ATF that the bullet casing from the Jespersen murder had been matched to ballistics from two other murders, the case jumped from the submission phase to an active investigation. Part of the Open-Unsolved Unit’s case protocol was to alert the victim’s family whenever a case went to active status. This was a tricky thing, however. The last thing the investigator wanted to do was give family members false hope or have them needlessly revisit the trauma of losing a loved one. The initial notification always had to be handled with finesse, and that meant approaching a selected family member with carefully chosen and vetted information.
In the Jespersen case, Bosch had only one family connection, back in Copenhagen. The victim’s brother, Henrik Jespersen, was listed in the original reports as the family contact, and a 1999 entry in the chronological report noted an email address for him. Bosch sent off an email to that address, having no idea if it would still be good after thirteen years. The message was not kicked back but it also wasn’t answered. Two days after sending it, he re-sent it, but again it was not replied to. Bosch had then put the contact issue aside as he investigated and prepared to meet Rufus Coleman at San Quentin.
Coincidentally, one of Bosch’s reasons for his early arrival at the office was to attempt to get a phone number for Henrik Jespersen and place a call to him in Copenhagen, which was nine hours ahead of Los Angeles.
Henrik had beaten Bosch to the punch and answered his email, the reply landing in Harry’s email basket at 2 A.M. L.A. time.
Dear Mr. Bosch, I thank you for your email which mistakenly diverted to my junk file. I have retrieved now and wish to answer promtly. Many thanks to you and LAPD for seeking the killer of my sister. Anneke is still very missed in our lifes here in Copenhagen. The BT newspaper where she work has brass plaque in place to commemorate this brave journolist who is a hero. I hope you can catch this bad people who kill. If we can talk to one another my job phone is best to call at the hotel where I work every day as direktor. 00-45-25-14-63-69 is the number you will call.