“You know a lot was said back then about Gulf War Syndrome, exposure to chemicals and heat. A lot of incidents of violence back home were attributed to that war. The soldier at Fort Bragg—that was his defense.”
Bosch nodded but he was no longer listening to Wingo. Things were suddenly coming together, words and pictures and memories . . . visions of that night in the alley off Crenshaw. Of soldiers lining the street. Of black-and-white photos of soldiers on the Highway of Death . . . the blown-up barracks in Dhahran and the smoking hulk of an army Humvee . . . the lights on the Humvee they brought into the alley . . .
Bosch leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and ran his hands back through his hair.
“Are you all right, Detective Bosch?” Wingo asked.
“I’m fine. I’m good.”
“Well, you don’t look it.”
“I think they were there . . .”
“Who was where?”
His hands still on top of his head, he realized he had spoken out loud. He turned to look at Wingo over his shoulder. He didn’t answer her question.
“You did it, Agent Wingo. I think you opened the black box.”
He stood up and looked down at her.
“Thank you and thank you to Rachel Walling. I need to go now.”
He turned and headed back toward the doors of the PAB. Wingo called after him.
“What’s the black box?”
He didn’t answer. He kept moving.
20
Bosch strode through the squad room to his desk. He saw Chu in the cubicle, turned sideways and hunched over his computer. Bosch entered the cubicle, grabbed his desk chair, and wheeled it right over next to Chu’s. He sat down on it backwards and started speaking in an urgent tone.
“What are you working on, David?”
“Um, just looking at travel options for Minnesota.”
“You going to go without me? It’s okay, I told you to.”
“I’m thinking I need to go, or start on something else while I’m waiting.”
“Then you’re right, you should go. Did you see who else can go?”
“Yeah, Trish the Dish is in. She has family in St. Paul, so she’s up for it, cold weather and all.”
“Yeah, tell her just to be careful with O’Toole looking over every travel voucher.”
“I already did. So, what do you need, Harry? I can tell you’re hot about something. You got one of your hunches?”
“Damn right. What I need you to do is get on the box and find out which California National Guard units were sent to Los Angeles during the ’ninety-two riots.”
“That should be easy enough.”
“And then find out which of those units were also deployed to the Persian Gulf for Desert Storm the year before. Understand?”
“Yes, you want to know which units were in both places.”
“Exactly. And once you have a list, I want to know where they were based in California and what they did in Desert Storm. Where they were assigned, that sort of thing. Can you do that?”
“I’m on it.”
“Good. And I’m guessing most of these units probably have archives online, websites, digital scrapbooks, things like that. I’m looking for names. Names of soldiers who were in Desert Storm in ’ninety-one and in L.A. a year later.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Thanks, David.”
“You know, Harry, you don’t have to call me by my first name if it makes you uncomfortable. I’m used to you calling me by my last name.”
Chu stared at his computer screen as he said it.
“It’s that obvious, huh?” Bosch said.
“It just sort of sticks out,” Chu said. “You know, after all this time of just calling me Chu.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. You find me what I’m looking for and I’ll call you Mr. Chu from now on.”
“That won’t be necessary. But do you mind telling me why we’re doing these searches? What’s it have to do with Jespersen?”
“I’m hoping everything.”
Bosch then explained the new theory of the case he was pursuing, that Anneke Jespersen was on a story and had come to L.A. not because of the riots but because she was following someone in one of the California National Guard units that had been deployed the previous year to the Persian Gulf.
“What happened over there that made her follow the guy?” Chu asked.
“I don’t know that yet,” Bosch said.
“What are you going to do while I’m working this angle?”
“I’m going to work another. Some of these guys are already in the murder book. I’ll start there.”
Bosch got up and rolled his chair back over to his desk. He sat down and opened the Jespersen case’s original murder book. Before he could start looking through the witness statements, his phone buzzed.
He checked the screen and saw it was Hannah Stone. Bosch was busy and had some newfound momentum. He normally would have let the call go to voice mail, but something told him he should take it. Hannah rarely called during his work hours. If she wanted to talk to him, she would text first to see if he was able to talk.
He took the call.
“Hannah? What’s up?”
Her voice was an urgent whisper.
“There’s a woman in the waiting room from the police. She said she wants to interview me about you and my son.”
Her whisper was tight with fear verging on panic. She had no idea what was going on and Bosch realized it was logical that she be interviewed. He should have warned her.
“Hannah, it’s okay. Did you get her card? Is her name Mendenhall?”
“Yes, she said she was a detective with police standards or something. She didn’t give me a card. She just showed up without calling first.”
“It’s okay. It’s the Professional Standards Bureau and she just needs to ask you what you know about me meeting Shawn the other day.”
“What? Why?”
“Because my lieutenant made a beef about it, basically saying I used company time for personal reasons. Look, Hannah, it doesn’t matter, just tell her what you know. Tell her the truth.”
“Are you sure? I mean, are you sure I should talk to her? She said I didn’t have to.”
“You can talk to her but just tell her the truth. Don’t tell her what you think might help me. Tell her only the truth as far as what you know. Okay, Hannah? It’s not a big deal.”
“But what about Shawn?”
“What about him?”
“Can she do anything to him?”
“No, Hannah, there’s nothing like that. This is about me, not Shawn. So bring her into the office and answer her questions only with the truth. Okay?”
“If you say it’s all right.”
“I do. It is. No worries. I’ll tell you what, call me back after she leaves.”
“I can’t. I have appointments. They’re going to stack up because I have to talk to her.”
“Then make it quick with her and then call me when you catch up on your clients.”
“Why don’t we just have dinner tonight?”
“Okay, that sounds good. Call me or I’ll call you and we’ll figure out where to meet.”
“Okay, Harry. I feel better.”
“Good, Hannah. I’ll talk to you.”
He disconnected and went back to the murder book. Chu interrupted from behind, having heard Bosch’s half of the conversation with Hannah.
“So they aren’t letting up on that,” he said.
“Not yet. Has Mendenhall scheduled you for an interview?”
“Nope, haven’t heard from her.”
“Don’t worry, you will. If anything, she seems like a pretty thorough investigator.”
Bosch went to the front of the murder book to find and reread the statement from Francis John Dowler, the California National Guard soldier who found Anneke Jespersen’s body in the alley off Crenshaw. The report was a transcript of a telephone interview conducted by Gary Harrod of the
Riot Crimes Task Force. Bosch and Edgar had never gotten the chance to interview Dowler the first night of the investigation. Harrod caught up with him by phone five weeks after the murder. By then he had returned to civilian life in a town called Manteca.
The witness report and statement said Dowler was twenty-seven years old and worked as a big-rig driver. It said he had been in the California National Guard for six years and was assigned to the 237th Transportation Company based in Modesto.
A blast of adrenaline drilled through Bosch’s body. Modesto. Someone calling himself Alex White had called from Modesto ten years after the murder.
Bosch swiveled in his chair and communicated the information about the 237th to Chu, who said he had already established in his Internet search that the 237th was one of three National Guard troops that sent people to both Desert Storm and the Los Angeles riots.
Reading from his screen, Chu said, “You have the two thirty-seventh barracks in Modesto and the twenty-six sixty-eighth from Fresno. Both were transpo companies—truck drivers basically. The third was the two seventieth from Sacramento. They were military police.”
Bosch wasn’t listening much past truck drivers. He was thinking about the trucks that hauled all the captured weapons out into the Saudi desert for disposal.
“Let’s focus on the two thirty-seventh. The guy who found the body was with the two thirty-seventh. What else you got on them?”
“Not a lot so far. It says they served for twelve days in Los Angeles. Only one injury reported—one guy spent a night in a hospital with a concussion when somebody hit him with a bottle.”
“What about Desert Storm?”
Chu pointed to his screen.
“I have that here. I’ll read you the description of their outing during Desert Storm. ‘The soldiers of the two thirty-seventh were mobilized on September twenty, nineteen ninety, with sixty-two personnel. The unit arrived in Saudi Arabia the following November three. During Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations, the unit transported twenty-one thousand tons of cargo, moved fifteen thousand personnel and prisoners of war, and drove eight hundred thirty-seven thousand accident-free miles. The unit returned to Modesto without a single casualty on April twenty-three, nineteen ninety-one.’ See what I mean? These guys were truck drivers and bus drivers.”
Bosch contemplated the information and statistics for a few moments.
“We’ve got to get those sixty-two names,” he said.
“I’m working on it. You were right. Each unit has an amateur website and an archive. You know, newspaper stories and whatnot. But I haven’t found any lists of names from ’ninety-one or ’ninety-two. Just mentions of different people here and there. Like one guy from back then is the sheriff of Stanislaus County now. And he’s also running for Congress.”
Bosch rolled his chair over so he could look at what Chu had on his screen. There was a photo of a man in a sheriff’s green uniform, holding up a sign that said “Drummond for Congress!”
“That’s the two thirty-seventh’s website?”
“Yeah. It says this guy served from ’ninety to ’ninety-eight. So he would’ve—”
“Wait a minute . . . Drummond, I know that name.”
Bosch tried to place it, casting his thoughts back to the night in the alley. So many soldiers standing and watching. He snapped his fingers as a fleeting glimpse of a face and a name came through.
“Drummer. That’s the guy they called Drummer. He was there that night.”
“Well, J.J. Drummond’s sheriff up there now,” Chu said. “Maybe he’ll help us with the names.”
Bosch nodded.
“He might, but let’s hold off on that until we have a better lay of the land.”
21
Bosch went to his computer and pulled up a map of Modesto so he could get a better geographic understanding of where Manteca, Francis Dowler’s hometown, was in relation to Modesto.
Both were in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, which was better known as the Central Valley and the food basket of the state. Livestock, fruit, nuts, vegetables—everything that was put down on the kitchen or restaurant table in Los Angeles and most parts of California came from the Central Valley. And that included some of the wine on those tables as well.
Modesto was the anchor city of Stanislaus County, while Manteca was just across the northern border and part of San Joaquin County. The county seat there was Stockton, the largest city in the Valley.
Bosch did not know these places. He had spent little time in the Valley except to pass through on trips to San Francisco and Oakland. But he knew that on Interstate 5 you could smell the stockyards outside Stockton long before you got to them. You could also pull off at almost any exit on California 99 and quickly find a fruit or vegetable stand with produce that reaffirmed your belief that you were living in the right place. The Central Valley was a big part of what had made California the Golden State.
Bosch went back to Francis Dowler’s statement. Though he had already read it at least twice since reopening the case, he now read it again, looking for any detail that he might have missed.
I, the undersigned, Francis John Dowler (7/21/64), was on duty with California National Guard, 237th Company, on Friday, May 1, 1992, in Los Angeles. My unit’s responsibilities were to secure and maintain major traffic arteries during the civil unrest that occurred following the verdicts in the Rodney King police beating trial. On the evening of May 1 my unit was stationed along Crenshaw Boulevard from Florence Avenue north to Slauson Avenue. We had arrived in the area late the night before after it had already been hit extensively by looters and arsonists. My position was at Crenshaw and Sixty-seventh Street. At approximately 10 P.M. I retreated to a nearby alley next to the tire store to relieve myself. At this time I noticed the body of a woman lying near the wall of a burned-out structure. I did not see anyone else in the alley at this time and did not recognize the dead woman. It appeared to me that she had been shot. I confirmed that she was deceased by checking for a pulse on her arm and then proceeded out of the alley. I went to radioman Arthur Fogle and told him to contact our supervisor, Sgt. Eugene Burstin, and tell him that we had a dead body in the alley. Sgt. Burstin came and inspected the alley and the body and then LAPD homicide was informed by radio communication. I returned to post and later was moved down to Florence Avenue when crowd control was needed because of angry residents at that intersection. This is a complete, truthful, and accurate account of my activities on the night of Friday, May 1, 1992. So attested by my signature below.
Bosch wrote the names Francis Dowler, Arthur Fogle, and Eugene Burstin on a page in his notebook under the name J.J. Drummond. At least he had the names of four of the sixty-two soldiers on the 1992 roll of 237th Company. Bosch stared at Dowler’s statement as he considered what his next move should be.
That was when he noticed the printing along the bottom edge of the page. It was a fax tag. Gary Harrod had obviously typed up the statement and faxed it to Dowler for his approval and signature. It had then been faxed back. The fax identification along the bottom of the page gave the phone number and a company name: Cosgrove Agriculture, Manteca, California. Bosch guessed that it was Dowler’s employer.
“Cosgrove,” Bosch said.
The same name was on the John Deere dealership where the Alex White call had come from ten years ago.
“Yeah, I’ve got that,” Chu said from behind him.
Bosch turned around.
“Got what?”
“Cosgrove. Carl Cosgrove. He was in the unit. I got him in some of the pictures here. He’s some sort of a bigwig up there.”
Bosch realized that they had stumbled onto a connection.
“Send me that link, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
Bosch turned to his computer and waited for the email to come through.
“This is the two thirty-seventh’s website you’re looking at?” he asked.
“Yeah. They got stuff on here going back to the riots
and Desert Storm.”
“What about a list of personnel?”
“No list, but there are some names in these stories and with the pictures. Cosgrove’s one.”
The email came through. Bosch quickly opened it and clicked on the link.
Chu was right. The website looked amateurish, to say the least. At sixteen, his own daughter had created better-looking web pages for school assignments. This one had obviously been started years earlier, when websites were a new cultural phenomenon. No one had bothered to update it with contemporary graphics and design.
The main heading announced the site as the “Home of the Fighting 237th.” Below this were what seemed to be the company’s motto and logo, the words Keep on Truckin’ and a variation on comic artist Robert Crumb’s iconic truckin’ man striding forward, one large foot in front of his body. The 237th version had the man in an army uniform, a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Beneath that were blocks of information about the current company’s training outings and recreational activities. There were links for making contact with the site manager or for joining group discussions. There was also one marked “History,” and Bosch clicked on it.
The link brought him to a blog that required him to scroll down through twenty years of reports about the company’s accomplishments. Luckily, the callouts for the Guard had been few and far between and it didn’t take long to get to the early nineties. These reports had obviously been loaded onto the site when it was first constructed in 1996.
There was a short written piece on the call-up for the Los Angeles riots that held no information that Bosch didn’t already know. But it was accompanied by several photos of soldiers from the 237th on station at various positions around South L.A. and included several names that Bosch didn’t have. He copied every name into his notebook and then continued to scroll down.
When he got to the 237th’s exploits during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, his pulse quickened as he viewed several photos similar to those Anneke Jespersen had taken while shooting and writing about the war. The 237th had bivouacked at Dhahran and was in close proximity to the barracks that were bombed by the Iraqi SCUD strike. The transportation company had ferried soldiers, civilians, and prisoners up and down the main roadways between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And there were even photos of members of the 237th on R&R leave on a cruise ship anchored in the Persian Gulf.