The Black Box

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.

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