“No, I don’t think I need backup. I’ll check in with you later.”
“I’ll be here, Harry.”
“I know.”
14
Bosch spent an hour roaming around Forest Lawn while waiting to pick up sandwiches at Giamela’s. Out of respect for his former partner Frankie Sheehan, he started at Casey Stengel’s last resting spot and then took the celebrity tour, passing stones etched with names like Gable and Lombard, Disney, Flynn, Ladd, and Nat King Cole as he made his way to the Good Shepherd section of the vast cemetery. Once there, he paid respects to the father he never knew. The stone said “J. Michael Haller, Father and Husband,” but Bosch knew that he was never accounted for in that family equation.
After a while he walked down the hill a bit to where it was flatter and the graves were closer together. It took him a while because he was working off a twelve-year-old memory, but eventually he found the stone that marked the grave of Arthur Delacroix, a boy whose case Bosch had once worked. A cheap plastic vase containing the dried stems of long-dead flowers sat next to the stone. They seemed to be a reminder of how the boy had been forgotten in life before being forgotten in death. Bosch picked up the vase and found a trash can for it on his way out of the cemetery.
He arrived at the Firearm Analysis Unit at 11 A.M., two still-warm submarine sandwiches from Giamela’s in a bag with sauce on the side. They went into a break room to eat, and Pistol Pete moaned after taking his first bite of meatball sub—so loudly that he drew two other firearm analysts to the room to see what was going on. Sargent and Bosch grudgingly shared their sandwiches with them, Bosch making friends for life.
When they got to Sargent’s worktable, Bosch saw that the Beretta he had brought in was already held in a vise with the left side angled up. The frame had already been polished smooth with steel wool in preparation for Sargent’s effort to raise the serial number.
“We’re ready to go,” Sargent said.
He pulled on a pair of heavy rubber gloves and a plastic eye shield and took his place on the stool in front of the vise. He then pulled the mounted magnifying glass over by its arm and snapped on the light.
Bosch knew that every gun legally manufactured in the world carried a unique serial number through which ownership as well as theft could be traced. People who wanted to hinder the tracing of a gun often filed the serial number off with a variety of tools or attempted to burn it off with acids.
But the manufacturing of the weapon and the stamping procedure involved in placing the serial number on it in the first place gave law enforcement a better-than-good chance of recovering the number. When a serial number is stamped on a gun’s surface during manufacture, the procedure compresses the metal below the letters and numbers. The surface may later be filed or acid burned, but it very often still leaves the compression pattern beneath. Various methods can be used to draw the serial number out. One involves the application of a mixture of acids and copper salts that reacts to the compressed metal, revealing the numbers. Another involves the use of magnets and iron residue.
“I want to start with Magnaflux because if it works it’s quicker and it doesn’t damage the weapon,” Sargent said. “We still have ballistics work to do with this baby and I want to keep it in working order.”
“You’re the boss,” Bosch said. “And as far as I’m concerned, quicker is better.”
“Well, let’s see what we get.”
Sargent attached a large, round magnet on the underside of the gun, directly below the slide.
“First we magnetize . . .”
He then reached up to a shelf over the table and took down a plastic spray bottle. He shook it and then pointed it at the weapon.
“Now we go with Pistol Pete’s patented iron-and-oil recipe . . .”
Bosch leaned in close as Sargent sprayed the gun.
“Iron and oil?”
“The oil is thick enough to keep the magnetized iron suspended. You spray it on and then the magnet will draw the iron to the surface of the gun. Where the serial number was stamped and the metal is denser, the magnetic pull is greater. The iron should eventually line up as the number. In theory, anyway.”
“How long?”
“Not long. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we go with acid, but that will most likely damage the gun. So we don’t want to do that until the ballistics work is finished. You have somebody lined up for that?”
“Not yet.”
Sargent was talking about the analysis that would confirm that the bullet that killed Anneke Jespersen was fired from the gun in front of them. Bosch was confident that it was, but it was necessary to have forensic confirmation. Bosch was knowingly going about this backwards to maintain his speed. He wanted that serial number so he could trace the gun, but he also knew that if Sargent’s oil-and-iron process didn’t work, he would have to slow things down and proceed in proper order. With O’Toole making his PSB complaint, the delay could effectively kill the forward progression of the case—just what O’Toole was hoping to do so that he could bask in the glow of approval from the chief.
“Well, then, let’s hope this works,” Sargent said, bumping Bosch out of these thoughts.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “So should I wait, or do you want to call me?”
“I like to give it about forty minutes. You can wait if you want.”
“Tell you what, call me as soon as you know.”
“You got it, Harry. Thanks for the sub.”
“Thanks for the work, Pete.”
There had been times in Bosch’s career when he knew the phone number of the Police Protective League’s Defense Assistance Office by heart. But back in his car, Bosch opened his phone to talk with a defense rep in regard to the O’Toole matter and realized that he had forgotten the number. He thought for a moment, hoping it would come to him. Two young criminalists moved through the parking lot, the wind lifting their white lab coats. He guessed that they were crime scene specialists, because he didn’t know them. He rarely worked live crime scenes anymore.
Before the League number came back to him, his phone started to buzz in his hand. The ID showed a procession of numbers following a plus sign. He knew it was an international call.
“Harry Bosch.”
“Yes, Detective, it is Bonn. I have Mr. Jannik on the line. Can you talk with him? I can translate.”
“Yes, hold on for a moment.”
Bosch put the phone down on the seat while he pulled out a notebook and pen.
“Okay, I’m back. Mr. Jannik, are you there?”
There was what he assumed was a repeat of his question in Danish and then a new voice responded.
“Yes, good evening, Inspector.”
There was a heavy accent but Jannik was understandable.
“You must forgive my words. My English is very poor.”
“Better than my Danish. Thank you for talking to me, sir.”
Bonn translated, beginning a halting thirty-minute conversation that provided Bosch with little in the way of information that helped make Anneke Jespersen’s journey to Los Angeles any clearer. Jannik did provide details about the photojournalist’s character and skills, her determination to follow stories, no matter the risk and opposition. But when Bosch tried to key in on the war crimes she was investigating, Jannik could provide no knowledge of what the crimes were, who committed them, or where the story came from. He reminded Bosch that Anneke was a freelancer, and therefore she would always be on guard against revealing her story to a newspaper editor. She had been burned too often by editors who listened to her story pitches, said no thanks, and then assigned their own salaried reporters and photographers to the story.
Bosch grew increasingly frustrated with the slow-paced translation process as well as with what he was hearing when Jannik’s answers were turned into English. He ran out of questions and realized he had written nothing in his notebook. As he tried to think about what else to ask, the two other men continued talking in their native language.
