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
“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
