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
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.
There were more names here, and Bosch continued copying them into his notebook, thinking that the chances were good that the 237th’s personnel did not change much between the Gulf War and the Los Angeles riots. Men listed in the war photos were most likely part of the unit sent to L.A. a year later.
He came to a set of photos that showed several members of the 237th on a ship called the
Bosch stopped dead when he read the names under one of the photos. It was a shot of four men on the
