“Yes, she’s dead, I’m afraid. She was murdered twenty years ago in L.A.”
“Oh, dear Lord.”
“It was during the riots in ’ninety-two. It was a year after Desert Storm.”
He waited to see if she would react to that, but there was only silence.
“I think it was somehow connected to that boat,” he said. “Do you remember anything else about her being on the boat? Was she drunk when you saw her the next day?”
“I don’t know about drunk. But she had a bottle in her hand. We both did. That’s what you did on that boat. Drink.”
“Right. Anything else you remember about it?”
“I just remember that her being the blond bombshell that she was, she was having a harder time than any of us keeping the boys at bay.”
“Us” meaning the women in the bar and on the boat.
“That’s what she asked me about when she came to see me at Benning.”
Bosch froze. He didn’t make a sound, he didn’t take a breath. He waited for more. When nothing came forth, he tried to gently coax the story out.
“When was that?” he asked.
“About a year after Storm. I remember I was a short-timer by then. It was like two weeks before my discharge. She somehow found me and came to the base, asking all these questions.”
“What exactly did she ask, do you remember?”
“She asked about that second day, you know, when she was off duty. First she asked if I’d seen her, and I said, don’t you remember? She then asked me who she was with and when was the last time I saw her.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I remembered that she went off with some of the guys. They said they were going to go to the disco and I didn’t want to go. So they left. I didn’t see her again until she came to Fort Benning.”
“Did you ask her why she wanted this information?”
“Not really. I think I kind of knew.”
Bosch nodded. It was likely the reason she remembered the last conversation so clearly after twenty years.
“Something happened to her on that boat,” he said.
“I think so,” Jackson said. “But I didn’t ask the specifics. I didn’t think she wanted to tell me. She just wanted answers to her questions. She wanted to know who she was with.”
Bosch thought he now understood many of the mysteries of the case. What the war crime was that Anneke Jespersen was investigating, and why she shared what she was doing with no one else. He felt a deeper heartbreak for the woman he never met or knew.
“Tell me about the men she went off with on the boat. How many were there?”
“I don’t remember, three or four.”
“Do you remember anything else about them? Anything at all?”
“They were from California.”
Now Bosch paused as Jackson’s answer rang in his head like a bell.
“Is that all, Detective? I need to go.”
“Just a few more, Ms. Jackson. You are being very helpful. How did you know the men were from California?”
“I don’t know. I just knew it. They must’ve told us, because I knew they were California guys. That’s what I told her when she came to see me at the base.”
“Do you remember any names or anything like that?”
“No, not now. It’s been forever since then. I only remember what I’m telling you because she came to see me that time.”
“What about back then? Do you remember if you gave her any of the names of these guys?”
There was a long pause while Jackson thought about it.
“I can’t remember if I knew any names. I mean, I might have known their first names when we were on the boat, but I don’t know if I remembered them a year later. There were so many guys on that boat. I just remember they were from California and we were calling them the truckers.”
“The truckers?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you call them that? Did they say they drove trucks?”
“They might have, but what I remember is that they had tattoos of the Keep on Truckin’ guy with the big shoes. You remember that comic?”
Bosch nodded, not at her question but at the confirmation of things.
“Yes, I do. So these guys had that tattoo? Where?”
“On their shoulders. It was hot on that boat and we were in the pool bar so they either weren’t wearing shirts or they had their wifebeaters on. At least a couple of them had matching tattoos and so we—meaning the girls in the bar—just started calling them the truckers. It’s hard for me to remember the details and I’m already going to be late for work.”
“You are doing good, Ms. Jackson. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Did those guys kill her?”
“I don’t know yet. Do you have email?”
“Of course.”
“Can I send you a link? It will be to a photo on a website that shows some guys on the
“Can I do it when I get to work? I need to go.”
“Yes, that will be fine. I’ll send it as soon as we hang up.”
“Okay.”
She gave him her email address and he wrote it down on a pad that was on the bedside table.
“Thank you, Ms. Jackson. Let me know about the link as soon as you can.”
Bosch disconnected. He went to the kitchenette table, fired up his laptop, and connected to the Wi-Fi signal of the house behind the motel. Using skills picked up from both his partner and daughter, he then located the link to the
He went to the window and checked through the curtain. It was still dark outside without even a hint of sunrise yet. Overnight the parking lot had somehow gotten almost half full. He decided to shower and get ready for the day while waiting for the response on the photo.
Twenty minutes later he was drying off with a towel that had been washed a thousand times. He heard the email ding from his computer and went to the kitchenette to check it. Charlotte Jackson had replied.
I think it’s them. I can’t be sure but I think so. The tattoos are right and that’s the boat. But it has been a long time and I was drinking. But, yes, I think it’s them.
Bosch sat down at the table and reread the email. He felt a growing sense of both dread and excitement. It was not a rock-solid identification from Charlotte Jackson, but it was close. He knew that occurrences of twenty years ago or longer were now coming together at an undeniable speed. The hand of the past was reaching up through the ground, and there was no telling who or what it would grab and pull down when it finally broke through the surface of the earth.
29
Bosch spent the morning in his room, leaving only briefly to walk across the parking lot to the liquor store to buy a carton of milk and some doughnuts for breakfast. He left the “Do Not Disturb” sign hooked on the knob and chose to make the bed and hang the towels himself. He called his daughter before she left for school and talked to Hannah as well. Both conversations were quick and of the have-a-great-day variety. He then got down to work, spending the next two hours on his laptop, updating in full detail the ongoing summary of the investigation. Once finished, he returned the computer and all the documents he’d used to his backpack.
