The Black Box

When you apply to the academy, you can’t have any—”
    “I don’t have a fake ID, okay? I got Hannah to get me the beer. Happy now?”
    She dropped the presents on the table, whirled around, anddisappeared down the hall. Bosch heard her bedroom door close hard.
    He waited a moment and then got up. He went down the hall and knocked gently on her door.
    “Hey, Maddie, come on, I’m sorry. Let’s have cake and forget about this.”
    There was no reply. He tried the knob but the door was locked.
    “Come on, Maddie, open up. I’m sorry.”
    “Go eat your cake.”
    “I don’t want to eat the cake without you. Look, I’m sorry. I’m your father. I have to watch out for you and protect you and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to get yourself in some kind of a jam.”
    Nothing.
    “Look, ever since you got your license, your freedom has expanded. I used to love taking you to the mall—now you drive yourself. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t making any kind of mistake that could hurt you down the line. I’m sorry I went about it the wrong way. I apologize. Okay?”
    “I’m putting on my earphones now. I’m not going to hear anything else you say. Good night.”
    Bosch restrained himself from shouldering the door open. He leaned his forehead against it instead and listened. He could hear the tinny sound of music coming from her earphones.
    He walked back into the living room and sat on the couch. He took out his phone and texted an apology to his daughter using the LAPD alphabet. He knew she could decipher it.
    Sam
    Ocean
    Robert
    Robert
    Young
    Frank
    Robert
    Ocean
    Mary
    Young
    Ocean
    Union
    Robert
    David
    Union
    Mary
    Boy
    Adam
    Sam
    Sam
    David
    Adam
    David
    He waited for her return, but when there was no response, he took up the murder book and went to work, hoping immersion in the Snow White case would take him away from the parenting mistake he had just made.
    The thickest report in the murder book was the investigators’ chronology, because it was a line-by-line accounting ofevery move made by detectives as well as every phone call and inquiry from the public about the case. The Riot Crimes Task Force had put up three billboards on the Crenshaw Boulevard corridor as a means of stirring public response to the unsolved Jespersen murder. The boards promised a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the killing. The boards and the prospect of a reward brought in hundreds of phone calls ranging from legitimate to completely bogus tips to complaints from citizens about the police department’s effort to solve the murder of a white woman when so many blacks and Latinos were the victims of unsolved murders during the riots. RCTF detectives dutifully noted each call in the chronology and cited any follow-up that was conducted. Bosch had moved quickly through these pages on his first survey of the murder book, but now he had names attached to the case and he wanted to study every page in the book to see if any names had come up before.
    Over the next hour, Bosch combed through dozens of pages of the chronology. There was no mention of Charles Washburn or Rufus Coleman or Trumont Story. Most of the tips seemed useless at face value and Bosch understood why they’d been dismissed. Several callers gave other names but those suspects were dismissed upon follow-up investigation. In many instances, anonymous callers fingered innocent people, knowing that the police would investigate them and make their lives difficult until they were cleared, the whole exercise payback for something unrelated to the murder.
    The calls noted in the chronology began to thin by 1993 and the closing of the task force and removal of the billboards. Once the Jespersen case was shifted to 77th Street Divisionhomicide, the notations in the chronology became few and far between. Primarily, only Jespersen’s brother, Henrik, and a number of different reporters checked in on the case’s status from time to time. But one of the very last entries finally caught Bosch’s eye.
    On May 1, 2002, the tenth anniversary of the murder, a call was noted in the chronology from someone named Alex White. The name meant nothing to Bosch but its entry in the chrono was followed by a phone number with a 209 area code. It was listed as a status inquiry. The caller wanted to know if the case had ever been closed.
    There was nothing further noted in the entry as to what White’s interest in the case was.