The Black Box

same pieces, and he thought a few of them were better than the frames chosen to run with the stories.
    The second section was more like a family photo album, with shots of Anneke starting from when she was a skinny little girl with white-blond hair. Bosch moved through these quickly until he came to a series of photographs that Annekehad taken herself. These were all shot in front of different mirrors over several years. Jespersen posed with her camera on a strap around her neck, holding it at chest level and shooting without looking through the viewfinder. Taken together, Bosch could see the progression of time in her face. She remained beautiful from image to image, but he could see the wisdom deepening in her eyes.
    In the last photos it was as if she was staring directly and only at Bosch. He found it hard to break away from her stare.
    The site had a comments section, and Bosch opened it to find that a flurry of comments beginning in 1996, when the website was constructed, tapered over the years to just one in the past year. The poster was her brother, who built and maintained the site. So that he could read the comment in English, Bosch copied his comment into the Internet translator he had been using.
    Anneke, time does not erase the loss of you. We miss you as a sister, artist, friend. Always .
    With those sentiments, Bosch clicked out of the website and closed his laptop. He was finished for the night, and though his efforts had brought him closer to Anneke Jespersen, they did not in the end give him insight into what had sent her to the United States a year after Desert Storm. It gave him no clue to why she had come to Los Angeles. There was no story on war crimes, nothing that appeared to warrant follow-up, let alone a trip to Los Angeles. Whatever it was that Anneke was chasing, it remained hidden from him.
    Harry looked at his watch. The time had flown. It was aftereleven and he had an early start in the morning. The disc had ended and the music had stopped, but he hadn’t noticed when. His daughter had fallen asleep on the couch with her book and he had to decide whether to wake her to go to bed or just cover her with a blanket and leave her undisturbed.
    Bosch stood up and his hamstrings protested as he stretched. He took the pizza box off the coffee table and, limping, walked it slowly into the kitchen, where he put it on top of the trash can to take out later. He looked down at the box and silently chastised himself for once again putting his work ahead of his daughter’s proper nutrition.
    When he came back out to the living room Madeline was sitting up on the couch, still half asleep, holding a hand in front of a yawn.
    “Hey, it’s late,” he said. “Time for bed.”
    “No, duh.”
    “Come on, I’ll walk you in.”
    She stood and leaned into him. He put his arm around her shoulders and they walked down the hall to her bedroom.
    “You’re on your own again tomorrow morning, kid. That okay?”
    “You don’t have to ask, Dad.”
    “I’ve got a breakfast appointment at seven and—”
    “You don’t have to explain.”
    At her doorway he let her go, kissing her on the top of her head, smelling the pomegranate from her shampoo.
    “Yes, I do. You deserve somebody who’s more around. Who’s here for you.”
    “Dad, I’m too tired. I don’t want to talk about this.”
    Bosch gestured back down the hall toward the living room.
    “You know if I could play that song like him, I would. Then you’d know.”
    He had gone too far with it, pushing his guilt on her.
    “I do know!” she said in an annoyed tone. “Now, good night.”
    She went through the doorway and closed the door behind her.
    “Good night, baby,” he said.
    Bosch went to the kitchen and took the pizza box out to the trash can. He made sure the top was sealed against coyotes and other creatures of the night.
    Before going back inside, he used his keys to open the padlock on the storage room at the back wall of the carport. He pulled the string to the overhead light and started scanning the crowded shelves. Junk he had kept through most of his life was in boxes on the dusty shelves. He reached up and brought one box down to the workbench and then reached back for what had been behind it on the shelf.
    He pulled down the white riot helmet he had worn on the night he met Anneke Jespersen. He looked over its scratched and dirty surface. With his palm he wiped the dust off the sticker affixed to the front. The winged badge.