The Black Box

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 thatreaffirmed 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 wehad 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 himin 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 Keep on Truckin ’ and a variation on comic artist Robert