The Black Box

Crumb’s iconic truckin’ man striding forward, one large foot in front of his body. The 237th version had the man in an army uniform, a rifle slung over his shoulder.
    Beneath that were blocks of information about the currentcompany’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 goodthat 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 Saudi Princess during R&R leave. There were shots of a volleyball team competing in a poolside tournament, but most of the pictures were of obviously drunk men holding up bottles of beer and posing for the camera.
    Bosch stopped dead when he read the names under one of the photos. It was a shot of four men on the wood decking surrounding the ship’s swimming pool. They were shirtless, holding up bottles of beer and shooting peace signs at the camera. Their wet bathing suits were cutoff camouflage pants. They looked very drunk and very sunburned. The names listed were Carl Cosgrove, Frank Dowler, Chris Henderson, and Reggie Banks.
    Bosch now had another connection. Reggie Banks was the salesman who sold Alex White his tractor mower ten years before. He wrote the new names down on his list and underlined Banks’s name three times.
    Bosch expanded the photo on his screen and studied it again. Three of the men—all except Cosgrove—had matching tattoos on their right shoulders. Bosch could tell it was the Keep on Truckin’ man in camouflage—the unit’s logo. Bosch then noticed that behind them and to the right was an overturned trash can that had spilled bottles and cans across the deck. As Bosch stared at the photo, he realized he had seen it before. Same scene, different angle.
    Harry quickly opened up a new window on his screen andwent to the Anneke Jespersen memorial site. He then opened the file containing her photos from Desert Storm. He quickly went through them until he got to the portfolio she had taken on the cruise ship. The third shot in the set of six was taken on the pool deck. It showed a ship’s houseman righting an upended trash can.
    By flipping from one window to the other, and from photo to photo, Bosch was able to match the combination of bottles, cans, and brands strewn on the deck. The configuration of the spilled containers was exactly the same. It meant without a doubt that Anneke Jespersen had been on the cruise ship at the same time as members of the 237th Company. To confirm this Bosch compared other markers in the photos. In both he noted the same lifeguard on a poolside perch, wearing the same floppy hat and zinc-coated nose in each photo. A woman in a bikini lounging on the edge of the pool, her right hand dipped into the water. And finally, the bartender behind the counter of