The Black Box

counties, Stanislaus to the south and San Joaquin to the north. Modesto and Salida were in Stanislaus County, where Sheriff Drummond held power and jurisdiction. But Manteca and Stockton fell under the jurisdiction of the sheriff of San Joaquin County. To Bosch it seemed no wonder that Reggie Banks, who lived in Manteca, preferred to do his drinking down in Modesto. Same, too, with Francis Dowler.
    Bosch circled the locations he wanted to check out before the day was over. The John Deere dealership where Reggie Banks worked, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, Cosgrove Ag’s operation center in Manteca, as well as the homes of the men he was coming to observe. His plan for the day was to immerse himself as much as possible in the worldwhere these men now lived. From there he would map out his next move—if there was a move to be made.
    Once he was back on CA-99 and moving north again, he propped a printout of a Sunday night email from Dave Chu on his right thigh. Chu had searched for Beau Bentley and Charlotte Jackson, the two soldiers quoted in Anneke Jespersen’s story on the Saudi Princess .
    Bentley was a quick dead end. Chu found a 2003 obituary for a Brian “Beau” Bentley, Gulf War veteran, in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that stated that he had succumbed to cancer at the age of thirty-four.
    Chu had only modestly better luck with the other soldier. Using the age parameters Bosch had given him, he had come up with seven Charlotte Jacksons living in Georgia. Five of them were listed in Atlanta and its suburbs. Using the department’s TLO account and other various Internet databases, Chu had managed to come up with telephone numbers for six of the seven women. As Bosch drove, he started calling.
    It was early afternoon in Georgia. He connected on his first two calls. They were answered by a Charlotte Jackson, but neither woman was the Charlotte Jackson he was trying to reach. The third and fourth calls went unanswered, and he left voice mails stating that he was an LAPD detective working on a murder case and urgently needed a return call.
    He got through on the next two calls but neither woman he talked to was the Charlotte Jackson who served her country during the first Gulf War.
    Bosch disconnected the last call, reminding himself that pursuing Charlotte Jackson was probably not the best use of his time. It was a common name and twenty-one years hadpassed. There was no guarantee that she was still in Atlanta or Georgia or that she was even still alive. She also could have gotten married and changed her name. He knew he could go to the U.S. military records archive in St. Louis and request a search, but as with all things steeped in bureaucracy, getting answers could take forever.
    He folded the printout and put it back inside his coat pocket.
    The land opened up after Fresno. The climate was arid from the beating sun and dusty from the dry fields. The highway, too, was rough. Its asphalt was thin and the concrete seams had become disjointed by time and disrepair. The surfaces were crumbling and the Crown Vic’s tires banged hard, sometimes making the music inside jump. It wasn’t how Art Pepper would have wanted it.
    The state was sixteen billion in debt, and the news always talked about the deficit’s effect on the infrastructure. Out in the middle of the state the theory was a fact.
    Bosch got to Modesto by midday. First on his agenda was a cursory drive by the Public Safety Center, where Sheriff J.J. Drummond held sway. It looked like a fairly new building, with the attendant jail next door. Out front, there was a statue of a police dog fallen in the line of duty, and Bosch wondered why there was apparently no human deserving of the same treatment.
    Normally when Bosch followed a case out of Los Angeles, he checked in at the Police or Sheriff’s Department at his destination. It was a courtesy, but it was also like leaving bread crumbs behind should anything go wrong. But not this time.He didn’t know if Sheriff J.J. Drummond had been involved in any way with Anneke Jespersen’s death. But there was too much smoke and there were too many coincidences and connections for Bosch to take the chance of alerting Drummond to the investigation.
    As if to underline those coincidences, he found Cosgrove Tractor, the John Deere dealership where Reginald Banks worked, only five blocks away from the sheriff’s complex. Bosch cruised it, made a U-turn, and came back to it, stopping at a curb