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 we had 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 him in 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 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 current company’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 good that 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 and went 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.