The Black Box

lotta opportunities out there, Harry. You know where that goes. Frustration, agitation, desperation. That’s why I say anything could happen. History runs in a cycle. It repeats itself. It could happen again, sure.”
    Bosch nodded. Gant’s take on things was not far from his own.
    “Can I keep these files awhile?” he asked.
    “As long as you bring them back,” Gant said. “I’ll also loan you the black box.”
    He reached behind him and grabbed the card box. When he turned back, Bosch was smiling.
    “What? You don’t want it?”
    “No, no, I want it. I’m just thinking of a partner I had once. This was way back. His name was Frankie Sheehan, and he—”
    “I knew Frankie. A shame what happened.”
    “Yeah, but before that, when we were partners, he always had this saying about working homicide. He said, you have to find the black box. That’s the first thing, find the black box.”
    Gant had a confused look on his face.
    “You mean like on a plane?”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Yeah, like in a plane crash, they have to find the black box, which records all the flight data. They find the black box and they’ll know what happened. Frankie said it was the same with a murder scene or a murder case. There will be one thing that brings it all together and makessense of things. You find it and you’re gold. It’s like finding the black box. And now here you are, giving me a black box.”
    “Well, don’t expect too much outta this one. We call them CRASH boxes. It’s just the shake cards from back then.”
    Before the advent of the MDT—the mobile data terminal installed in every patrol car—officers carried FI cards in their back pockets. These were merely 3 × 5 cards for writing down notes from field interviews. They included the date, time, and location of the interview, as well as the name, age, address, aliases, tattoos, and gang affiliation of the individual questioned. There was also a section for the officer’s comments, which was primarily used to record any other observations worth noting about the individual.
    The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had long decried the department’s practice of conducting field interviews, calling them unwarranted and unconstitutional, likening them to shakedowns. Undaunted, the department continued the practice, and the FI cards became known across its ranks as shake cards.
    Bosch was handed the box, and opening it he found it full of well-worn cards.
    “How did this survive the purging?” he asked.
    Gant knew he meant the department’s shift toward digital data storage. Across the board, hard files were being turned into digital files to make way for an electronic future.
    “Man, we knew that if they archived these on computers, they would miss all kinds of stuff. These are handwritten, Harry. Sometimes you can’t figure out the writing to save yourlife. We knew most of the info on these cards wouldn’t make it across, know what I mean? So we held on to as many of those black boxes as we could. You were lucky, Harry, we still had the Sixties in a box. Hope there’s something in there that helps.”
    Bosch pushed back his chair to get up.
    “I’ll make sure you get it back.”

4
    B osch was back at the Open-Unsolved Unit before noon. The place was largely deserted, as most detectives came in early and took their lunch break early. There was no sign of David Chu, Harry’s partner, but that wasn’t a concern. Chu could be at lunch or anywhere in the building or the outlying crime labs in the area. Bosch knew that Chu was working on a number of submissions, that is, the early stages of cases in which genetic, fingerprint, or ballistics evidence is prepared and submitted to various labs for analysis and comparison.
    Bosch put the files and the black box down on his desk and picked up the phone to see if he had any messages. He was clear. He was just settling in and getting ready to start looking through the material he had received from Gant when the unit’s new lieutenant came by the cubicle. Cliff O’Toole was new not only to the OU but to Robbery-Homicide Division as well. He had been transferred in from Valley Bureau, where he had run the full detective squad in Van Nuys. Bosch hadn’t had a lot of interaction with him yet, but what he had seen and heard from others in the squad wasn’t good. After arriving to take over command of Open-Unsolved, in record timethe lieutenant garnered not one but two nicknames with negative