Bosch nodded. He was getting the sense of the fruitlessness of his search. Trumont Story was dead and the connection to the gun was gone with him. He was really no closer to knowing who killed Anneke Jespersen than he was on the night twenty years ago when he stared down at her body and apologized. He was nowhere.

Gant identified his disappointment.

“Sorry, Harry.”

“Not your fault.”

“It probably saves you a bunch of trouble anyway.”

“Yeah, how so?”

“Oh, you know, all those unsolved cases from back then. What if the only one we closed was the white girl’s? That probably wouldn’t go over too well in the community, know what I mean?”

Bosch looked at Gant, who was black. He hadn’t really considered the racial issues in the case. He was just trying to solve a murder that had stuck with him for twenty years.

“I guess so,” he said.

They sat in silence for a long moment before Bosch asked a question.

“So, what do you think, could it happen again?”

“What, you mean the riots?”

Bosch nodded. Gant had spent his whole career in South L.A. He would know the answer better than most.

“Sure, anything can happen down here,” Gant answered. “Are things better between the people and the department? Sure, way better. We got some of the people actually trusting us now. The murder count’s way down. Hell, crime in general is way down and the bangers don’t run the streets with impunity. We got control, the people have control.”

He stopped there and Bosch waited but that was it.

“But . . .,” Bosch prompted.

Gant shrugged.

“Lotta people without jobs, lotta stores and businesses closed up. Not a 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 makes sense 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.”