The Wrong Side of Goodbye(36)

The footlocker was a basic plywood box painted grayish green and now faded to the point that the grain of the wood was readily visible. There was faded black stenciling across the top panel.

DOMINICK SANTANELLO HM3

Bosch easily interpreted the coding. Only in the military would HM3 stand for hospital corpsman 3rd class. This meant Santanello’s actual rank was petty officer, 3rd class.

He pulled latex gloves from his pocket and put them on before handling either box. There was a single unlocked hasp on the footlocker. Bosch opened it and shone the light onto its contents. An earthy smell immediately caught in Bosch’s nose and he had a momentary flash of the tunnels he had been in over there. The wooden box smelled like Vietnam.

“Did you find it?” Olivia called from below.

Bosch collected himself for a moment before answering.

“Yeah,” he called out. “It’s all here. I might be up here awhile.”

“Okay,” she called back. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m going downstairs to the laundry for a minute.”

The footlocker was neatly packed with folded clothes on top. Bosch carefully lifted each piece out, examined it, and put it on top of the cardboard box he had set to the side. Bosch had served in the Army but he knew that across the board of military services, when the belongings of a KIA were shipped home to a grieving family, they were sanitized first, in order not to embarrass or add to the grief. All magazines and books featuring nudity were removed as well as any photos of Vietnamese or Filipino girls, any sort of drugs and paraphernalia, and any sort of personal journal that might have details of troop movements, mission tactics, or even war crimes.

What was left to return were the clothes and some of the creature comforts. Bosch removed several sets of fatigues—both camo and green—as well as underwear and socks. At the bottom of the box were a stack of paperback novels popular in the late 1960s, including a book that Bosch remembered had been in his own footlocker, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. There was a full carton of Lucky Strikes along with a Zippo lighter with a chevron on it from the Subic Bay naval base in Olongapo, Philippines.

There was a stack of letters with a rubber band that broke the moment Bosch tried to remove it. He looked through the envelopes. All the senders were family members and the return address was the same, the home Bosch was in at that moment. Most of the letters were from Olivia.

Bosch did not feel the need to intrude on these private communications. He assumed they were letters of encouragement, with his loved ones telling Dominick they were praying for his safe return from war.

There was a zippered leather toiletry kit in the box and Bosch carefully lifted it out. More than anything else, this was what he had come for. He unzipped it and spread it open, then put the light beam into it. The bag contained all the usual toiletries: razor, shaving powder, toothbrush, toothpaste, nail clippers, and a brush and comb.

Bosch took nothing out of the bag because he wanted to leave that to the DNA lab to do. The contents were so old he feared he might lose a hair follicle or some microscopic piece of skin or blood by moving it.

By holding the light at an angle, he could see hair in the bristles of the brush. Each was longer than an inch and he guessed that once Santanello had gotten out into the boonies, he had let his hair grow out like a lot of guys did.

He next put the light on an old-fashioned double-edged razor which was held in the kit by a leather strap. It looked clean but Bosch could only see one of its edges. He knew the DNA gold mine would be if there was blood on it. One slight nick with the razor could have left a microdot of blood, which would be all he’d need.

Bosch had no idea whether after almost fifty years DNA could be extracted from hair or saliva dried on a toothbrush or even whiskers in a double-edged razor, but he knew that blood would work. In the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit he had worked cases where dried blood almost as old as this had given up a solid DNA code. Maybe he’d get lucky with what he had in the kit. He would deliver it undisturbed to one of the labs suggested by Mickey Haller. As long as he could persuade Olivia to let him borrow it.

After zipping the bag closed, Bosch put it on the wood floor to his right side. There he would gather everything he intended to ask Olivia for permission to take. He went back to the seemingly empty footlocker and used the light and his fingers to check for a false bottom. He knew from experience that some soldiers would take the bottom panel out of an unused footlocker and put it inside their own box, creating a secret layer under which they could hide drugs, unauthorized weapons, and Playboy magazines.

There was no removable panel. Santanello had hidden nothing in his footlocker. Bosch thought the contents were notable for their lack of photos and for having no letters from people other than family.

Bosch carefully repacked the footlocker and pulled the top over to close it. When he did so, the beam from the flashlight caught something. He studied the inside top of the box closely and by holding the light at an oblique angle he could see several lines of discoloration on the wood. He realized these were marks created by adhesive that had been left on the surface after tape had been removed. Santanello must have at one time taped things—most likely photographs—to the inside of his footlocker.

It was not unusual. The inside of a footlocker was often used like the inside of a high school locker. Bosch recalled many soldiers who taped photos of girlfriends, wives, and children inside their boxes. Sometimes signs, sometimes drawings sent by their kids, and sometimes centerfolds.