In 1992, protests escalate in the streets of Los Angeles, and the city descends into chaos. The body of the Danish war correspondent Anneke Jespersen is found in a secluded alley. Cause of death: a shot to the head at close range. Detective Harry Bosch secures the crime scene in the midst of the riots. The evidence is rare, only one bullet casing has been left behind by the perpetrator. The case remains unsolved, but Bosch is gnawed at by a thought that becomes a conviction: Jespersen was not an accidental victim. The investigation came to a standstill for twenty years, then shells at another crime scene led Bosch to the weapon with which Jespersen was murdered: a US military pistol from the Second Gulf War. Bosch takes up the case again, because he knows that it must be somewhere, the trace that connects all the loose threads, the missing piece of the puzzle, the 'black box'.