The Black Box (35 page)

Bosch nodded, realizing that if Banks hadn’t made the call, then he might not have connected things to Modesto and the case would still be cold.

“Actually, your number was recorded,” he told Banks. “It’s the reason I’m here.”

Banks nodded glumly.

“But there’s something I don’t understand,” Bosch said. “Why did you call? You guys were in the clear. Why risk raising suspicion?”

Banks shrugged and shook his head.

“I don’t know. It was sort of spur-of-the-moment. The newspaper made me start thinking about that girl and what happened. I was wondering if, you know, they were still looking for anybody.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was ten o’clock. It was late but Bosch didn’t want to wait until the morning to drive Banks to Los Angeles. He wanted to keep his momentum.

He ended the recording and saved it. Being a man who
never trusted modern technology, Bosch then did a rare thing. He used the phone’s email feature to send the audio file to his partner as a just-in-case measure. Just in case his phone failed or the file was corrupted or he dropped the phone in the toilet. He just wanted to be sure he safeguarded Banks’s story.

He waited until he heard the whisking sound from the phone that indicated the email had been sent and then stood up.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re done for now.”

“Are you going to take me back to my car?”

“No, Banks, you’re coming with me.”

“Where?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Now?”

“Now. Stand up.”

But Banks didn’t move.

“Man, I don’t want to go to L.A. I want to go home. I got kids.”

“Yeah, when was the last time you saw your kids?”

That gave Banks pause. He had no answer.

“I thought so. Let’s go. Stand up.”

“Why now? Let me go home.”

“Listen, Banks, you’re going with me to L.A. In the morning I’m going to sit you down in front of a deputy DA who will take your official statement and then probably waltz you in to the grand jury. After that, he’ll decide when you get to go home.”

Banks still didn’t move. He was a man frozen by his past. He knew that whether or not he escaped criminal prosecution, his life as he knew it was over. Everyone from Modesto to Manteca would know the part he played—then and now.

Bosch started gathering the photos and documents and returning them to the file.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “We’re going to L.A. and you can sit up in the front next to me or I can arrest you and cuff you and put you in the backseat. You make that long drive hunched over like that and you’ll probably never walk straight again. Now, how do you want to go?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go. But I gotta take a leak first. You saw how much I was drinking and I didn’t take a piss before I left the post.”

Bosch frowned. The request wasn’t unreasonable. In fact, Bosch was already trying to figure out how to use the bathroom himself without giving Banks a chance to change his mind on the whole thing and run out the door.

“All right,” he said. “Come on.”

Bosch went into the bathroom first and checked the window over the toilet. It was an old louvered window with a crank handle. Bosch was able to pull the handle off easily. He held it up so Banks would see he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Do your business,” he said.

He stepped out of the bathroom but left the door open so he would hear any effort by Banks to open or break the window. While Banks urinated, Bosch looked around for a place to cuff him so he could in turn use the bathroom before the five-hour drive. He settled on the bars that were part of the design of the bed’s headboard.

Bosch hurriedly started packing, basically throwing his clothes into his suitcase without care. When Banks flushed the toilet and came out of the bathroom, Bosch walked him over to the bed and made him sit while he cuffed him to the headboard.

“What the hell is this?” Banks protested.

“Just making sure you don’t change your mind while I’m taking a leak.”

Bosch was standing over the toilet and just finishing his own business when he heard the front door crash open. He quickly zipped up and ran into the bedroom, prepared to chase Banks down, when he saw that Banks was still cuffed to the headboard.

His eyes moved to the open door and the man standing there with a gun. Even without the uniform or the Hitler mustache that had been drawn on his campaign poster, Bosch easily recognized J.J. Drummond, sheriff of Stanislaus County. He was big and tall and handsome with an angular jaw. A campaign manager’s dream.

Drummond entered the room alone, careful to keep the gun aimed at Bosch’s chest.

“Detective Bosch,” he said. “You’re a little ways out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”

32

D
rummond told Bosch to raise his hands. He came over and removed Bosch’s gun from its holster and put it into the pocket of his green hunting jacket. Then he signaled with his own gun toward Banks.

“Uncuff him.”

Bosch pulled his keys from his pocket and released Banks from the headboard.

“Take the cuffs off him and put one on your left wrist.”

Bosch did as he was told and put his keys back in his pocket.

“Now, Reggie, cuff him up. Behind the back.”

Bosch put his hands behind his back and let Banks cuff him. Drummond walked over to him then, close enough that he could touch him with the muzzle of his gun if he wanted to.

“Where’s your phone, Detective?”

“Right front pocket.”

As Drummond dug the phone out, he locked eyes with Bosch from a foot away.

“Should have left things alone, Detective,” he said.

“Maybe,” Bosch said.

Drummond reached into Bosch’s other pocket and took out the keys. He then patted Bosch’s pockets to make sure there was nothing else. Stepping over to the bed, he picked up Bosch’s jacket and felt through it until he came up with Bosch’s badge wallet and the keys to the rental car. He put everything he had confiscated into the other pocket of his jacket. He then reached under his jacket to his back and came out with another gun. He handed it to Banks.

“Watch him, Reggie.”

Drummond walked over to the table and flipped open the case file with a fingernail. He bent over to look down at the photographs of the camera models Anneke Jespersen had carried.

“So, what are we doing here, gentlemen?” he asked.

Banks blurted out an answer, as if he had to get on record ahead of Bosch.

“He was trying to get me to talk, Drummer. Talk about L.A. and the boat. He knows about the boat. He fucking kidnapped me. But I didn’t tell him shit.”

Drummond nodded.

“That’s good, Reggie. Real good.”

He continued to look at the file, turning some of the pages, again just using a fingernail. Bosch knew he wasn’t really looking at the file. He was trying to assess what he had walked into and what he needed to do about it. Finally, he closed the file and put it under his arm.

“I think we’re going to take a little ride,” he said.

Bosch finally spoke, making a pitch he knew wasn’t going to go anywhere.

“You know you don’t have to do this, Sheriff. I’ve got nothing
but my hunches and if you put them and a buck together, you won’t even be able to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks.”

Drummond smiled without humor.

“I don’t know. I think a guy like you operates on a little more than his hunches.”

Bosch returned the humorless smile.

“You’d be surprised sometimes.”

Drummond turned and surveyed the room, making sure he hadn’t missed anything.

“Okay, Reg, grab Detective Bosch’s jacket. We’re going to take that drive now. We’ll use the detective’s car.”

The parking lot was deserted when they walked Bosch out to his rented Crown Vic. Bosch was put in the backseat and then Drummond gave Banks the keys and told him to drive. Drummond got in the back, behind Banks and next to Bosch.

“Where are we going?” Banks asked.

“Hammett Road,” Drummond said.

Banks pulled out of the lot and headed toward the 99 entrance ramp. Bosch looked over at Drummond, who still had his gun in his hand.

“How’d you know?” he asked.

In the darkness he could see Drummond’s contented smirk.

“You mean, how did I know you were sniffing around up here? Well, you made a few mistakes, Detective. First of all, you left muddy tracks across the helipad at Carl Cosgrove’s place last night. He saw them this morning and called me up. He said he had a prowler, and I sent out a couple of my guys to check it out.

“Then I get a call from Frank Dowler tonight telling me that our boy Reggie here is having drinks at the post with a
guy looking to buy an IRG pistol, and the confluence of these things got me to thinking—”

“Drummer, this guy was conning me,” Banks said from the front seat, his eyes looking for Drummond’s in the mirror. “I didn’t know, man. I thought he was legit, so I called Frank to see if he wanted to sell his gun. Last time I talked to him he was looking for money.”

“I figured as much, Reggie. But Frank knows a few things you don’t know—plus he was nervous because his wife said a stranger had come by the house yesterday asking about him.”

He glanced at Bosch and nodded at him as if to say he knew he was the visitor.

“Frank put two and two together and was wise enough to call me. Then I made some calls, and pretty soon I hear that a name I know from a night long in the past is on the registry at the Blu-Lite. That was another mistake, Detective Bosch. Putting the room in your name.”

Bosch didn’t respond. He looked out the window into the dark and tried to cheer himself with the knowledge that he had sent the audio file of the Banks interview to his partner. Chu would find it when he checked his email in the morning.

He knew he could use that knowledge in some way now to possibly bargain for his freedom, but he felt it was too risky. He had no idea what people or connections Drummond had down in L.A. Bosch couldn’t risk his partner or the recording. He had to be content to know that no matter what happened to him this night, the story would get to Chu, and Anneke Jespersen would be avenged. Justice would be done. Harry could count on that.

They went south and soon crossed the line into Stanislaus
County. Banks asked when he’d be able to get his car and Drummond told him not to worry about it, that they’d pick it up later. Banks put the turn signal on as the exit for Hammett Road approached.

“Going to see the boss, huh?” Bosch said.

“Something like that,” Drummond said.

They exited and headed through the almond grove toward the grand entrance to the Cosgrove estate. Drummond told Banks to pull forward so he could push the button on the call box from the backseat.

“Yes?”

“It’s me.”

“Everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. Open up.”

The gate opened automatically and Banks drove through. They followed the entrance road through the grove toward the château, traversing in two minutes what had taken Bosch an hour to cover the night before. Bosch leaned against the side window and looked up. It seemed darker than the night before. Cloud cover had blotted out the canopy of stars.

They came out of the grove and Bosch saw that the mansion’s exterior lights were off. Maybe there wasn’t enough wind to turn the turbine behind the house. Or maybe Cosgrove just wanted a blackout for the business at hand. The headlights washed across the black helicopter sitting on its pad, ready to go.

A man was waiting in the circle in front of the château. Banks pulled up and the man got in the front seat. In the overhead light, Bosch saw that it was Carl Cosgrove. Big and barrel-chested with a full head of wavy gray hair. He recognized
him from the photos. Drummond said nothing to him, but Banks was excited to see his old pal from the Guard.

“Carl, long time no see, man.”

Cosgrove glanced over at him, clearly not as jazzed about their reunion.

“Reggie.”

That was all he said. Drummond instructed Banks to drive around the circle and onto a service road that wrapped around behind the château and went past a freestanding garage and back into the hillside to the rear of the property. Soon they came to an old A-frame barn that was surrounded by cattle pens but looked unused and abandoned.

“What are we doing?” Banks asked.

“We?” Drummond said. “We are taking care of Detective Bosch because Detective Bosch couldn’t leave the ghosts of the past alone. Pull to the front of the barn.”

Banks stopped with the headlights bathing the large double doors. There was a “No Trespassing” sign nailed to the door on the left. A large slide bar secured the doors and a heavy chain was also wrapped through the two handles and held in place with a padlock.

“Kids were sneaking in here, leaving their beer cans and shit all over,” Cosgrove said, as if he had to explain why the barn was locked.

“Unlock it,” Drummond said.

Cosgrove got out and headed to the barn doors with a key already in his hand.

“You sure about this, Drummer?” Banks asked.

“Don’t call me that, Reggie. People stopped calling me that a long time ago.”

“Sorry. I won’t. But are you sure we have to do this?”

“There you go with that
we
stuff again. When was it ever
we
, Reg? Don’t you mean
me
? Me always cleaning up after what you guys did?”

Banks didn’t answer. Cosgrove had gotten the doors unlocked and was pulling the right side open.

“Let’s do this thing,” Drummond said.

He got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Banks was slow to do likewise, and Bosch seized the moment, locking eyes with him in the rearview.

“Don’t be a part of this, Reggie. He gave you a gun, you can stop this.”

Bosch’s door opened then and Drummond reached in to pull him out.

“Reggie, what are you waiting for? Let’s go, man.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you wanted me, too.”

Banks got out as Bosch was pulled out.

“In the barn, Bosch,” Drummond said.

Bosch looked up at the black sky again as he was pushed toward the open door of the barn. Once they were inside, Cosgrove turned on an overhead light that was so high up in the crossbeams that it threw only a dim glow down to where they stood below.