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 chateau, 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 chateau. 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 chateau 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
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.
Drummond went to a center column that helped support the hayloft and pushed against it to test its strength. It felt solid.
“Here,” he said. “Bring him over.”
Banks pushed Bosch forward and Drummond grabbed him by the arm again and turned him, so his back came to the column. He brought the gun up and pointed it at Bosch’s face.
“Hold still,” Drummond commanded. “Reggie, cuff him to the beam.”
Banks pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked one of Bosch’s cuffs, then locked his arms around the column. Bosch realized that this meant they were not going to kill him. Not yet, at least. They needed him alive for some reason.
Once Bosch was secured, Cosgrove got brave and came up close to him.
“You know what I should’ve done? I should’ve unloaded my sixteen on you back in that alley. It would have saved me all of this. But I guess I aimed too high.”
“Carl, enough,” Drummond said. “Why don’t you go back to the house and wait for Frank. We’ll take care of this and I’ll be right behind you.”
Cosgrove gave Bosch a long look that ended with an evil smile.
“Have a seat,” he said.
He then kicked Bosch’s left foot out from beneath him and shoved him down by the shoulder. Bosch slid down the column to the ground, landing hard on his tailbone.
“Carl! Come on, man, let us handle it.”
Cosgrove finally backed away at the same time Bosch realized what he had meant about aiming high. Cosgrove had been the soldier who had opened fire that night at the crime scene, the gunfire that sent everyone to the ground for cover. And now Bosch knew that he had not seen anyone on a roof. He had only wanted to set nerves on edge and cause a distraction from the investigation of the crime he had committed.
“I’ll be in the car,” Cosgrove said.
“No, we leave the car up here. I don’t want Frank to see it when he’s coming in. It might make him nervous. His wife told him about Bosch driving by.”
“Whatever. I’ll walk back.”
Cosgrove left the barn, and Drummond stood in front of Bosch and looked down on him in the dim light. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the gun he had taken away from Bosch.
“Hey, Drummer,” Banks said nervously. “What did you mean about Frank not seeing the car? Why is Frank —”
“Reggie, I told you not to call me that.”
Drummond raised his arm and put the muzzle of Bosch’s gun to the side of Reggie Banks’s head. He was still looking down at Bosch when he pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening and Bosch was hit by the blowback of blood and brain matter a split second before Banks’s body dropped to the hay-strewn floor next to him.
Drummond looked down at the body. The heart’s last few contractions sent blood gushing from the bullet entrance point into the dirty straw. Drummond pocketed Bosch’s gun again and then reached down to the gun he had given Banks earlier. He picked it up.
“Back in the car, when you were alone with him, you told him to use it on me, didn’t you?”
Bosch didn’t answer and Drummond didn’t wait long before moving on.
“You’d think he would’ve checked to see if it was loaded.”
He popped out the magazine and wiggled it empty in front of Bosch.
“You were right, Detective,” he said. “You attacked the weak link and Reggie was the weakest link. Bravo on
