Banks because he knew he had talked to Bosch. Working it from there, Bosch could say Banks showed him something, some kind of evidence that he kept hidden as his ace in the hole. Something with which he could turn the tables on Cosgrove and Drummond, if he ever had the chance.
Bosch suddenly thought he had something. The gun again.
Bosch grew excited with hope. He actually thought the play could work. It wasn’t completely there yet, but it could work. It needed embellishment. It needed a reason to create genuine concern in Drummond, a legitimate fear that the list would come out and expose him now that Banks was dead.
Bosch began to believe he had a chance. He just needed to wrap the basic story in more detail and believability. He just needed—
He stopped his thought processes. There was a light. He realized he’d had his eyes open the whole time he was working out the play with Drummond. But now he was drawn to a small greenish-white glow he saw down near his feet. It was a blurred circle of dots no bigger than a half dollar. There was movement within the circle, too. A tiny speck of light like a distant star moved along the circumference of the circle, touching dot to dot to dot.
Bosch realized he was looking at Reggie Banks’s watch. And all in a moment he knew how he could escape.
A plan quickly formed in Bosch’s mind. He slid down the beam to the point where he was in a sitting position without a chair beneath him. Despite soreness in his thighs and hamstrings from the plod through the almond grove the night before, he used his right leg to brace his back against the column and hold his position, then reached out with his left foot. Using his heel, he attempted to hook the dead man’s wrist and pull it toward him. It took several tries before he was able to find purchase and move the arm. Once he had moved it as far as he could with his foot, he stood back up and rotated 180 degrees around the column. He slid all the way to the ground this time and reached back with his hand for Banks’s hand. He was barely able to reach it.
Holding the dead man’s hand in both of his, Bosch leaned forward as far as he could to drag the body even closer. Once he accomplished that, he reached for the wrist and unbuckled the watch. Holding it in his left hand, he flipped the buckle back so the prong extended free. He then twisted his wrist so he could work the small steel pin into the keyhole on the right handcuff.
As he worked, Bosch visualized the process. A handcuff was one of the easiest locks to pick, provided you weren’t doing so in the dark and working with your hands behind your back. The key was basically a single-notched pin. The key was universal, because in law enforcement, cuffs were often moved with prisoners from officer to officer, or from bench to bench. If every pair of cuffs had a unique key, then an already ponderous system would slow down even more. Bosch was counting on that as he worked with the watch buckle’s pin. He was skilled with the set of lock picks that he kept hidden behind his badge in the wallet Drummond had confiscated. Turning the prong of a watch buckle into a pick was the challenge.
It took him less than a minute to open the cuff. He then brought his arms around and removed the other cuff even faster. He was free. He got up and immediately headed in the direction of the barn door, promptly tripping over Banks’s body and falling face-first into the straw. He stood back up, got his bearings, and tried again, walking with his arms out in front of him. When he made it to the door, he reached to his left, moving his hands up and down the wall until he found the light switch.
Finally there was light in the barn. Bosch quickly moved back to the huge double doors. He had heard Drummond slide the outside bar home but he tried to move the doors anyway, pushing hard but failing. He tried it twice more and got the same result.
Bosch stepped back and looked around. He had no idea if Drummond and Cosgrove were coming back in a minute or a day, but he felt the need to keep moving. He walked back around the body toward the darker recesses of the barn. He found another set of double doors on the rear wall, but those were locked as well. He turned around and surveyed the interior but saw no other doors and no windows. He cursed out loud.
He tried to calm himself and think. He put himself outside and tried to remember looking at the barn in the wash of the headlights as they had pulled up. It was an A-frame structure, and he remembered that there was a door up in the loft for loading and unloading hay.
Bosch moved quickly to a wooden ladder built next to one of the main support beams and started climbing. The loft was still crowded with bales of hay that had never been removed after the barn was abandoned. Bosch made his way around them to the small set of double doors. These doors were locked, too, but this time from the inside.
It was a simple flip-over hasp with a heavy-duty padlock. Bosch knew he could break the lock if he had the right picks but they were in his badge wallet, which was in Drummond’s pocket. A watch buckle wouldn’t work. He found his escape thwarted again.
He bent forward to study the hasp as best he could in the dim light. He was thinking about trying to kick the doors open, but the wood seemed solid and the hasp assembly was anchored by eight wood screws. Trying to kick it open would have to be only a loud and final resort.
Before going down to the lower level again, he looked around the loft for anything that might help him escape or defend himself. A tool for prying off the lock hasp, or even a piece of solid wood to use as a club. What he found instead might work better. Behind a row of broken hay bales was a rusted pitchfork.
Bosch dropped the pitchfork down to the first floor, careful not to land it on Banks’s body, and then climbed down. With the pitchfork in hand he made one more search around the barn, looking for a way of escape. Finding none, he returned to the light at the center of the barn’s floor. He checked Banks’s body on the off chance he carried a folding knife or something else he could use.
He found no weapon, but he did find the keys to his rental car. Drummond had forgotten to retrieve them after killing Banks.
Bosch moved to the front doors of the barn and pushed one more time, even though he knew they would not part. He was less than fifteen feet away from his car but couldn’t get to it. He knew that in the trunk, beneath the cardboard boxes of equipment that he had transferred, there was another box that he had moved from his work car to the rental. It was the box that held his second gun. The Kimber Ultra Carry .45, loaded with seven bullets in the magazine plus one more jacked into the chamber for good luck.
“Shit,” he whispered.
Bosch knew he had no choice but to wait. He had to surprise and overpower two armed men when they returned. He reached over and switched off the light, dropping the barn back into darkness. He now had the pitchfork and the darkness and the element of surprise. He decided that he liked his chances.
34
Bosch didn’t have to wait long. No more than ten minutes after he turned off the light, he heard the scraping sound of metal on metal as the slide bar outside was moved. This was done slowly, and Bosch thought maybe Drummond was trying to surprise him.
The door slowly came open. From his angle Bosch could see the outside darkness. He could feel the rush of cooler air enter the barn. And he could just make out the shadow of a single figure entering.
Bosch braced himself and raised the pitchfork. He was standing near the light switch. This is where one of them would go first. To turn on the light. His plan was to thrust from shoulder level and drive the weapon through the body. Take out the first one, go for his gun. Then it would be down to one on one.
But the lone figure did not move toward the light switch. He stood stock-still in the door’s opening as if letting his eyes adjust to the dark. He then moved forward three steps into the barn. Bosch wasn’t ready for this. His attack position was on the switch. He was now too far away from his target.
A light suddenly came on in the barn, but it was not from overhead. The person who had entered was carrying a flashlight. And Bosch now thought it might be a woman.
