As Gant approached the door, Bosch could see that the Ziploc bag was wet.
“Toilet tank?”
An obvious place. One of the top five hiding places used by criminals. They all watched The Godfather at some point in their maturation process.
“Nope. The drain pan under the washing machine.”
Bosch nodded. That wasn’t even top twenty-five. Briscoe reached around Gant and unlocked the security gate. Bosch pulled it open to let him out.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Briscoe,” he said.
“Just get the fuck off my property now and don’t come back,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Gladly.”
Bosch threw her a mock salute and followed Gant off the stoop. Gant handed him the bag and Harry checked the weapon as they walked. The plastic bag was smeared with black mold and scratched from years of use but he could tell the gun was a Beretta model 92.
At the trunk of his car Harry put on a pair of latex gloves and removed the gun from the plastic bag so he could carefully examine it. He first noted that the left side had a deep scrape mark along the barrel and frame that had been painted over or filled in with a marker. It appeared to be the weapon that Charles 2 Small Washburn had described finding in his backyard after the Jespersen murder.
Bosch next checked the serial number on the left side of the frame. But it appeared that the machine-stamped number was gone. By holding the weapon up closer and angling it in the light, he could see where the metal had been scarred by several scrape marks. He doubted these could have been caused by the lawn mower blade. Rather, it looked like a concentrated and deliberate effort to obliterate the tracking number. The closer he looked at the scarring on the metal, the more he was convinced. Either Trumont Story or a previous holder of the gun had purposely removed the serial number.
“That it?” Gant asked.
“Looks like it.”
“You see the serial number?”
“No, it’s gone.”
Bosch ejected the fully loaded magazine and the bullet from the gun’s chamber. He then transferred the weapon to a new plastic evidence bag. Ballistics testing would have to confirm the gun’s connection to the Jespersen killing and those that followed, but Bosch felt sure that he was holding the first solid piece of evidence produced in the case in twenty years. It didn’t necessarily move him any closer to Anneke Jespersen’s killer but it was something. It was a starting point.
“I told you all to get!” Briscoe called from behind her security gate. “Leave me alone or I’ll sue your asses for harassment! Why don’t you make yourselves useful and find out who killed Tru Story.”
Bosch put the gun into an open cardboard box he kept in the trunk and then slammed the lid, looking at the woman over the roof of his car. He held his tongue as he came around to the driver-side door.
They were lucky. Charles Washburn had not only been unable to make bail but he had yet to be transferred from the lockup at 77th Street Station to the city jail downtown. He was pulled out and returned to the interview room in the Detective Bureau and was waiting there when Bosch, Chu, and Gant walked in.
“What, we got three stooges now?” he said. “It take all three a you to roust me this time?”
“Nah, we ain’t here to roust you, Charlie,” Gant said. “We’re here to make things right by you.”
“Yeah, and how’s that?”
Bosch pulled out a chair and sat across from Washburn. He placed a closed cardboard box on the table. Gant and Chu remained standing in the tiny room.
“We got a deal for you,” Gant said. “You take us to the house where you grew up and show us where you put a bullet in the fence post, and we’ll see what we can do about dropping some of these charges you got on you. You know, cooperating witness. Quid pro quo.”
“What, now? It’s dark out, man.”
“We’ve got flashlights, Two Small,” Bosch said.
“I ain’t no cooperating witness, man, and you can keep your quid pro quota shit. I only tol’ you about Story because he’s dead. You can put me back in lockup now.”
He started to get up but Gant clapped him on the shoulder in a way that was friendly but also kept him in the chair.
“Nah, you won’t be cooperating against anybody. Nuttin’ like that. You’ll just be leading us to that bullet. That’s all we want.”
“And that’s all?”
His eyes moved to the box on the table. Gant looked at Bosch who took over.
“And we want you to look at a couple of guns we picked up and see if you can identify the one you found twenty years ago. The gun you gave to Trumont Story.”
Bosch leaned forward and opened the box. They had put two other unloaded 9mm pistols in evidence bags into the box along with the gun turned over by Gail Briscoe. Bosch took them out and put them on the table and then put the box on the floor. Gant then uncuffed Washburn so he could pick each one up and study it without removing it from the plastic bag.
Two Small examined the Beretta from Trumont Story’s house last. He studied both sides and then nodded.
“This one,” he said.
“You sure about that?” Bosch asked.
Washburn ran a finger along the left side of the Beretta.
“Yeah, I guess, except they fixed the scratch mark up. But I can still feel it. That’s the lawnmower blade.”
“I don’t want you guessing. Is that the weapon you found or not?”
“Yeah, man, it’s the piece.”
Bosch took it back and stretched the plastic tightly across the frame where the serial number would have been stamped.
“Look at that. Is that how it was when you found it?”
“Look at what?”
“Don’t play dumb, Charles. The serial number’s gone. Was it that way when you found it?”
“You mean those scratch marks? Yeah, I guess so. The lawnmower did that.”
“No lawnmower did that. That was done with a file. And you’re saying you’re sure that’s the way it was when you found it?”
“Man, I can’t be sure about nothin’ twenty years ago. What do you want from me? I don’t remember.”
Bosch was getting annoyed with his dancing.
“Did you do that, Charles? To make it more valuable to a guy like Tru Story?”
“No, man, I didn’t do it.”
“Then, tell me, how many guns have you found in your life, Charles?”
“Just this one.”
“Okay, and as soon as you found it, you knew it had a value, right? You knew you could give it to the street boss and you could get something back for it. They might welcome you into the club, right? So don’t be dancing around this, telling me you don’t remember. If the serial number was gone when you found it, then you would have told Trumont Story that it was gone, because you knew it would be a plus to him. So, which is it, Charles?”
“Yeah, man, it was gone. Okay? It was gone. There was no serial number when I found it, and that’s what I told Tru, so get outta my face.”
Bosch realized he had leaned across the table and had invaded what Washburn considered his personal space. He leaned back.
“Okay, Charles, thank you.”
It was a significant admission because it confirmed something about how Anneke Jespersen’s killer carried out the crime. Bosch had been grinding on the question of why the killer had thrown the gun over the fence. Had something happened in the alley that necessitated his getting rid of the gun? Had the gunshot drawn others? The fact that he was using a gun that he thought was untraceable made things fit a little better. With the serial number obliterated, the killer would have thought that the only way to be connected to the murder would be to be caught with the murder weapon in his possession. The best way to avoid that was to dump the gun quickly. This explained why the gun was thrown over the fence.