Bosch envisioned it. A camera landing in somebody’s backyard and being kept or pawned instead of turned in to police.
“Anything else, Detective?” asked Drummond, clearly relishing his chance to flaunt his cleverness to Bosch.
“Yeah,” Bosch said. “If it was you who did it, how did you keep Cosgrove and the others in line for twenty years?”
“That was easy. Carl Junior would’ve been disowned if the old man had learned of his involvement in any of this. The others just followed along and got put down if they didn’t.”
With that he turned and headed toward the door. He pushed it open but then hesitated. He looked back at Bosch with a grim smile as he reached over and turned out the overhead light.
“Get some sleep, Detective.”
He then stepped out and closed the door behind him. Bosch heard the steel slide bar strike home as Drummond locked him in.
Bosch was left in a perfect darkness. But he was alive—for now.
33
Bosch had been left in darkness before. And many of those times he was scared and knew that death was near. He also knew that if he waited, somehow he would see, that there was lost light in all places of darkness, and if he found it, it would save him.
He knew he had to try to understand what had just happened and why. He shouldn’t be alive. All his theories ended with him in a box. With Drummond putting a bullet in his head in the same callous manner he had executed Reggie Banks. Drummond was the ultimate fixer, the cleaner, and Bosch was part of the mess. It made no sense that he was spared, even temporarily. Bosch had to figure that out if he was to survive.
The first step was to free himself. He put all of the case questions aside and concentrated on escape. He brought his ankles in underneath him and pushed up, slowly rising into a standing position so that he could better assess his surroundings and possibilities.
He started with the column. It was a 6 × 6 solid piece of timber. Hitting it with his back caused no shudder or shimmy. It only caused him pain. The beam wasn’t going anywhere, so he had to work with it as a given.
He looked up into the darkness and could just make out the shapes and forms of tie beams overhead. He knew from before the light went out that there was no way for him to reach the top, no way for him to climb up to free himself.
He looked down but his feet were obscured in the dark. He knew the floor was straw on dirt and he kicked at the bottom of the beam with his heel. It felt solidly anchored but he could not tell how.
He knew he had a choice: wait for Drummond to come back or make an effort to escape. He remembered the image he had conjured up earlier of his daughter and decided he would not go easily. He would fight with his last strength. He used his feet to sweep the straw away and then started kicking at the dirt with his heel, slowly digging down beneath the surface.
Knowing it was a last desperate effort, he kicked with ferocity, as if he were kicking back at anyone and anything that had ever held him back. His heels were damaged by the effort and screaming in pain. His wrists were pulled tight into the cuffs to the point that he could feel numbness taking his fingers. But he didn’t care. He wanted to kick at everything that had ever stopped him in life.
His effort was futile. He finally dug down to what he believed was the concrete mooring the column had been set in. The connection was solid. It wasn’t going anywhere and neither was he. He finally stopped his efforts and leaned forward, head down. He was exhausted and feeling close to defeated.
He settled into the knowledge that his only shot, his only chance, would be to make his move when Drummond came back. If Bosch could come up with a reason for Drummond to uncuff him, he would have a fighting chance. He could go for the gun or he could make a run for it. Either way, it would be his only shot.
But what did he have, what could he say to make Drummond give up his one strategic advantage? Bosch straightened up against the beam. He had to be alert. He had to be ready for all possibilities. He started reviewing what Banks had told him back in the motel room, looking for a piece of the story that Bosch could use. He needed something he could threaten Drummond with, something hidden and that only Bosch could lead him to.
He held fast to his conviction that he could not give up the email he had sent to Chu. He could not put his partner in potential danger, nor could he allow Drummond to erase the solution to the case. Banks’s confession was too important to barter with.
Bosch had no doubt that Drummond had already examined his phone, but it was password protected. The phone was set to lock after three failed attempts to enter the code. If Drummond kept trying after that he would eventually trigger a data purge. That gave Bosch high confidence in the recording safely getting to Chu without Drummond knowing. Harry decided that he must do nothing that would change that.
He needed something else now. He needed a play, a script, something that he could work with.
What?
His mind grew desperate. There had to be something. He started with the fact that Drummond had shot 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.
What?
Bosch suddenly thought he had something. The gun again. Follow the gun. It had been the rule of the entire investigation. There was no reason to change it now. Banks had said he was the National Guard company’s inventory officer. He was the one who packed the souvenir guns in the bottom of the equipment cartons for shipping back to the States. He was the fox guarding the henhouse. Bosch would tell Drummond that the fox had made a list. Banks had kept a list of serial numbers to the weapons and it contained the names of who got which gun. That list included the name of the soldier who got the gun that killed Anneke Jespersen. That list was hidden, but with Banks dead, it would soon come to light. Only Bosch could lead Drummond to it.
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.