Mendenhall followed him out.
“Detective Bosch, I said, what is going on?”
Bosch lifted one of the cardboard boxes out of the trunk and lowered it to the ground.
“Keep your voice down,” he said. “What are you doing here? You followed me up here over O’Toole’s complaint?”
Bosch found the gun box and opened it.
“Not exactly.”
“Then, why?”
He retrieved the Kimber and checked its action.
“I wanted to know something.”
“Know what?”
He holstered the gun, then took the extra magazine out of the box and put it in his pocket.
“What you were doing, for one thing. I had a feeling you weren’t going on vacation.”
Bosch closed the trunk quietly and looked around to get his bearings. He then looked at Mendenhall.
“Where’s your car? How did you get in here?”
“I parked where you parked last night. I got in the same way.”
He looked down at her shoes. They were caked in mud from the almond grove.
“You’ve been following me and you’re alone. Does anyone even know where you are?”
She averted her eyes and he knew the answer was no. She was freelancing on Bosch while he was freelancing on Anneke Jespersen. Somehow, some way, he liked that about her.
“Turn off the flashlight,” he said. “It will only expose us.”
She did as she was told.
“Now, what are you doing here, Detective Mendenhall?”
“I’m working my case.”
“That’s not good enough. You’re freelancing on me and I want to know why.”
“Let’s just say I followed you off the reservation and leave it at that. Who killed that man in there?”
Bosch knew there wasn’t time to go back and forth with Mendenhall over her motives for following him. If they got out of this, he would get back to it at the right time.
“Sheriff J.J. Drummond,” he answered. “In cold blood. Right in front of me, without missing a beat. Did you see him when you were sneaking in here?”
“I saw two men. They both went into the house.”
“Did you see anybody else? A third man arrive?”
She shook her head.
“No, just the two. Can you please just tell me what is going on? I saw you taken here. Now there’s a man in there dead and you were locked in like—”
“Look, we don’t have a lot of time. There is going to be more killing if we don’t stop it. The shorthand is that this is where my cold case has led. The case I told you about and that I went to San Quentin on. It’s here. This is where it ends. Get in.”
Bosch continued in a whisper as he moved toward the driver-side door.
“My victim was Anneke Jespersen from Denmark. She was a war correspondent. Four National Guard soldiers drugged and raped her on an R&R leave during Desert Storm in ’ninety-one. She came over here the next year, looking for them. I don’t know if she was going to write a story or a book or what, but she followed them to L.A. during the riots. And they used the cover of the riots to murder her.”
Bosch got in, put the key in the ignition, and started the car, keeping his foot as light on the gas as possible. Mendenhall got in the passenger side.
“My investigation has caused the conspiracy that binds them to unravel. Banks was a loose end, so they killed him. They mentioned that another man was coming and I think they’re going to kill him, too.”
“Who?”
“A guy named Frank Dowler.”
He put the car in reverse and started backing away from the barn. He left the lights off.
“Why didn’t they kill you?” Mendenhall asked. “Why only Banks?”
“Because they need me alive—for the moment. Drummond has a plan.”
“What plan? This is crazy.”
Bosch had run everything through his data banks while waiting in the darkness with the pitchfork. He had finally come to understand J.J. Drummond’s plan.
“T-O-D,” he said. “He needs me alive because of time of death. The plan is to lay it all on me. They’ll say I became obsessed with the case, had set out to avenge the victim. I killed Banks and then Dowler, but before I could get to Cosgrove, the sheriff got to me. Drummond plans to put me down as soon as he’s done with Dowler. I’m sure the story will cast him as the fearless lawman, going up against the mad dog cop to save one of the Valley’s best and brightest citizens—Cosgrove. After that, Drummond will ride into Congress a hero. Did I mention he’s running for Congress?”
Bosch started down the hill to the château. The exterior lights were still off and a mist was coming in off the grove, cloaking the place in further darkness.
“I don’t understand how Drummond is even involved in this. He’s the sheriff, for God’s sake.”
“He’s the sheriff because Cosgrove made him the sheriff. Just like he’ll put him in Congress. Drummond knows all the secrets. He was in the two-thirty-seventh with them. He was there on the ship during Desert Storm and he was there in L.A. during the riots. He’s the one who killed Anneke Jespersen. And that’s how he kept a hold on Cosgrove all these—”
Bosch stopped as he realized something. He slowed the car to a halt. His mind hit playback to one of the last things Drummond had said before leaving the barn. Carl Junior would’ve been disowned if the old man had learned of his involvement.
“He’s going to kill Cosgrove, too.”
“Why?”
“Because Cosgrove’s old man is dead. Drummond can no longer control him.”
As if to punctuate Bosch’s conclusion, the sound of gunfire came from the direction of the château. Bosch pinned the accelerator and they quickly came around the side of the mansion and into the turnaround.
There was a motorcycle leaning on its stand twenty feet from the front door. Bosch recognized its metallic-blue gas tank.
“That’s Dowler’s,” he said.
They heard another shot from the house. And then another.
“We’re too late.”
35
The front door was unlocked. Bosch and Mendenhall entered, covering the angles from both sides of the frame. They came into a circular entry room with a thick oval of glass sitting atop a three-foot-high stump of cypress. There was nothing else in the room, just the table for keys and mail and packages. From there they started down the main hallway, clearing first a dining room with a table long enough to seat twelve, and then a living room that had to have been at least two thousand square feet, with twin fireplaces at opposite ends. They moved back into the hall, which jogged around a grand staircase and into a smaller back hallway that led to the kitchen. On the floor here was the dog that had charged toward Bosch the night before. Cosmo. He had been shot behind the left ear.
They hesitated in front of the dog, and almost immediately the kitchen lights went out. Bosch knew what was coming.
“Get down!”
He threw himself forward to the floor, coming up behind the dog’s body. A figure appeared in the darkness of the kitchen doorway and Bosch saw the gunpowder flashes before he heard the shots. He felt the dog’s body jerk with the impact of shots meant for him and he returned fire, putting four shots through the doorway into the dark. He heard glass shattering and wood splintering. Then he heard a door opening and the sound of footsteps running away.
No shots followed his volley. He looked around and saw Mendenhall huddled next to a bookcase that stood against the right wall, filled with cookbooks.
“Okay?” he whispered.
“Fine,” she responded.
He turned and looked down the hallway behind them. They had left the front door open. The shooter could be circling the house to come in on them from behind. It was time to move. Time to clear the kitchen.
Bosch pulled himself up into a crouch, then sprang forward, jumping over the dog’s body and moving quickly toward the dark doorway to the kitchen.