The Black Box hb-18

by Michael Connelly

  “What are you talking about? You told me Drummond wasn’t there.”

  “He wasn’t. I’m talking about later. After we got back here. He knew what happened in that room. He knew everything.”

  Bosch needed to know more before he could assess Drummond’s role in the crimes against Anneke Jespersen. Keeping Banks from comfortably spinning his story, he inexplicably jumped in time to the L.A. riots and 1992.

  “Tell me about Crenshaw Boulevard now,” he said.

  Banks shook his head.

  “What?” he said. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t? You were there.”

  “I was there but I wasn’t there, you know what’m saying?”

  “No, I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Well, of course, I was there. We were called out. But when that girl got shot, I was nowhere near that alley. They had me and Henderson checking IDs down at the roadblock at the other end of the formation.”

  “So, you are saying now, and it’s on tape, that you never saw ‘the girl,’ Anneke Jespersen, alive or dead while you were in L.A.?”

  The formality of the question gave Banks pause. He knew that Bosch was locking in his story. Bosch had explicitly informed him earlier that if he told the truth, there was hope for him. But he had warned him that if he lied even once, all bets were off and any effort by Bosch to ameliorate Banks’s situation would be stopped.

  As a cooperating witness, Banks was no longer handcuffed. He brought his hands up and ran his fingers through his hair. Two hours before, he had been on a stool at the VFW. Now he was figuratively fighting for his life, a life that one way or the other would surely be different after this night.

  “Okay, wait, I’m not saying that. I saw her. Yeah, I saw her, but I didn’t know nothing about her getting shot up in that alley. I wasn’t near there. I found out it was her after we got back up here like two weeks later, and that’s the truth.”

  “All right, then, tell me about seeing her.”

  Banks said that shortly after the 237th arrived in Los Angeles for riot duty, Henderson informed the others that he had seen the “blond girl” from the boat with the rest of the press outside the Coliseum, where the California National Guard units were mustering after driving down in a long truck line from the Central Valley.

  At first the others didn’t believe Henderson, but Cosgrove sent Drummond to check the media line because he hadn’t been in the room on the Saudi Princess and wouldn’t be recognized.

  “Yeah, but how would he recognize her?” Bosch asked.

  “He had seen her on the boat, so he knew what she looked like. He just hadn’t gone to the room with us. He said four was a crowd.”

  Bosch computed that and told Banks to go on with the story. He said that Drummond came back from the media line and reported that the woman was indeed there.

  “I remember we were saying, ‘What does she want?’ and ‘How the hell did she find us?’ But Cosgrove wasn’t worried. He said she couldn’t prove anything. This whole thing was before DNA and CSI stuff like that, get what’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah, I get it. So when did you, personally, actually see her?”

  Banks said that once their unit received orders and moved out to Crenshaw Boulevard, he saw Jespersen. She had followed the transport and was taking photographs of the men in the unit as they deployed along the boulevard.

  “It was like she was this ghost following us, takin’ pictures of us. It was creepin’ me out. Henderson, too. We thought she was like going to do a story on us or something.”

  “Did she speak to you?”

  “No, not to me. Never.”

  “What about Henderson?”

  “Not that I saw, and he was with me most of the time.”

  “Who killed her, Reggie? Who took her in that alley and killed her?”

  “I wish I knew, man, because I would tell you. But I wasn’t up there.”

  “And you five guys never talked about it after?”

  “Well, yeah, we talked but it was never said who did what. Drummer took charge and said we had to make a pact never to talk about it again. He said Carl was rich and he would take care of everybody as long as we kept quiet about it. And if we didn’t, he said he’d make sure we all went down for it.”

  “How?”

  “He said he had the evidence. He said that what happened on the boat was motive and we’d all get charged. Conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Bosch nodded. It all fit with his own conspiracy theory.

  “So, who actually shot the woman? Was it Carl? Is that what you took from all that?”

  Banks shrugged.

  “Well, yeah, that’s what I always thought. He pushed her into that alley or lured her in there, and the others kept watch for him. They were together up there. Carl, Frank, and Drummer. But me and Henderson, we weren’t there, man. I’m telling you.”

  “And then that night, Frank Dowler goes into the alley to take a leak and just happens to ‘discover’ the body.”

  Banks just nodded.

  “Why? Why’d he bother? Why didn’t they just leave the body there? It probably wouldn’t have been found for at least a few days.”

  “I don’t know. I think they thought that if they found it during the riots, the investigation would be all messed up. You know, like it would be hurried. Drummer was a deputy up here and he knew about cop stuff. We were hearing stories about how nothing was being done about anything. It was crazy out there.”

  Bosch stared at him for a long moment.

  “Yeah, well, they were right about that,” he said.

  Bosch paused there as he tried to consider what he still needed to ask. Sometimes when a witness opened up, there were so many aspects of a case or a crime to cover that it was hard to keep track. He remembered that what had brought him to this moment with Banks was the gun. Follow the gun, he reminded himself.

  “Whose gun was used to kill her?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Not mine. Mine’s at home in a safe.”

  “You all had Berettas from Iraq?”

  Banks nodded and told a story about their unit driving truckloads of seized Iraqi weapons out to a hole dug in the ground in the Saudi desert so that they could be blown apart and buried. Almost all of the members of the unit working the operation cadged handguns from the trucks, including the five men who would later be on the Saudi Princess at the same time as Anneke Jespersen.

  The weapons were then shipped home, hidden by Banks—the company’s inventory officer—in the bottom of the company’s equipment cartons.

  “It was like the fox guarding the henhouse,” Banks said. “We were a transportation company and I was one of the guys in charge of breaking everything down and putting it in cartons. Gettin’ those guns home was easy.”

  “And then you distributed them when you got back here.”

  “That’s right. And all I know is that I still got mine at home in the safe, so that proves I wasn’t the one who killed her.”

  “Were you all carrying them in L.A.?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t. You’d have to hide the thing the whole time.”

  “But you were going to a city that you saw on TV was totally out of control. You didn’t want to bring something extra just in case?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know, man. We weren’t that tight anymore, you know? After Desert Storm we came back and we all did our own thing. And then when we got called back up for L.A., we were back together. But nobody asked nobody who was bringing their extra gun with them.”

  “All right. But one more thing about those guns. Who removed the serial numbers from them?”

  Banks looked confused.

  “What do you mean? Nobody, as far as I know.”

  “You sure about that? The gun that killed that woman in that alley had the serial number removed. None of you guys did that? You never filed down the numbers?”
/>   “No, why would we? I mean, I didn’t. The guns were sort of like souvenirs from being over there. Like a keepsake.”

  Bosch would have to think about Banks’s answer. Charles Washburn had insisted that the gun he found in his backyard already had its serial number removed. This jibed with the fact that the shooter threw the gun over the fence after the murder, indicating a strong belief that the gun could not be traced to him in any way. But if Banks was to be believed, not all the members of the Saudi Princess five removed the serial numbers after returning from the Gulf War. But at least one of them did. There was something sinister about that. At least one of the five knew the weapon was going to be more than a souvenir. It was going to be used someday.

  Bosch considered what was next. It was important for him to document all parts of the story, including the ongoing and changing relationships among the five men from the ship.

  “Tell me about Henderson. What do you think happened to him?”

  “Somebody killed him, that’s what happened.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, man. All I know is that he told me we were clear on the boat thing because enough time had gone by, and that we had nothing to do with what happened in L.A., so we were totally in the clear there, too.”

  Banks said that he never had another conversation with Henderson. A month later he was murdered in the robbery at the restaurant he managed.

  “The restaurant that was owned by Cosgrove,” Bosch said.

  “That’s right.”

  “It said in a newspaper story at the time that he was starting to get his own restaurant going. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I read that, too, but I didn’t know about it.”

  “Did you think the robbery was just coincidence?”

  “No, I thought the whole thing was a message. My take was that Chris thought he was in the clear but that he had something he could hold over Carl. He went to him and said, put me in business or else, and then the robbery happened and he got clipped. You know, they’ve never caught anybody for it and they never will.”

  “So then who did it?”

  “How the fuck do I know? Carl’s got tons of money. If he needs something done, it’ll get done, get what’m saying?”

  Bosch nodded. He got it. He picked up the file and flipped through it, looking for anything that might spring the next question into his mind. He came across a series of photos of cameras like those Anneke Jespersen was known to have been carrying. The RCTF had circulated the photos to local pawnshops after the riots, without results.

  “What about her cameras? They were taken. Did you see anyone with the cameras?”

  Banks shook his head. Bosch pressed him.

  “What about the film? Did Cosgrove ever mention taking film out of her camera?”

  “Not to me. I don’t know anything about what happened in that alley, man. How many times I have to tell you? I wasn’t there.”

  Bosch suddenly remembered a key area of questioning that he had not yet tapped and silently chastised himself for almost forgetting it. He was sure he would have only this one go-round with Banks. Once the case moved forward, Banks would get an attorney. Even if he continued to cooperate under his lawyer’s guidance, it was unlikely that Bosch would get another chance at a one-on-one sit-down with no lawyers in the room and him setting the rules. He had to get all he could from Banks right now.

  “What about the girl’s hotel room? Somebody went in there after she was dead, and they had her key. It was pulled out of her pocket when she was murdered.”

  Banks started shaking his head halfway through Bosch’s question. Bosch read it as a tell.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Banks said.

  “You sure?” Bosch said. “You hold something back on me and it’s just the same as a lie. I find out and this deal is dead and I use everything you’ve said to put you in the ground. You understand that?”

  Banks relented.

  “Look, I don’t know a lot. But when we were down there, I heard that Drummer got hurt and had to go to the hospital. He had like a concussion and they kept him overnight. But Drummer told me later that the whole thing didn’t happen. That he and Carl cooked it up so he would be away from the unit and be able to go to her hotel and use the key to see if she had anything that was, you know, incriminating about the boat.”

  Bosch already knew the public story. Drummond, the war hero, was the only one in the 237th who was injured during the call of duty in Los Angeles. It was all a fake, part of a plan to cover up a gang rape and a murder. Now, with the financial help of one of the men he covered up for, he was a two-term sheriff looking at a run for Congress.

  “What else did you hear?” Bosch asked. “What did he get from the room?”

  “All I heard was that he got her notes. It was like a journal of her looking for us and trying to figure out who we were. Turned out she was writing a book about it, I guess.”

  “Does he still have it?”

  “I have no idea. I never even saw it.”

  Bosch decided that Drummond had to still have the journal. It was that and his knowledge of what had happened that allowed him to control the other four conspirators. Especially Carl Cosgrove, who was rich and powerful and could help Drummond fulfill his ambitions.

  Bosch checked his phone. It was still recording and going on ninety-one minutes. He had one more area of questioning for Banks.

  “Tell me about Alex White.”

  Banks shook his head in confusion.

  “Who’s Alex White?”

  “He was one of your customers. Ten years ago you sold him a tractor mower at the dealership.”

  “Okay. What’s that—”

  “The day he took delivery, you called down to the LAPD and used his name to check on the Jespersen case.”

  Bosch saw recognition finally come to Banks’s eyes.

  “Oh, yeah, right, that was me.”

  “Why? Why’d you call?”

  “Because I was wondering what happened with the case. I was reading a paper somebody left in the break room, and there was a story about how it had been ten years since the riots. So I called down and asked about it and I got switched around a few times and then finally some guy talked to me. Only he said I had to give him my name or he couldn’t tell me anything. So, I don’t know, I saw the name on a piece of paper or something and just said I was Alex White. I mean, he didn’t have my number or nothing, so I knew it wouldn’t add up to anything.”

  Bosch nodded, realizing that if Banks hadn’t made the call, then he might not have connected things to Modesto and the case would still be cold.

  “Actually, your number was recorded,” he told Banks. “It’s the reason I’m here.”

  Banks nodded glumly.

  “But there’s something I don’t understand,” Bosch said. “Why did you call? You guys were in the clear. Why risk raising suspicion?”

  Banks shrugged and shook his head.

  “I don’t know. It was sort of spur-of-the-moment. The newspaper made me start thinking about that girl and what happened. I was wondering if, you know, they were still looking for anybody.”

  Bosch checked his watch. It was ten o’clock. It was late but Bosch didn’t want to wait until the morning to drive Banks to Los Angeles. He wanted to keep his momentum.

  He ended the recording and saved it. Being a man who never trusted modern technology, Bosch then did a rare thing. He used the phone’s email feature to send the audio file to his partner as a just-in-case measure. Just in case his phone failed or the file was corrupted or he dropped the phone in the toilet. He just wanted to be sure he safeguarded Banks’s story.

  He waited until he heard the whisking sound from the phone that indicated the email had been sent and then stood up.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re done for now.”

  “Are you going to take me back to my car?”

  “No, Banks, you’re coming with me.”

  “
Where?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Now?”

  “Now. Stand up.”

  But Banks didn’t move.

  “Man, I don’t want to go to L.A. I want to go home. I got kids.”

  “Yeah, when was the last time you saw your kids?”

  That gave Banks pause. He had no answer.

  “I thought so. Let’s go. Stand up.”

  “Why now? Let me go home.”

  “Listen, Banks, you’re going with me to L.A. In the morning I’m going to sit you down in front of a deputy DA who will take your official statement and then probably waltz you in to the grand jury. After that, he’ll decide when you get to go home.”

  Banks still didn’t move. He was a man frozen by his past. He knew that whether or not he escaped criminal prosecution, his life as he knew it was over. Everyone from Modesto to Manteca would know the part he played—then and now.

  Bosch started gathering the photos and documents and returning them to the file.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “We’re going to L.A. and you can sit up in the front next to me or I can arrest you and cuff you and put you in the backseat. You make that long drive hunched over like that and you’ll probably never walk straight again. Now, how do you want to go?”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll go. But I gotta take a leak first. You saw how much I was drinking and I didn’t take a piss before I left the post.”

  Bosch frowned. The request wasn’t unreasonable. In fact, Bosch was already trying to figure out how to use the bathroom himself without giving Banks a chance to change his mind on the whole thing and run out the door.

  “All right,” he said. “Come on.”

  Bosch went into the bathroom first and checked the window over the toilet. It was an old louvered window with a crank handle. Bosch was able to pull the handle off easily. He held it up so Banks would see he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Do your business,” he said.

  He stepped out of the bathroom but left the door open so he would hear any effort by Banks to open or break the window. While Banks urinated, Bosch looked around for a place to cuff him so he could in turn use the bathroom before the five-hour drive. He settled on the bars that were part of the design of the bed’s headboard.