The Black Box

others. All the threats about prosecution and prison were ultimately hollow. Bosch had the thinnest veil of circumstantial evidence tying Banks and the others to Anneke Jespersen’s murder. He had no witnesses and no physical evidence that linked them. He had the murder weapon but could not put it in any of hissuspects’ hands. Yes, he could put victim and suspects in close proximity in the Persian Gulf and then a year later in South L.A. But that did not prove murder. Bosch knew it wasn’t enough and that not even the greenest deputy district attorney in L.A. would touch it. Bosch had only one shot here and that was turning an insider out. By a trick or a play or by any means necessary, he had to get Banks to break down and give up the story.
    Now Banks shook his head, but it was as if he was trying to ward off some thought or image. As though he thought if he kept his head moving, the reality of what he was facing couldn’t get in.
    “No, no, man, you can’t—you gotta help me,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything but you have to help me. You have to promise.”
    “I can’t promise you anything, Reggie. But I can go to bat for you with the District Attorney’s Office, and I do know this: prosecutors always take care of their key witnesses. If you want that, then you have to open up and tell me everything. Everything. And you can’t tell me any lies. One lie and it all goes away. And you go away for the rest of your life.”
    He let him sit with that for a long moment before continuing. Bosch would make the case against the others here, or the chance would be gone and he would never make it.
    “So, you ready to talk to me?” he finally asked.
    Banks nodded hesitantly.
    “Yes,” Banks said. “I’ll talk.”

31
    B osch plugged the password into his phone and turned on the recording app. He then began the interview. He identified himself and the case the interview was concerning and then identified Reginald Banks, including his age and address. He read Banks his rights from a card he kept in his badge wallet, and Banks said he understood his rights and was willing to cooperate, clearly stating that he did not want to confer with a lawyer first.
    From there Banks told a twenty-year story in ninety minutes, beginning with the Saudi Princess . He never used the word rape , but he acknowledged that four of them—Banks, Dowler, Henderson, and Cosgrove—had sex with Anneke Jespersen in a stateroom on the ship while she was incapacitated by alcohol and a drug Cosgrove had slipped into her drink. Banks said Cosgrove called the drug “romp and stomp,” but Banks didn’t know why. He said it was something given to cattle to calm them down before they were trans-ported.
    Bosch guessed he was talking about a veterinary sedative called Rompun. It had come up in other cases he had worked.
    Banks continued, saying that Jespersen had been specifically targeted by Cosgrove, who told the others she was probably a natural blond and that he had never been with a woman like that before.
    When Bosch asked if J.J. Drummond was in the stateroom during the attack, Banks emphatically said no. He said afterward that Drummond knew what happened but that he was not part of it. He said the five men were not the only men from 237th Company on leave on the ship at that time but that no one else was involved.
    Banks cried as he told the story, often saying how sorry he was to have been a part of what happened in the stateroom.
    “It was the war, man. It just did something to you.”
    Bosch had heard that excuse before—the idea that the life-and-death pressures and fears of war should give someone a free pass on despicable and criminal actions they would never commit or even contemplate back home. It was used to excuse everything from killing villages full of people to gang-raping an incapacitated woman. Bosch didn’t buy it and thought Anneke Jespersen had had it right. These were war crimes and they weren’t excusable. He believed that war brought out the true character in a person, good or bad. He had no sympathy for Banks or the others.
    “Is that why Cosgrove brought the romp and stomp overseas with him? In case the war did something to him? How many other women did he use it on over there? And what about before? What about in high school? You all went to school together, I bet. Something tells me you guys didn’t just try it out for the first time on that boat.”
    “No, man, it wasn’t me. I never used that