The Black Box

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 asmall 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.
    Holding the dead man’s hand in both of his, Bosch leaned forward as far as he could to drag the body even closer. Once he accomplished that, he reached for the wrist and unbuckled the watch. Holding it in his left hand, he flipped the buckle back so the prong extended free. He then twisted his wrist so he could work the small steel pin into the keyhole on the right handcuff.
    As he worked, Bosch visualized the process. A handcuff was one of the easiest locks to pick, provided you weren’t doing so in the dark and working with your hands behind yourback. The key was basically a single-notched pin. The key was universal, because in law enforcement, cuffs were often moved with prisoners from officer to officer, or from bench to bench. If every pair of cuffs had a unique key, then an already ponderous system would slow down even more. Bosch was counting on that as he worked with the watch buckle’s pin. He was skilled with the set of lock picks that he kept hidden behind his badge in the wallet Drummond had confiscated. Turning the prong of a watch buckle into a pick was the challenge.
    It took him less than a minute to open the cuff. He then brought his arms around and removed the other cuff even faster. He was free. He got up and immediately headed in the direction of the barn door, promptly tripping over Banks’s body and falling face-first into the straw. He stood back up, got his bearings, and tried again, walking with his arms out in front of him. When he made it to the door, he reached to his left, moving his hands up and down the wall until he found the light switch.
    Finally there was light in the barn. Bosch quickly moved back to the huge double doors. He had heard Drummond slide the outside bar home but he tried to move the doors anyway, pushing hard but failing. He tried it twice more and got the same result.
    Bosch stepped