The Black Box

the flashlight was held out in front of her body and away. Bosch could not see her face from his angle but he could tell by size and demeanor that it was neither Drummond nor Cosgrove. It was definitely a woman.
    The beam swept across the barn and then jerked back to the body on the ground. The woman rushed forward to put the light on the dead man’s face. Banks lay on his back with his eyes wide open and the horrible entry wound to the right temple. His left hand was extended out at an odd angle toward the support column. His discarded watch was lying in the straw next to it.
    The woman crouched next to Banks and shifted the light as she played it across his body. In doing so she revealed first the gun in her other hand and then her face. Bosch lowered the pitchfork and stepped out of cover.
    “Detective Mendenhall.”
    Mendenhall swiveled right and brought the gun’s bead on Bosch. He raised his hands, still holding the pitchfork.
    “It’s me.”
    He realized he must appear to her as some sort of send-up of the famous American Gothic painting, with the pitchfork-carrying farmer and his wife—minus the wife. He let go of the pitchfork and let it drop to the straw.
    Mendenhall lowered her weapon and stood up.
    “Bosch, what’s going on here?”
    Bosch noted that she had dispensed with her own demandfor rank and respect. Rather than answer he moved toward the door and looked out. He could see the lights of the château through the trees, but no sign of Cosgrove or Drummond. He stepped out and went to his rental car, using the key fob to pop the trunk.
    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