The Black Box

up a large Ziploc bag containing a black pistol.
    “Got it, Harry. We’re good.”
    Bosch told Chu to retrieve the two GED guys and he let out his first full breath in ten minutes. It was the best way to have worked it. There was no way O’Toole would have approved his going for a search warrant. There wasn’t enough probable cause for a judge to okay a search three years after the subject’s death. So the dummy warrant scam was the best way. And Gant’s script had worked perfectly. Briscoe had given them the gun voluntarily, without their having to illegally search the house.
    As Gant approached the door, Bosch could see that the Ziploc bag was wet.
    “Toilet tank?”
    An obvious place. One of the top five hiding places used by criminals. They all watched The Godfather at some point in their maturation process.
    “Nope. The drain pan under the washing machine.”
    Bosch nodded. That wasn’t even top twenty-five. Briscoe reached around Gant and unlocked the security gate. Bosch pulled it open to let him out.
    “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Briscoe,” he said.
    “Just get the fuck off my property now and don’t come back,” she said.
    “Yes, ma’am. Gladly.”
    Bosch threw her a mock salute and followed Gant off the stoop. Gant handed him the bag and Harry checked theweapon as they walked. The plastic bag was smeared with black mold and scratched from years of use but he could tell the gun was a Beretta model 92.
    At the trunk of his car Harry put on a pair of latex gloves and removed the gun from the plastic bag so he could carefully examine it. He first noted that the left side had a deep scrape mark along the barrel and frame that had been painted over or filled in with a marker. It appeared to be the weapon that Charles 2 Small Washburn had described finding in his backyard after the Jespersen murder.
    Bosch next checked the serial number on the left side of the frame. But it appeared that the machine-stamped number was gone. By holding the weapon up closer and angling it in the light, he could see where the metal had been scarred by several scrape marks. He doubted these could have been caused by the lawn mower blade. Rather, it looked like a concentrated and deliberate effort to obliterate the tracking number. The closer he looked at the scarring on the metal, the more he was convinced. Either Trumont Story or a previous holder of the gun had purposely removed the serial number.
    “That it?” Gant asked.
    “Looks like it.”
    “You see the serial number?”
    “No, it’s gone.”
    Bosch ejected the fully loaded magazine and the bullet from the gun’s chamber. He then transferred the weapon to a new plastic evidence bag. Ballistics testing would have to confirm the gun’s connection to the Jespersen killing and those that followed, but Bosch felt sure that he was holding the first solid piece of evidence produced in the case in twenty years. Itdidn’t necessarily move him any closer to Anneke Jespersen’s killer but it was something. It was a starting point.
    “I told you all to get!” Briscoe called from behind her security gate. “Leave me alone or I’ll sue your asses for harassment! Why don’t you make yourselves useful and find out who killed Tru Story.”
    Bosch put the gun into an open cardboard box he kept in the trunk and then slammed the lid, looking at the woman over the roof of his car. He held his tongue as he came around to the driver-side door.
    They were lucky. Charles Washburn had not only been unable to make bail but he had yet to be transferred from the lockup at 77th Street Station to the city jail downtown. He was pulled out and returned to the interview room in the Detective Bureau and was waiting there when Bosch, Chu, and Gant walked in.
    “What, we got three stooges now?” he said. “It take all three a you to roust me this time?”
    “Nah, we ain’t here to roust you, Charlie,” Gant said. “We’re here to make things right by you.”
    “Yeah, and how’s that?”
    Bosch pulled out a chair and sat across from Washburn. He placed a closed cardboard box on the table. Gant and Chu remained standing in the tiny room.
    “We got a deal for you,” Gant said. “You take us to the house where you grew up and show us where you put a bullet in the fence post, and we’ll see what we can do about dropping some of these charges you got on you. You know, cooperating witness. Quid pro quo.”
    “What, now? It’s dark out, man.”
    “We’ve got