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 stuff. I didn’t even know he used it then. I thought she was just, you know, drunk. Drummond told me that later.”

“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.”