“Man, I don’t want to go to L.A. I want to go home. I got kids.”

“Yeah, when was the last time you saw your kids?”

That gave Banks pause. He had no answer.

“I thought so. Let’s go. Stand up.”

“Why now? Let me go home.”

“Listen, Banks, you’re going with me to L.A. In the morning I’m going to sit you down in front of a deputy DA who will take your official statement and then probably waltz you in to the grand jury. After that, he’ll decide when you get to go home.”

Banks still didn’t move. He was a man frozen by his past. He knew that whether or not he escaped criminal prosecution, his life as he knew it was over. Everyone from Modesto to Manteca would know the part he played—then and now.

Bosch started gathering the photos and documents and returning them to the file.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “We’re going to L.A. and you can sit up in the front next to me or I can arrest you and cuff you and put you in the backseat. You make that long drive hunched over like that and you’ll probably never walk straight again. Now, how do you want to go?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go. But I gotta take a leak first. You saw how much I was drinking and I didn’t take a piss before I left the post.”

Bosch frowned. The request wasn’t unreasonable. In fact, Bosch was already trying to figure out how to use the bathroom himself without giving Banks a chance to change his mind on the whole thing and run out the door.

“All right,” he said. “Come on.”

Bosch went into the bathroom first and checked the window over the toilet. It was an old louvered window with a crank handle. Bosch was able to pull the handle off easily. He held it up so Banks would see he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Do your business,” he said.

He stepped out of the bathroom but left the door open so he would hear any effort by Banks to open or break the window. While Banks urinated, Bosch looked around for a place to cuff him so he could in turn use the bathroom before the five-hour drive. He settled on the bars that were part of the design of the bed’s headboard.

Bosch hurriedly started packing, basically throwing his clothes into his suitcase without care. When Banks flushed the toilet and came out of the bathroom, Bosch walked him over to the bed and made him sit while he cuffed him to the headboard.

“What the hell is this?” Banks protested.

“Just making sure you don’t change your mind while I’m taking a leak.”