Banks pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked one of Bosch’s cuffs, then locked his arms around the column. Bosch realized that this meant they were not going to kill him. Not yet, at least. They needed him alive for some reason.

Once Bosch was secured, Cosgrove got brave and came up close to him.

“You know what I should’ve done? I should’ve unloaded my sixteen on you back in that alley. It would have saved me all of this. But I guess I aimed too high.”

“Carl, enough,” Drummond said. “Why don’t you go back to the house and wait for Frank. We’ll take care of this and I’ll be right behind you.”

Cosgrove gave Bosch a long look that ended with an evil smile.

“Have a seat,” he said.

He then kicked Bosch’s left foot out from beneath him and shoved him down by the shoulder. Bosch slid down the column to the ground, landing hard on his tailbone.

“Carl! Come on, man, let us handle it.”

Cosgrove finally backed away at the same time Bosch realized what he had meant about aiming high. Cosgrove had been the soldier who had opened fire that night at the crime scene, the gunfire that sent everyone to the ground for cover. And now Bosch knew that he had not seen anyone on a roof. He had only wanted to set nerves on edge and cause a distraction from the investigation of the crime he had committed.

“I’ll be in the car,” Cosgrove said.

“No, we leave the car up here. I don’t want Frank to see it when he’s coming in. It might make him nervous. His wife told him about Bosch driving by.”

“Whatever. I’ll walk back.”

Cosgrove left the barn, and Drummond stood in front of Bosch and looked down on him in the dim light. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the gun he had taken away from Bosch.

“Hey, Drummer,” Banks said nervously. “What did you mean about Frank not seeing the car? Why is Frank—”

“Reggie, I told you not to call me that.”

Drummond raised his arm and put the muzzle of Bosch’s gun to the side of Reggie Banks’s head. He was still looking down at Bosch when he pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening and Bosch was hit by the blowback of blood and brain matter a split second before Banks’s body dropped to the hay-strewn floor next to him.

Drummond looked down at the body. The heart’s last few contractions sent blood gushing from the bullet entrance point into the dirty straw. Drummond pocketed Bosch’s gun again and then reached down to the gun he had given Banks earlier. He picked it up.

“Back in the car, when you were alone with him, you told him to use it on me, didn’t you?”