He smirked and seemed delighted to share confirmation of his crime with Bosch after twenty years. Bosch worked it.

“How did you get her into the alley?” he asked.

“That was the easy part. I went right up to her and told her I knew who and what she was looking for. I said I was on the boat and I heard about it. I said I would be her source but I was scared and couldn’t talk. I told her I’d meet her at oh-five-hundred in the alley. And she was dumb enough to be there.”

He nodded as if to say done deal.

“What about her cameras?”

“Same as the gun. I threw all that stuff over the fences back there. I took the film out first, of course.”

Bosch envisioned it. A camera landing in somebody’s backyard and being kept or pawned instead of turned in to police.

“Anything else, Detective?” asked Drummond, clearly relishing his chance to flaunt his cleverness to Bosch.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “If it was you who did it, how did you keep Cosgrove and the others in line for twenty years?”

“That was easy. Carl Junior would’ve been disowned if the old man had learned of his involvement in any of this. The others just followed along and got put down if they didn’t.”

With that he turned and headed toward the door. He pushed it open but then hesitated. He looked back at Bosch with a grim smile as he reached over and turned out the overhead light.

“Get some sleep, Detective.”

He then stepped out and closed the door behind him. Bosch heard the steel slide bar strike home as Drummond locked him in.

Bosch was left in a perfect darkness. But he was alive—for now.

Chapter 33

33

Bosch had been left in darkness before. And many of those times he was scared and knew that death was near. He also knew that if he waited, somehow he would see, that there was lost light in all places of darkness, and if he found it, it would save him.

He knew he had to try to understand what had just happened and why. He shouldn’t be alive. All his theories ended with him in a box. With Drummond putting a bullet in his head in the same callous manner he had executed Reggie Banks. Drummond was the ultimate fixer, the cleaner, and Bosch was part of the mess. It made no sense that he was spared, even temporarily. Bosch had to figure that out if he was to survive.

The first step was to free himself. He put all of the case questions aside and concentrated on escape. He brought his ankles in underneath him and pushed up, slowly rising into a standing position so that he could better assess his surroundings and possibilities.