“What you were doing, for one thing. I had a feeling you weren’t going on vacation.”

Bosch closed the trunk quietly and looked around to get his bearings. He then looked at Mendenhall.

“Where’s your car? How did you get in here?”

“I parked where you parked last night. I got in the same way.”

He looked down at her shoes. They were caked in mud from the almond grove.

“You’ve been following me and you’re alone. Does anyone even know where you are?”

She averted her eyes and he knew the answer was no. She was freelancing on Bosch while he was freelancing on Anneke Jespersen. Somehow, some way, he liked that about her.

“Turn off the flashlight,” he said. “It will only expose us.”

She did as she was told.

“Now, what are you doing here, Detective Mendenhall?”

“I’m working my case.”

“That’s not good enough. You’re freelancing on me and I want to know why.”

“Let’s just say I followed you off the reservation and leave it at that. Who killed that man in there?”

Bosch knew there wasn’t time to go back and forth with Mendenhall over her motives for following him. If they got out of this, he would get back to it at the right time.

“Sheriff J.J. Drummond,” he answered. “In cold blood. Right in front of me, without missing a beat. Did you see him when you were sneaking in here?”

“I saw two men. They both went into the house.”

“Did you see anybody else? A third man arrive?”

She shook her head.

“No, just the two. Can you please just tell me what is going on? I saw you taken here. Now there’s a man in there dead and you were locked in like—”

“Look, we don’t have a lot of time. There is going to be more killing if we don’t stop it. The shorthand is that this is where my cold case has led. The case I told you about and that I went to San Quentin on. It’s here. This is where it ends. Get in.”

Bosch continued in a whisper as he moved toward the driver-side door.

“My victim was Anneke Jespersen from Denmark. She was a war correspondent. Four National Guard soldiers drugged and raped her on an R&R leave during Desert Storm in ’ninety-one. She came over here the next year, looking for them. I don’t know if she was going to write a story or a book or what, but she followed them to L.A. during the riots. And they used the cover of the riots to murder her.”

Bosch got in, put the key in the ignition, and started the car, keeping his foot as light on the gas as possible. Mendenhall got in the passenger side.