“You said Trumond. You mean Trumont, right? Trumont Story?”

“I guess, man. I didn’t know him that well.”

“Why’d you give him the gun, then?”

“Because I wanted to know him. I wanted to move up the ladder, you know?”

“And did you?”

“Not really. I took a bust and got sent to JD up in Sylmar. I was there for almost two years. After that I sort of missed my chance.”

One of the largest juvenile detention centers was in Sylmar in the northern suburbs of the San Fernando Valley. The juvy courts often sent underage criminals to centers far from their home neighborhoods in an effort to break their connection to gangs.

“Did you ever see that weapon again?” Gant asked.

“Nope, never did,” Washburn answered.

“What about Tru Story?” Bosch asked. “Did you see him again?”

“I’d see him on the street but we never were together. We never spoke.”

Bosch waited a moment to see if he would say more. He didn’t.

“Okay, sit tight, Two Small,” he said.

He tapped Gant on the shoulder as he stood up. The detectives left the interrogation room, closed the door, and huddled together outside. Gant shrugged his shoulders and spoke first.

“It hangs together,” he said.

Bosch nodded reluctantly. Washburn’s story did have the ring of truth. But the ring didn’t matter. He had admitted finding a gun in his backyard. It was most likely the gun Bosch was looking for, but there wasn’t any evidence of that, just as there wasn’t any evidence that 2 Small Washburn’s involvement in Anneke Jespersen’s murder was anything more than what he had admitted to.

“What do you want to do with him?” Gant asked.

“I’m done with him. Book ’im on the warrant and the weed, but let him know that it wasn’t Latitia or anybody else who talked to us.”

“Will do. Sorry it didn’t work out, Harry.”

“Yeah, I was thinking . . .”

“Thinking what?”

“Trumont Story. What if he wasn’t whacked with his own gun?”

Gant cupped his elbow in one hand and rubbed his chin with the other.

“That was almost three years ago.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a long shot. But there was a five-year stretch in there when Story was up in Pelican Bay and nobody used the gun. It stayed hidden.”

Gant nodded.

“He lived on Seventy-third. About a year ago I had occasion to be in that neighborhood on a community relations thing we were running. I knocked on that door and his baby mama was still living in the house.”

Bosch nodded.

“The team that caught his killing, you know if they ever checked the house?”

Gant shook his head.

“I don’t know, Harry, but I’m thinking probably not too closely. Not with a warrant, I mean. I can check.”

Bosch nodded and started toward the squad room door.

“Let me know,” he said. “If they didn’t go through that place, then maybe I will.”

“It might be worth a shot,” Gant said. “But you should know, Story’s baby mama was a hard-core gang girl. Hell, she’d probably be on top of the pyramid if she had the right plumbing. She’s tough.”