“Tell you what, Charles. You promise to cooperate out there and we don’t have to go with the cuffs. And we’ll be sure to keep you and your ex far apart. That work for you?”

Washburn looked at Bosch and nodded. Harry saw the change. The little man had been worried about his son seeing him cuffed up.

“But if you jackrabbit on us,” Gant said, “I will hunt your ass down and you ain’t going to like it when I find you. Now, let’s go.”

This time he helped Washburn up out of his seat.

A half hour later Bosch and Chu stood with Washburn in the backyard of his boyhood home. Gant was in the front of the house, maintaining a vigil with Washburn’s ex, making sure her anger didn’t translate into aggressive action against the father of her child.

It didn’t take Washburn long to point out the fence post he had put a bullet in twenty years before. The penetration mark was still visible, especially in the angled light of their flashlights. The hole had broken the weather seal on the wood and been the point of water damage. Chu first took a photograph with his phone, while Bosch held a business card next to the penetration point to give it scale. Then Bosch opened the blade of his folding knife and dug into the soft, rotting wood, soon prying out the lead slug. He rolled it between his fingers to clean it off and then held it up. The bullet that had been ahead of it in the gun had killed Anneke Jespersen.

He dropped the slug into a small evidence bag opened by Chu.

“So, now I walk?” Washburn said, his eyes warily darting toward the back door of the house.

“Not quite yet,” Bosch said. “We’ve got to go back to Seventy-seventh and do some paperwork.”

“You told me if I helped, you’d drop the charges. Cooperating witness and all that.”

“You’ve cooperated, Charles, and we appreciate it. But we never said we would drop all the charges. We said, you help us, we help you. So we go back now and I make some calls and we will improve your situation. I’m sure we’ll be able to deal with the drug charge. But the child support, you still have to deal with that. That’s a warrant issued by a judge. You’ll have to see him to take care of that.”

“It was a her, and how’m I gonna deal with that if they got me in jail?”

Bosch turned square to Washburn and separated his feet. If 2 Small was going to rabbit, he would do it now. Chu caught the movement and changed his posture as well.

“Well,” Bosch said, “maybe that’s a question you have to ask your lawyer.”

“My lawyer ain’t worth shit. I ain’t even seen him yet.”