“Okay.”
She hung up. She knew that she should be going to Hollywood Division to sit in on the roll call for the start of her watch, but she wanted to keep moving. She instead called the watch office to see which sergeant would be handling roll call and then asked to speak to him. It was Rodney Spellman.
“Whaddaya got, Ballard?” he said by way of a greeting.
“We had a third hit by the Midnight Men last night,” she said. “Up in the Dell.”
“Heard about it.”
“I’m out running with it and won’t make roll call. But can you bring it up and ask about last night? Especially, the fifteen and thirty-one cars? I want to know if they saw anything, jammed anybody, anything at all.”
“I can do that, yes.”
“Thanks, Sarge, I’ll check back later.”
“That’s a roger.”
She disconnected. She crossed the 101 on the Pilgrimage Bridge and soon was on Woodrow Wilson, heading up to Bosch’s place. Before she got there, she got a call from Lisa Moore.
“What’s happening, sister Ballard?” she asked.
Ballard guessed she was already hitting the wine, and her salutation rang false and annoying. Still, Ballard needed to talk to somebody about her findings.
“I’m still working it,” Ballard said. “But I think we need to rethink this. The third case is different from the first two and we might be looking the wrong way.”
“Whoa,” Moore said. “I was hoping to hear I’m okay to stay up here till Sunday.”
Ballard’s patience with Moore ran out.
“Jesus, Lisa, do you even care about this?” she said. “I mean, these two guys are out there and — ”
“Of course I care,” Moore shot back. “It’s my job. But right now it’s fucking up my life. Fine, I’m coming back. I’ll be in tomorrow at nine. I’ll meet you at the station.”
Ballard immediately felt bad about her outburst. She was now sitting in the car outside Bosch’s house.
“No, don’t bother,” she said. “I’ll cover it tomorrow.”
“You sure?” Moore said.
She said it a little too quickly and hopefully for Ballard.
“Yes, whatever,” Ballard said. “But you’re taking my shift, no questions asked, next time I need it.”
“Deal.”
“Let me ask you something. How did you do the cross-referencing of the first two victims? Interview, or did you have them fill out a Lambkin survey?”
“That thing’s eight pages long now with the updates. I wasn’t going to ask them to do that. I interviewed them and so did Ronin.”
Ronin Clarke was a detective with the Sexual Assault Unit. He and Moore weren’t partners in the traditional sense. They each carried their own caseload but backed each other up when needed.
“I think we should give them the survey,” Ballard said. “Things are different now. I think we had the victim acquisition wrong.”
There was silence from Moore. Ballard took this as disagreement, but Moore probably felt she could not voice an objection after having split town, leaving Ballard working the new case solo.
“Anyway, I’ll handle it,” Ballard said. “And I should go now. Got a lot to do and I have my shift tonight.”
“I’ll check in tomorrow,” Moore said helpfully. “And thank you so much, Renée. I will pay you back. You name the day, I’ll take your shift.”
Ballard disconnected and put on her mask. She got out with her briefcase. Bosch’s front door opened before she got to it.
“Saw you sitting out there,” Bosch said.
He stood back against the door so she could enter.
“I was just being a fool,” Ballard said.
“About what?” Bosch asked.
“My partner on the rapes. Allowing her to run off for the weekend with her boyfriend while I’m working two cases. I’m being stupid.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Santa Barbara.”
“Are places open up there?”
“I don’t think they plan on leaving the room much.”
“Oh. Well, like I said, I’m here and I can help. Wherever you need me.”
“I know. I appreciate it, Harry. It’s just the principle of it. She’s totally burned out. No empathy left. She should ask for a transfer from sex crimes.”
Bosch gestured toward the table in the dining room, where he already had his laptop open. They sat down facing each other. There was no music playing. Also on the table was a hardcover book with yellowed pages. It was Two of a Kind, by Darcy O’Brien.
“It does hollow you out, sex crimes,” Bosch said. “What’s happening since we talked?”
“It’s going upside down,” Ballard said. “Like I told you, three cases definitely linked, but this third one — it’s different from the first two. It changes things.”
Ballard put her briefcase on the floor next to her chair and slid out her laptop.
“You want to run it by me, since your partner is gone?” Bosch asked.
“What, are you like my favorite uncle that I never had?” Ballard asked. “Are you going to give me a dollar bill for candy when I leave?”
“Uh …”
“I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t mean — I’m just out of sorts with Lisa. I’m mad at myself for letting her skate like that.”
“That’s okay. I get it.”
“Can I still use your Wi-Fi?”
She opened her laptop and Bosch walked her through connecting to the Internet. His password to the Wi-Fi account was his old badge number, 2997. Ballard pulled up a blank copy of the Lambkin survey and sent it to Cindy Carpenter, getting her email off the report Black had sent her. She hoped Carpenter wouldn’t ignore it.
“You know what will teach your partner a lesson?” Bosch said. “Bagging these assholes before she gets back.”
“That’s highly unlikely. These guys … they’re good. And they just changed the game.”
“Tell me how.”
Ballard spent the next twenty minutes updating Bosch on the case, all the while thinking she should be updating Lisa Moore in such detail. When she was finished, Bosch had the same conclusion and opinion as Ballard. The investigation needed to shift. They had been wrong about the Midnight Men and how they acquired their victims. It was not the neighborhood that was chosen first. It was the victims. They were picked and then followed to their neighborhoods and homes. All three women had crossed the perpetrators’ radar somewhere else.
Ballard now had to find that crossing point.
“I just sent the latest victim a Lambkin questionnaire,” Ballard said. “I hope to get it back tomorrow or Sunday. I have to talk the first two victims into doing it, because Lisa thought it was too much to ask of them at the time. The first rape was back at Thanksgiving and I doubt the victim will have as good a memory now as she would’ve if she’d been asked to do it in the first place.”
“Now I’m getting annoyed with this Lisa,” Bosch said. “That was lazy. Are you going to send it to the other two now?”
“No, I want to call and talk to them first. I’ll do that after I leave here. Did you know Lambkin when he was in the department?”
“Yeah, we worked some cases. He knew what he was doing when it came to assaults like this.”
“Is he still in town?”
“No, I heard he retired out of state and has never come back. Somewhere up north.”
“Well, we still use the cross-referencing survey with his name on it. I guess that’s some kind of legacy. You want what I’ve got on Javier Raffa?”
“If you’re willing to share.”
“You have a printer?”
“Down here.”
Bosch reached down to one of the bottom shelves of the bookcase behind his chair. He brought up a boxlike printer that looked like it might have been put into service in the previous century.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ballard said.
“What — this?” Bosch responded. “I don’t do a lot of printing. But it works.”
“Yeah, probably five pages a minute. Luckily I don’t have much to share. Give me the connector thing and plug it in. You have paper?”
“Yes, I have paper.”