“You know I am not going to be able to find a transcript of that hearing on a Friday night,” Ballard said. “Maybe not even on Monday. Would it break the rules for you to summarize why you asked the judge in open court to seal the record?”
“Without first consulting my client, I will only tell you this,” Edwards said. “The cause of action in the divorce contained allegations of things Mr. Carpenter did to my client to humiliate her. Terrible things. She didn’t want those allegations contained in any public record. The judge agreed, the file was sealed — and that’s all I can tell you.”
“Reggie’s a bad guy, isn’t he?”
It was a shot in the dark. Ballard thought maybe she’d get a response, but Edwards didn’t bite.
“What else can I do for you, Detective Ballard?” she asked instead.
“I appreciate your time, Ms. Edwards. Thank you for calling me back.”
“Not at all. I hope you get whoever it was who committed this crime.”
“I intend to.”
Ballard disconnected. She leaned back in her chair to consider what she had learned from Edwards and the call to Reginald Carpenter. She had just pulled on a string without much reason other than her gut feeling about the way Cindy Carpenter talked about her ex. But this case was about two serial rapists who had attacked three different women. That this would connect to Reginald Carpenter, whether he was an abusive husband or not, seemed far-fetched. Plus, he claimed he had been in Palm Springs. She doubted he would have mentioned that to a detective if it could not be backed up.
Still, the information gleaned from the two calls stuck with Ballard and she decided that at some point she needed to talk to Cindy Carpenter about her ex, despite it obviously being a subject she wanted left alone. She decided in the meantime to go back to the new focus of the case: finding the nexus that connected the three known victims.
She called the second victim, Angela Ashburn, and talked her into filling out the questionnaire that would be emailed to her. Ashburn did not exhibit the same fear and upset that Bobbi Klein had. Though expressing reluctance to reopen thoughts about the assault, she ultimately agreed to work on the Lambkin survey the next day, since she would be off from work. Ballard thanked her and said she would check in with her Saturday afternoon.
Ballard went back to work on her laptop, setting up a file in which she would collate the information that would come in from the victims. She had just begun the task when she heard her call sign come up on the rover she had placed on the desk. She could tell it was Lieutenant Rivera by the slight accent in his voice.
“Go for six-William-twenty-six.”
She waited thirty seconds for Rivera to come back up on the radio.
“Code six, Adam-fifteen, Cahuenga and Odin.”
This meant patrol officers needed help with an investigation and were requesting a detective. It didn’t indicate what the investigation or crime was about. Ballard was often called to a scene where she did not know the details ahead of time. Nine out of ten times a detective was actually not needed and the call was an attempt by patrol officers to lay off some of their responsibilities and work on her. In this case she knew the Adam-15 car was Vitello and Smallwood, and she expected this to be one of those times. But she responded in the affirmative to Rivera without asking for additional information.
“Roger, six-William-twenty-six.”
She closed her laptop, put it in her briefcase, and grabbed the rover. Then she went down the back hallway to the station house door.
14
Coming out of the station’s parking lot, Ballard went east one block, passing the fire station, and took a left onto Cahuenga. It was a straight shot up to the Cahuenga Pass, where she saw the blue flashers up ahead at the intersection with Odin. She pulled in behind the patrol car, which was behind a dark coupe. Vitello and Smallwood stood between the two cars with a man who had his wrists cuffed behind his back.
Ballard got out with her rover in hand.
“Fellas,” she said. “What’s up?”
Smallwood signaled her to follow him to the front of the coupe so they could talk out of earshot of the man in cuffs.
“Hey, Mallard, we got one of the dirtbags you’re looking for,” Smallwood said.
Ballard ignored the play on her name from the officer whose own name provided so much more comedy in the division.
“What dirtbags?” Ballard asked.
“You know, the tag team,” Smallwood said. “The rapists that hit last night. This guy’s one of them.”
Ballard looked over Smallwood’s shoulder at the man in handcuffs. He stood with his head down in shame.
“And how do you know that?” she asked. “Why’d you stop him?”
“We stopped him on a deuce,” Smallwood said. “But check out the floor of the back seat. We didn’t search in case you need a warrant or something. We didn’t want to fuck anything up, you know?”
“Let me see your light. Did you talk to this guy at all?”
“Not at all. Didn’t want to fuck up.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
Smallwood gave her his flashlight and she walked down the side of the coupe and pointed the beam through the windows into the car. She scanned the front seats and center console before moving to the back. In the footwell on the passenger side she saw an open cardboard box, and in it she could see rolls of duct tape and blue tape and a box cutter. She felt the beginning of an adrenaline rush.
She stepped behind the car and put the light on the man in handcuffs, blinding him and forcing him to turn away. He had dark, curly hair, was mid-thirties, and had acne scars on his cheeks.
“Sir, where were you coming from when the officers stopped you?”
“I was up on Mulholland.”
“You were drinking?”
“I had a couple beers after I finished my work. When I was parked at the overlook.”
Ballard picked up what sounded like a slight English accent. None of the victims of the Midnight Men had reported that either of the rapists had an accent. Still, she knew it could be a ploy.
“Where were you going just now when you got stopped?”
“Um, just home.”
“Where’s that?”
Vitello handed her a driver’s license. She put the light on it and read it as the man gave the matching address. He was Mitchell Carr, thirty-four years old and living on Commonwealth in Los Feliz. Ballard realized he could be her neighbor. She handed the license back to Vitello.
“You run him?” she asked.
“He’s clean except for motor vehicle violations,” Vitello said.
“I only had two beers,” Carr added helpfully.
Ballard looked at him. She noticed something clipped to his belt and put the light on it. It was a retractable tape measure. The adrenaline buzz started to ebb. This didn’t feel right.
“Where are you from?” she asked. “Originally.”
“New South Wales,” Carr said. “A long time ago.”
Vitello leaned toward her confidentially.
“Australia,” he whispered.
Ballard raised her hand and gestured him back without touching him.
“What do you do for a living, sir?” she asked.
“Interior design work,” Carr said.
“You’re a designer?”
“Well, no, I work for an interior designer.”
“Doing what?”
“Delivering and installing furniture, hanging pictures, taking measurements, that sort of thing.”
Ballard looked at Smallwood, who had joined them between the cars. She handed him back his flashlight and turned back to Carr.
“What’s with the box cutter and the tape in your car?” she asked.
“I was taping out furniture dimensions in a house,” Carr said. “So the owner could see where everything was going to go. How it would fit.”
“This was up on Mulholland?”
“Actually, it was on a street up there called Outpost. Right by Mulholland.”
“Do you carry a hand vacuum on your job?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like a battery-operated vacuum — a Dustbuster type of thing.”
“Oh. No, not really. I supervise furniture installations and those guys usually do the cleanup after.”
“Do you mind if we look in your trunk, Mr. Carr?”