“Let’s drive around behind,” Bosch said. “See what the parking situation looks like.”
Ballard followed his instruction and found an alley that ran behind the plaza and where there was reserved parking for building employees. They saw Esquivel’s name on a placard reserving one spot. Right next to it was a spot reserved for a Dr. Mark Pellegrino.
“Looks like he has a partner,” Bosch said.
Next stop was Esquivel’s home in the hills above Glendale: a multimillion-dollar contemporary with white walls, hard lines, black window frames, and a gated driveway.
“Not bad,” Bosch said.
“He’s doing all right,” Ballard said. “I guess drillin’ teeth is drillin’ for gold.”
“But can you imagine that life? No one’s ever happy to see you.”
“You’re the guy who’s going to stick your fingers and metal instruments in my mouth.”
“Sucks.”
“Not that different from being a cop. These days, people don’t want to see us either.”
And so it went. They next traversed the Valley, checking out Dennis Hoyle’s office and home. DMV records showed that he had previously lived in Malibu, but his current residence was in the hills off Coldwater Canyon. It was a gated property with a view of the whole San Fernando Valley. Next they dropped down through the Sepulveda Pass to the Westwood location, where Jason Abbott practiced dentistry, and then over to the other side of the freeway in Brentwood, where he lived.
They headed south for the final drive-by — the places the late John William James worked, lived, and died. But before they got there, Ballard took an unexpected turn in Venice. Bosch thought she was making a driving mistake.
“This is not it,” he said.
“I know,” Ballard said. “I just want to make a little detour. One of my Midnight Men victims — the latest one — has an ex that lives down here. And I thought, since we’re on skee patrol, that I’d just take a run by and scope it out.”
“No problem. You think he’s one of the Midnight Men?”
“No, it’s not that. But there’s something there. They divorced two years ago but she seems afraid of him. I hit him up last night on a pretext call to see what his reaction would be and he sounded like an asshole. He’s in the tech-investment field.”
“They’re all assholes. What address are we looking for?”
“Number five Spinnaker.”
They were on a narrow street a block from the beach. The homes were all modern, multilevel, and expensive. Reginald Carpenter was apparently doing better financially than his ex-wife. They found his home two houses off the beach. It was three levels sitting on top of a three-car garage with just enough space between the very similar houses on either side to store trash cans.
“I hope he has an elevator,” Bosch said.
There was a door to the right of the garage with a no soliciting sign on it. Ballard leaned toward her window so she could look up the facade of the home. She could see the tip of a surfboard leaning over the railing of a balcony.
“I wonder if I knew this guy from when I used to stay out here,” she said.
Bosch didn’t answer. Ballard turned the car around and headed back to Pacific Avenue.
Pacific ran alongside the Ballona Lagoon, which separated Venice from Marina del Rey. They took it to Via Marina and then were cruising by homes valued even higher than those in overpriced Venice. They cruised by the condo complex where James had lived and then went out to Lincoln Boulevard, where his dental practice was located in a shopping plaza that backed up to the vast complex of docks and boats that made up the area’s namesake marina. Here, the skeeing paid off. The James family dentistry practice was still in business seven years after his unsolved murder. The name listed on the door was Jennifer James, DDS.
“Well, that explains some things,” Ballard said.
“She inherited her husband’s partnership and his practice,” Bosch said. “Unless maybe it was a joint practice all along.”
“I wonder what she knew or knows about the factoring.”
“And the murders, including her own husband’s.”
Bosch pointed to an empty parking space in the corner of the parking lot.
“Right there, that’s where he was parked,” he said. “The gunman supposedly came over from the Marina, crossed the lot, and shot him right through the window. Two head shots, very clean, very fast.”
“I take it no brass was left behind?” Ballard asked.
“None.”
“That would’ve been too easy. And the slugs?”
Bosch shook his head.
“It wasn’t my case,” he said. “But from what I remember, no go on the slugs. They flattened when they hit bone.”
Ballard drove out of the parking lot onto Lincoln Boulevard and headed north toward the 10 freeway.
“So, what else do you know about that investigation?” she asked.
Bosch explained that the John William James murder case was handled by Pacific Division Homicide, where it was determined that there were not enough reasons or evidence to connect it to the Albert Lee killing.
“I tried to get it there,” Bosch said. “But they wouldn’t listen. A guy named Larkin on the table at Pacific worked it. I think he was a short-timer, had, like, three months till he pulled the pin, and wasn’t looking for a big conspiracy case. By then I was two years in on Lee and I could not make the connection that would force the issue. Last thing I heard was that they were calling it robbery. James wore a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex his wife had given him. It was gone.”
“His wife who inherited his ownership in the lab as well as his practice,” Ballard said. “When did she give it to him?”
“That I don’t know. But as far as I do know, the case was never cleared. It would now be a cold case and the murder book would be at the Ahmanson Center.”
“You want me to make a U-turn?”
“It all depends on what else you’ve got going today.”
“I have my shift tonight and need to call my victims on the Midnight Men thing. They’re all working up surveys for me.”
“Another nexus to be found.”
“Hopefully. I also want to get to Raffa’s wife to ask about his twenty-five-thousand-dollar loan.”
Ballard saw an opening and made a U-turn on Lincoln. She headed south toward Westchester, the area of the city near LAX.
“What a treat!” she said. “We get to hit airport traffic from two airports in the same day.”
“This traffic is a breeze,” Bosch said. “Wait till the pandemic is over and people get out and want to travel. Good luck then.”
The Ahmanson Training Center was on Manchester Boulevard and was part of the LAPD network of training facilities for new recruits. The department had long outgrown the academy in the hills surrounding Dodger Stadium and had ancillary facilities here and up in the Valley. The citywide homicide archive was also housed here. It had opened only a few years before, when the glut of unsolved cases — six thousand since 1960 — had overburdened filing space in the department’s divisions. The murder books were on shelves in a room as big as a regular neighborhood library, and there was an ongoing project to digitize cases so there would always be space for more.
“You have your retiree badge or ID card with you?” Ballard asked. “In case they ask.”
“I have my card in my wallet,” Bosch said. “Didn’t think I’d be badging anybody.”
“You probably won’t need it. On weekends and holidays they just have a couple recruits on shit duty keeping the place open. They’ll probably be too intimidated by the likes of you to ask for ID.”
“Then I guess it’s good to know I can still bring it.”
“Why don’t you bring your printouts so we can get the date for the book we want to pull.”