Ballard didn’t know how early Robinson-Reynolds would be coming in after the holiday weekend. She decided to use the time waiting to switch gears from the Raffa case to the Midnight Men investigation.
She knew that most city services departments began work at seven. She left the station and drove into East Hollywood, where the Bureau of Street Lighting had a service lot at Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil Avenue. Its location was marked by a procession of the various types of streetlights found in Los Angeles, all planted on the sidewalk in front of the work-and-storage yard. Over at the county museum, there was an art installation of L.A. streetlights that tourists and art aficionados flocked to for selfies. Here was the real thing. Ballard pulled into the yard and parked in front of the office. She knew she needed to be cautious here. It was not outside the bounds of possibility that one or both Midnight Men worked for the BSL. It might explain their familiarity with the various neighborhoods of Hollywood, and their knowing which wire to cut to disable the light outside Cindy Carpenter’s house without cutting the line that fed power to all the lights on the street. Ballard had seen a tangle of wires behind the access panel but only one had been cut.
As she got out, she looked around the work yard and into the open bays of a garage. She assumed that most of the BSL trucks were already out in the field by now, but there were two trucks parked in the repair bays. They were white but they were not vans, and each carried a city seal on the driver’s-side door with bureau of street lighting printed beneath it. Jack Kersey had not mentioned the city seal in his description of the van he had seen up on Deep Dell Terrace.
Ballard stepped into the office, showed her badge, and asked to see a supervisor. She was ushered in to see a man named Carl Schaeffer, who had a cubbyhole office where the time cards and time clock were in his sight and a work schedule dominated the wall behind his desk. His title was yard supervisor. Ballard closed the door and took a good look at Schaeffer. He was in his fifties and far outside the age range the victims had estimated for the Midnight Men.
“I need to confirm some information related to streetlight repairs,” Ballard said.
“We cover Alvarado to Westwood and the ten north to Mulholland,” Schaeffer said. “If that’s where you’re looking, then I’m your guy. How can I help?”
“I’m looking for repair records for Deep Dell Terrace for … let’s go back the last two months.”
“Okay, that one I know without looking because we’re sending a truck up there today.”
“What’s going on up there?”
“Sounds like we have a tampering situation. A homeowner says two of our guys cut power to the post, but we didn’t have any guys up there. Sounds like it was vandalism.”
“When was this?”
“Happened December thirtieth according to the homeowner.”
“Can you cancel the service up there today?”
“Uh, sure I can. How come?”
“I’m going to have the post and access plate processed for fingerprints. There was a crime committed in the area and the suspects may have cut the light ahead of time.”
“What kind of crime? Was it a murder?”
“No.”
Schaeffer waited for Ballard to say more but she didn’t. He got the message.
“But you think somebody cut the light so no one could see them?”
“Possibly. Do you have any records of other work orders for Deep Dell?”
“No. I can go back and look but I would remember anything recent. They got a guy lives up there — whenever they lose a light, we hear from him, and this one on Deep Dell Terrace was the first time I’ve heard from him in about a year.”
“Jack Kersey?”
“Sounds like he calls you folks, too.”
“I ran into him up there.”
“He’s a character. Keeps us on our toes, I’ll tell you that.”
“I can tell.”
“What else can I do for you, Detective?”
“I have two other streets I want to check to see if you’ve had repair orders there recently.”
She did not give him the dates or exact addresses of the first two sexual assaults. She just asked if there had been any repairs to streetlights in the last three months in the 600 block of Lucerne Boulevard or the 1300 block of Vista Street. For these Schaeffer could not answer from memory. He punched the addresses into his computer and then sent two pages to his printer.
“The answer is yes,” he said. “I’m printing it out for you. We got calls on both streets. On Lucerne we got the complaint December second and repaired it the fourth. On Vista it came in on the twenty-eighth and we were shorthanded because everybody wants that week off. Repairs on Vista are going out today as well.”
“I want you to stop that repair too,” Ballard said.
“Not a problem.”
“Thank you. I have a couple more questions. On the Lucerne repair, did you get a report on what the problem was there?”
“Yeah, it’s on the printout. That was vandalism — wires cut at the base.”
“Multiple wires?”
Schaeffer checked his computer screen.
“We had to replace the whole circuit there,” he said. “The feed line and the loop.”
That was the street where the first rape occurred. Ballard considered that the Midnight Men had cut two wires there because they didn’t know which was the feed. By the time of the Deep Dell attack they had learned.
“So they actually disabled several lights at once?” she asked.
“Exactly,” Schaeffer said. “And we got complaints from multiple residents.”
By learning to cut just one light — the one nearest the intended victim’s house — the Midnight Men were improving their MO and less likely to draw immediate attention to their nefarious efforts.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “I noticed that most of your trucks are out in the field, but there are two in the bays. Do you use white vans for service calls?”
“Vans? No. We use flatbeds, so when we have to replace a post or a whole light assembly, we can take what we need on the work truck. You can’t put a fourteen-foot streetlight in a van, and that’s what we’re most often doing — replacing the whole assembly. People like hitting them with their cars.”
He smiled at his own attempt at humor.
“Got it,” Ballard said. “And your flatbeds are clearly marked as city vehicles? With the city seal and department name?”
“Always,” Schaeffer said.
“No vans?”
“Not a one. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Is somebody doing some shit and saying he’s with us?”
“I wish I could tell you, Mr. Schaeffer — you’ve been very helpful. But I can’t, and I need you to keep this confidential. Don’t talk about it with anyone.”
“What am I going to tell? I don’t know what’s going on.”
Ballard reached into her pocket for a business card. It had her cell number on it.
“One last thing,” she said. “I need to know about any reported light outages in the Hollywood area for the next two weeks. I don’t care if it’s a weekend or not, I need you to call me as soon as a report comes in that there’s a streetlight out. I don’t need to know about car accidents. Just lights that are burned out, malfunctioning, vandalized, whatever. Can you do that?”
“Of course, not a problem,” Schaeffer said.
“Thank you, sir. When this is all over, I’ll be able to tell you more about it.”
“Whatever it is, I hope you catch the bastard. Especially if he’s the one out there cutting our wires.”
He handed her the printouts with the details of the first two streetlight outages. Ballard thanked him again and left. As she returned to her car, she acknowledged to herself that it was more likely than not that the next report of a vandalized streetlight in Hollywood would come in after it was too late and the next attack had already occurred.