“Well, you see,” she began. “I took — ”
“Let me see if I can put it together,” the lieutenant said, cutting her off. “You’ve got a full plate. You catch a murder New Year’s Eve and West Bureau’s overwhelmed so you have to run with that through the weekend. Then the Midnight Men jump up again and now you’ve got that. You’ve got no help because even Lisa Moore’s abandoned you for Santa Barbara — yes, I know about that. So you’re up against the wall, and you remember Harry Bosch, the retired guy who wishes he wasn’t retired. You think, ‘I could reach out to him for help and advice, but how do I get to him?’ So you pull out your little black bag of lockpicks and you break into my office to get the pension book that has Bosch’s number. The only problem besides getting photographed by the GED is that you forgot the little black bag and you put the pension book back in the wrong spot. How am I doing?”
Ballard stared at him in awe. The mantrap door was opening.
“You’re a detective, L-T,” she said. “That’s amazing. But there’s another reason I called Bosch.”
“And what’s that?” Robinson-Reynolds asked.
“Ten years ago he worked a homicide here in Hollywood. I connected the Raffa case to his case through ballistics. His case is still open. I wanted to talk to him about it and we agreed to meet at the Raffa memorial.”
Robinson-Reynolds leaned back in his chair as he considered this.
“And when were you going to tell me this?” he asked.
“Today. Now. I was waiting for the chance.”
“Ballard …”
He decided not to say what he was going to say.
“Just make sure Ross Bettany gets everything you’ve got on the case,” he said instead.
“Of course,” Ballard said.
“And look, I don’t mind what you did. But I mind how you did it. You’re lucky I think Davenport up there in GED is an empty suit. Why he’s mad at you, I don’t know. Sounds like professional jealousy. But what I do mind is you breaking into my office. That can’t happen again.”
“It won’t, sir.”
“I know it won’t. Because I’m going to get one of those Ring cameras and put it in here so I get an alert anytime somebody comes in.”
Ballard nodded.
“That’s a good idea,” she said.
“So take your little black bag and go call West Bureau and arrange to hand off the case,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “Then call Bosch and tell him his services on the case are no longer needed. That West Bureau will take it from here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then I want you to get together with the Sex team to figure out next moves on the Midnight Men. I want to be briefed before you split.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can go now, Ballard.”
Ballard stood up, took the lockpicks off the corner of the desk, and headed for the door. Before leaving, she turned back to the lieutenant.
“By the way, I’m off the next three nights,” she said. “Did you put somebody on call yet?”
“Not yet,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “I’ll figure it out.”
“How did you know about Lisa and Santa Barbara?”
“Because I was in Santa Barbara. I’m walking on the beach and hear this voice and I look, and there is Moore in a cabana in front of the Miramar.”
“Did you say something?”
“Nope. I’m going to bring her in here like I did with you. See if she tells me a story or tells me the truth. And don’t you warn her, Ballard.”
“I won’t.”
“If she tells me the truth, we’ll be fine. If she lies to me … well, I can’t have that.”
“I understand.”
Ballard left the office and took an immediate right turn, away from the squad room and toward the station’s front hallway. She went to the break room to brew a cup of coffee. She knew it was going to be a few hours before she would get to sleep. She also didn’t want to be in the detective bureau when Lisa Moore showed up for work and the lieutenant summoned her to his office. She didn’t need to have Moore blaming her for not giving her a warning.
As the coffee dripped, Ballard considered firing a text to Moore telling her not to lie to the L-T.
But she didn’t. Moore could make her own way and deal with the consequences.
27
Ballard walked into the squad room through the back hallway and saw Matt Neumayer and Ronin Clarke at their workstations in the Crimes Against Persons pod. Lisa Moore’s station was empty. Ballard walked over, put her coffee down on one of the half walls that separated the workstations. It was a six-person pod; one half was the Sexual Assault Unit and the other was the actual CAPs Unit, which handled all assaults that were not sexually motivated.
“Lisa coming in?” Ballard asked.
“She’s here,” Clarke said. “L-T called her in for a powwow.”
Ballard glanced toward the lieutenant’s office and through the glass could see Lisa sitting in front of Robinson-Reynolds’s desk.
“You know, Ronin, you’re not supposed to use words like that anymore,” Neumayer said.
Ballard looked at Neumayer. It did not look like he was serious.
“Powwow?” Clarke said. “My bad — I’ll add it to my list. I guess I’m just not woke enough.”
Clarke then turned to Ballard.
“So, Ballard, are you Indian?” Clarke said. “You look like there’s something going on there.”
He made a gesture as if circling her face.
“You mean Native American?” Ballard asked. “No, I’m not.”
“Then what?” Clarke persisted.
Neumayer cut in before Clarke could put both feet across the line.
“Renée, sit down,” he said. “Tell me about the weekend.”
She sat in Moore’s station and had to adjust the seat up so she could see both Neumayer and Clarke over the dividers, though she was going to talk mostly to Neumayer.
“You know about the new Midnight Men case, right?” she asked.
“Lisa told us before she got called in,” Neumayer said.
“Well, I think we need to change the focus a little bit,” Ballard said.
“Why?” Clarke asked.
“The new case is up in the hills,” Ballard said. “The Dell. And it’s not the kind of neighborhood you walk into to peep in windows and find a victim. She was targeted and followed there. At least that’s my take. So that changes how we should look at victim acquisition. The first two, the thinking was that the suspects picked the neighborhood because of access and then found their victims. That doesn’t work with victim three. So there’s something about these victims that connects them, and whatever that is — a place or an event either real or virtual — that’s what put them on the suspects’ radar.”
“Makes sense,” Neumayer said. “Any idea where that … point is?”
“The nexus?” Ballard said. “No, not yet. But victim three runs a coffee shop in Los Feliz. That means she has many interactions with strangers on a daily basis. Anyway, that’s what I stuck around for. To talk it out with Lisa and you guys.”
“Well, here she comes now,” Neumayer said. “Let’s all go into the task force room. Nobody’s using it.”
Moore walked up to the pod. She had either gotten a sunburn over the weekend or was colored with embarrassment or anger.
Ballard started to get up from her chair.
“No, that’s okay, Renée,” Moore said. “Take it. You earned it.”
“What are you talking about?” Ballard asked.
“You got my job,” Moore said. “Might as well start today.”
Now she had the attention of Clarke and Neumayer, who was already gathering files to take to the task force room.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ballard said.
“Sure you do,” Moore said. “Next deployment I’m on the late show and you’re on Sex. And don’t play stupid. You set me up.”
“I didn’t set anybody up,” Ballard said. “And this is news to me.”
“Me too,” Clarke said.
“Shut up, Clarke,” Moore said. “This is between me and this backstabbing bitch.”
Ballard tried to remain calm.
“Lisa, wait a minute,” Ballard said. “Let’s go back into L-T’s office and — ”