They entered a large office that had a sitting area to the left and a desk to the right. In between was a man sitting in a chair. He was partially gagged with a piece of white cloth stuffed into his mouth and held in place by plastic zip ties wrapped around his head and across his mouth. Zip ties also secured his wrists to the arms of the chair and still more held his ankles to the legs.
Ballard swept her aim across the room to make sure there was no one else present. She also checked through the open door to a small bathroom that was to the right behind the desk. She then holstered her weapon as she returned to the center of the room.
“Harry? You — ”
“Got it.”
Bosch moved in, unfolding a knife he had withdrawn from a pocket. He first worked on the gag, pulling the zip tie loop away from the man’s jaw to cut it. He then pulled loose the cloth from the man’s mouth and dropped it on the floor. Ballard noted that it was a washcloth, likely grabbed from the bathroom.
“Oh, thank god,” the man said. “I thought he would come back first.”
Bosch moved on to the bindings on the man’s wrists and ankles.
“Who are you?” Ballard asked. “What happened here?”
“I’m Jason Abbott,” the man said. “Dr. Jason Abbott. You saved me.”
He was wearing blue jeans and a light blue button-down shirt with the tails out. The zip ties had left marks on his cheeks. He had a ruddy complexion and blue eyes under a full head of dark, curly hair.
When his wrists were released, he immediately started rubbing them to get circulation going.
“What happened?” Ballard repeated. “Who did this to you?”
“A man,” Abbott said. “His name is Christopher Bonner. He’s an ex-cop. He tied me up.”
After crouching down to cut the ties on Abbott’s ankles, Bosch stood up and backed away. Abbott reached down and rubbed his ankles, exaggerating the action, and then unsteadily stood up and tried to take a few steps. He quickly reached his hands out and leaned down on the front of the desk.
“I can’t feel my feet,” he said. “I’ve been tied to that chair for hours.”
“Dr. Abbott, sit down over here on the couch,” Ballard said. “You need to tell us exactly what happened.”
Ballard held Abbott by the arm and helped him move unsteadily from the desk to the couch, where he sat down.
“Bonner came here and tied me up,” he said.
“When was this?” Ballard asked.
“About two. He came in, he had a gun, and I had to let him tie me up with those plastic things. I had no choice.”
“Two a.m. or p.m.?”
“Two p.m. Like twelve hours ago. What time is it anyway?”
“It’s after four.”
“Jesus. I’ve been in that chair fourteen hours.”
“Why did he tie you up?”
“Because he was going to kill me, I think. He said he had to go do something and I think he wanted me alive and with no alibi when he did it. Then he was going to come back and make it look like I did it. He’d kill me, make it look like a suicide or something and I’d get the blame.”
“He told you all of this?”
“I know it sounds fantastic, but it’s true. He didn’t tell me everything. But I’ve been sitting here for fourteen fucking hours and I put it together. I mean, why else would he tie me up and keep me here?”
Ballard knew that the more she kept Abbott talking, the more his story would become implausible and the flaws in it would show.
“What was it he had to go and do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Abbott said. “But I think he was going to kill somebody. That’s what he does.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me. He flat out told me. This guy, he’s had his hooks into me for years. He’s been blackmailing me, threatening me, making me do things. And not just me. All of us.”
“Who is ‘all of us,’ Dr. Abbott?”
“My partners. I have partners in the lab, and Bonner bullied his way in and took control. I mean, he was a cop. We were scared. We did what we were told.”
Ballard had to assume that Abbott did not know that Bonner was dead. But trying to throw the blame on him was probably the best ploy he could come up with when he saw Ballard and Bosch on the lab’s exterior cameras and deduced that it hadn’t been Bonner texting him about “complications.”
“So you think this was some sort of master plan on Bonner’s part?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Abbott said. “Ask him. If you can find him.”
“Or was it a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing, you think?”
“I already said I don’t know.”
“Because I noticed those zip ties you were bound to the chair with came from the lab down the hall. I saw a few of them on the floor in there.”
“Yeah, then he must have just grabbed them on his way back here to me.”
“Who let him into the building?”
“I did. We were closed today — tacked the day on to the holiday weekend. I was here alone, catching up on work and he buzzed the gate. I had no idea what he was going to do. I let him in.”
Ballard stepped closer to the couch.
“Let me see your wrists,” she said.
“What?” Abbott exclaimed. “You’re arresting me? For what?”
“I want to see your wrists,” Ballard said calmly.
“Oh,” Abbott replied.
He held out his hands, exposing his wrists below the cuffs of his shirt. Ballard saw no sign of injury or any mark that would have been left if Abbott had been bound for as long as he claimed. Ballard had had that experience herself once and knew what his wrists should look like.
“How come you haven’t asked me my name?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Abbott said. “I guess I just thought you would tell me at some point.”
“I’m Ballard. The one you sent Bonner to kill.”
For a moment everything paused and was silent as Abbott registered her words.
“Wait,” he then said. “What are you talking about? I didn’t send anybody anywhere.”
“Come on, Dr. Abbott, this whole thing here, the washcloth and the zip ties, you did that,” Ballard said. “Not a bad try for the time you had, but you’re not fooling any — ”
“Are you crazy? Bonner tied me up. If he tried to kill you, then he did that on his own. And he was going to frame me for it. We’re both victims here.”
Ballard could picture how Abbott did it. The gag first, leaving it loose enough for him to be able to clench his teeth. Ballard had noted how loose it was when Bosch moved in to cut it.
Binding the feet to the chair’s legs would come next. Then put a loose loop around one of the arms of the chair, then bind one wrist to the other side before putting his free hand through the loose loop and pulling it tight with his teeth. She glanced at Bosch to see if he was on the same wavelength and he gave her a slight nod. She looked back at Abbott.
“I could sit in that chair and tie myself up like you were in two minutes,” she said. “Your story is shit, Dr. Abbott.”
“You have this wrong. I am a victim here.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“My phone?”
“Yes, your cell phone. Where is it?”
Ballard could tell by his eyes and his reaction that Abbott realized he had missed something, that there was a flaw in his story. He had left something out of the plan.
“It’s over there on the desk,” he said.
Ballard glanced over and saw an iPhone on the desk.
“What about the burner?” she asked.
“What burner?” Abbott said. “There is no burner.”
Ballard looked at Bosch and nodded.
“Call it, Harry,” she said.
Bosch pulled out his cell and called the number that had sent the texts to Bonner’s burner.
“What’s he doing?” Abbott said. “Who’s he calling?”
There was a buzzing sound in the room.
“He’s calling you,” Ballard said.
She followed the sound to the desk. The buzzing kept coming in intervals. She started opening drawers, trying to track it. When she pulled the bottom desk drawer out, the buzzing became louder. There, next to a box of envelopes and a stack of Post-it pads, was a black cell phone matching the one Ballard had found on Bonner.
“You forgot about it, didn’t you?” she asked.
“That’s not mine,” Abbott said. “Bonner — he put it there!”
Ballard didn’t touch the phone because she assumed only Abbott’s prints would be found on it. And if there were no prints, then they would look for DNA. She closed the drawer. It would be a critical piece of evidence and she would alert Ross Bettany to it.
She came back around the desk and walked toward the couch.