“What?” Ballard asked.
“Came in at a bad angle on that punch,” he said.
“Well,” Ballard said. “I hope you Houdinied him.”
She had read somewhere that Houdini had died from a punch to the gut.
Bosch put his hand back on the wheel.
“What are we going to do with this?” he asked.
“I’m still thinking the FBI is the best bet,” Ballard said. “They have the skills to deal with all the encryption and masking. Much better than the LAPD.”
“I didn’t really get any of that Dark Web stuff,” Bosch said. “Tell you the truth, I don’t even know how it works.”
Ballard smiled and looked over at him.
“You don’t have to know,” she said. “You’ve got me for that now.”
Bosch nodded.
“Well, how about the shorthand, then?” he asked.
“In the Dark Web, nothing is indexed,” Ballard began. “There’s no Google or anything like that. You sort of have to know your destination, and then one thing can lead to another. That’s what happened with Denning. He found like-minded and totally warped people, and that brought him eventually to the Midnight Men.”
“Okay.”
“The problem is that the Dark Web offers anonymity. He said he has a VPN. That’s a virtual private network that masks his computer ID when he’s prowling around on websites. Then he also uses Tor as a browser. It’s like the dot-com of the Dark Web and it encrypts his moves and bounces them all over the world to further defy tracing them. So he’s anonymous in the Dark Web, can’t be traced. Supposedly.”
“Supposedly?”
“The FBI is plugged in with the NSA and the whole federal alphabet soup of agencies. They’re cutting-edge when it comes to this. They’re doing things the public has no idea about. So I say we go to them, I give them the site where all that horrible stuff is and the password that’ll get them in. That’s all they need. They take it from there. They’ll be able to identify the three known victims on there. That last one we saw was my case, Cindy Carpenter. And I got the mojo on her ex as soon as I talked to him. He’s gotta go down for this. They’ll squeeze Denning and make him a witness, but he won’t walk. I’ll make sure of that. They let him walk, and I know the name of the Times reporter that would love that story.”
Bosch nodded.
“All of them have to go down,” he said.
“They will,” Ballard said. “The bureau will go silent but then the hammer will come down on all of them at once. A great reckoning of assholes. And if it doesn’t happen that way, then we make a call, and that’ll get some action going.”
Bosch nodded again.
“When should we go to the bureau?” he asked.
“How about right now?” Ballard said.
Bosch put on the blinker and started negotiating his way to the transition lanes to the eastbound 10. They were headed downtown.
EPILOGUE
Ballard was walking up Finley with Pinto when she saw the black SUV double-parked in front of her building. She had been on a pre-drive walk with the dog so he could take care of business before she headed out to surf Trancas Point. It would take over an hour to get out there. The surf report had a west swell and winds out of the north, perfect conditions for Trancas. She hadn’t been to the Point since before the pandemic and was looking forward to being on the ocean up there and riding a few waves. She would go alone, except for the dog. Garrett Single was on duty.
As she got closer she could hear the SUV idling and could tell by the license plate that it was a city car, not a vehicle from a limo service waiting on an airport run. A large man in a suit waited by the passenger-side door for the return of his passenger. She pulled out her earbuds and killed the music on her phone. Marvin Gaye was singing “What’s Going On.”
When she got to the security gate, she saw a man with gray hair and in a full police uniform, four stars on the collar. It was the chief of police. He heard the dog’s collar jingle and turned to see Ballard approach.
“Detective Ballard?” he asked.
“Well, I’m Ballard,” she said. “It’s not ‘Detective’ anymore.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Have we met previously?”
“No, not in person. But I know who you are, Chief.”
“Is there a place we can talk privately?”
“I don’t think anyone can hear us here.”
The point was clear. She wasn’t inviting him in.
“Then here is good,” he said.
“What can I do for you?” Ballard said.
“Well, I’ve been apprised of your work on some of the cases that have made recent headlines. Your uncredited work, I should say. Both before and after you turned in your badge.”
“And?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a badge. Ballard recognized the number. It was the one she had worn until two weeks earlier.
“I want you to take it back,” he said.
“You want me to come back?” she asked.
“I do. The department needs to change. To do that, it has to change from within. How can we accomplish that if the good people who can make change choose to leave?”
“I don’t think the department wants someone like me. And I don’t think the department wants to change.”
“It doesn’t matter what the department wants, Detective Ballard. If an organization doesn’t change, it dies. And that’s why I want you back. I need you to help bring the change.”
“What would my job be?”
“Whatever you want it to be.”
Ballard nodded. She thought about Bosch and how he had told her that change had to come from within. A million people protesting in the street wasn’t enough. And she thought about the partnership she and Bosch had planned.
“Can I think about it, Chief?” she said.
“Sure, think about it,” he said. “Just don’t take too long. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
He held up the badge.
“I’ll keep this until I hear from you,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Ballard said.
The chief headed back to the car, and the driver held the door for him. The black SUV took off down Finley, and Ballard watched it go.
Then she went surfing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Team Ballard and Bosch, an all-star lineup of editors, readers, advisers, and investigators who helped the author with this novel in immeasurable ways. They include Asya Muchnick, Bill Massey, Emad Akhtar, Pamela Marshall, Betsy Uhrig, Jane Davis, Heather Rizzo, Dennis Wojciechowski, Henrik Bastin, John Houghton, Terrill Lee Lankford, and Linda Connelly. The detectives roundtable includes Mitzi Roberts, the inspiration for Ballard, as well as Rick Jackson, David Lambkin, and Tim Marcia, inspirations all. Many thanks to all who lent a hand to the author.