She wanted to get out on the water before the wind kicked up.
Ballard’s van was a white Ford Transit Connect that she’d bought used from a window washer who was retiring and closing his business. It had eighty thousand miles on it but the previous owner had taken good care of it. Ballard kept the ladder racks on the roof for carrying her board, and as in the work car she shared with Jenkins, the rear storage area of the van was compartmentalized with cardboard boxes.
Before exiting Hollywood Station, Ballard had changed into faded jeans and a red hoodie over a tank suit, leaving her work suit in a locker. She now stripped down to the tank and put the other clothes in a backpack along with underwear, socks, and a pair of New Balance trainers. She next grabbed one of the wet suits off a hanger hooked on the inside wall of the van. She squeezed into it and pulled the rear zipper up her back with a short tether. She took a big beach towel out of one of the boxes and stuffed that into the backpack last. She clipped her tent bag to the side of the backpack and put it on over both shoulders.
Lastly, she grabbed a multigrain-and-chocolate energy bar out of an insulated cooler she kept food in and was ready. She closed and locked the van, then pulled her board off the roof racks. It was an eight-foot One World board with the paddle attached to clips on the deck. It was a bear to bring down off the van’s roof and she was careful not to bounce the tail fin on the asphalt. She put her fingers into the center grip hole and carried the board under her right arm while using her left to feed herself. She trudged toward the water barefoot and walking gingerly until she was off the parking lot and into the sand. Lola followed dutifully.
She set up the tent twenty-five yards off the water’s edge. Its assembly was an easy, five-minute routine. She placed her backpack inside to stabilize the tent against any wind and then zipped the entrance closed. She buried the key to the van in the sand by the front-right corner of the tent and then pointed at the spot until the dog took her place there.
“Keep watch,” she said.
The dog bowed her head once. Ballard hefted the thirty-pound board again and carried it to the water. She wrapped the leash around her right ankle and secured it with the Velcro strap, then pushed the board out ahead of her.
Ballard only weighed 125 pounds and could step up onto the board without tipping the balance. She powered through four right-hand strokes with the paddle to get out past the low rollers and then at last was smoothly gliding through what was left of the morning mist. She looked back once at her dog, even though she knew she didn’t have to. Lola sat at attention at the right-front corner of the tent. She would do so until Ballard got back.
Ballard had started a paddling routine soon after her transfer to the late show. She had grown up surfing on the West Maui beaches between Wailea and Lahaina and had traveled to surf with her father in Fiji, Australia, and elsewhere, but she left surfing behind when she moved to the forty-eight to pursue a career in law enforcement. Then one night she and Jenkins were called to a residential burglary in the bird streets in the hills off Doheny Drive. A couple had come home from dinner at Spago and found the door to their $5 million home ajar and the interior ransacked. Patrol officers arrived first and then Ballard and Jenkins were called out because the victims were deemed HVC—high-value constituents—by the station commander. He wanted detectives to roll along with a crime scene team right away.
Shortly after arriving, Jenkins was supervising the crime scene techs at the point of entry while Ballard surveyed the home with the lady of the house, trying to determine exactly what had been taken. In the master bedroom they entered a massive walk-in closet. It was hidden behind floor-to-ceiling mirrors and not seen when the first patrol officers to arrive had checked the house. On the floor of the closet a fur coat was spread open. Piled in the center of the coat’s silk lining were a mound of jewelry and three pairs of high-heeled shoes with red soles that Ballard knew cost more than a thousand dollars apiece.
At that moment, Ballard realized that the burglar might still be in the home. At the exact same moment, the intruder jumped from behind a row of clothes on hangers and tackled her to the ground. The lady of the house backed up against a mirrored wall in the closet and stood there frozen and mute as Ballard struggled with a man who had almost a hundred pounds on her.
The intruder grabbed one of the red-soled shoes and was attempting to drive the spiked heel into Ballard’s eye. She held his arm back but knew he was too strong to hold off for long. She managed to call out for Jenkins as the spike came closer to her face. She turned her face at the last moment and the spike dragged across her cheek, drawing a line of blood. The intruder pulled it back to start another go at her eye, when he was suddenly hit from behind by Jenkins wielding a small bronze sculpture he had picked up on his way through the bedroom. Ballard’s attacker collapsed unconscious on top of her. The sculpture broke in two.
The intruder turned out to be the couple’s schizophrenic son, who had disappeared from the home years earlier and was presumed to be living on the streets in Santa Monica. Ballard ended up with four butterfly stitches applied to her cheek at Cedars-Sinai, and Jenkins and the department got sued by the couple and their son for using excessive force and for damaging an expensive work of art. The city settled the lawsuit for a quarter million dollars and Ballard took up paddleboarding to increase her upper-body strength and clear her mind of the memory of the spiked heel inching toward her eye.
The sky turned gray as the sun slipped behind the clouds, and the water turned a dark, impenetrable blue. Ballard liked turning the paddle blade sideways and watching it slice a thin line down through the water until the white tip on it disappeared in darkness. She would then turn the blade and power through a full stroke, the board and paddle making barely a mark on the surface as she moved. She called it stealth paddling.
She made a wide loop that took her at least three hundred yards offshore. She checked her tent every few minutes and saw no one approaching or disturbing it or the dog. Even from a distance she could identify the lifeguard in the station seventy-five yards down the beach. Aaron Hayes was one of her favorites. He was her backup to Lola. She knew he would be watching over her things and would probably visit her later.