She next took a deeper dive into online records and pulled up an abstract on Trent’s case. She learned that following his arrest, Trent negotiated an agreement with the District Attorney’s Office in which he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of possession of a dangerous weapon, paid a five-hundred-dollar fine, and was placed on three years’ probation. The plea was part of a pretrial intervention program that would allow Trent to have his record cleaned if he completed probation without another arrest.
On the court records, Trent’s home address was listed on Wrightwood Drive in Studio City. Ballard plugged the address into Google and found a map showing that Wrightwood dropped off of Mulholland Drive on the northern slope of the Santa Monica Mountains. She clicked on the street-view feature and saw what looked like a contemporary ranch house with a double-wide garage. But she knew from the map that the house was on the mountain and that it was most likely that the structure stretched one or two levels down the slope from the street. It was a very typical design of many of the homes in the hills. The top floor contained the common areas—kitchen, dining room, living room, and so on—while the lower levels contained the bedrooms. There would be stairs, or in some cases an elevator, that led down to the lower floors.
Ballard realized that someone unfamiliar with these mountainside designs could view the houses as odd because the bedrooms were on the bottom floors. In that way, Trent’s home might be considered an upside-down house.
That realization dumped a jolt of adrenaline into Ballard’s blood. She leaned closer to the computer screen to study Trent’s booking photo and arrest report. The personal details on the report said Trent was a car salesman who worked at an Acura dealership on Van Nuys Boulevard. The first question that struck her at that point was how a car salesman afforded a home in the hills, where price tags easily started in the seven figures.
She switched over to a different search site that handled public records and put in Trent’s name and date of birth. Soon she was looking at records of a marriage dissolution that occurred seven months after his arrest. Beatrice Trent had claimed irreconcilable differences in her divorce petition and it appeared that Trent did not contest the filing. The three-year marriage was dissolved.
There was also a record of a lawsuit from 2011 in which Trent was the plaintiff in a personal injury claim against a company called Island Air and its insurer. The record showed only the filing—for injuries sustained in a helicopter crash in Long Beach—but not the outcome of the case. Ballard assumed that this meant the case had been settled before trial.
Ballard printed all of these reports and then picked up the desk phone and called the dealership where Trent worked. She asked for him by name and the call was transferred.
A voice said, “This is Tom. How can I help you?”
Ballard hesitated and then disconnected. She looked at the clock and saw it was just past six o’clock and in the guts of rush hour. It would be a miserable crawl from Hollywood up into the Valley.
There was no guarantee that Trent would even still be working by the time she got there, but Ballard decided to give it a shot. She wanted to get a look at him.
10
The Acura dealership where Thomas Trent worked was at the end of a long stretch of competing dealerships that stretched north along Van Nuys Boulevard toward the center of the Valley. It took Ballard almost an hour to get there. She had driven her own van because the city-ride assigned to her and Jenkins screamed COP! with its baby-shit-brown paint, no-frills hubcaps, and grille-and-rear-window flashers. Her purpose was only to get a look at Trent and get a read on him, not to alert him to the police interest.
She had downloaded the mug shot from Trent’s arrest three years earlier to her phone and she pulled it up on the screen now. Parked at a curb on Van Nuys, she studied it and then scanned the new-and used-car lots for salesmen. There was no match. The interior showroom was still a possibility, but since the sales booths appeared to be lined along the rear wall, she had no angle on their occupants. She called the dealership’s main number and asked for Trent again, just to make sure he hadn’t left for the day. He once again answered in the same way, but this time Ballard didn’t disconnect.
“This is Tom, how can I help you?”
There was a salesman’s confidence in his voice.
“I wanted to come in and look at an RDX but with this traffic I may be a while getting there,” Ballard said.
She had read the name of the model off the windshield of an SUV that sat on a pedestal near the lot’s entrance.
“No worries!” Trent exclaimed. “I’m here till we shut her down tonight. What’s your name, hon?”
“Stella.”
“Well, Stella, are you looking to buy or lease?”
“Purchase.”
“Well, you’re in luck. We have a one percent financing deal going on this month. You bringing in a trade for me?”
“Uh, no. I think I’m just looking to buy.”
Through the showroom glass Ballard saw a man stand up in one of the booths on the rear wall. He was holding a corded phone to his ear. He put his arm down on top of the booth’s partition and spoke into the phone.
“Well, whatever you want, we’ve got,” he said.
Ballard heard the words at the same time the man in the showroom said them. It was Trent, though his appearance had changed some since his bust on Sepulveda Boulevard. He had a shaved head now and eyeglasses. Judging from what she could see of him, he had bulked up as well. His shoulders stretched the fabric of his short-sleeved dress shirt and it looked like his neck was too thick for him to connect the top button behind his tie.
Ballard saw something then and quickly reached into the storage compartment in the center console. She pulled out a compact set of binoculars.
“So, when you think you’ll get here?” Trent asked.
“Um …” Ballard stalled.
She put the phone on her lap and looked through the binos. She focused and got her first good look at Trent. The hand that was holding the phone to his ear appeared to be bruised along the knuckles.
She picked the phone back up.
“Twenty minutes,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”
“Good deal,” Trent said. “I’ll have an RDX ready to go.”
She ended the call, started the van, and pulled away from the curb.
Ballard drove up Van Nuys two blocks and took a right into a neighborhood of World War II–era homes. She pulled to a stop in front of one without any lights on and then climbed into the back of the van. She took off her gun, badge, and rover and put them into the lockbox welded to the wheel well. She pulled her wallet out of her shoulder bag and put it in there as well—no matter what happened at the dealership, she was not going to give Trent her driver’s license. She had already given a fake name and she would never risk him knowing her real name or address.
She quickly took off her suit next and put on a pair of jeans to go with her blouse. The jeans were loose-fitting so that she could wear her backup pistol in an ankle holster without it being obvious.