As Ballard backed her Ford out of its parking space, Trent stood in the lot and watched her go, sending her off with a friendly wave. She drove up Van Nuys Boulevard and back to the same street and spot where she had parked before. She pulled out a notebook and wrote down as many quotes from her conversation with Trent as she could remember. Extemporaneous notes written just moments after a conversation were given greater weight in court than those written much later. She had no idea if her undercover encounter with Trent would eventually become part of a case but she knew it was the smart thing to do.
After putting her notebook away, she climbed into the rear of the van again to retrieve her gun, badge, and rover. She decided she would change back into her work suit when she got to Hollywood Station. Her phone buzzed as she was climbing into the driver’s seat. It was an 818 number and she took the call. It was Trent.
“Just looking at the computer here, Stella,” he said. “We can get you a white one. They have them all over the place—Bakersfield, Modesto, Downey, plenty of choices. All of them fully loaded, backup camera, everything.”
Ballard guessed that he was only calling to see if she had stiffed him with a phony number. The fact that she had not seemed to energize him.
“All right, well, let me think about it,” Ballard said.
“You sure I can’t pull the trigger on one of these right now?” Trent asked. “You would qualify for our end-of-the-day discount. That’s a five-hundred-dollar credit on your down payment, Stella. You could take that money and order custom door mats or upgrade the headliner, if you want. There’s a lot of—”
“No, Tom, not yet,” Ballard said decisively. “I told you I was going to think about it and I will call you tomorrow or Sunday.”
“Okay, Stella,” Trent said. “Then I’ll wait to hear from you.”
The line went dead. Ballard started the engine and pulled away from the curb. She started heading south toward the mountains. She checked the dashboard clock. If Trent was working at the dealership until the ten p.m. closing, then it would be two hours before he got home. That was plenty of time for what she had planned.
11
Ballard sat in the van at the Mulholland Overlook about two blocks from Wrightwood Drive. It was a clear night and the lights of the Valley spread out to infinity toward the north. She had her rover on and tuned to the North Hollywood Division dispatch frequency. She didn’t have to wait long. A radio call went out to all patrol units, reporting a possible prowler and home break-in on Wrightwood. A patrol unit accepted the call and asked where they would meet the person who reported the incident. The dispatcher said the call came from a passing motorist who declined to identify herself.
After another thirty seconds went by, Ballard keyed her rover. She identified herself to dispatch as a Hollywood Division detective who was in the area and would respond to the call as well. Dispatch repeated the information to the responding patrol unit so the officers would know that there was a friendly in the neighborhood. The dispatcher then called for an air unit to fly over the hillside neighborhood with its powerful spotlight.
Ballard pulled away from the overlook and headed to Wrightwood. As she dropped down the steep street and took the first curve, she saw a patrol car—its blue lights engaged—parked a block away. She flashed her beams as she approached and stopped the van alongside the cruiser. Two officers were getting out. Since she was in her personal car, she held her badge out the window so they could confirm she was a cop. They were from North Hollywood Division, so they were strangers to Ballard.
“Hey, guys,” she said. “I was passing through and heard the call. Want some help or you’ve got it handled?”
“Not sure what there is to handle,” said one of the officers. “Whoever called it in is GOA and we don’t know exactly where this prowler was. Seems like a bullshit call.”
“Maybe,” Ballard said. “But I’ve got a few minutes. I’m going to pull over.”
She parked behind the patrol car and got out with a flashlight in one hand and the rover in the other. After introductions were made, Ballard volunteered to head up the street, knocking on doors and checking houses. The two patrol officers would work their way down the street. They had just split up when a helicopter came over the crest of the mountain and put its light down on the street. Ballard waved her own light up at it and proceeded up the street.
Thomas Trent’s house was the third house she came to. There were no lights on inside that she could see. She used the butt of the metal flashlight to bang loudly on the door. She waited but no one came. She knocked again and when she was satisfied there was no one home, she stepped back to the street and started sweeping the front of the house with her light as if checking for signs of a break-in.
Ballard turned and looked down the street. She could see the flashlights of the two patrol officers on opposite sides of Wrightwood. They were checking houses and moving further away from her. The chopper had banked out and was following the curve of the hillside, training its light on the back of the homes. Ballard saw an alcove where trash cans were kept and beyond it a gate. She knew it blocked access to a set of steps that led down the side of Trent’s house. It was a code requirement that hillside houses have a secondary means of access in case of fire or other emergency. She quickly moved around the trash cans to see if Trent had put a lock on the gate and she found that he had not. She opened it and started moving down the stairs.
Almost immediately her movements engaged a motion-activated light that illuminated the stairway. She brought her hand up and held it out to block the light, pretending to be blinded. She looked up through her spread fingers and checked the exterior of the house for any cameras. She saw nothing and dropped her hand. Satisfied that her image was not being recorded, she proceeded down the stairs.
The stairway had landings at two lower levels of the house, giving access to decks that ran across the rear of the structure. Ballard stepped onto the first level down and saw it was furnished with outdoor furniture and a barbecue grill. There were four sliding doors and she checked these but found them locked. She put her beam on the glass but curtains had been drawn behind the doors and she could not see inside the house.
Ballard quickly returned to the stairs and went down to the lowest level, where the deck was much smaller and there were only two sliding doors. As she approached the glass, she saw the curtain inside was only halfway extended across the door. She pointed her light at the gap and saw that the room beyond was almost empty. There was a straight-backed wooden chair at the center with a small table next to it. There appeared to be nothing else in the room.
As she swept the beam across the room, she was momentarily startled by a flash but then realized the entire wall to the right was a mirror. It was her own light that she had seen.
Ballard tried the door and found it unlocked, but after she started to slide it open, it abruptly stopped moving. She shone her light down into the door track and saw that there was a sawed-off broomstick placed in the inside track to prevent the door from being opened from the outside.