Ballard located room 18 and saw no lights on behind its curtained window. She noted the beat-up Ford pickup parked in front of its door. Eighteen was the last room before a well-lit alcove that contained an ice dispenser and Coke machine housed in a steel cage with cutouts for depositing money and removing drinks. She kept moving and parked the city-ride on the other side of the office so that it would not be seen should someone in room 18 split the curtain and look out the window. The car could be identified as a police car a mile away.
Before getting out, she used the rover to request a wants-and-warrants check on the pickup. It came back clean and registered to a Judith Nettles of Poway, a small town Ballard knew was down in San Diego County. Nettles had no record and no warrants on the computer.
Ballard proceeded on foot to the motel office, where she had to push a button on the glass door and wait until a man came out from a back room located behind the counter. Ballard had her badge up already and he buzzed her in.
“Hey there,” Ballard said as she entered. “I’m Detective Ballard from the Hollywood Station. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
“Evening,” said the counterman. “Ask away, I guess.”
He stifled a yawn as he sat down. Behind him on the wall were several clocks showing the time in cities all over the world, as if the place catered to the international traveler who had to keep tabs on business around the globe. Ballard could hear the sound of a TV coming from the back room. It was the audience laughter of a late-night talk show.
“Do you have a guest in room eighteen tonight?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, yes, eighteen is occupied,” the man said.
“What’s that guest’s name?”
“Don’t you need a warrant to ask that?”
Ballard put her hands on the counter and leaned toward the man.
“You watch too much TV in that back room, sir. I don’t need a warrant to ask questions and you don’t need to be presented with a warrant to answer them. You just need to choose right now to either help the LAPD with an investigation or hinder the LAPD.”
He stared at her for a moment and then turned the seat clockwise until he was facing a computer screen to his right. He hit the space bar and the screen came to life. He then pulled up the motel’s occupancy chart and clicked on room 18.
“His name is Christopher Nettles,” he said.
“He alone in there?” Ballard asked.
“Supposed to be. Registered as a single.”
“How long has he been here?”
The man referred to his screen again.
“Nine days.”
“Spell the first and last name for me.”
After getting the spellings, Ballard told the clerk she would be right back. She grabbed a couple of pamphlets for a Homes of the Stars bus tour off a stack on the counter and used them to keep the door from latching. She stepped into the parking lot to be out of the counterman’s earshot and used the rover to call communications and check Christopher Nettles for wants and warrants. He came up clean but Ballard was smart enough to know not to leave it there. She pulled her phone and called the Hollywood Station watch office and asked a desk uni to run the name through the national crime index database.
She paced on the asphalt while waiting for the results and noticed that there was no water in the motel pool. She walked around to the corner of the office so she could get another visual on room 18. It was still dark behind the curtain. She checked the pickup truck and pegged it as at least twenty years old. It likely didn’t have an alarm and would not be useful in drawing Nettles out of the room.
The desk officer came back on the line and reported that there was a Christopher Nettles in the system with a 2014 conviction on multiple theft charges, including burglary of an occupied dwelling. This Christopher Nettles was white, twenty-four years old, and on parole after serving two years in state prison for the convictions.
Ballard asked the officer to put Lieutenant Munroe on the line.
“L-T, it’s Ballard. I’m at Siesta Village and I have a line on a suspect in the four-five-nine on El Centro last night. Can you send me a unit?”
“I can do that. I had all hands on a domestic but it’s calm now and I’ll pull a car off and send them your way. They’re ten out.”
“Okay, have them hold a block back and go to Tact four and I’ll call them in. I want to try to caper this guy out of the room.”
“Roger that, Ballard. You got a name I can write down?”
He was asking for the suspect’s name in case things went sideways and they had to go hunting for him without Ballard’s help. She gave him the details she had on Nettles and then disconnected. She switched her rover to the Tactical 4 frequency and went back into the office, where the counterman was waiting.
“How has Mr. Nettles been paying for his room?” she asked.
“He pays with cash,” he said. “Every three days he pays for three days in advance. He’s good till Monday.”
“Has he been getting deliveries here?”
“Deliveries?”
“You know, boxes, mail. Have people been sending him stuff?”
“I wouldn’t really know. I work during the night. The only deliveries are pizza deliveries. Matter of fact, I think Nettles got a pizza a couple hours ago.”
“So you’ve seen him? You know what he looks like?”
“Yeah, he’s come in and paid for the room a couple times at night.”
“How old is he?”
“I don’t know. Twenties, I’d say. Young. I’m not good at that stuff.”
“Big or small?”
“I’d say on the big side. Looks like he works out.”
“Tell me about the free Wi-Fi.”
“What can I tell you? It’s free. That’s it.”
“Does every room have a router, or is there a main router for the whole place?”
“We got the setup in the back here.”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the room behind him. Ballard knew that the router’s history could be examined for proof that Nettles had attempted to make purchases online with Leslie Anne Lantana’s credit card, but that would require a warrant and a commitment of time and money from the department’s Commercial Crimes Division that outweighed the importance of the case. It would never happen unless Ballard or someone working the daytime burglary unit did it.
“What about phones? Are there phone lines in the rooms?”
“Yes, we have phones. Except for a couple rooms where they got stolen. We haven’t replaced them.”
“But eighteen has a phone?”
“Yes, there’s a phone.”
Ballard nodded as she considered a plan for getting Nettles out of his room so she could question and possibly arrest him.
“Can you turn the light off in that alcove with the Coke machine?”
“Uh, yeah. I have a switch here. But it turns out the light on the second floor alcove too.”
“That’s okay, turn them both off. Then I need you to call his room and get him to come to the office.”
“How do I do that? It’s almost three o’clock in the morning.”
He pointed over his shoulder toward the wall of clocks to underline that it was too late for him to call Nettles’s room. As if on cue, her rover squawked and she heard her call code. She brought the rover up to respond.
“Six-William-twenty-six, you guys in position?”
“That’s a roger.”
She recognized the voice. It was Smith. She knew she had a solid cop and a gung-ho boot as backup.
“Okay, hold there. When I call you in, drive in the main entrance and don’t let anyone out. Suspect has a 1990s Ford one-fifty, silver in color.”
“Roger that. Weapons?”
“No known weapons.”