“It was a long time ago—more than twenty years.”
A fleeting resonance of the dream came back. She remembered the bubble going to the surface like a call for help.
“You want to come fishing with us?” Compton asked.
“Uh, no, I’m going to go paddle and then do some work,” Ballard said. “But thanks. Someday I’d like to meet your sons.”
Compton got up off the bed and went over to the dresser. He started putting his wallet and cash into the pockets of his blue jeans. Ballard watched him. He had a broad, muscular back, and the tips from a couple of the flames from his sun tattoo poked above the collar of his T-shirt.
“Where are you taking them?” she asked.
“Just down to the rocks by the entrance to the marina,” he said.
“Is fishing legal there?”
He held up his badge to her, then clipped it to his belt. The implication was clear. If a lifeguard or someone else tried to tell him fishing was illegal on the rock jetty at the mouth of Marina del Rey, then he would employ the law enforcement exclusion rule.
“I might go down that way when I’m paddling,” she said. “I’ll look for you guys.”
“Yeah, come on by,” he said. “We’ll try not to snag you with a hook.”
He turned from the dresser, smiling and ready to leave.
“There’s OJ in the fridge,” he said. “Sorry, no coffee.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll hit Starbucks.”
He came over and sat down on the bed again.
“So you were just a kid when your dad drowned.”
“Fourteen.”
“What happened?”
“He was surfing and went under a wave and just never came up.”
“Were you there?”
“Yeah, but there was nothing I could do. I was running up and down the beach, screaming like a crazy person.”
“That’s rough. What about your mother?”
“She wasn’t there. She wasn’t really a part of my life. Then or now.”
“What did you do after he was gone?”
“Well, I lived the way we had been living. On the beach, on friends’ couches when it got cold. Then, after about a year, my grandmother came over and found me, brought me back here when I was sixteen. Ventura, where my dad was from.”
Compton nodded. They had been as intimate physically as you could get, but neither had shared the innermost details of their lives before. Ballard had never met his sons and didn’t even know their names. She had never asked him about his divorce. She knew this moment might bring them closer or could serve to push them apart.
She sat up on the bed and they hugged.
“So I’ll see you around, okay?” he said. “Call me—and not just about work.”
“Okay,” she said. “But thanks for last night.”
“Anytime for you, Renée.”
He moved in for a kiss but she turned her face to his shoulder.
“You’ve brushed your teeth. I haven’t,” she said.
She kissed his shoulder.
“I hope they’re biting today,” she said.
“I’ll text you a photo if we get anything,” he said.
He got up and left the room. Ballard heard the front door close, then the sound of his car starting out front. She thought about things for a few minutes and then got up for the shower. She felt a bit sore. End-of-shift sex was never good sex. It was quick, perfunctory, often rough in the service of a primal drive to somehow reaffirm life through carnal satisfaction. Ballard and Compton had not made love. They had simply gotten what they needed from each other.
When she got out of the shower, she had no choice but to dress in the same clothes as the night before. She noted the scent of adrenalized perspiration left in her blouse from that moment when Nettles left the room and she saw he had a gun. She paused for a moment to relive that thrill. The feeling was addictive and dangerous, and she wondered whether there might be something wrong with her for craving it.
She continued dressing, knowing she would switch to a fresh suit before starting work. Her goal for the day was to track down and get a look at Thomas Trent’s ex-wife, the woman who left him a few months after his arrest on Sepulveda Boulevard and probably knew a lot of his secrets. Ballard knew she had to make a decision about whether to go straight at her for an interview or to finesse a conversation without revealing she was a cop.
As she checked herself in the mirror and ran her fingers through her hair, she felt a text vibration from her phone. Surprised the battery still had some juice, she pulled it out of her suit pocket and checked the screen. She saw she had a missed call from Jenkins that had come in while she was in the shower and a text from Sarah, her critter sitter, asking if Ballard planned on picking up Lola anytime soon.
Ballard first texted Sarah, apologized about the late pickup, and said she would be getting Lola within the hour. She next called Jenkins back, thinking he had just been checking in on how things went the night before.
“Partner, what’s up?” she said.
“I was just calling with condolences,” Jenkins said. “That was bad news.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Chastain. You didn’t get the RACER?”
He was referring to a digital alert from the Real-time Analysis and Critical Emergency Response unit, which put out e-mails to all personnel in detective services when a major crime or civic activity was occurring. Ballard had not yet checked her e-mail that morning.
“No, I haven’t looked,” she said. “What happened to Chastain?”
She had a bad feeling growing in the pit of her stomach.
“Uh, he’s dead,” Jenkins said. “His wife found him in their garage this morning.”
Ballard walked over and sat down on the bed. She leaned forward, bringing her chest down to her knees.
“Oh god,” she managed to say.
She flashed on the confrontation they’d had in the detective bureau two nights earlier. The one-sided confrontation. Her mind leaped to the idea that she had kicked off some sort of cascade of guilt that had led Chastain to take his own life. Then she remembered that they didn’t send out RACER alerts for cop suicides.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “How was he killed? He didn’t do it himself, did he?”
“No, he was hit,” Jenkins said. “Somebody got him in the garage when he was getting out of his car. The RACER alert says execution-style hit.”
“Oh my god.”
Ballard was beside herself. Chastain had betrayed her, yes, but her mind skipped over all that to the five solid years of their partnership before it. Chastain was a skilled and determined investigator. He had five years in RHD before Ballard came in, and he’d taught her a lot. Now he was gone and soon his badge and name would join his father’s on the memorial to fallen officers outside the PAB.
“Renée, you okay?” Jenkins asked.
“I’m okay,” she said. “But I gotta go. I’m going to go up there.”
“That’s probably not a good idea, Renée.”
“I don’t really care. I’ll talk to you later.”