She disconnected and flipped over to her Uber app to summon a ride back to Hollywood Division.
Chastain had lived with his wife and teenage son up in Chatsworth in the far-northwest corner of the city. It was about as far as you could get from downtown and the PAB and still live within the borders of the city. Most cops escaped the city at the end of their shifts and lived outside its boundaries but Chastain had been ambitious and he always thought it would pay off to tell promotional boards that he had always lived in the city he policed.
Once back at the station, Ballard quickly changed into a fresh suit, then grabbed the plain wrap assigned to the late show and headed north, taking a series of three different freeways to get to Chatsworth. An hour after she had gotten the call from Jenkins, she pulled to the curb behind a long line of police cruisers and plain wraps clogging the cul-de-sac at the end of Trigger Street. Passing by the street sign reminded Ballard that Chastain used to joke about being a cop who lived on Trigger Street.
Now it seemed sadly ironic.
The first thing Ballard noticed as she got out of her car was that there appeared to be no media on the perimeter of the scene. Somehow, no one in the legion of reporters who covered L.A. had tumbled to or been tipped to the story. It was probably because it was a Saturday morning and the local media machinery was getting a late start.
She hung her badge around her neck as she approached the yellow tape at the driveway. Save for the media, she saw all the other routine participants in a crime scene: detectives, patrol officers, and forensic and coroner’s techs. The house was a midcentury ranch house built when Chatsworth was the utter boondocks of the city. The double-wide garage door was open onto the center of activity.
A patrol officer from Devonshire Division was running the clipboard at the yellow tape. Ballard gave her name and badge number and then ducked under as he wrote it down. As she walked up the driveway toward the garage, a detective she had once worked with at RHD stepped out and walked toward her with his hands up to stop her. His name was Corey Steadman, and Ballard had never had a problem with him.
“Renée, wait,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Ballard stopped in front of him.
“He was my partner,” Ballard said. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“The lieutenant will shit a brick if he sees you,” Steadman said. “I can’t let you in.”
“Olivas? Why is his team handling this? Isn’t it a conflict of interest?”
“Because it’s related to the Dancers thing. We’re folding it in.”
Ballard made a move to go around Steadman but he sidestepped quickly and blocked her. He held his hand up again in front of her.
“Renée, I can’t,” he said.
“Okay, then just tell me what happened,” Ballard said. “Why’s he in the garage?”
“We think he got hit last night when he came in. The shooter was either waiting inside or, more likely, waiting outside and came in behind him in the blind spot when he drove in.”
“What time was this?”
“The wife went to bed at eleven. She had gotten a text from Kenny saying he’d be working until at least midnight. She gets up this morning and sees that he never got home. She texts, he doesn’t answer. She takes some trash out to the cans in the garage and finds him. That was about nine.”
“Where was he hit?”
“Sitting in the driver’s seat, one in the left temple. Hopefully he never saw it coming.”
Ballard paused for a moment as feelings of anger and sorrow combined in her chest.
“And Shelby didn’t hear the shot? What about Tyler?”
“Tyler was staying the weekend with a friend from the volleyball team. Shelby didn’t hear anything, we think because there was an improvised suppressor. We’ve got some paper fibers and a liquid residue on the car seat and body. Sticky. We’re thinking orange soda but that’s up to the lab.”
Ballard nodded. She knew that Steadman was talking about the method of taping a plastic liter bottle of soda to the muzzle of a gun. Empty out the liquid and stuff in cotton, paper towels, anything. The setup considerably dampened the sound of the muzzle blast but also expelled some of the material in the bottle.
And it was good for one shot only. The shooter must have been confident that it would get the job done.
“Where was he last night?” Ballard asked. “What was he doing?”
“The lieutenant actually sent him home at six,” Steadman said. “He’d been running eighteen hours straight by then and L-T told him to take a break. But he didn’t go home. Shelby said he texted that he had to go wrangle a witness and would be home late.”
“That was the word he used in the text? ‘Wrangle’?”
“That’s what I heard, yeah.”
Ballard had heard Chastain use the word on multiple occasions when they had been partners. She knew that to him, wrangling a witness meant dealing with a complicated situation. It could be complicated for numerous reasons but most often it meant going out and looking for a reluctant witness, one that needed to be controlled and herded into court or into giving a statement.
“Who was the wit?”
“I don’t know. Somebody he heard about or had a line on.”
“And he was working by himself?”
“He’s been the squad whip. You know, since you … transferred out.”
The whip was a detective elevated to a role secondary to the lieutenant. Most often it was someone being groomed for promotion and without an assigned partner. It explained why Chastain might have gone out on his own.
“How is Shelby?” Ballard asked.
“I don’t know,” Steadman said. “I haven’t talked to her. The L-T was dealing with her inside.”
Mentioning Olivas seemed to conjure him. Looking over Steadman’s shoulder, Ballard saw the lieutenant step out of the garage and head toward them. He had his suit jacket off, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, and his shoulder holster exposed—counterbalanced with gun on the left and two bullet clips on the right. In a low voice she warned Steadman.
“Here he comes,” she whispered. “Tell me to get out of here again. Make it loud.”
It took Steadman a moment to understand the warning.
“I told you,” he said forcefully. “You can’t be here. You need to go back to your—”
“Corey!” Olivas barked from behind. “I’ll handle this.”
Steadman turned as if just realizing Olivas was behind him.
“She’s leaving, L-T,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No, go back in,” Olivas said. “I need to speak to Ballard.”
Olivas waited for Steadman to head back to the garage. Ballard stared at him, ready for what she knew would be a verbal assault.
“Ballard, did you have any contact with Chastain yesterday?” he asked.
“Not since I turned a witness over to him on the morning after the shooting,” Ballard said. “That was it.”
“Okay, then you need to leave. You’re not welcome here.”
“He was my partner.”