“Bella, we are shooting,” Beaupre said. “I’m going back now.”
Bella didn’t respond. Beaupre led Ballard to the front door and ushered her out, offering her good luck in her investigation. Ballard handed her a business card with the usual request to call if anything else came to mind.
“The DMV lists this as your home address,” Ballard said. “Is that true?”
“Isn’t a home the place where you eat and fuck and sleep?” Beaupre said.
“Maybe. So no other place?”
“I don’t need another place, Detective.”
Beaupre closed the door.
Ballard started her car but then opened her notebook and started writing down as much as she could remember from the interview. Head down and writing, she was startled by a sharp rap on the car window. She looked up to see Billy, the doorman in the beanie. She lowered the window.
“Detective, Shady said you forgot this,” he said.
He held out a key. It was not on a ring. It was just a key.
“Oh,” Ballard said. “Right. Thank you.”
She took the key and then put the window back up.
22
Ballard made her way to the 101 freeway and headed south toward downtown. She drove with internal momentum. She still didn’t have a shred of direct evidence but the interview with Beatrice Beaupre pushed Thomas Trent further across the line that separated person of interest and suspect. He was now Ballard’s one and only focus and her thoughts were exclusively on how to build a prosecutable case.
She was just taking the curve into the Cahuenga Pass when her phone buzzed, and she saw it was Jenkins. She connected her earbuds and took the call.
“Hey, partner, just checking in before heading in. I got any holdovers from you?”
Jenkins was on shift by himself for the next two nights. It was supposed to be Ballard’s weekend.
“Not really,” she said. “Hopefully you’ll have a quiet watch.”
“I wouldn’t mind sitting in the bureau all night,” Jenkins said.
“Well, at least for the first hour or so. I have the car.”
“What? You’re supposed to be up in Ventura, surfing. What’s going on?”
“I just came from an interview with the ex-wife of the suspect on the Ramona Ramone case. It’s him, no doubt. He’s our guy. Calls his crib the upside-down house, just like the victim said to Taylor and Smith.”
“All right.”
She could tell by his tone and the way he drew out the words that he was not as convinced.
“He also collects sets of brass knuckles,” she added. “With good and evil on them. You can see the letters in the bruising on Ramona. I went back to check and take pictures.”
Jenkins was silent at first. This was new information to him and it also was an indication of her obsession with the case. Finally, he spoke.
“You have enough for a search warrant?”
“I’m not there yet. But the victim was transferred to County, which I don’t think they could do if she was still in the coma. So I’m headed there, and if she’s awake, I’m going to have her look at a six-pack. If she makes the ID, then I’ll bring the package to McAdams in the morning and come up with a plan.”
There was only silence from Jenkins as he apparently dealt with having been left on the platform as the train sped by without stopping.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You want me to divert and meet you at County?”
“No, I think I’ve got it covered,” Ballard said. “You get in and take roll call, see what’s going on. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back with the car.”
County-USC used to be a dire place but in recent years it had gotten a face-lift and a paint job and it was no longer as cheerless as it had once been. Its medical staff were no doubt as dedicated and skilled as the crew at any private hospital in the city but, like with most giant bureaucracies, everything always came down to budget. Ballard’s first stop was at the security office, where she showed her badge and attempted to persuade a nighttime supervisor named Roosevelt to put extra eyes on Ramona Ramone. Roosevelt, a tall, thin man nearing retirement age was more interested in whatever was on his computer screen than in what Ballard was selling.
“No can do,” he said bluntly. “I put someone on that room, I gotta take him off the ER door, and no way those nurses down there will let me do that. They’d skin me alive if I left them unprotected like that.”
“You’re telling me you got one guy in the ER and that’s it?” Ballard said.
“No, I got two. One inside, one out. But ninety-nine percent of our violence happens in the ER. So we have two-step protection: one guy on the walkins, another to handle those that come in the back of an ambulance. I can’t lose either one.”
“So meantime my victim is up there naked—no protection at all.”
“We have security in the elevator lobbies, and I float. If you want extra protection up on that room, then I would invite you to ask the LAPD to provide it.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Then I’m sorry.”
“I got your name, Roosevelt. If anything happens, it’ll go in the report.”
“Make sure you spell it right. Just like the president.”
Ballard next went up to the acute-care ward, where Ramone was being treated. She was disappointed to learn that, while the patient had been conscious and semi-alert when transported from Hollywood Presbyterian, she had since been sedated and intubated after a setback in her condition. Choosing to find and interview Beaupre as the day’s priority had cost Ballard a chance to communicate with her victim. She nevertheless visited Ramone and took cell-phone photos as part of the continuing documentation of the depth of her injuries and treatment. She hoped someday to show them to a jury.
Afterward Ballard made a stop at the nursing desk on the ward and handed the duty nurse a stack of her business cards.
“Can you pass these around and keep one there by your phone?” she asked. “If anybody comes in to see the patient in three-oh-seven, I need to know. If you get any phone calls inquiring about her status, I need to know. Take a name and number and say you’ll get back to them. Then call me.”
“Is the patient in danger?”
“She was the subject of a vicious attack and left for dead. I checked with your security officer and got turned down on extra security. So all I’m saying is be vigilant.”
Ballard left then, hoping that putting the word in the duty nurse’s ear might get some results. Hospital security would find it harder to resist internal safety concerns than those from the LAPD.
Back at the station by midnight, Ballard was walking down the rear hallway toward the D bureau as Jenkins came down the stairs from the roll-call room. They walked into the bureau side by side.
“Anything going on?” Ballard asked.
“All quiet on the western front,” Jenkins said.
He held up his hand and she put the city-ride’s keys in his palm.
“Ramona look at a six-pack?” Jenkins asked.