Ballard padded down the hallway to her room in bare feet, a large white towel wrapped around her body. She closed the door to her bedroom and noticed that Tutu had finished the laundry she had started the night before in the garage. Her clothes were neatly folded on the bed, and Ballard was overjoyed at the prospect of putting on fresh and clean things.
She put on a bra and underwear. But before getting dressed further, she checked her phone, which was charging on the bedside table, where she had left it. The screen said she had eleven new voice-mail messages. She sat on the bed and started playing them one by one.
The first two messages were from Jenkins and had been left before they had connected at the crime scene. He had gotten word about the investigation into an officer-involved death on Wrightwood Drive and wanted to know if she was okay. The second message was to let her know he was going to the crime scene to find her.
The next message was from an academy classmate Ballard maintained ties with. Rose Boccio had heard on the blue pipeline that Ballard was at the center of an officer-involved death being investigated in Studio City.
“Balls!” she said, using Ballard’s academy nickname. “Thank god you’re all right. Call me. We need to talk.”
The fourth message was similar. It was from Corey Steadman of RHD. Another friend hoping Ballard was okay.
The fifth caller was Rob Compton, parole agent and sometime lover. He evidently was not aware of what was going on with Ballard and was not calling about her abduction or killing of Thomas Trent.
“Hey, Renée, it’s Robby. Listen, we got a hot one. An ATF agent called me about the stolen Glock we recovered from our boy Nettles. Pretty interesting stuff. Hit me back, okay?”
It took Ballard a moment to place what Compton was talking about. The events of the past day had been so acute that they had completely crowded other cases and memories from her mind. Then she remembered. Christopher Nettles, the one-man crime wave. Compton had put in an ATF request on the three presumed stolen weapons recovered from Nettles and his room at the Siesta Village motel.
Ballard made a mental note to call Compton as soon as she got into the proper mental state to work cases. She thought that diving back into the Nettles caper would be a welcome diversion from her current situation.
The next message was from her direct supervisor, Lieutenant McAdams. He opened by telling Ballard he was relieved to hear that she was reasonably okay after the ordeal. That said, he began reading an order that had come to him from on high that put Ballard on light duty while the investigation of the officer-involved death proceeded.
“So I’m working on the schedule and I’ll get somebody paired up with Jenkins,” McAdams concluded after reading the order. “You’re riding the pine on dayside until FID finishes up and you get the all clear from BSU. It’s all pretty routine. Give me a call back or shoot me an e-mail to let me know you received and understand this order. Thanks, Renée.”
The next couple messages were from well-wishers within the department. One of these was Rogers Carr of Major Crimes.
“This is Carr and, wow, I just heard. Glad you’re okay, glad you’re good, and glad you took that big evil out of the picture. I’m around if you need anything.”
Ballard had been deleting the messages as she heard them but she saved the recording from Carr. She thought she might want to listen to it again, especially the part about taking big evil out of the picture. She thought that the message might be reassuring to listen to the next time her internal jury started deliberating the case and leaning toward a guilty verdict.
The next message was also a keeper. It was from Beatrice Beaupre. She was crying, as she had left it just an hour earlier.
“They finally let me go. They asked a lot of questions and then they asked them all over again. Anyway, Detective Ballard, I told them the truth. You saved my life. You saved both our lives. He was going to kill me, I know it. He told me so when he injected me. I thought that was it. Then you were there to save me. You were so good. You fought him and got the upper hand. I told them. I told them what I saw. Thank you, Detective Ballard. Thank you so much.”
Her voice trailed off into a sob as Beatrice hung up. The message, though heartfelt, gave Ballard pause. She knew Beatrice had not seen the fight with Trent. She was unconscious. The message indicated she had told the FID investigators she had seen what she hadn’t. Had Beatrice perceived that the FID was trying to fault Ballard in some way and turn it into a bad killing? She had to be careful here. She couldn’t call Beaupre back to inquire about these concerns. That might be viewed by the FID as witness tampering. It was a firing offense to try to manipulate an internal investigation. Ballard had to bide her time and be cautious. The call from Beatrice was a good heads-up.
Her feelings of concern seemed more than justified when she got to the last two messages. The first of these was from Lieutenant Feltzer of FID. He was requesting that they move up the hour of their appointment for a follow-up interview. He said that the crime scene investigation had been completed and all initial interviews conducted.
“We need to sit down with you and iron out the inconsistencies,” he said. “Please come to the FID office tomorrow morning at, let’s say eight o’clock. We’ll try to get you out of here as soon as possible.”
The first thing Ballard thought about was whether she should bring a union defense rep with her to FID. She had picked up an adversarial tone in Feltzer’s voice and given the message from Beatrice, she was growing more concerned the more she thought about what Feltzer had said about inconsistencies. Then it struck her. Her choice for a defense rep would have been Ken Chastain. He was smart. His analytical mind could have helped her decipher the moves being made against her. He would have been perfect in helping her form her answers to their questions.
But he had betrayed her and now he was dead. She had no one she felt comfortable asking to sit next to her. No one close, no one smart and cunning enough. Not Jenkins. Not Steadman. She was alone against this.
If that conclusion wasn’t depressing enough, the last message on her phone was the true chiller. It had come in less than thirty minutes ago while she had been in the shower. The caller was a reporter from the Times named Jerry Castor. Ballard had never spoken to him but he was known to her. She had seen him at various crime scenes and press conferences, especially during her time with RHD.
Reading the Times coverage of the department over time gave insight into the allegiances of different reporters. The angles the stories took often revealed the sources, even if unnamed, behind them. Castor was considered a Level 8 reporter by those in the department who monitored such things. This was a reference to the makeup of the PAB. The building was ten floors, with command staff and administration largely housed on floors eight through ten, with the chief on top.