Ballard went down to the main floor, watching for Feltzer but catching no glimpse of him. She exited the store onto 5th and looked about. No sign of Feltzer.
Ballard guessed that Feltzer, like Castor, had walked to the meeting but that he had passed the same four blocks via Main Street instead of Spring. Main was more convenient from the PAB’s exit and it put space between the reporter and his source. She saw the light at the intersection change and crossed, then followed 5th to Main Street. At the intersection, she casually looked around the corner and north on Main. There, about two blocks away in the direction of the PAB, she saw a man walking with a fast pace that she recognized as Feltzer’s hard-charging gait.
Concerned that Feltzer would be more alert than Castor to the possibility of a tail, Ballard waited another ten minutes before heading up Main herself. When she got to First, she turned right and walked down into Little Tokyo.
At the Miyako Hotel she checked into a room after being assured by the desk clerk that there were several sushi choices on the room-service menu.
She got to the room and ordered dinner first thing. Then she opened her shoulder bag and laid out the clothes she planned to wear in the morning. The meeting with Feltzer was going to be pivotal.
While she waited for her food, she pulled out her phone and Googled the business number for defense attorney Dean Towson. She expected Towson wouldn’t be in his office this late but he would most likely get her message. Defense attorneys were used to getting late-night calls from clients. And judging by how fearful Towson had grown by the end of Ballard’s interview with him Sunday morning, he would return the call promptly.
The call went through to an answering service, and Ballard spoke to a live individual instead of a computer.
“My name is Detective Renée Ballard with the LAPD. I spoke to Mr. Towson Sunday morning about a murder investigation. Please get a message to Mr. Towson tonight. I need him to call me back as soon as possible, no matter how late. This is urgent.”
She disconnected and began the wait.
To pass the time, she put on the room’s television and was soon distracted by the political infighting and name-calling presented every night on cable TV.
Towson’s callback came faster than the sushi.
31
At 8:25 a.m. Wednesday morning, Ballard walked into the FID offices at PAB with Dean Towson. It had been Towson’s idea to arrive late and to ignore Lieutenant Feltzer’s two calls and messages to Ballard, asking where she was. It put Feltzer on edge before they even got there.
As head of one of the unit’s two squads, Feltzer had a private office. It was small and they had to wheel a chair in to accommodate Towson. He and Ballard sat across a desk from the visibly annoyed lieutenant, who had closed the door.
“Detective Ballard, I’m not sure why you see the need to have an attorney present,” Feltzer said. “You are still subject to Lybarger and are compelled to answer questions. If anything criminal arises out of this investigation, then of course all statements from you will be disallowed.”
He raised his hands off his desk in a gesture that suggested this was simple stuff and they did not need a lawyer to complicate it.
“I intend to fully cooperate and answer all questions,” Ballard said. “But only if I have my attorney present. You said in your message that we needed to clear up some inconsistencies. Why don’t we do that and not worry about my having representation?”
Feltzer considered it, clearly looking like a man worried about walking into a legal trap of some kind.
“We’re going to record this,” he finally said. “As with the first interview.”
He opened a desk drawer and got out a digital recorder. As he was setting it to record, Towson removed his phone from the inside pocket of his suit coat and put it on the desk.
“We’ll be recording the session as well,” he said.
“Whatever floats your boat,” Feltzer said.
“Thank you,” Towson said.
“Let’s start with the other victim, Beatrice Beaupre,” Feltzer said. “In your statement yesterday, you said that she was unconscious when she was brought into the room by Trent.”
“I believe I said she ‘appeared’ to be unconscious,” Ballard said. “My focus was on Trent, not her.”
“Ms. Beaupre has told us that she was in fact conscious at the time and was pretending not to be so that she might have a chance of escaping from Trent.”
“Okay. That’s entirely possible.”
“She goes on to say that she saw you and Trent engage in the struggle that resulted in his fatal injuries. And her description of what happened differs markedly from yours.”
“Well, she would definitely have had a different view of it.”
“I’m giving you the chance to correct the record if you wish.”
“I would just defer to Ms. Beaupre’s account. I was engaged at the time in a life-and-death struggle with a man nearly twice my weight and size. I wasn’t stopping to take notes or commit my moves to memory. I was trying to stay alive and to keep Ms. Beaupre alive as well.”
It was an answer Ballard and Towson had rehearsed because they assumed that the discrepancies Feltzer alluded to in his phone message were the contradictions between her and Beaupre’s statements. Ballard and Towson had met at six-thirty that morning in the breakfast room at the Miyako Hotel to prepare for the FID appointment. The rehearsed response covered all contradictions with the threshold factor in justified homicide. Fear of death or great bodily harm to the officer or citizenry.
“I think that covers it, Lieutenant,” Towson said. “Do you have anything else for my client?”
Feltzer looked at Towson.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
There was a confidence in Feltzer’s voice that put Ballard on high alert.
“Have you had any communication with Ms. Beaupre since the incident occurred and you two were separated for questioning?” Feltzer asked.
“Nothing direct,” Ballard said. “She called my cell phone yesterday and I didn’t take the call. She left a message thanking me for saving her life. I haven’t responded to the call yet, because I thought it would be inappropriate to speak with her before your investigation is concluded.”
Another carefully crafted and rehearsed answer.
“I still have the message,” Ballard said. “I could put it on speaker and play it for the recording if you wish.”
“We’ll get to that later if we need to,” Feltzer said. “Your late arrival has backed me into other appointments, so let’s move on. Yesterday you said that when you managed to free yourself while Trent was gone, you did not immediately leave the house because you were not sure where you were and whether you could escape. Is that fair to say?”
“We are talking about a very brief moment,” Ballard said. “Those were my thoughts initially, but then I heard the garage door and knew that Trent was back and that he most likely had another victim with him, because he had told me he was going to abduct his ex-wife.”