Dark Sacred Night

32

Ballard had the kind of night she had been waiting for all week. No calls for a detective, no calls for backup, no officer-needs-assistance calls. She spent the whole shift in the detective bureau and even ordered food delivered to the front desk. This gave her time to focus and power through the remaining field interview cards.

The pickings were thin in the first two boxes in terms of pulling cards for follow-up investigation. Ballard put only two in the stack that had been accumulating from the start of the project. But the third box produced five cards, including three that she felt should immediately go to the top.

Three weeks before the murder of Daisy Clayton, two officers had stopped their car and inspected a panel van that was parked illegally in front of a red curb on Gower south of Sunset. When they approached, they heard voices from within the van and saw light inside. There were windows on the rear doors and they noticed a makeshift curtain had fallen partially open behind one of them. Through the narrow opening they saw a man and woman having sex on a mattress while a second man videoed them with a camera.

The officers broke the party up and checked the IDs of all three of the van’s occupants. They confirmed with the woman — who had a record of prostitution arrests — that both the sex and the videoing of it were consensual. She denied that any money had changed hands or that she was engaged in prostitution.

No arrests were made, because there was no crime the threesome could be charged with. Under the law, officers could make an arrest for lewd behavior only if it was witnessed by the public and a citizen reported being offended. The three were let off with a warning and told to move on.

Three individual shake cards were filled out. What Ballard keyed on — besides the van — was that one of the men had the word “porno actor” under his name. He was listed as Kurt Pascal, twenty-six years old at the time and living on Kester Street in Sherman Oaks.

From the few details that were on the shake cards, Ballard drew the likely conclusion that the officers had interrupted a porno shoot in the van. Pascal and the cameraman, identified as Wilson Gayley, thirty-six, had paid prostitute Tanya Vickers, thirty-one, to perform in the van. Ballard took it a step further and envisioned a night three weeks later when they picked up another prostitute for filming and then found out after the fact that they had committed a crime because she was underage. One solution to their problem would be to eliminate the prostitute and make it look like the work of a sexual sadist.

Ballard knew it was all supposition. Extrapolation upon extrapolation. But something about the scenario held her. She needed to run with those three shake cards and knew just where to start.

She looked up at the wall clock and saw that the shift had gone by quickly. It was already five a.m. and she realized that Bosch had not shown up, as he had said he would. She thought about calling him but didn’t want to wake him if he had instead decided to get a full night’s sleep.

Ballard looked at the three shake cards spread on the desk in front of her. She wanted to dive right in on them but she had an allegiance to Bosch and how he said the review of the cards should go. She moved to the final box and started looking through more cards.

Two hours later she had finished going through the last box. She had pulled no cards. Bosch still had not shown up. She checked her phone to see if she had somehow missed a call or text from him but there was nothing. She wrote him a text instead.

She sent it and waited. There was no immediate reply.

Ballard went back to work and used the next half hour before leaving to run the three names from the van through the computer in an attempt to get current addresses and legal status. She determined that, over the four years that followed the van incident, Tanya Vickers was arrested nine times for prostitution and drug offenses before she died of a heroin overdose at age thirty-five.

The porno actor, Kurt Pascal, had no record and was still listed in Department of Motor Vehicle Records as living on Kester in Sherman Oaks, but the record was old. The driver’s license had expired two years ago without being renewed.

The cameraman, Wilson Gayley, was also unaccounted for. In 2012 he was sentenced to prison after being convicted of intentionally infecting a person with a sexually transmitted disease. He spent three years in prison and completed a year on parole. He then dropped off the grid. Ballard could find no record of him having a driver’s license in any state.

Ballard had her work cut out for her, but it was now eight a.m. and she was supposed to meet Professor Calder at USC in thirty minutes to pick up the GRASP data. She couldn’t miss the window of time he had given her, because he had a three-hour computer lab starting at nine.

She put the four boxes of FI cards on top of the file cabinets that ran the length of the bureau, grabbed a rover from the charging station, and headed out the back door.

It was after eight by the time she pulled out of the parking lot, and Ballard felt no concern about calling and waking Bosch. But her call went straight to his voice mail.

“Bosch, it’s Ballard. What happened to you? I thought we were doing this together. I’m on my way to USC. Call me. I found some shake cards I really like.”

She disconnected, half expecting Bosch to call her back right away.

He didn’t.

Ballard looked up a number in her phone and called it. Beatrice Beaupre was a director of adult films as well as a previous performer. All told, she had almost twenty years in the business. Ballard knew her because the year before she had rescued Beaupre from a man with plans to kill her. In that regard Beaupre owed Ballard, and she was calling now to collect.

Ballard knew that at this hour Beaupre was either wrapping up a night’s work at her studio out in Canoga Park or she was asleep and dead to the world.

The call was answered after one ring.

“What?”

“Beatrice, it’s Renée Ballard.”

Beaupre was known by several different names in the porno field. Few people called her by or even knew her given name.

“Ballard, what are you doing? I was about to crash. Been working all night.”

“Then I’m glad I got you beforehand. I need your expertise.”

“My expertise. What, you want to try bondage or something?”

“Not quite. I want to run a few names by you, see if anything clicks.”

“Okay.”

“First one is Kurt Pascal. He’s supposedly a porn actor. Was, at least, nine years ago.”

“Nine years ago. Shit, the industry’s turned over twice in that time. People come and go — no pun intended.”

“So you don’t know him.”

“Well, I know these guys by their stage names and that ain’t no stage name. Let me get to my computer. See if he’s in the database under his real name.”

“What database is that?”

“Adult casting. Hold on.”

Ballard heard typing and then:

“Pascal? P-A-S-C-A-L?”

“That’s what I have, yeah.”

“Okay, yeah, he’s here. I don’t recognize the photo, so I would say I never worked with him. What did he do?”

“Nothing. Does it say where he lives?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s got his management listing and then age and body details. He’s a ten hard, which explains why he got into the business and apparently stayed. He’s thirty-five and that’s kinda old for the game.”

Ballard thought for a moment about what would be the best way to connect with Pascal. For the time being she moved on.

“What about a guy named Wilson Gayley?” she asked. “He might be a cameraman.”

“Is that a performing name?” Beaupre asked. “I don’t make gay porn, so I wouldn’t know him.”

“No, it’s a real name. I think.”

“You think.”

Ballard heard typing.

“He’s not in the database,” Beaupre said. “But it kinda rings a bell. You know, a guy with a name for gay porn but who’s in the straight game. Let me ask around.”

“He went to prison about five years ago for intentionally infecting someone with an STD,” Ballard said.

“Oh, wait a minute,” Beaupre said. “That guy?”

“What guy?”

“I think it’s him. There was a guy back around that time that was mad at a girl — a performer — because she’d talked trash or something about one of his partners. So he hired her for a scene and put himself in it. She ended up getting syph and that forced her out of the business. She went to vice because somebody told her that the producer — sounds like this Gayley guy — did it on purpose. Like he knew he had it when he fucked her. And then vice made a case. They got his medical reports and stuff. Proved he knew it, and he went to jail.”

“Have you heard of him since then? He got out a couple years ago.”

“I don’t think so. I just remember that story. It’s about the scariest thing that can happen in this business.”

Ballard knew she had to pull the files on Gayley to confirm Beaupre’s story. But it sounded like they were talking about the same man.

“On the first guy, Pascal,” she said. “You could hire him for a shoot through that database?”

“I would send his management a message checking on availability,” Beaupre said.

“Would there be like an audition or something?”

“No. In this business, you look at his reel, which the manager will send me, and you either hire him or you don’t. He gets three hundred a pop. It says it right here in the database.”

“Can you hire him for a shoot today?”

“What are you talking about? What shoot?”

“There is no shoot. I just want to get him to your place so I can talk to him.”

There was a pause before Beaupre responded.

“I don’t know, Ballard. If it gets out I did this for the cops, it might hurt me, being able to hire people in the future. Especially with that management group. It’s one of the big ones.”

Now Ballard paused, hoping her silence would communicate what she didn’t want to say: You owe me, Beaupre.

The strategy worked.

“Okay, I guess I could claim innocence,” Beaupre said. “Say I thought you were a valid producer or something.”

“Whatever you need to do,” Ballard said.

“What day?”

“How about today?”

“Same-day booking is kind of suspect. Nobody does that.”

“Okay, what about tomorrow?”

“What time?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“At night, right?”

“No, morning.”

“Nobody works in the morning.”

“Okay, tomorrow afternoon, then.”

“Okay, I’ll book him for four o’clock and let you know. And then you’ll be here?”

“I’ll be there.”

They disconnected. Ballard then tried Bosch again and once more the call went directly to message.

It was as if Bosch’s phone had been turned off.

33

Traffic was a bear getting down to USC. Even with her city car allowing her access to a no-parking zone on campus, Ballard didn’t get to Professor Calder’s office until he was locking the door to go to his lab.

“Professor, I’m sorry I’m so late,” she said to his back. “Any chance I can pick up the GRASP data?”

Ballard realized she had adopted the imploring tone of a student. It was embarrassing.

Calder turned and saw it was her and unlocked his door.

“Come in, Detective.”

Calder put a backpack down on a chair and went behind his desk, where he stayed standing while opening the middle drawer.

“You know, I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he said. “The LAPD did not treat me well.”

He took a thumb drive from the drawer and held it out across the desk to Ballard.

“I know,” she said. “It was the politics of the moment.”

She took the drive from him and held it up.

“But I can assure you,” she said. “If this helps us catch a killer, I will make sure people know it.”

“I hope so,” Calder said. “You’ll have to print hard copies for your partner yourself. It’s the end of the semester and it turns out I don’t have the budget or the paper.”

“Not a problem, Professor. Thanks.”

“Let me know how it goes.”

When Ballard got back to the car, no more than ten minutes after leaving it, there was a parking ticket under the windshield wiper.

“Are you kidding me?” she said.

She yanked the envelope out from under the windshield wiper and did a complete circle, looking for the parking enforcement officer who had issued it. There were only students on their way to classes.

“It’s a fricking cop car!” she yelled.

Students stared at her for a moment but then moved on. Ballard got in the car and tossed the envelope onto the dashboard.

“Assholes,” she said.

She headed back toward Hollywood. She had to decide what to do next. She could turn in the city ride, get her van, and head to the beach to follow her routine of paddling and then sleeping. Or she could keep moving on the case. She had fifty-six field interview cards that needed a second look. And she had the GRASP files, which represented a new angle of investigation.

She had not been on the water in two days and knew she needed the exercise and the equilibrium it would bring to her being. But the case was calling to her. With the FI cards narrowed and the GRASP data in hand, she needed to keep case momentum going.

She pulled her phone and called Bosch for the third time that morning. It once again went straight to message.

“Bosch, what the fuck? Are we working together on this or not?”

She disconnected, annoyed that there was no way to do an angry hang-up with a cell phone.

As she slogged through heavy traffic, her annoyance with Bosch dissipated and turned into concern. When she got back to Hollywood, she headed north on Highland into the Cahuenga Pass. She knew Bosch lived in the pass. He had given her his address so she could talk to Elizabeth Clayton. She didn’t remember the number but she still had the street.

Woodrow Wilson Drive edged the mountain over the pass and offered clipped views between houses that held their ground on steel-and-concrete pilings. But Ballard wasn’t interested in the views. She was looking for the old green Cherokee she had seen Bosch driving earlier in the week. Her hope was that Bosch didn’t have a garage.

When she was three curves from the top of the mountain, she spotted the Jeep parked in a carport attached to a small house on the view side of the street. She drove past and pulled to the curb.

Ballard went to the front door and knocked. She stepped back and checked the windows for an open curtain. There was nothing, and no one answered. She tried the door and it was locked.

She moved to the carport and checked the side door. It too was locked.

Back out on the street, she walked to the other side and studied the house from afar. She thought about the way Bechtel, the art thief, had gotten in to steal the Warhols. She saw that the carport was supported by a cross-hatched ironwork with squares she judged to be large enough to use as footholds.

She headed across the street again.

Just as she had done three days before, Ballard climbed up to the roof and then crossed it to the rear edge. Every house with a view had a rear deck and she wasn’t disappointed by Bosch’s home. She checked a gutter for the strength of its moorings, then gripped it with both hands and swung down to the deck. She dropped the remaining three feet without a problem.

Something was definitely strange. The slider was open wide enough for her to slip inside without having to push it further. She stood in the middle of a small, sparsely furnished living room. Visually, nothing seemed wrong.

“Harry?”

No answer. She stepped further in. She noticed an odd food smell.

There was an alcove with a dining room table and a wall of shelves behind it that contained books, files, and a collection of vinyl records and CDs. On the table she saw an unopened bottle of water and a paper bag from Poquito Más, its sides stained with grease. She touched the bag and bottle. Both were room temperature. The bag was open and she looked down into it. She saw wrapped food items and knew the food had gone uneaten for a long time and was the source of the smell in the house.

“Harry?”

She said it louder this time but that didn’t change the lack of response.

Stepping into the entryway by the front door, she looked into the galley kitchen that led to the carport. Nothing seemed amiss. She saw a set of keys on the counter.

She turned and walked down the hallway toward the bedrooms. A series of thoughts rushed through her mind as she moved. Bosch had said Elizabeth Clayton had mysteriously moved out. Had she come back to harm him? To rob him? Had something else gone wrong?

Then she thought about Bosch’s age. Was she going to find him collapsed in the bed or bathroom? Had he pushed himself too far with lack of sleep and exhaustion?

“Harry? It’s Ballard. You here, Harry?”

The house remained silent. Ballard nudged open the door of a bedroom that obviously was Bosch’s daughter’s room, with posters and photos on the walls, stuffed animals on the bed, her own phonograph, and a thin collection of records. There was a framed photo on the night table of a young girl hugging a woman. Ballard assumed it was Bosch’s daughter and her mother.

Across the hall was another room, with a bed and a bureau. All very basic and spartan. Elizabeth’s room, she guessed. A communal bathroom off the hallway was next. And then the master bedroom, Harry’s room.

Ballard entered and this time only whispered Bosch’s name, as if she expected to find him asleep. The bed was made with a military precision, the spread tightly tucked under the edges of the mattress.

She checked the bathroom to finish the search but she knew Bosch was gone. She turned back and walked all through the house and out onto the deck. The last place she needed to check was the steep embankment below the cantilevered house.

The arroyo down below was overgrown with heavy brush and acacia and scrub pine trees. Ballard moved up and down the length of the deck, changing her angles of view so she would be able to see all of the ground below. There was no sign of a body or any sort of break in the natural shape of the canopy of branches.

Satisfied that the house and grounds below were clear, Ballard folded her arms and leaned down on the railing as she tried to decide what to do. She was convinced something had happened to Bosch. She checked her watch. It was now ten o’clock and she knew the detective bureau at Hollywood Station would be in full swing. She pulled her phone and called her boss, Lieutenant McAdam, on his direct line.

“L-T, it’s Ballard.”

“Ballard. I was just looking for the overnight log and couldn’t find it.”

“I didn’t write one. It was a slow night. No calls.”

“Well, that’s one in a million. Then what’s up?”

“You remember I put on the overnight earlier this week that I’m working the cold case with the girl who got snatched nine years ago?”

“Yes. Daisy something, right?”

“Right, yeah. And I was working it with Harry Bosch.”

“Without my permission, but yeah, I know Bosch was in on it.”

“He had the watch commander’s permission. Anyway, here’s the thing. Bosch was supposed to come in this morning and go through old shake cards with me and he didn’t show.”

“Okay.”

“Then we had an appointment with a guy at USC and Bosch didn’t show for that either.”

“Did you call him?”

“I’ve been calling him all morning. No answer. I’m now at his house. The back door was open, there’s uneaten food from last night just sitting on the table, and it doesn’t look like his bed has been slept in.”

There was a long silence as McAdam considered everything Ballard had said. She thought he was on the same concerned wavelength as her, but when he finally spoke, it was clear that he wasn’t.

“Ballard, are you and Bosch... involved in some way beyond this case?”

“No. Are you kidding me? I think something happened to him. I’m not — He’s missing, Lieutenant. We need to do something. That’s why I’m calling. What should we do?”

“All right, settle down. My mistake, okay? Forget I said anything. So, when exactly was he supposed to show up on this thing?”

“There wasn’t an exact time. But he said he’d be in early. I was looking for him around four or five.”

Again, silence.

“Renée, we’re talking about six hours at the most here.”

“I know but there’s something wrong. His dinner’s sitting on the table. His car’s here but he isn’t.”

“It’s still too soon. We have to see how it plays out.”

“Plays out? What are you talking about? He was one of us. LAPD. We need to put out a bulletin, get it on RACR at least.”

RACR, pronounced racer, was an internal text alert system through which messages could be sent to the phones of thousands of officers at once.

“No, it’s too soon,” McAdam said. “Let’s see what happens over the next few hours. Text me the address and I’ll send a car up there after lunch. You’re done for the day.”

“What?” Ballard said.

There was exasperation in her voice. McAdam wasn’t seeing what she was seeing, didn’t know what she knew. He was handling this wrong.

“You’re done, Renée. I’ll send a car up later to check on Bosch. We’ve got to give this at least twelve hours. I’ll call you later when we know more. It’s probably nothing.”

Ballard disconnected without acknowledging McAdam’s order. She was afraid that if she said anything further it would be in a high-pitched voice that was near hysterical.

She kept her phone out and looked up the number for the San Fernando Police Department. She made the call and asked to be transferred to the detective bureau. A woman answered but identified herself too quickly for Ballard to pick up the name.

“Is Harry Bosch there?”

“No, he’s not. Can someone else help you?”

“This is Detective Ballard with the LAPD. Can I speak to his partner, please? This is urgent.”

“We don’t have partners here. It’s interchangeable. We—”

“I need to talk to whoever he was working with last — on the gang murder where the witness was killed.”

There was a pause before there was a response.

“That was me. How do you know about that case?”

“What was your name again?”

“Detective Lourdes. How do you—”

“Listen to me. I think something’s happened to Harry. I’m at his house now and he’s not here and it looks... it looks like he might have been taken.”

“Taken?”

“We were supposed to meet early this morning. He didn’t show. His phone’s turned off and he’s not here. He’s got uneaten food on the table from last night, the bed is still made, and his back door was open.”

“Okay, okay, you need to listen to me now. We got intel yesterday that the SanFers had put a hit out on Harry because they know he was building a case against one of their OGs. Today we were working on it. But last night I warned Harry. I told him. So, is there any chance that he just went into hiding?”

A sharp pressure started building in Ballard’s chest. It was dread.

“I — No, that’s not what it looks like here. His keys are on the table. And his car’s here.”

“Maybe he thought the car could be tracked. Look, I’m not trying to downplay this. If you’re saying this looks involuntary, then we’ll call out the troops on this end. Have you talked to his daughter?”

Ballard suddenly realized that Bosch had revealed something to her during the course of the week that might be helpful.

“No,” she said. “But I will now.”

She disconnected the call.

34

Ballard moved back into the house to conduct a different kind of search. She needed a phone number for Bosch’s daughter. In the master bedroom, she had seen a small desk like is found in a hotel room. She went there and started looking through drawers until she found one containing checkbooks and rubber-banded stacks of envelopes.

One stack was all telephone bills. She quickly opened the envelope on top and saw that Bosch had a family plan where he paid for two cell phones on one account. One she recognized as his number, and the other she assumed was his daughter’s. She next opened the checkbook and looked through the registry until she came upon a record of a check for four hundred dollars to Madeline Bosch.

She had what she needed and made the call. It rang through to a message, which didn’t surprise her, since Bosch’s daughter would have no reason to recognize her number.

“Madeline, this is Detective Ballard with the LAPD. It’s very important that you call me back as soon as you hear this. Please call me back.”

She gave her number even though the girl’s phone would have captured it. She then disconnected, put everything back in the drawer, and got up from the desk. Bosch had mentioned in passing that his daughter went to Chapman down in Orange County and was just an hour or so away. She was considering a call to the school’s security office to see if Madeline Bosch could be located, but then her phone buzzed and the screen showed the number she had just called.

“Madeline?”

“Yes, what’s going on? Where’s my father?”

“We’re trying to find him and we need your help.”

“Oh my god, what happened?”

“Don’t panic, Madeline. Is that what you go by? Madeline?”

“It’s Maddie. Tell me what happened.”

“I’m not sure. He missed two appointments with me and I can’t reach him. I’m at his house now and his car is in the carport and there’s food on the table but he’s not here. When did you hear from him last?”

“He, uh, texted me last night. He asked about getting together this weekend.”

“Are he and your mother divorced? Would he be in touch with—”

“My mother’s dead.”

“Okay, sorry, I didn’t know. This is where I need your help. Your dad told me that you two had a deal. He could track your phone if you could track his. I think his phone is off at the moment but I want you to pull up your tracker and tell me where the last tracking point on it is. Can you do that?”

“Yes. I just need to — I’ll put you on speaker while I...”

“Go ahead.”

Ballard waited and eventually Maddie spoke.

“Okay, it only goes up to eleven forty-two last night. Then it stops.”

“Okay, that’s good. What’s the location of the phone.”

There was silence as Maddie checked the location. Ballard hoped it wasn’t the house. That would not advance things at all.

“Uh, it’s up in the Valley. A place called the Saddletree Open Space.”

Ballard’s heart sank. It sounded like a place to dump a body.

“Can you be more specific?” she asked, trying not to reveal her thoughts in the tone of her voice. “Can you widen the screen or something?”

“Hold on,” Maddie said.

Ballard waited.

“Um, it’s, like, near Sylmar,” Maddie said. “The nearest road to the spot is Coyote Street.”

“Can you hang up, take a screenshot, and text it to me?”

“Yes, but why was he up there? What is—”

“Maddie, listen to me. We need to hang up so you can send me the screenshot. I need to get that to the right people so we can see if your father is there. I know you’re scared and this is an awful kind of call to get. But I need to go now. I will call you back as soon as I know something. Okay?”

Ballard thought she could hear the girl crying.

“Maddie?”

“Yes, okay. I’m hanging up.”

“One other thing. I know that if you are anything like your dad, you’re going to send me the screenshot and then get in a car and head up here. Don’t do that. You have to stay away from your house, okay? It may not be safe.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m not. I need you to stay away until you hear from me or your father, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Send me the screenshot.”

Ballard disconnected. She knew that Heather Rourke was probably sleeping, but that didn’t matter. She called her friend and, surprisingly, the call was answered right away.

“What are you doing awake, Renée?”

“Still working, and I have a situation. I need a flyover up in the Valley. Who do you think would do it for me?”

“That’s easy. Me.”

“What?”

“I’m working an OT shift and have the Valley today. We’re about to go up. Where in the Valley?”

“Sylmar area. How long until—”

“Thirty minutes. What exactly are you looking for?”

“We’re looking for a missing police officer. I’m going to text you a screenshot of the location we have on a map. The area’s called the Saddletree Open Space. I need to know what’s there. Any houses, structures, whatever. And if there’s nothing there... look for a body.”

“You got it. Get that screenshot to me.”

“As soon as I have it, I’ll send. Keep this off the radio if you can. Use my cell to make contact.”

“Roger that.”

Ballard disconnected just as the screenshot from Maddie Bosch came through. She forwarded it to Heather Rourke and started moving through the house, realizing that it might become a crime scene. She left the back slider open and went out the front door and locked it behind her.

She didn’t get a clear signal on her phone until she took Woodrow Wilson back down into the pass and started north on the 101 freeway. Then she called Lourdes at San Fernando PD.

“Do you know anything about the Saddletree Open Space?”

“Uh, I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s just north of Sylmar off a road called Coyote Street. We traced Bosch’s phone to a spot there last night about midnight. Then it went dead. I have an airship about to fly over and tell us what’s there. I’m on my way.”

“I’m closer. I can get up there now.”

“Wait for the flyover. We don’t know what’s up there. It could be a body but it could be a trap.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“If you people knew there was a hit out on him, why wasn’t he protected?”

“He turned it down. I don’t think he took it seriously. We still don’t know if it has anything to do with this. He might be up there camping and there’s no cell service.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. I want to keep my phone free. I’ll call when I hear something on the flyover.”

“I’m here and, look, Harry saved my life once and...”

She didn’t finish.

“I get it,” Ballard said.

She disconnected.

The late-morning northbound traffic was light and Ballard made good time. She took the 101 to the 170 and then the 5 before dropping onto surface streets at Roxford. She checked her phone screen repeatedly, but there was nothing from Rourke on the flyover. Ballard even leaned over to look up through the windshield to see if she could spot the helicopter moving against the backdrop of the mountains that rimmed the Valley. There was nothing.

As she was crossing San Fernando Road, she got a call from Rourke instead of a text. There was no sound of the chopper’s engine in background and she grew livid.

“You’re still at Piper Tech?”

“No, we have a pad we can use at the Davis.”

Ballard knew the department had a training facility near Sylmar named after former chief Edward Davis.

“You did the flyover? Was there anything up there?”

Ballard could hear her own voice drawn tight by the tension of the moment.

“No body,” Rourke said. “But about a hundred yards further north into the scrub from the spot on that screenshot you sent me, it looks like there’s some kind of an abandoned kennel or animal-training facility. There are a couple of sheds and training rings. But no vehicles, no sign of life.”

Ballard exhaled. At least Bosch’s body wasn’t lying out there in the sun.

“Can it be accessed?” she asked.

“Might be tough on the suspension,” Rourke said. “Looks like there was a washout on the dirt road up there.”

“Did you take any photos?”

“Yes. I’m about to send but I thought I should talk to you first.”

“No problem.”

“Do you want us to stay close?”

“I think I’m about fifteen out on a ground search. If you can fly backup, I wouldn’t turn it down.”

“Okay, we’re here till we get a call.”

“Roger that.”

Ballard disconnected and called Lourdes back. She told the San Fernando detective what the results of the flyover were and invited her to meet at the terminus of Coyote Street and then conduct a ground search of the last known location of Harry Bosch’s phone.

“I’m on my way,” Lourdes said.