Dark Sacred Night

8

Ballard got to Hollywood Division three hours before her eleven p.m. shift started so she could begin work on the shake cards. She first entered the main station, grabbed the late show rover out of its charger, and took it with her back across the parking lot to the outbuilding, where she had left the boxes lined in the hallway. There was nobody in the gym or martial arts training room. She found a work space in one of the storage rooms where wooden desks predating the last renovation of the station were still stored. Despite what Bosch had said earlier, Ballard was tempted to go right to the box of field interview cards from the time of the Daisy Clayton murder. Maybe she would get lucky and an obvious suspect would emerge from a 3 x 5 card. But she knew that Bosch’s plan was the right one. To be thorough she should start at the beginning and move chronologically forward.

The first box of shake cards had dates beginning in January 2006, fully three years before the Clayton murder. She put the box on the floor next to the desk she was using and started pulling out four-inch stacks at a time. She gave each card a quick glance front and back, focusing on the location and time of the stop, checking to see if the interviewee was a male, and then examining the details further if warranted.

It took her two hours to get through the first box. Out of all the cards she examined, she put aside three for follow-up and discussion with Bosch and one just for herself. In the process, she reaffirmed her long-held belief about Hollywood being a final destination for many of society’s freaks and losers. Card after card contained records of interviews with individuals who were aimlessly roaming the streets, looking for whatever grim opportunity presented itself. Many were outsiders trying to buy drugs or sex, and the police stop was designed to dissuade them. Others were permanent denizens — whether predators or prey — of the Hollywood streets with no seeming plan to change their situation.

Along the way, Ballard got to know something about the cops who conducted the field interviews. Some were verbose, some were profoundly grammatically challenged, some used codes, like Adam Henry (asshole), to describe the citizens they were interviewing. Some obviously didn’t care to write FI cards and kept things to a minimum. Some were able to keep their sense of humor despite the circumstances of their job and the view it gave them of humanity.

The blank side of the card was where the most telling information was found and Ballard read these mini-reports with an almost anthropological interest for what they said about Hollywood and society at large. She put one card aside for herself simply because she liked what the officer had written.

The officer was named on the cards as T. Farmer. Ballard found herself looking for his FI cards so she could read more of his elegiac street reports.

The three cards she set aside for follow-up were all for white males who were deemed “tourists” by the officers who made the stop. This meant they were outsiders who came into Hollywood to look for something, in the case of these three men, most likely sex. They had not committed any crime when stopped and interviewed, so the officers were circumspect in what they wrote. But it was clear from the location, time, and tenor of the interviews that the officers suspected the men were trolling for prostitutes. One man was on foot, one man was in a car, and the third was in what was described as a work van. Ballard would run their names and license plates through the computer and law enforcement databases to see if there was any record or activity that warranted a closer look.

Ballard was halfway through the second box when her rover squawked at exactly midnight. It was Lieutenant Munroe.

“I missed you at roll call, Ballard.”

She was not required to attend roll call but she appeared so often that it was noticed when she didn’t.

“Sorry about that. I’m working on something and I lost track of time. Anything I should know?”

“No, all quiet. But your boyfriend from last night is here. Should I send him back?”

Ballard paused before keying the mic and answering. She assumed her visitor was Bosch. She knew that complaining about Munroe calling him her boyfriend would be a complete waste of time and would cost her more than she would gain from it.

She keyed the mic.

“I’m not in detectives. Hold my ‘boyfriend’ there. I’ll come get him.”

“Roger that.”

“Hey, L-T. We have a PO on Hollywood roster named T. Farmer?”

If Farmer was still in the division, he must work dayside now. She knew everybody on the night shifts.

It was a few moments before Munroe responded.

“Not anymore. He went EOW right before you got here.”

End of watch. Ballard suddenly remembered that when she was reassigned to Hollywood three years earlier, the whole division was mourning the death of one of its officers. It had been a suicide. She now realized it had been Farmer.

Ballard felt an invisible punch to the chest. She keyed the mic.

“Copy that.”

9

Ballard decided to keep the review of the field interview cards close to the source. She brought Bosch to the storage room and set him up at one of the old desks, where it was less likely that other Hollywood officers would see him working with her and raise questions about it. She called Lieutenant Munroe on the private watch office number and told him where she would be if needed.

Bosch and Ballard decided to split reading duties rather than have Bosch back-read the cards Ballard had already gone through. It was the first sign of trust between them, a belief that each could rely on the other’s assessment of the cards. And it would make the process faster.

Ballard was at a desk positioned perpendicular to Bosch’s and this allowed her to watch him head-on, while he would have to turn and be more obvious about attempting to observe her. At first she surreptitiously kept an eye on him and in doing so ascertained that his process was different. His rate of putting cards aside for further consideration was far quicker than hers. At some point, he noticed that she was watching him.

“Don’t worry,” he said without looking up from his work. “I’m employing a two-step approach. First a big net, then a smaller net.”

Ballard just nodded, a bit embarrassed that she had been caught.

She soon started her own two-step process and stopped paying attention to Bosch, realizing that she was only slowing her own work down by watching him. After a long stretch of silence and after putting a large stack of cards into the no-interest pile, Ballard spoke.

“Can I ask you something?” she began.

“What if I said no?” Bosch replied. “You’d ask anyway.”

“How did Daisy’s mother end up living in your house?”

“It’s a long story, but she needed a place to stay. I had a room.”

“So this is not a romantic thing?”

“No.”

“But you let this stranger stay in your house.”

“Sort of. I met her on an unrelated case. I helped her out of a jam and then I found out about Daisy. I told her I’d look into the case and she could use the room I had while I investigated. She’s from Modesto. I assume that if we close this thing, I’ll get my room back and she’ll go home.”

“You couldn’t do that if you were with the LAPD.”

“There’s a lot I couldn’t do if I were still with the LAPD. But I’m not.”

They both went back to the cards but almost immediately Ballard spoke again.

“I still want to talk to her,” she said.

“I told her that,” Bosch said. “Anytime you like.”

A half hour went by and they both managed to finish off the cards in their respective boxes. Bosch went out into the hallway and brought a fresh box in for Ballard and then repeated the process for himself.

“How long can you do this?” Ballard asked.

“You mean tonight?” Bosch asked. “Till about five thirty. I have a thing at six up in the Valley. It may run through most of the day. If it does, I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“When do you sleep?”

“When I can.”

They were ten minutes into their next boxes when Ballard’s radio squawked. Ballard responded and Munroe told her that a detective was requested on the burglary of an occupied dwelling on Sunset Boulevard.

Ballard looked at the stack of FI cards in front of her and radioed back.

“You sure they need a detective, L-T?”

“They asked. You in the middle of something or what?”

“No, I’m rolling now.”

“Roger that. Lemme know what you’ve got out there.”

Ballard stood up and looked at Bosch.

“I need to go and I can’t leave you here,” she said.

“You sure?” he asked. “I’ll stay here and keep chopping wood.”

“No, you’re not LAPD. I can’t leave you here unsupervised. I’d take a hit for that if someone came in and found you here.”

“Whatever. So, what do I do, go with you?”

Ballard thought about that. It would work.

“You can do that,” she said. “Take a stack of those with you and sit in the car while I check this call out. Hopefully, it’s not a long one.”

Bosch reached down into the box next to his desk and used two hands to pull out a good-size stack of cards.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The burglary call was less than five minutes from the station. The address was familiar to Ballard but she did not place it until they arrived and saw that it was a strip bar called Sirens on Sunset. And it was still open, which made the question of burglary a bit baffling.

There was one patrol car blocking the valet zone. Ballard pulled in behind it. She knew two units had already responded and assumed the other car was in the alley behind the station.

“This should be interesting,” Bosch said.

“Not for you,” Ballard said. “You wait here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I hope this is just bullshit and I’ll be right back out. Start thinking about code seven.”

“You’re hungry?”

“Not right now but I’m gonna need a lunch break.”

Ballard grabbed the rover out of the console charger and got out of the car.

“What’s open?” Bosch asked.

“Almost nothing,” she said.

She closed the door and headed toward the front door of Sirens.

The interior entry area was dimly lit in red. There was a pay station with a bouncer and cashier, and a velvet-roped channel that led to an arched doorway to the dance floor. Ballard could see three small stages outlined in red below faux Tiffany atrium ceilings. There were women in various stages of undress on the stages but very few customers. Ballard checked her watch. It was 2:40 a.m. and the bar was open until 4. Ballard badged the bouncer.

“Where are the officers?” she asked.

“I’ll walk you back,” the bouncer said.

He opened a door that matched the walls in red-velvet paisley and led her down a dark hallway to the open door of a well-lit office. He then headed back to the front.

Three officers were crowded into the small room in front of a desk where a man sat. Ballard nodded. The blue suiters were Dvorek in charge and Herrera and Dyson, whom Ballard knew well because they were a rare female team, and the women on the late show often took code seven together. Herrera was the senior lead officer and had four hash marks on her sleeves. Her partner had one. Both women wore their hair short to avoid having it grabbed and pulled by suspects. Ballard knew that most days they worked out in the gym after their shifts and their shoulders and upper arms showed the results. They could hold their own in a confrontation and the word on Dyson was that she liked to start them.

“Detective Ballard, glad you could make it,” Dvorek said. “This is Mr. Peralta, manager of this fine establishment, and he requested your services.”

Ballard looked at the man behind the desk. He was in his fifties, overweight, with slicked-back hair and long, sharply edged sideburns. He wore a garish purple vest over a black collared shirt. On the wall behind his chair was a framed poster of a naked woman using a stripper pole to strategically cover her privates, but not quite enough to hide that her pubic hair had been trimmed to the shape of a small heart. To his right was a video monitor that showed sixteen camera angles of the stages, bars, and exits of the club. Ballard saw herself in one of the squares from a camera over her right shoulder.

“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked.

“This is like a dream come true,” Peralta said. “I didn’t realize the LAPD was almost all women. You want a part-time job?”

“Sir, do you have a problem that requires police involvement or not?” Ballard replied.

“I do,” Peralta said. “I’ve got a problem — someone is going to break in.”

“Going to? Why would someone break in when they can walk in the front door?”

“You tell me. All I’m saying is, it’s going down. Look at this.”

He turned to the video monitor and pulled out a drawer beneath it, revealing a keyboard. He hit a few keys and the camera angles were replaced with a schematic of the premises.

“I’ve got every opening in the building wired,” Peralta said. “Somebody’s on the roof fucking with the skylights. They’re going to come down through there.”

Ballard leaned across the desk so she could see the screen better. It was showing breaches at two of the skylights over the stages.

“When did this happen?” she asked.

“Tonight,” Peralta said. “Like an hour ago.”

“Why would they break in?”

“Are you kidding me? This is a cash business, and I don’t walk out of here at four-thirty in the fucking morning with a cash bag under my arm. I’m not that stupid. Everything goes into the safe and then once, maybe twice, a week — in daylight — I come in to do the banking, and I have two guys you don’t want to fuck with watching my back the whole time.”

“Where’s the safe?”

“You’re standing on it.”

Ballard looked down. The officers moved back toward the walls of the room. There was an outline cut in the planked wood floor and a fingerhold for pulling open the trap door.

“Is it removable?” Ballard asked.

“Nope,” Peralta said. “Set in concrete. They’d have to drill it — unless they knew the combo, and there are only three people who know that.”

“So how much is in there?”

“I did the banking after the weekend, so it’s going to be light tonight. About twelve thou in there right now and we’ll get it up to sixteen when I close out the registers tonight.”

Ballard assessed things, looked up, and caught Dvorek’s eye and nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to take a look around. Any cameras on the roof?”

“No,” Peralta said. “Nothing up there.”

“Any access?”

“Nothing from inside. You’d need a ladder on the outside.”

“All right. I’ll be back in after we check around. Where’s the door to the alley?”

“Marv will take you.”

Peralta reached under the desk and pushed a button to call his bouncer. Soon the big man from the velvet rope was back.

“Take them out the back, Marv,” Peralta said. “To the alley.”

A few minutes later Ballard was standing in the alley, assessing the roofline of the club. The building was freestanding with a flat roof about twenty feet up. There was no approach from the business on either side and no ladders or obvious means of getting up. Ballard checked behind her. The other side of the alley was contained by wood and concrete fences and bordered on a residential neighborhood.

“Can I borrow a light?” Ballard asked.

Dyson pulled her Pelican off her equipment belt and handed it to Ballard. It was a small but powerful flashlight. Ballard walked the length of the building, looking for upward access. She found a possible ascension point by the west corner. A cinder-block enclosure had been built to contain a row of city trash containers. It was about six feet high and was next to the downspout of a gutter that ran along the edge of the roofline. Ballard shone the light up the downspout and saw that it was secured to the exterior wall with brackets every few feet.

Dvorek came up behind her.

“There’s your ladder,” Ballard said.

“You going up?” Dvorek asked.

“Not on your life. I’m calling an airship. They’ll light it up and if anybody’s up there, we’ll grab them coming down.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Put the sisters on the other corner just in case they have a ladder up there with them and decide to come down the other side. I’ll get the air unit offline.”

“Gotcha.”

Ballard didn’t want to radio for the airship, because a burglar could be monitoring LAPD frequencies. She had a working relationship with the tactical flight officer on the chopper that covered the city’s west side on most nights. They often responded to the same calls. Ballard on the ground, Heather Rourke, the spotter, in the air with her pilot partner Dan Sumner. Ballard shot a text to Rourke.

Two minutes went by before there was a response.

Ballard knew that the Rourke-Sumner team would have high adrenaline after chasing down a car involved in a hit-and-run. She was glad they were free.

In the event they had to speak by radio for expediency, the tactical channel was an unpublished frequency that wasn’t readily obtained on the internet.

Ballard still had Dyson’s light. She waved it to get the attention of the three officers at the other corner of the building. She put the light on her free hand and held up three fingers and twirled her hand in the air.

They waited. Ballard was pretty sure it was a fruitless exercise. If there had actually been someone up there, they most likely would have noticed the lights from the arrival of the patrol cars and made their escape when the officers entered the building. But checking out the roof with the airship should give some measure of satisfaction to Peralta. Ballard would then write up a recommendation to the detective commander to send out someone from the commercial burglary unit to check the roof in daylight for any signs of an attempted break-in.

Ballard heard the helicopter’s approach and tucked in close to the rear wall of the building, next to the trash enclosure. She raised the rover and switched it to the tactical 5 frequency.

She waited. The alley smelled like booze and cigarettes. She breathed through her mouth.

Soon the powerful beam of the chopper washed over everything, turning night into day. Ballard raised the rover.

“Anything, Air six?”

She held the radio to her ear, hoping to hear the response over the sound of the airship rotor. She partially heard it. The tenor of Heather Rourke’s voice told her more than the words she could make out. There was somebody on the roof.

“...suspects. Heading... corner...”

Ballard dropped the rover and pulled her weapon. She backed into the alley, raising her gun toward the roofline. The light from the chopper was blinding. Soon she saw movement and heard yelling, but she could not make out the words over the sound of the rotor. She saw someone sliding down the gutter’s downspout. Halfway down he lost his grip and fell to the ground. Soon another body was coming down the pipe, and then another.

Ballard tracked the movement with her gun. Soon all three of the suspects started running down the alley.

“Police! Freeze it right there!”

Two of the fleeing figures stopped in their tracks. The third kept going and after reaching the end, turned left into the neighborhood.

Ballard started approaching the two who had stopped and already raised their hands. As she ordered them to their knees, Dyson blew by her, running, and continued down the alley after the third suspect. Herrera followed her younger partner but at a much slower pace.

As Ballard approached, her gun at the ready, she saw—

The two suspects kneeling on the ground were just kids.

“What the fuck?” Dvorek said as he came up next to her.

Ballard holstered her weapon and put her hand on Dvorek’s arm to make him lower his. She walked around and shone the beam of Dyson’s light on their faces. They were no older than fourteen. Both were white, both looked scared. They were wearing T-shirts and blue jeans.

She realized she had dropped her rover to the ground near the trash enclosure.

“I can’t hear myself think,” she called to Dvorek. “Advise the airship on tac five that we have a code four here and they can stay with A twenty-five’s pursuit.”

Dvorek went to his rover to make the call and soon the chopper headed south in the direction the third boy had run. Ballard held the light on the young faces in front of her. One boy lowered one of his hands to try to block the blinding light.

“Keep your hands up,” Ballard ordered.

He complied.

Ballard looked at the two boys in front of her and had a good idea why they had been on the roof.

“You two almost just got yourselves killed, you know that?” she barked.

“We’re sorry, we’re sorry,” one of them said meekly.

“What were you doing up there?”

“We were just looking around. We didn’t—”

“Looking around? You mean looking down at naked women?”

In the cold, hard light of her beam Ballard could see their cheeks turn red with shame. But she knew it was shame at being caught and called on it by a woman, not shame at climbing onto a roof to look down through a skylight at women’s bodies.

She glanced at Dvorek and saw a small smile on his face. She realized that on some level he admired their ingenuity — boys will be boys — and she knew that in the world of men and women, there would never be a time when women were viewed and treated completely as equals.

“Are you going to have to tell our parents?” one of the boys asked.

Ballard lowered the light and headed back to pick up her rover.

“What do you think?” Dvorek asked her quietly as she passed him.

The question further revealed him.

“Your call,” Ballard said. “I’m out of here.”

10

There was one booth in Du-par’s at the Farmers Market that afforded an entire view of the restaurant and its entrance. Ballard always took it when it was available, and most nights when she was able to get a real meal break, it was so late that the place was largely empty and she had her choice of the entire room.

She sat across from Bosch, who had ordered coffee only. He explained that there were almost always breakfast burritos or doughnuts at SFPD in the morning, and he intended to go there at six for a briefing before his team delivered the search warrant.

Ballard didn’t hold back. She had skipped dinner the evening before and was famished. She matched Bosch’s coffee but added a blue-plate special that included pancakes, eggs, and bacon. As she waited for the food, she asked about the stack of FI cards he had gone through in the car while she handled the call at Sirens.

“No keepers,” Bosch said.

“You come across any written by a P.O. named Farmer?” she asked. “Good writer.”

“I don’t think so... but I wasn’t checking too many names. Are you talking about Tim Farmer?”

“Yeah, you knew him?”

“I went to the academy with him.”

“I didn’t know he was that old.”

Ballard immediately realized what she had said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I mean, like, why was a guy who’d been around so long still on the street, you know?”

“Some guys can’t give up the street,” Bosch said. “Like some guys can’t give up homicide work. You know he—”

“Yeah, I know. Why’d he do it?”

“Who knows? He was a month from retirement. I heard it was kind of a forced retirement — if he stayed, they were going to put him on a desk. So he put in his papers and during his last deployment period pulled the plug.”

“That’s a sad fucking story.”

“Most suicides are.”

“I liked the way he wrote. His observations on the shakes were like poetry.”

“A lot of poets kill themselves.”

“I guess.”

A waiter brought her food and Ballard suddenly wasn’t all that hungry. She was feeling sad about a man she had never met. She poured syrup over her short stack and started to eat anyway.

“So, did you stay in touch after the academy?” she asked.

“Not really,” Bosch said. “We were close then, and there were class reunions, but we were on different tracks. It wasn’t like now with social media and all of that Facebook stuff. He was up in the Valley and came to Hollywood after I’d left.”

Ballard nodded and picked at her food. The pancakes were getting soggy and more unappetizing. She moved her fork to the eggs.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about King and Carswell,” she said. “I assume you or Soto talked to them at the start of this.”

“Lucia did,” Bosch said. “One of them, at least. King retired about five years ago and moved to Bumfuck, Idaho — somewhere out in the woods with no phone and no internet. He went completely off grid. She got the PO box where his pension checks go and sent him a letter asking for an interview on the case. She’s still waiting for an answer. Carswell also retired and he took a gig as an investigator with the Orange County D.A. Lucia went down and talked to him but he wasn’t a font of new information. He barely remembered the case and told her everything he did know was in the murder book. It didn’t sound as though he wanted to talk about a case he didn’t close. I’m sure you know the type.”

“Yeah — ‘If I can’t close it, nobody else can.’ What about Adam Sands, the boyfriend. Either of you do a fresh interview?”

“We couldn’t. He died in 2014 of an overdose.”

Ballard nodded. It wasn’t a surprising end for Sands but it was a disappointment because he could have been helpful in setting the scene that Daisy Clayton lived and died in and in providing the names of other runaways and acquaintances. Ballard was beginning to see why Bosch wanted to locate the field interview cards. It might be their only hope.

“Anything else?” she asked. “I take it Soto has the murder book. Anything not in the database that’s important?”

“Not really,” Bosch said. “King and Carswell weren’t the extra-mile sort of guys. Carswell told Lucia they didn’t put their notebooks in the murder book because everything was in the reports.”

“I got that feeling about them when I was reading the book online.”

“Speaking of which, I started a secondary book with what I’ve been doing.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“It’s in my car. I’ll bring it in when we get back. I guess you should keep it now that you have official standing.”

“All right. I will. Thanks.”

Bosch reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a shake card. He slid it across the table for Ballard to read.

“I thought you said there were no keepers,” she said.

“There weren’t,” he said. “That one’s from earlier. Read it.”

She did. The card was written at 3:30 a.m. on February 9, 2009, several months before Daisy Clayton’s murder. The subject of the field interview was a man named John McMullen who was thirty-six years old at the time he was questioned at the intersection of Western and Franklin Avenues. McMullen had no criminal record. According to the card, he was driving a white Ford panel van marked with Bible quotes and religious sayings and registered to a city-licensed charitable foundation called the Moonlight Mission.

The card said the van was parked in a red zone while McMullen was on the nearby sidewalk accosting pedestrians and asking if they wanted to be saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. Those who demurred were treated to a verbal lashing that included dire predictions of their being left behind during the upcoming rapture.

There was more on the flip side of the card: “Subject refers to himself as John the Baptist. Cruises Hollywood in his van, looking for people to baptize.”

Ballard flipped the card onto the table in front of Bosch.

“Okay,” she said. “Why’d you wait to show me this now?”

“I wanted to check him out a little bit first,” Bosch said. “I made some calls while you were in the strip club.”

“And?”

“And the Moonlight Mission still exists and he’s still there.”

“Anything else?”

“The van — it’s still registered to him and apparently still in service.”

“Okay, but I have a stack back at the station of about twenty van stops. Why is this the one card you decided to steal?”

“Well, I didn’t steal it. I’m showing it to you. How’s that stealing?”

“I told you all the cards had to remain on LAPD property except that stack I let you take tonight.”

“Okay, fine. I took one of the cards I read earlier because I thought maybe after your callout we’d cruise by the Moonlight Mission and see what it’s all about. That’s all.”

She dropped her eyes to her plate and pushed the eggs around again with her fork. She didn’t like the way she was acting, being so picky and by the book with Bosch.

“Look,” Bosch said. “I know about you. I know you’ve been burned bad in the department. So was I. But I’ve never betrayed a partner, and over the years, I’ve had a lot of them.”

Ballard looked up at him.

“Partner?” she said.

“On this case,” Bosch said. “You said you wanted in. I let you in.”

“It’s not your case. It’s an LAPD case.”

“It belongs to whoever’s working it.”

Bosch took a sip of coffee, but she could tell by his reaction that it had gone cold. He turned to look back from the booth toward the kitchen, where the waitress was loitering, and held the mug up for more.

He then turned back to Ballard.

“Look, you want to work with me on it, then fine, let’s work,” he said. “If not, we work separately, and that would be too bad. But this territorial bullshit... that’s why nothing ever gets done. Like the great man said, Can’t we all just get along?”

Ballard was about to bark back at him, but the waitress was suddenly at the table with the coffee pot, and she held her tongue while both mugs were topped off. In those few seconds she calmed and thought about what Bosch had just said.

“Okay,” she said.

The waitress put a check down on the table and walked back toward the kitchen.

“Okay what?” Bosch said. “Which way do you want to go?”

Ballard reached over and grabbed the check.

“Let’s go to the Moonlight Mission,” she said.

When they got into Ballard’s city ride, she used her cell to call Lieutenant Munroe and tell him she was back in service but pursuing an investigative lead and would be out of the station until further notice. Munroe asked what case she was working on and she put him off, saying it was just a loose end on a hobby case. She disconnected and started the car.

“You don’t like him, do you?” Bosch said.

“I’m the only detective who has to report to a patrol lieutenant,” Ballard said. “He’s not really my boss but he likes to think he is. And look, about before? That callout to the strip club... it just sort of fired up my feral instincts. I shouldn’t have said you stole the shake card, okay? I apologize.”

“No need to. I get it.”

“No, you don’t. You couldn’t. But I appreciate your saying so.”

She pulled out of the empty Farmers Market parking lot onto Fairfax and headed north.

“Tell me about John the Baptist,” she said. “Where are we going and why?”

“The mission is on Cherokee near Selma — south of the Boulevard,” Bosch said. “And something about this guy looking for people to baptize poked at me. Call it a hunch, whatever. But Daisy was washed in bleach. I’m not much into organized religion, but when you get baptized you get immersed in the waters of Jesus or whatever, right?”

“I’m not much into it either — organized religion. I grew up in Hawaii. My father chased waves. That was our religion.”

“A surfer. And your mother?”

“Missing in action. Back to John the Baptist. How did you—”

Before finishing the question, Ballard looked over at the mobile data computer terminal mounted on the dashboard. It was on a swivel and she knew that the screen had been facing the driver’s seat when they left the station earlier because she wasn’t working with a partner all this week while Jenkins was out. The screen had been turned and now faced Bosch.

“You used the MDC?” she asked in an accusing voice. “To run McMullen?”

Bosch shrugged and she took that as a yes.

“How?” she demanded. “Did you steal my password?”

“No, I didn’t,” Bosch said. “I used my old partner’s. She only changes the last two digits each month. I remembered.”

Ballard was about to pull over and dump Bosch out of the car, but then she remembered that she had once used a former partner’s password to log into the department database on the down-low. Her partner was even dead at the time. How could she jump on Bosch for the same thing?

“So, what did you find?” she asked.

“He’s clean,” Bosch said. “No record.”

They drove in silence for a while. Ballard took Fairfax all the way up to Hollywood Boulevard and then turned east.

“It’s a lucky break that John the Baptist still has the van,” she said. “If Daisy was ever in it, there might still be evidence.”

Bosch nodded.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” he said. “A lucky break — but only if he’s the guy.”

11

The Moonlight Mission was located in an old Hollywood bungalow that had somehow survived the ravages of time. It was completely surrounded by commercial structures and pay lots that serviced Hollywood Boulevard a block to the north and Sunset Boulevard a block south. It stood like an orphan in its concrete surroundings, the last vestige of a period when Hollywood was primarily a residential suburb of downtown.

Ballard came down Cherokee from the Boulevard and turned left on Selma. The front of the two-story Victorian was on Cherokee but there was a gated drive-in entrance to the rear of the house on Selma. Through the gate, she glimpsed a white van.

“There’s the van,” she said. “Did you see any lights on inside?”

“A couple,” Bosch said. “Doesn’t seem like a lot of activity at the mission tonight.”

Ballard pulled into an empty self-pay lot and turned the lights off but left the engine and the heater running. She checked her watch. It was almost five, and she knew Bosch would need to go soon.

“What do you think?” she said. “We could go back to the station and knock off some more cards before you head out.”

“Let’s take another run by the front,” Bosch said. “See what we’ve got.”

Ballard dropped the car into drive and headed out of the lot. This time when they went by, the property would be on Bosch’s side and he would get the best look.

Ballard took it slow, and just as she passed the property on the Selma side, the lights of the van behind the gate came on.

“He’s leaving,” Bosch said excitedly.

“Did you see him?” Ballard asked.

“No, just the headlights. But somebody’s leaving. Let’s see who and where to.”

Ballard crossed through the intersection and pulled to the curb, still on Selma. She turned the lights on the G-ride off.

“He probably made us,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Bosch said.

He slid down in his seat and leaned to his right. Ballard was much smaller but she did the same thing, leaning left like she was asleep but giving herself an angle on the sideview mirror.

She watched the van pull through the automatic gate and turn toward them on Selma.

“Here he comes,” she said.

The van went by the detective car without hesitation. It continued down Selma to Highland Avenue. It stopped and then turned left. Once it was out of sight, Ballard put the lights on and headed down Selma.

There were so few cars on Highland that it was easy to track the van but hard not to be obvious about it. For several blocks they were the only two vehicles on the road. Bosch and Ballard were silent as they followed.

At Melrose the van made an abrupt U-turn and headed back up Highland.

“He made us,” Ballard said. “What should we—”

She stopped when the van turned into a shopping plaza on the corner.

“Keep going a few blocks,” Bosch said. “Then turn right and come back on Melrose.”

Ballard followed his instructions. When they got back to the intersection of Melrose and Highland, they spotted the van parked in front of a twenty-four-hour Yum Yum Donuts store. Ballard knew it was a popular place with the late show crew.

“He’s just getting donuts,” Ballard said. “He’ll then head back to the mission or he’ll go give them out at the homeless encampments and see if he can pick up a few baptisms.”

“Probably,” Bosch said.

“You want to go get doughnuts and get a look at him?”

“I’d rather get a look inside the van, see what he’s got in there.”

“Gaslight him?”

Bosch checked his watch.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

Ten minutes later, after discussing a strategy, they were following the van back up Highland. They had seen a white man wearing what looked like a full-length bathrobe come out of Yum Yum with two twelve-packs of doughnuts and then hop behind the wheel of the van. As they crossed Sunset, Ballard put on the grille lights of the detective car and straddled the lane so the van’s driver could see her in his sideview. She signaled him over and he complied, pulling to the curb at the corner of Highland and Selma.

Ballard and Bosch both got out and approached on either side of the van. Ballard flipped her jacket back and kept her hand on her holstered gun as she approached the driver-side door. The window came down as she got there. She noticed that on the door just below the window was written JOHN 3:16. She guessed that McMullen had named himself after a Bible verse.

“Good morning,” she said. “How are you today, sir?”

“Uh, I’m fine,” he said. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

“It’s Detective, actually. Can I get some identification from you, sir?”

The man already had his driver’s license in his hand. Ballard checked it, her eyes flicking from the ID to the man behind the wheel, wary of any quick move. McMullen had a beard and long hair with gray streaks that had infiltrated since the ID photo was taken.

The DOB on the license put him at forty-five years old. The address corresponded with the Moonlight Mission bungalow. She handed the driver’s license back.

“What brings you out on the street so early, sir?” Ballard asked.

“I went to get doughnuts for my people,” McMullen said. “How come you’re stopping me?”

“We got a report of a van that was being driven erratically. Suspected drunk driver. Have you been drinking, sir?”

“No, and I never drink. Alcohol is the work of the devil.”

“Do you mind stepping out of the van so we can make sure?”

McMullen noticed Bosch staring at him through the passenger-side window. He turned his head back and forth between him and Ballard.

“I told you I don’t drink,” he protested. “Haven’t had a drop in twenty-one years.”

“Then it should be pretty easy to show us you’re sober,” Ballard said.

McMullen gripped the steering wheel until Ballard could see the points of his knuckles turn white.

“All right,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time.”

He reached his hand down out of sight and Ballard gripped her gun, ready to go. She saw Bosch make a quick head shake, telling her everything was all right. Then she heard McMullen’s seatbelt come off. He opened the door and climbed out, then slammed it behind him. He was dressed the part of the missionary in sandals and a white tunic cinched at the waist by a braided rope. Over this he wore an ankle-length maroon robe with gold tassels on the sleeves.

“Is there anyone else in the van, sir?” Ballard asked.

“No,” McMullen said. “Why should there be?”

“Officer safety, sir. My partner’s going to check to make sure. Are you okay with that?”

“Whatever. The lock on the side door’s broken. He can open it.”

“Okay, sir, please step to the back of your vehicle, where it’s safer.”

Ballard nodded to Bosch, who was now standing at the front of the van. She followed McMullen to the rear and started putting him through old-school field sobriety testing. She began with the walk and turn so she could glance back while McMullen was walking a straight line away from her. She saw Bosch leaning into the van through the rear side door. It looked like nothing was amiss.

McMullen completed the maneuver without issue.

“I told you,” he said.

“Yes, you did, sir,” Ballard said. “I want you now to face me and raise your right leg and hold it up, standing only on your left foot. Do you understand? I then want you to count to ten while keeping your foot up.”

“Not a problem.”

McMullen raised his leg and stared at Ballard.

“Who are your people?” Ballard asked.

“What do you mean?” McMullen said.

“You said you just got doughnuts for your people.”

“The Moonlight Mission. I have a flock.”

“So you’re a preacher. You can put your foot down.”

“Of sorts. I just try to lead people to the Word of God.”

“And they go willingly? Raise your other foot now and hold it.”

“Of course they do. Or they can leave. I don’t force anybody to do anything.”

“You provide beds for people, or is it just prayer services?”

“We have beds. People can stay temporarily. Once they find the Word, they want to get off the streets and make something of their lives. We’ve saved many. We’ve baptized many.”

While McMullen was speaking, Ballard heard Bosch slide the van’s door closed. His footsteps came up behind her.

“Young girls?” Bosch said over her shoulder. “They part of your flock?”

McMullen lowered his foot to the ground.

“What is this?” he said. “Why’d you pull me over?”

“Because we’re looking for a girl who went missing last night,” Ballard said. “A witness said she got pulled into a van.”

“Not my van,” McMullen said. “It’s been parked all night behind a gate. You saw. There’s nothing in there.”

“Not now,” Bosch said.

“How dare you!” McMullen fired back. “How fucking dare you to try to impugn the good work of the mission! I am in the business of saving souls, not taking them. I’ve been going down these streets for twenty years and no one has ever accused me of anything improper. Anything!”

As McMullen spoke, tears filled his eyes and his voice grew tight and high.

“Okay, okay, sir,” Ballard said. “You have to understand, we need to ask these questions. When a young girl disappears, we have to do what we need to do and sometimes we step on toes. You can go now, Mr. McMullen. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“I want your names,” McMullen demanded.

Ballard looked at Bosch. They had intentionally not identified themselves when they had first stopped McMullen.

“Ballard and Bosch,” she said.

“I’ll remember that,” McMullen said.

“Good,” Bosch said.

McMullen climbed back into the van as Ballard and Bosch watched. He roared the engine and took a sharp turn onto Selma.

“What did you see?” Ballard asked.

“A couple bench seats and not much else,” Bosch said. “I took some photos I’ll show you in the car.”

“You mean no baptismal font full of bleach?” Ballard asked.

“Not quite.”

“So what do you think?”

“Doesn’t mean anything. I’m still interested. What do you think?”

“Something seems off but I don’t know. It will be interesting to see if he files a complaint.”

“If he’s our guy, he doesn’t file the complaint, because he won’t want the follow-up.”

They walked back to Ballard’s car and got in. Ballard was silent as she pulled away from the curb. She was wondering if joining forces with Bosch had been a career-threatening mistake.