Dark Sacred Night

20

It was one a.m. and well into her official shift before Ballard completed the paperwork that went along with the arrest and booking of Theodore Bechtel on suspicion of breaking and entering and grand theft. After he was secured in a solo cell at the station, she walked through the parking lot to the storage rooms and retrieved a fresh box of shake cards. Once back in the detective bureau she set up in a back corner and soon was sifting through the reports on the human tumbleweeds, as Tim Farmer called them, that drifted across the streets of Hollywood on a nightly basis.

After an hour she had put six cards aside for further consideration and follow-up. Several hundred did not make the cut. Her forward progress was slowed when she came across another card written by Farmer. His words and observations held her once again.

She wondered who the rain people were in Farmer’s estimation. People who couldn’t fit in with the rest of society? People who needed the rain?

Her rover squawked and Lieutenant Munroe called her to the watch office. She took the long way, going down the rear hallway of the station and then up to the front. This allowed her to see who was in the station and maybe get a sense of what was happening before speaking to Munroe.

But the station was empty as it was on most nights. Munroe was standing behind his desk, looking down at the deployment screen, which showed the locations of cars and personnel in the field. He didn’t look up but knew she had entered the room.

“Ballard, we’ve got a hot shot and I need you to get out there and honcho it,” he said.

“What’s the call?” Ballard asked.

“A woman calls in, says she’s locked in the bathroom of a house up on Mount Olympus. Says she’s been raped and managed to get to the bathroom with her cell phone. Says the guy’s still there, trying to break the door down. I rolled two units and a sergeant. They get there and guess who the guy is? Danny fucking Monahan. It’s a he-said-she-said, and I want you out there to make the call.”

“Did they transport the victim to the rape center?”

“Nope. She’s still there. She took a shower while she was in the bathroom.”

“Shit. They should’ve transported her anyway.”

“They’re not sure she’s a victim, Ballard. Just get out there and see for yourself. This should be right up your alley.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean. Just get up there. And don’t forget your rover.”

He handed a slip of paper over the screen to her. It had the address written on it and the name and age of the person reporting the incident: Chloe Lambert, 22.

Ballard was in her city ride, heading back toward the hills within five minutes. She hated cases involving celebrities. Things always had a different reality to them. It wasn’t normal life. Danny Monahan was a stand-up comic who had broken big in the last five years with podcasts and cable specials and now a growing string of hit movies that steadily broke the hundred-million-dollar mark at the box office. He was a triple threat and a major force to contend with in Hollywood. It seemed appropriate that he would live in a part of the Hollywood Hills known as Mount Olympus.

Ballard hit the blue lights and streaked down Sunset to Crescent Heights, where she turned north toward Laurel Canyon. The neighborhoods of Mount Olympus covered the front right shoulder of the canyon, with large homes that peeked at the lights of the city down in the flats. Ballard pulled into the driveway of a house on Electra Drive and parked behind one of the patrol cars.

She was met in the driveway by Sergeant Dvorek.

“Won’t need a space suit tonight, Sally Ride,” he said.

“Good,” Ballard said. “What will I need?”

“The wisdom of Solomon, I guess. She says he’s an ass bandit and he says she’s setting him up for a MeToo moment.”

“Why didn’t you transport her to the RTC, Stan?”

Dvorek held his hands up as if to calm her.

“Just hold on, hold on. I didn’t want to make the call on that because, if she gets transported, then there’s a case number and this guy’s life and career go down the toilet.”

The male bias was no shock to Ballard. But now wasn’t the time to call Dvorek on it.

“Okay, where are they?” she asked.

“I’ve got Monahan sitting snug as a bug in the home office, and the girl is...”

“The girl?”

“Woman, whatever. She’s in the screening room on the other side of the house. Nobody’s touched anything in the bedroom or talked to the suspect.”

“Well, you did that right. I’m going to talk to the woman first. Show me.”

Dvorek led the way into a massive home that appeared to be a conjoining of circular structures of different sizes. The center circle was the tallest. The entryway was at least two stories high.

“She’s this way,” Dvorek said.

They walked through a massive entertaining area with a small stage and microphone in one corner, where, Ballard guessed, Monahan practiced his stand-up routines or performed for invited guests and family. They then moved into a hallway and toward an open door where a blue suiter named Gina Gardner was standing post.

“G-G,” Ballard said as she passed.

She entered a home theater with a large curtained screen at the front. Four rows of plush leather lounge chairs, twelve in all, were on stepped levels going toward the rear. Posters from Monahan’s movies and in various languages lined the walls.

Sitting on the edge of one of the lounge chairs was a young woman wearing a man’s bathrobe. She was blond with large doe eyes. Her cheeks were streaked with makeup that had run down her face with tears.

Dvorek presented the victim and then backed into the hallway with Gardner. Ballard held out her hand.

“Chloe, I’m Detective Ballard. I’m here to hear your story and to make sure you get whatever medical treatment you need.”

“I just need to go home, but they won’t let me. He’s still here. I’m scared.”

“You are perfectly safe. There are six police officers in the house and he’s being held in a room on the other side. I just want to get some basic information from you and then we’ll take you for medical examination and treatment. I’m going to record your statement.”

“Okay.”

Ballard sat on the edge of the lounge chair next to Chloe’s and put the small digital recorder she always carried between them. Once she started to record, she identified herself and the victim and gave the time, date, and location of the interview.

“Chloe, how long have you known Danny Monahan?”

“Tonight was when I met him.”

“Where was that?”

“At the Comedy Room. I went with my friend Aisha tonight and he was there. He did stand-up and then I met him at the bar in the back. He invited me up here.”

“What about Aisha?”

“No, just me.”

“Did you drive here in your own car?”

“No, I had Ubered. I mean to the Comedy Room. He drove me here in his car.”

“Do you know what kind of car it was?”

“It was a Maserati but I don’t know, like, which model it was.”

“That’s okay.”

“So, you came here on an invitation. You weren’t forced.”

“No, I even had sex with him and I wanted to. But then later he... god, this is so embarrassing...”

She started crying again.

“It’s okay, Chloe. Nothing that happened is your fault. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. You are not the—”

“He rolled me over and raped me in the ass. I told him to stop but he wouldn’t. I said no. I said no several times but he wouldn’t stop.”

She said it rapid-fire, like it was the one and only time she would be able to say it.

“Are you hurt, Chloe?”

“Yes, I’m bleeding.”

“Okay, I have to ask you this question and I apologize ahead of time. Had you ever had anal sex before this occurred with Danny Monahan?”

“No, never. I think it’s disgusting.”

“Okay, Chloe, that’s all for now. I’m going to get you to a rape treatment center where they’re going to look for biological evidence and treat you for your injuries. They’ll also be able to talk to you about counseling and what steps to take from there.”

“I just want to go home.”

“I know, but this is a necessary stage in the investigation. We need to do this. Okay?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Okay, you wait here. Officer Gardner is going to be outside the door at all times, and I’ll be back soon.”

When she stepped out through the door, Dvorek was gone. Gardner gave her a head wave and they walked up the hall so they could confer without Chloe hearing them. Gardner had ten years on the job, all of them at Hollywood Division. She was petite and wore her dark hair tied up in the back.

“She has her cell,” Gardner said. “I heard her whispering on a call.”

“Okay,” Ballard said.

“Just so you know, I heard her say, ‘This guy’s going to pay. I’m going to be rich.’”

Ballard pointed to the body cam affixed to her uniform.

“You think that picked it up?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Make sure I get the video file at end of shift. I want you to write up a report as well. Anything else?”

“No, just that.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

Ballard found Dvorek in the entertaining area and asked him to take her to the bedroom.

It was a large, round room with a round bed and a round mirror on the ceiling above it. Ballard kept her hands in her pockets as she leaned over the bed and looked down at the knot of sheets and pillows. She saw no blood or anything else that might constitute evidence. She went into the bathroom, which featured a large round Jacuzzi in the center. She inspected a large white-tiled shower stall but saw no blood or other evidence. In a wastebasket next to the toilet she saw a wad of blood-stained tissues.

“Okay, we’re going to need to call out a field unit to collect everything,” she said. “Can you make the call while I talk to the suspect?”

“You got it,” Dvorek said. “I’ll take you over to him first.”

Danny Monahan was sitting behind a desk that was notable to Ballard because it wasn’t big and it wasn’t round. It was old and scratched, and that told her it had sentimental value to the comic genius sitting behind it.

“You notice the desk, huh?” he said. “I was a schoolteacher once. Not many people know that.”

Monahan was midthirties, paunchy with success, his red hair too long, overly styled, and cut to look like he had just rolled out of bed and run his hands through it. A guy who cared about his looks but trying to look like he didn’t.

Ballard ignored the reveal about the desk.

“Mr. Monahan, I’m Detective Ballard. Has anyone read you your rights?”

“My rights? No. Come on, this is a shakedown. She wants money. She told me she would bleed me dry.”

Ballard showed him her digital recorder and turned it on. She then recited the Miranda rights warning and asked Monahan if he understood them.

“Look, it might have gotten a little rough but it wasn’t anything she didn’t ask for,” he said.

“Mr. Monahan,” Ballard insisted. “If you want to talk to me and explain what happened, then you need to acknowledge that you understand the rights I have recited to you. If not, then we’re done here and you are under arrest.”

“Arrest? That is fucking absurd. This was completely consensual.”

Ballard paused for a moment before speaking calmly and slowly.

“One more time,” she said. “Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?”

“Yes, I understand my rights,” Monahan said. “Happy now?”

“Do you want to talk to me about what happened here in your home tonight?”

“Sure, I’ll talk, because it’s all bullshit. It’s a con — she wants money, Detective. You can’t see that?”

Ballard put the recorder down on Monahan’s old teaching desk. She again stated the time and location as well as Monahan’s name and his agreement to give a recorded statement.

“Tell me what happened. This is your chance.”

Monahan spoke matter-of-factly, as if describing what he had had for dinner.

“I met her at the club tonight and then I took her home and fucked her. That’s what happened and it’s what I do all the time. But this time, she gets up and runs into the bathroom, locks the door, and starts yelling rape.”

“Did you try to break through the door to the bathroom?”

“Nope.”

“Let’s go back to the sex. Did she at any time say no or tell you to stop?”

“No, she stuck her ass up and said go for it. Anything else is a lie.”

It was a classic he-said-she-said case, as Lieutenant Munroe had warned and as many rape cases reported to the LAPD were. But Ballard had seen the blood in the wastebasket and she knew that would tip consideration toward Chloe’s side of the story. The results of the examination at the rape treatment center could also be probative if the victim’s injuries were quantifiable. The blood in the basket seemed to indicate that they would be.

Arresting a celebrity in a celebrity town was risky business. The cases drew massive attention and the accused usually hired the best and brightest legal teams. The defense would do a deep dive into Ballard’s life and career, and she knew as surely she was standing there that her history as a complainant about sexual harassment in the department would be brought up and likely used to paint her as biased in favor of the female.

She realized she could back out at this point. The celebrity involvement would easily qualify this investigation as a downtown case. The newly formed sexual harassment task force should be called out. But Ballard also realized that the way the system worked could put other women in jeopardy. Her passing the buck here would result in a slow and methodical investigation during which Monahan would not be arrested or in any way removed from his life and routines. It might be weeks before the case was presented to the District Attorney’s Office for charges.

But Monahan had just said he did this often — brought a woman up from the comedy clubs down below. Did he do what he did to Chloe to every woman he brought to the round bedroom? Ballard could not risk that her acting out of career caution or department protocol might lead to other women being victimized.

Ballard called Dvorek in from the hallway, then turned back to Monahan.

“Mr. Monahan, stand up,” she said. “You’re under arrest for—”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Monahan yelled. “Okay, okay. Look, I didn’t want to do this but I can prove to you there was no rape. Just let me show you. There will be no arrest. I guarantee it.”

Ballard looked at him for a moment, then glanced at Dvorek.

“You have five minutes,” she said.

“We have to go to my bedroom,” Monahan said.

“That’s a crime scene.”

“No, it’s not a crime scene. I have the whole thing on video. You look at it, you’ll see. No rape.”

Ballard realized she should have seen that coming. The mirror on the ceiling. Monahan was a voyeur.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Monahan led the police procession to the bedroom, stating his case along the way.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not a creep,” he said. “But with all this MeToo stuff starting up last year, I thought I needed protection, you know?”

“You put in cameras,” Ballard said.

“Damn right. I knew it might come to this. I didn’t do it for me to watch — that would be sick. I just needed the protection.”

In the bedroom he went to a remote control on a stand next to the bed and turned on a large screen that mirrored the curve of the wall. Soon the screen split into sixteen views from security cameras around the house. He highlighted one of the squares and expanded it. Ballard was now looking at an overhead view of the room that included her, Dvorek, and Monahan. Ballard turned to locate the camera and focused on the ornate frame of a painting on the wall near the head of the bed.

“Okay, now we just rewind,” Monahan said.

Ballard turned back. Two minutes later, they were watching Monahan and Chloe Lambert have sex on the bed. There was no sound and thankfully it was a wide-angle lens. Ballard assumed that the action on the screen could be blown up, but that was not necessary for her to see what was obviously a consensual coupling.

“That was the first time we did it,” Monahan said. “Then we took a little nap. You want me to fast-forward to the main event?”

“Please,” Ballard said.

Monahan sped forward to the second round of sex, and it became clear through Lambert’s body language and posturing that she had initiated the second go and the specific act of anal sex. When it was over, she walked calmly to the bathroom and closed the door.

Monahan started to fast-forward the playback again.

“So, here is where I hear her on the phone in there calling the cops.”

He switched to normal playback and they watched as he jumped naked from the bed and rushed to the bathroom door. He leaned his head to the jamb like he was listening to the phone call Lambert was making, then started pounding the side of his fist against the door.

“You can turn it off,” Ballard said. “I’m going to need a copy.”

“No way,” Monahan said. “Why?”

“Because it’s evidence. I’m going to arrest her for filing a false report.”

“I don’t want her arrested. I just want you to get her the fuck out of here. You think I want every broad I’ve banged this year to know I have them on tape? Why do you think I didn’t tell you about this from the start? I’m not pressing any charges. Just get her out of here.”

“Mr. Monahan, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to press charges. She made the false report to the police.”

“Well, I won’t cooperate and I’ll hire the best fucking lawyer in the country to stop you from getting the video. You want that fight?”

“You know, sir, I could also charge you with recording a sexual encounter without both parties’ knowledge and consent.”

Monahan computed the ramifications of that for a few moments before speaking.

“Uh, don’t you think decisions like this are above your pay grade, Detective?”

“You want me to call my commander? Or better yet, the sex harassment task force that leaks to the media like a sieve? If you want, I’ll call the chief of police at home. I’m sure everybody on the food chain will be totally discreet about this.”

Monahan’s face revealed that he was realizing the can of worms he was opening up.

“Sorry, my bad,” he said. “I think you are probably perfectly capable of deciding how best to handle this.”

Ten minutes later, Ballard returned to the home theater where Chloe Lambert was waiting. She dropped the clothes she had collected from the bedroom on the floor in front of her.

“You can get dressed,” Ballard said.

“What’s happening?” Lambert asked.

“Nothing’s happening. You’re going home. You’re lucky you’re not going to jail.”

“Jail? What for?”

“Filing a false report. You weren’t raped, Chloe.”

“What the fuck? That guy’s a predator.”

“Maybe, but so are you. He has the whole thing on video. I watched it. So you can stop the act. Get dressed and I’ll have you driven down the hill.”

Ballard turned to leave but then hesitated and looked back.

“You know, it’s women like you that...”

She didn’t finish. She believed it would be lost on Chloe Lambert.

21

Ballard was depressed. She left the Monahan estate not knowing which of the two people she had interviewed was the more loathsome example of the human form. And yet neither would face consequences for their actions of the night. She decided to focus her enmity on Chloe as a betrayer of the cause. For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.

She tried to shake it off as she came through the back door of the station and headed down the hallway to the detective bureau. She had a half box of FI cards she wanted to finish before the end of her shift. She checked her watch. It was 4:15 a.m. Her plan was to write up a report on the callout to Electra Drive. She would pull no punches, naming all parties in the investigation and describing their actions, even though the investigation had come to nothing so far. She would file it in the detective commander’s inbox and it would be someone else’s decision from there. It might go down to the task force and it might even make it to the D.A.’s Office for consideration. Along the way, it might also get leaked to the media. No matter how it went, she was passing the buck on it, and that did not sit well with her. She could have arrested them both on the spot for different crimes, but such a move would have resulted in her actions being studied and questioned by a command staff that didn’t like her or want her. Some fault would likely be found and she would be further buried by the department and pulled away from the one thing she needed most: her job on the late show.

She turned into the detective bureau and headed to the back corner where she had set up for work earlier. She was nearly there when she saw the familiar head of gray curly hair over one of the half walls of the workstation. Bosch.

When she got to him, she saw that he was looking through the last four-inch stack of cards from the storage box she had brought in.

“So, they just let you waltz in here anytime you like,” she said by way of a greeting.

“To be honest, I sort of let myself in tonight,” Bosch said. “They never took my nine-nine-nine key when I quit.”

Ballard nodded.

“Well, I have to write a report. I won’t be able to look at shake cards till I file.”

“I’m on the last stack here. I’ll go out back and get another box.”

“I’d better go with you. Let’s do it now before I settle in and start writing. I can tell you the latest on John the Baptist on the way.”

They headed back through the station and out the back door to the parking lot. Ballard updated Bosch on her return to the Moonlight Mission and interview with McMullen. She said that her gut instinct was still that McMullen wasn’t their guy. She told him about the head count he kept on his calendars and the photo of Daisy she had found.

“So, you actually placed him with the victim,” Bosch said. “He knew her.”

“He baptized her several months before the murder,” Ballard said. “But come on, she was a night dweller and he roams Hollywood at night, looking for souls to save. I would be surprised if they didn’t cross paths. I still don’t think there’s anything there and I might have an alibi for McMullen’s van.”

She told him about the van being in the shop on the night of the abduction and murder.

“McMullin looked it up and left me a message about the place,” she said. “As soon as they open this morning, I’m going to see if I can confirm that the van was there when Daisy got taken. If I do, then I think we move on from John the Baptist.”

Bosch said nothing, indicating he was not ready to scratch the missionary man off the list of potential suspects.

“So, what’s happening with your search warrant case?” Ballard asked.

“We got part of the way there,” Bosch said. “We found the bullets we were looking for but they were no good for comparison. And then my source ended up dead out in Alhambra.”

“Oh shit! And it’s connected?”

“Looks that way. Done in by his own gang. LAPD SWAT arrested the shooter last night in Sylmar. He wasn’t talking when I left but he’s known to be tight with our suspect on the cold case. Sometimes when you blow the dust off an old investigation, bad things happen.”

Ballard looked at him in the dim light of the parking lot. She wondered if that was some kind of warning about the Daisy Clayton case.

They walked silently the rest of the way to the storage facility. Once there, they each picked up a box of FI cards and headed back to the station. Ballard turned and assessed the boxes in the hallway before leaving. They were about halfway through.

Walking back across the lot, Bosch stopped for a breather and put his box on the trunk of a black-and-white.

“I’ve got a bad knee,” he explained. “I get acupuncture when it acts up. Just haven’t had the time.”

“I’ve heard that knee replacements are better than the real thing these days,” Ballard said.

“I’ll keep that in mind. But that would take me out of the game for a while. I might never get back.”

He picked up the box and pressed on.

“I was thinking,” he said. “You remember the GRASP program — Were you here then?”

“I was on patrol,” Ballard said. “‘Get a GRASP on crime’ — I remember. A PR stunt.”

“Well, yeah, but I think that was still going strong when Daisy got taken. And I was wondering what happened to all that data they collected. I thought, if it was still around somewhere, we might get another angle on the lay of the land in Hollywood at the time of the murder.”

GRASP was indeed a public relations ploy by a former chief who took the reins of the department and touted a law enforcement think-tank idea of studying crime through geography to help determine how people and facilities were targeted. It was revealed with much fanfare by the department but suffered a quiet death a few years later when a new chief with new ideas came in.

“I don’t remember what it stood for,” Ballard said. “I was on patrol in Pacific Division and I remember filling out the forms on the MDC. Geographic something or other.”

“Geographic Reporting and Safety Program,” Bosch said. “The guys down in the ASS Office really worked some OT on it.”

“Ass Office?”

“The Acronym Selection Section. You never heard of it? They got about ten guys down there full-time.”

Ballard started laughing as she lifted her knee, held her box with one hand on her thigh, and used her key card to open the door of the station. She then opened it with her hip and let Bosch in first.

They walked down the hallway.

“I’ll look into the GRASP files,” she said. “I’ll start at the ASS office.”

“Let me know what you find.”

Back at the workstation, Ballard noticed the blue binder that had been left at her spot. She flipped it open.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I told you I had started a new murder book for the reinvestigation,” Bosch said. “I figured you would want to start adding to it, maybe do a chrono. I think it should stay with you.”

There were only a few reports in the binder at the moment. One was Bosch’s summary of his interview with a supervisor at American Storage Products about the container that he believed Daisy Clayton’s body had been stuffed into.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll print out everything I have and put it in. I already have an online chrono going.”

She flipped the binder closed and saw that it was old and the blue plastic faded. Bosch was recycling an old murder book and it didn’t surprise her. She guessed that he had the records from several old cases in his home. He was that kind of detective.

“Did you close the one this came from?” she asked.

“I did,” Bosch said.

“Good,” she said.

The went back to work. There were no more callouts for Ballard that shift. She got her report writing finished and filed and then joined Bosch on the FI cards. By dawn they had made it through the two boxes they brought from storage. Fifty more cards were added to the stack that warranted a second look but did not rise to the level of requiring immediate action. As they worked through the cards, they had talked and Bosch had told her stories about his days in Hollywood Homicide in the 1990s. She noticed that he, or in some instances the media, had given names to many of his cases: the Woman in the Suitcase, the Man with No Hands, the Dollmaker, and so on. It was as though homicides back then were an event. Now it seemed that nothing was new, nothing shocked.

Ballard gathered their two stacks of keepers together along with the murder book.

“I’m going to put these in my locker and then go over to the auto repair shop,” she said. “You want to go with me? To the shop, I mean.”

“No,” Bosch said. “I mean, I do, but I think I better get up to the Valley and see where we are on things. Maybe I’ll see if I can get some pins stuck in my knee on the way.”

“Let’s check in later, then. I’ll let you know what I get.”

“That’s a plan.”

22

Ballard stopped for a latte after leaving the station. While waiting for it, she got a text from Aaron saying he was off all day. She took this to mean that the man he had pulled from the riptide had not survived and Aaron was given a “therapy day” to deal with it. She texted him back and said she had a stop to make before heading out toward the beach.

The two garage doors were open at Zocalo Auto Services when she got there. She had driven her van because she was not planning to go back to the station afterward.

A man stood in one of the open bays, wiping his already greasy hands on a rag and assessing the Ford Transit with the board racks. Ballard got out and quickly showed her badge to disabuse him of the idea that she was a potential client.

“Is the owner or manager here?” she asked.

“That’s me,” the man said. “Both. Ephrem Zocalo.”

He had a strong accent.

“Detective Ballard, LAPD Hollywood Division. I need your help, sir.”

“What can I do?”

“I’m trying to confirm that a particular van was here getting work done — a transmission possibly — nine years ago. Is that possible? Do you have records from ’09?”

“Yes, we have records. But that is a very long time ago.”

“You have computer records? Maybe just put in the name?”

“No, no computers. We have files and we keep, you know... we keep the papers.”

It didn’t sound too sophisticated but all Ballard cared about was that there were records of some sort.

“Are they here?” she asked. “Can I look? I have the name and dates.”

“Yeah, sure. We have in the back.”

He led her to a small office adjacent to the repair bays. They passed a man who was working in a trench beneath a car, the high-pitched whine of a drill sounding as he removed the bolts of a transmission cover. He looked suspiciously at Ballard as she followed Zocalo to the office.

The office was barely big enough to hold a desk, chair, and three four-drawer file cabinets. Each drawer had a framed card holder on which a year was handwritten. This meant Zocalo had records going back twelve years, which gave Ballard hope.

“You said ’09?” Zocalo asked.

“Yes,” Ballard said.

He pointed a finger up and down the drawers until he found the one marked 2009. The labels were not in a clear chronological order and Ballard guessed that each year, he dumped the oldest set of records and started with a fresh drawer.

The 2009 drawer was the second drawer up in the middle row. Zocalo waved at it with an open hand as if saying it was all Ballard’s to deal with.

“I’ll keep everything in order,” she said.

“Don’t matter,” Zocalo said. “You can use the desk.”

He left her there and went back out into the garage. Ballard heard him saying something in Spanish to the other worker, but they spoke too fast for her to translate the conversation. But she heard the word migra, and her sense was that the man in the garage trench was worried that she was really an immigration agent.

She pulled the file drawer open and found it to be only a third full of receipts leaning haphazardly against the back panel. She reached down with both hands, pulled about half of them out, and carried them to the desk.

All surfaces of the desk seemed to be coated with a patina of grease. Zocalo clearly didn’t visit the sink when he moved from doing repair work to office work. Many of the invoice copies she started looking through were also smudged with grease.

The invoices were generally kept in order by date, so the process of checking the alibi for John the Baptist’s van went quickly. Ballard moved through the stack directly to the week in question and soon found a copy of an invoice for installation of a new transmission in a Ford Econoline van with the name John McMullen and the address of the Moonlight Mission on it. Ballard studied it and saw that the dates the van was in the shop corresponded with the blank squares on McMullen’s calendar and covered the two days that Daisy Clayton was missing and then found dead.

Ballard looked around the office. She saw no copier. Leaving the McMullen receipt out, she returned the rest of the stack to the file drawer and closed it. She walked out of the office and into the garage. Zocalo was down in the trench with the other man. She squatted down next to the car they were working under and held out the grease-smudged invoice.

“Mr. Zocalo, this is what I was looking for. Can I take it and make a copy? I’ll bring you back the original if you need it.”

Zocalo shook his head.

“I don’t really need to have it,” he said. “Not for so long, you know. You just keep it. Is okay.”

“You sure?”

“Sí, sí, I’m sure.”

“Okay, thank you, sir. Here’s my card. If you ever need my help with anything, you give me a call, okay?”

She handed a business card down into the trench and right away it was marked with a greasy thumbprint as Zocalo took it.

Ballard left the garage and stood next to her van. She pulled her phone and took a photo of the invoice Zocalo had let her keep. She then texted the photo to Bosch with a message.

Bosch didn’t respond right away. Ballard got in her van and headed toward Venice.

She caught the morning migration west and it took almost an hour to get to the overnight pet-care facility where she kept Lola. After she got her dog and took her for a short walk around the Abbot Kinney neighborhood, she returned to the van and drove over to the canals, Lola sitting upright on the passenger seat.

Public parking near the canals was at a premium. Ballard did what she often did when she visited Aaron. She parked in the city lot on Venice Boulevard and then walked into the canal neighborhood on Dell. Aaron shared one side of a town house duplex on Howland with another lifeguard. The other side of the duplex was also the home of lifeguards. There seemed to be a steady rotation of them moving in and out as assignments changed. Aaron had been there for two years and liked working Venice Beach. While others aspired to assignments farther north toward Malibu, he was content to stay and therefore had the longest residency in the duplex, which was notable for its dolphin-shaped mailbox.

Ballard knew that Aaron would be home alone, since all lifeguards worked day shifts. She patted the dolphin on the head and led Lola through the gate by her leash. The sliding door on the lower level had been left half open for her and she entered without knocking.

Aaron was lying on the couch, eyes closed, balancing a bottle of tequila on his chest. He startled when Lola went over and licked his face. He grabbed the bottle before it fell.

“You okay?” Ballard asked.

“I am now,” he said.

He sat up and smiled, happy to see her. He held out the tequila but she shook her head.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

Ballard knew what he was feeling. Any death experience — whether it was a close call for oneself or involvement in the death of another — led to some kind of primordial need to affirm not having been vanquished from existence. That affirmation could turn into some of the best sex ever.

She pointed Lola to a dog bed in the corner. Aaron had a pit bull but he had apparently taken her to the kennel even though he had the day off. Lola dutifully climbed onto the round cushion, circled it three times, and finally sat down with a view of the sliding door. She would be on guard. There was no need to even close the slider.

Ballard went over to the couch, grabbed Aaron’s hand, and led him toward the stairs. He started to speak as they went up.

“They took him off life support at nine last night after they got all the family there. I went over. I sort of wish I hadn’t. Not a good scene. At least they didn’t blame me. I got to him as fast as I could.”

Ballard quieted him when they got to the bedroom door.

“No more,” she said. “Leave that out here.”

Thirty minutes later they were lying entwined and spent on the floor of Hayes’s bedroom.

“How’d we get off the bed?” Ballard asked.

“Not sure,” Hayes said.

He reached over to the tequila bottle on the wood floor but Ballard used her foot to push it out of reach. She wanted him to hear what she said next.

“Hey!” Hayes said, feigning upset.

“Did I ever tell you that my father drowned?” Ballard asked. “When I was a kid.”

“No, that’s awful.”

He moved in closer to her to console her. She was turned and looking at the wall.

“Did it happen here?” Hayes asked.

“No, Hawaii,” Ballard said. “That’s where we lived. He was surfing. They never found him.”

“I’m sorry, Renée. I—”

“It was a long time ago. I always just wished they had found him, you know? It was so strange that he just got on his board and went out there. And then he never came back.”

They were silent for a long moment.

“Anyway, I was thinking about that with that guy yesterday,” Ballard said. “At least you brought him in.”

Hayes nodded.

“That must’ve been awful for you back then,” he said. “You should have told me this before.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just sort of... you know, your father drowns at the beach and now you mostly sleep at the beach. You and me, with me being a lifeguard. What’s that say?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think about it.”

“Did your mother remarry?”

“No, she wasn’t around. I don’t think she knew for a long time.”

“Oh, man. This story just gets worse.”

He had his arm around her, just below her breasts. He pulled her against his chest and kissed the back of her neck.

“I don’t think I’d be here doing what I do if things hadn’t happened the way they did,” Ballard said. “There’s that.”

She reached her leg out, hooked the tequila bottle, and slid it in so he could reach it.

But he didn’t. He kept her in his embrace. She liked that.