The Dark Hours

1

It was supposed to rain for real and that would have put a damper on the annual rain of lead. But the forecast was wrong. The sky was blue-black and clear. And Renée Ballard braced for the onslaught, positioning herself on the north side of the division under the shelter of the Cahuenga overpass. She would have preferred being alone but was riding with a partner, and a reluctant partner at that. Detective Lisa Moore of the Hollywood Division Sexual Assault Unit was a day-shift veteran who just wanted to be home with her boyfriend. But it was always all hands on deck on New Year’s Eve. Tactical alert: everyone in the department in uniform and working twelves. Ballard and Moore had been working since 6 p.m. and it had been quiet. But it was now about to strike midnight on the last day of the year and the trouble would begin. Added to that, the Midnight Men were out there somewhere. Ballard and her reluctant partner needed to be ready to move quickly when the call came in.

“Do we have to stay here?” Moore asked. “I mean, look at these people. How can they live like this?”

Ballard surveyed the makeshift shelters made of discarded tarps and construction debris that lined both sides of the underpass. She saw a couple of Sterno cook fires and people milling about at their meager encampments. It was so crowded that some shanties were even pressed up against the mobile toilets the city had put on the sidewalks to preserve some semblance of dignity and sanitation in the area. North of the overpass was a residential zone of apartments fronting the hillside area known as the Dell. After multiple reports of people defecating in the streets and yards of the neighborhood, the city came through with the portable toilets. A humanitarian effort, it was called.

“You ask that like you think they all want to be living under an overpass,” Ballard said. “Like they have a lot of choices. Where are they going to go? The government gives them toilets. It takes their shit away but not much else.”

“Whatever,” Moore said. “It’s such a blight — every overpass in the fucking city. It’s so third world. People are going to start leaving the city because of this.”

“They already have,” Ballard said. “Anyway, we’re staying here. I’ve spent the last four New Year’s Eves under here and it’s the safest place to be when the shooting starts.”

They were quiet for a few moments after that. Ballard had thought about leaving herself, maybe going back to Hawaii. It wasn’t because of the intractable problem of homelessness that gripped Los Angeles. It was everything. The city, the job, the life. It had been a bad year with the pandemic and social unrest and violence. The police department had been vilified, and she along with it. She’d been spat on, figuratively and literally, by the people she thought she stood for and protected. It was a hard lesson, and a sense of futility had set upon her and was deep in the marrow now. She needed some kind of a break. Maybe to go track down her mother in the mountains of Maui and try to reconnect after so many years.

She took one of her hands off the wheel and held her sleeve to her nose. It was her first time back in uniform since the protests. She could make out the smell of tear gas. She had dry-cleaned the uniform twice but the odor was baked in, permanent. It was a strong reminder of the year that had been.

The pandemic and protests had changed everything. The department went from being proactive to reactive. And the change had somehow cast Ballard adrift. She had found herself more than once thinking about quitting. That is, until the Midnight Men came along. They had given her purpose.

Moore checked her watch. Ballard noticed and glanced at the dashboard clock. It was off by an hour, but doing the math told her it was two minutes till midnight.

“Oh, here we go,” Moore said. “Look at this guy.”

She was looking out her window at a man approaching the car. It was below 60 degrees but he wore no shirt, and he was holding his dirt-caked pants up with his hand. He wore no mask either. Moore had her window cracked but now hit the button and closed and sealed the car.

The homeless man knocked on her window. They could hear him through the glass.

“Hey, officers, I got a problem here.”

They were in Ballard’s unmarked car but she had engaged the flashing grille lights when they parked in the median under the overpass. Plus they were in full uniform.

“Sir, I can’t talk to you without a mask,” Moore said loudly. “Go get a mask.”

“But I been ripped off,” the man said. “That sumbitch o’er there took my shit when I was sleepin’.”

“Sir, I can’t help you until you get a mask,” Moore said.

“I don’t have no fucking mask,” he said.

“Then I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “No mask, no ask.”

The man punched the window, his fist hitting the glass in front of Moore’s face. She jerked back even though it had not been a punch intended to break the glass.

“Sir, step back from the car,” Moore commanded.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Sir, if I have to get out, you’re going to County,” Moore said. “If you don’t have corona now, you’ll get it there. You want that?”

The man started to walk away.

“Fuck you,” he said again. “Fuck the police.”

“Like I never heard that before,” Moore said.

She checked her watch again, and Ballard looked back at the dash clock. It was now the final minute of 2020, and for Moore and most people in the city and the world, the year couldn’t end soon enough.

“Jesus Christ, can we move to another spot?” Moore complained.

“Too late,” Ballard said. “I told you, we’re safe under here.”

“Not from these people,” Moore said.

2

It was like a bag of popcorn cooking in a microwave. A few pops during the final countdown of the year and then the barrage as the frequency of gunfire made it impossible to separate it into individual discharges. A gunshot symphony. For a solid five minutes, there was an unbroken onslaught as revelers of the new year fired their weapons into the sky following a Los Angeles tradition of decades.

It didn’t matter that what goes up must come down. Every new year in the City of Angels began with risk.

The gunfire of course was joined by legitimate fireworks and firecrackers, creating a sound unique to the city and as reliable through the years as the changing of the calendar. The over/under at roll call was eighteen in terms of calls related to the rain of lead. Windshields mostly would be the victims, though the year before, Ballard had caught a callout on a case in which a bullet fell through a skylight and hit a stripper on the shoulder as she was dancing on a stage below. The falling bullet didn’t even break the skin. But a jagged piece of falling skylight glass did give a customer sitting close to the stage a new part in his hair. He chose not to make a police report, because it would reveal that where he was didn’t match where he had told his family he would be.

Whatever the number of calls, patrol would handle most of them unless a detective was warranted. Ballard and Moore were mostly waiting for one call. The Midnight Men. It was a painful reality that sometimes you needed predators to strike again in hopes of a mistake or a new piece of evidence that could lead to a solve.

The Midnight Men was the unofficial moniker Ballard had bestowed on the tag team rapists who had assaulted two women in a five-week span. Both assaults had occurred on holiday nights — Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. The cases were linked by modus operandi, not DNA, because the Midnight Men were careful not to leave DNA behind. Each attack started shortly after midnight and lasted as long as four hours while the predators took turns assaulting women in their own beds, ending the torture by cutting off a large hank of each victim’s hair with the knife that had been held to her throat during the terrifying ordeal. Other humiliations were included in the attacks and helped link the cases beyond the rarity of a two-man rape team.

Ballard, as the third-watch detective, had been the responding detective on both cases. She then handed the cases over to the day-watch detectives from the Hollywood Division Sexual Assault Unit. Lisa Moore was a member of that three-detective unit. Since Ballard worked the shift when the attacks had occurred, she was informally added to the team.

In past years, a pair of serial rapists would have immediately drawn the attention of the Sex Crimes Unit that worked out of the Police Administration Building downtown as part of the elite Robbery-Homicide Division. But City Hall cutbacks in police funding had seen the unit disbanded, and sex assault cases were now handled by the divisional detective squads. It was an example of how protesters demanding the defunding of the police department had achieved their goal in an indirect way. The move to defund was turned away by the city’s politicians, but the police department had burned through its budget in dealing with the protests that followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. After weeks of tactical alert and associated costs, the department was out of money and the result was freezes on hiring, the disbanding of units, and the end of several programs. In effect, the department had been defunded in several key areas.

Lisa Moore was a perfect example of how all of this led to a downgrade in service to the community. Rather than the Midnight Men investigation going to a specialized unit with many resources as well as detectives who had extra training and experience in serial investigations, it had gone to the overworked and understaffed Hollywood Division Sexual Assault team, which was responsible for investigating every rape, attempted rape, assault, groping, indecent exposure, and claim of pedophilia in a vast geographic and population-dense area. And Moore was like many in the department since the protests, looking to do as little as possible between now and retirement, no matter how far away it was. She was looking at the Midnight Men case as a time suck taking her away from her normal eight-to-four existence, where she dutifully filed paperwork the first half of the day and conducted minimal investigative work after that, leaving the station only if there was no way the work could be done by phone and computer. She had greeted her assignment to work the midnight shift with Ballard over the New Year’s holiday as a major insult and inconvenience. Ballard, on the other side of that coin, had seen it as a chance to get closer to taking down two predators who were out there hurting women.

“What do you hear about the vax?” Moore asked.

Ballard shook her head.

“Probably the same as you hear,” she said. “Next month — maybe.”

Now Moore shook her head.

“Assholes,” she said. “We’re first-fucking-responders and should get it with the fire department. Instead we’re with the grocery workers.”

“The fire guys are considered health-care providers,” Ballard said. “We’re not.”

“I know, but it’s the principle of it. Our union is shit.”

“It’s not the union. It’s the governor, the health department, a lot of things.”

“Fuckin’ politicians...”

Ballard let it go. It was a complaint heard often at roll calls and in police cars across the city. Like many in the department, Ballard had already contracted Covid-19. She had been knocked down for three weeks in November and now just hoped she had enough antibodies to see her through to the vaccine’s arrival.

During the brooding silence that followed, a patrol car pulled up next to them on Moore’s side in one of the two southbound lanes.

“You know these guys?” Moore asked as she reached for the window button.

“Unfortunately,” Ballard said. “Pull your mask up.”

It was a team of P2s named Smallwood and Vitello, who always had too much testosterone running in their blood. They also thought they were “too healthy” to contract the virus and eschewed the department-mandated mask requirement.

Moore lowered the window after pulling her mask up.

“How’s things in the tuna boat?” Smallwood said, a wide smile on his face.

Ballard pulled up her department-issued mask. It was navy blue with LAPD embossed in silver along the jawline.

“You’re blocking traffic there, Smallwood,” Ballard said.

Moore looked back at Ballard.

“Really?” she whispered. “Small wood?”

Ballard nodded.

Vitello hit the switch for the light bar on the patrol car’s roof. Flashing blue lit up the graffiti on the concrete walls above the tents and shanties on both sides of the overpass. Various versions of “Fuck the Police” and “Fuck Trump” had been whitewashed by city crews but the messages came through under the penetrating blue light.

“How’s that?” Vitello asked.

“Hey, there’s a guy over there wants to report a theft of property,” Ballard responded. “Why don’t you two go take a report?”

“Fuck that,” Smallwood said.

“Sounds like detective work to me,” Vitello added.

The conversation, if it could be called that, was interrupted by the voice of a com center dispatcher coming up on the radio in both cars, asking for any 6-William unit, “6” being the designation for Hollywood, and “William” for detective.

“That’s you, Ballard,” Smallwood said.

Ballard pulled the radio out of its charger in the center console and responded.

“Six-William-twenty-six. Go ahead.”

The dispatcher asked her to respond to a shooting with injury on Gower.

“The Gulch,” Vitello called over. “Need backup down there, ladies?”

Hollywood Division was broken into seven different patrol zones called Basic Car Areas. Smallwood and Vitello were assigned to the area that included the Hollywood Hills, where crime was low and most of the residents they encountered were white. This was a move designed to keep them out of trouble and away from confrontational enforcement with minorities. However, it had not always worked. Ballard had heard about them roughing up teenagers in cars parked illegally on Mulholland Drive, where there were spectacular views of the city at night.

“I think we can handle it,” Ballard called across. “You boys can go back up to Mulholland and watch for kids throwing their condoms out the window. Make it safe up there, guys.”

She dropped the car into drive and hit the gas before either Smallwood or Vitello could manage a comeback.

“Poor guy,” Moore said without sympathy in her voice. “Officer Smallwood.”

“Yeah,” Ballard said. “And he tries to make up for it every night on patrol.”

Moore laughed as they sped south on Cahuenga.

3

The Gower Gulch was the name affixed by Hollywood lore to the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, where almost a hundred years ago it was a pickup spot for day laborers. These laborers waited at the corner for work as extras in the westerns the movie studios were turning out by the week. Many of the Hollywood cowboys waited at the intersection in full costume — dusty boots, chaps, vests, ten-gallon hats — so it became known as the Gower Gulch. It was said that a young actor named Marion Morrison picked up work here. He was better known as John Wayne.

The Gulch was now a shopping plaza with the fading facade of an Old West town and portraits of the Hollywood cowboys — from Wayne to Gene Autry — hanging on the outside wall of the Rite Aid drugstore. Going south from the Gulch, a stretch of studio stages as big as gymnasiums lined the east side all the way down to the crown jewel of Hollywood, Paramount Studios. The storied studio was surrounded by twelve-foot-high walls and iron gates, like a prison. But these barriers were constructed to keep people out, not in.

The west side of Gower was a contradiction. It was lined with a stretch of car repair shops sharing space with aging apartment buildings where burglar bars guarded all windows and doors. The west side was marked heavily by the graffiti of a local gang called Las Palmas 13, but the east-side walls of the studios were left unmarred, as if those with the spray paint knew by some intuition not to mess with the industry that built the city.

The shooting call took Ballard and Moore to a street party in the tow yard of an auto body shop. Several people were milling about in the street, most without masks. Most were watching officers from two patrol cars who were taping off a crime scene inside the gated and asphalt-paved yard, which was lined with vehicles in different stages of repair and restoration.

“So, we have to do this, huh?” Moore said.

“I do,” Ballard said.

She opened the door and got out of the car. She knew her answer would shame Moore into following. Ballard was pretty sure she was going to need Moore to help with this.

Ballard ducked under yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the business and quickly ascertained that the victim of the shooting was not on scene and had been transported. She saw Sergeant Dave Byron and another officer trying to corral a group of potential witnesses in one of the business’s open garages. Two other uniforms were stringing an inner boundary around the actual crime scene, which was marked by a pool of blood and debris left behind by the paramedics. Ballard walked directly over to Byron.

“Dave, what do you have for me?” she asked.

Byron looked over his shoulder at her. He was masked but she could tell by his eyes that he was smiling.

“Ballard, I have a shit sandwich for you,” he said.

She signaled him away from the citizens so they could talk privately.

“Folks, you all stay right here,” Byron said, holding his hands up in a stay-put motion to the witnesses, which Ballard took to mean that they might not understand English.

He joined Ballard by the front of the rusting body of an old VW bus. He looked at what he had jotted down in a small notebook.

“Your victim is supposedly Javier Raffa, owner of the business,” he said. “Lives about a block from here.”

He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the neighborhood west of the body shop.

“For what it’s worth, he has a known affiliation with Las Palmas,” Byron added.

“Okay,” Ballard said. “Where’d they transport him?”

“Hollywood Pres. He was circling.”

“What did the wits tell you?”

“Not much. Left them for you. Raffa apparently has the gates open and puts out a keg every New Year’s Eve. It’s for the neighborhood but a lot of Las Palmas shows up. After the countdown, there was some shooting of firearms into the sky, and then suddenly Raffa was on the ground. So far nobody is saying they actually saw him get hit. And you’ve got shell casings all over the place. Good luck with that.”

Ballard shot her chin toward a camera mounted on the roof eave over the corner of the garage.

“What about cameras?” she asked.

“The cameras outside are dummies,” Byron said. “Cameras inside are legit but I haven’t checked them. I’m told they are not in a position to be of much help.”

“Okay. You get here before the EMTs?”

“I didn’t, but a seventy-nine did. Finley and Watts. They said it was a head wound. They’re over there and you can go talk to them.”

“I will if I need to.”

Ballard checked to see if either of the uniforms who were marking the boundary was a Spanish speaker. Ballard knew basic Spanish but was not skilled enough to conduct witness interviews. She saw that one of the officers tying the crime scene tape to the sideview mirror of an old pickup was Victor Rodriguez.

“You mind if I keep V-Rod to translate?” she asked.

Ballard thought she saw the lines of a frown form on Byron’s mask.

“How long?” he asked.

“Preliminary with the witnesses and then maybe the family,” Ballard said. “I’ll get somebody from another unit if we transport anybody back to the station.”

“All right, but anything else comes up, I’m going to need to pull him back out.”

“Roger that. I’ll move fast.”

Ballard walked over to Rodriguez, who had been with the division for about a year after transferring from Rampart.

“Victor, you’re with me,” Ballard said.

“I am?” he said.

“Let’s go talk to witnesses.”

“Cool.”

Moore caught up to Ballard in step toward the group of witnesses.

“I thought you were staying in the car,” Ballard said.

“What do you need?” Moore said.

“I could use someone at Hollywood Pres to check on the victim. You want to take the car and head over?”

“Shit.”

“Or you can interview witnesses and family while I go.”

“Give me the keys.”

“I thought so. Keys are still in the car. Let me know what you find out.”

Ballard briefed Rodriguez in a whisper as they approached the witnesses.

“Don’t lead them,” she said. “We just want to know what they saw, what they heard, anything they remember before they saw Mr. Raffa on the ground.”

“Got it.”

They spent the next forty minutes doing quick interviews with the collected witnesses, none of whom saw the victim get shot. In separate interviews, each described a crowded, chaotic scene in the lot, during which most people were looking up at the stroke of midnight as fireworks and bullets cut through the sky. Though no one admitted doing it themselves, they acknowledged that there were those in the neighborhood crowd who had fired guns into the air. None of these witnesses revealed anything that made them important enough to transport to the station for another round of questioning. Ballard copied their addresses and phone numbers into her notebook and told them to expect follow-up contact from Homicide investigators.

Ballard then signaled Finley and Watts into a huddle to ask them about first impressions of the crime. They told her the victim was nonresponsive upon arrival and appeared to have been hit by a falling bullet. The wound was at the top of the head. They said they were mostly occupied with crowd control, keeping people away from the victim and creating space for the paramedics.

As she was wrapping up with them, Ballard got a call from Moore, who was at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

“The victim’s family is all here, and they’re about to get the word that he didn’t make it,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

I want you to act like a trained detective, Ballard thought but didn’t say.

“Keep the family there,” she said instead. “I’m on my way.”

“I’ll try,” Moore said.

“Don’t try, do it,” Ballard said. “I’ll be there in ten. Do you know if they speak English?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay, find out and text me. I’ll bring somebody in case.”

“What’s it looking like over there?”

“Too early to tell. If it was an accident, the shooter didn’t stick around. And if it wasn’t, I’ve got no camera and no witnesses.”

Ballard disconnected and walked over to Rodriguez.

“Victor, you need to drive me to Hollywood Pres,” she said.

“No problem.”

Ballard informed Byron of where she was going and asked him to keep the crime scene secured until she got back.

As she crossed the lot, following Rodriguez to his car, she saw the first drops of rain hitting the asphalt amid the bullet casings.

4

Rodriguez used the lights but not the siren to speed their drive to the hospital. Ballard used the minutes to call her lieutenant at home to update him. Derek Robinson-Reynolds, the OIC of Hollywood detectives, picked up immediately, having texted Ballard his request for the update.

“Ballard, I was expecting to hear from you sooner than this.”

“Sorry, L-T. We had several witnesses to talk to before we could get a handle on this. I also just heard that our victim is DOA.”

“Then I’ll have to get West Bureau out. I know they’re already running full squad on a two-bagger from yesterday.”

Homicides were handled out of West Bureau. Robinson-Reynolds was ready to pass the investigation off but knew it would not be well received by his counterpart at West Bureau Homicide.

“Sir, you can do that, of course, but I haven’t determined what this is yet. There were a lot of people shooting guns at midnight. Not sure if this was accidental or intentional. I’m heading to the hospital now to get a look at him.”

“Well, didn’t any of the witnesses see it?”

“Not the witnesses who stuck around. They just saw the victim on the ground. Anybody who saw it happen scrammed out of there before the unis got on scene.”

There was a pause as the lieutenant considered his next move.

They were a block from the hospital. Ballard spoke before Robinson-Reynolds responded.

“Let me run with it, L-T.”

Robinson-Reynolds remained silent. Ballard made her case.

“West Bureau is running on the two-bagger. We don’t even know what this is yet. Let me stay with it and we’ll see where it stands in the morning. I’ll call you then.”

The lieutenant finally spoke.

“I don’t know, Ballard. Not sure I want you capering out there on your own.”

“I’m not alone. I’m with Lisa Moore, remember?”

“Right, right. Nothing on that tonight?”

He was asking about the Midnight Men.

“Not so far. We’re pulling into Hollywood Pres now. The family of the victim is here.”

It pushed Robinson-Reynolds to make a decision.

“Okay, I’ll hold off on West Bureau. For now. Keep me informed. No matter the hour, Ballard.”

“Roger that.”

“Okay, then.”

Robinson-Reynolds disconnected. Ballard’s phone buzzed with a text as Rodriguez was pulling to a stop behind Ballard’s car, which had been left by Moore in an ambulance bay.

“Was that Dash?” Rodriguez asked. “What did he say?”

He was using the short name ascribed to Robinson-Reynolds by most in the division when not addressing the lieutenant personally. Ballard checked the text. It had come from Moore: No English spoken here.

“He gave us the green light,” Ballard said.

“Us?” Rodriguez said.

“I’m probably going to need you in here too.”

“Sergeant Byron told me to double-time back.”

“Sergeant Byron’s not in charge of the investigation. I am, and you’re with me until I say otherwise.”

“Roger that — as long as you tell him.”

“I will.”

Ballard found Moore in the ER waiting room, surrounded by a group of crying women and one teenage boy. Raffa’s family had just gotten the bad news about their husband and father. A wife, three adult daughters, and the son were all exhibiting various degrees of shock, grief, and anger.

“Oh, boy,” Rodriguez said as they approached.

Nobody liked intruding on the kind of trauma unexpected death brings.

“I heard you want to be a detective someday, V-Rod,” Ballard asked.

“Fuck, yeah,” Rodriguez responded.

“Okay, I want you to help Detective Moore interview the family. Do more than translate. Ask the questions. Any known enemies, his association with Las Palmas, who else was at the shop tonight. Get names.”

“Okay, what about you? Where are—”

“I need to check the body. Then I’ll be joining you.”

“Got it.”

“Good. Let Detective Moore know.”

Ballard split off from him and went to the check-in counter. Soon she was led back to the nursing station that was in the middle of the ER. It was surrounded by multiple examination and treatment spaces separated by curtain walls. She asked a nurse if the body of the gunshot victim had been moved yet from a treatment space and was told that the hospital was waiting for a coroner’s team to pick it up. The nurse pointed her to a closed curtain.

Ballard pulled back the pastel-green curtain, entered the single-bed examination space, and then closed the curtain behind her. Javier Raffa’s body was faceup on the bed. There had been no attempt to cover him. His shirt — a blue work shirt with his name on an oval patch — was open and his chest still showed conduit ointment, likely from paddles that had been used in an attempt to revive him. There were also whitish discolorations on the brown skin of his chest and neck. His eyes were open, and there was a rubber device extending from the mouth. Ballard knew it had been placed in his mouth before the paddles were used.

Ballard pulled a pair of black latex gloves out of a compartment on her equipment belt and stretched them on. Using both hands, she gently turned the dead man’s head to look for the entry wound. His hair was long and curly, but she found the entry at the upper rear of his head under hair matted by blood. Judging from its location, she doubted there was an exit wound. The bullet was still inside, which in terms of forensics was a break.

She leaned farther over the bed to look closely at the wound. She guessed that it had been made by a small-caliber bullet and noticed that some of the hair around it was singed. It meant that the weapon had been held less than a foot away when discharged. She saw specks of burnt gunpowder in Javier Raffa’s hair.

In that moment, Ballard knew this had been no accident. Raffa had been murdered. A killer had used the moment when all eyes were cast upward to the midnight sky and there was gunfire all around to hold a gun close to Raffa’s head and pull the trigger. And in that moment, Ballard knew she wanted the case, that she would find a way to keep this conclusion to herself until she was too deeply embedded to be removed.

She knew this could be the solve she needed to save herself.

5

Ballard pulled the curtain closed after stepping out of the treatment bay and walked over to the nursing station so she would not block traffic in the busy ER. She took out her phone and called the number for the Hollywood Division Gang Enforcement Detail. No one picked up. She then called the inside line in the watch office. Sergeant Kyle Dallas answered and Ballard asked him who was working second twelves from GED.

“That would be Janzen and Cordero,” Dallas said. “And I think Sergeant Davenport is around too.”

“Out or in?” Ballard asked.

“I just saw Cordero in the break room, so I guess they might have all come in now that the witching hour is passed.”

“Okay, if you see them, tell them to stay put. I need to talk to them. I’ll be in soon.”

“You got it.”

Ballard went through the automatic doors to the waiting room and saw Moore and Rodriguez sitting in the corner with the Raffa family in a group interview. Renée was annoyed that Moore had not conducted individual interviews but then she reminded herself that Moore was used to investigating sexual assaults, which usually involved solo interviews of victims. Moore was out of her league here and Rodriguez just didn’t know any better.

Ballard saw that the son was sitting outside the huddle and looking over the shoulders of two of his sisters at Moore. He was young enough to still be in school, which meant he might speak English. Moore should have known this.

She walked up and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Do you speak English?” she whispered.

The boy nodded.

“Come with me, please,” Ballard said.

She led him over to another corner. The waiting room was surprisingly uncrowded. Surprising for any night of the week but particularly for post-midnight on New Year’s Eve. She pointed to a chair for the boy to take and then pulled a second chair away from the wall and positioned it so they could talk face-to-face.

They both sat down.

“What’s your name?” Ballard asked.

“Gabriel,” the boy said.

“You are Javier’s son?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. We are going to find out what happened and who did it. I’m Detective Ballard. You can call me Renée.”

Gabriel eyed her uniform.

“Detective?” he asked.

“We had to be in uniform for New Year’s Eve,” Ballard said. “Everybody out on the street, that sort of thing. How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“What school do you go to?”

“Hollywood.”

“And you were at the shop’s tow yard tonight at midnight?”

“Yes.”

“Were you with your father?”

“Uh, no, I was... over by the Caddy.”

While at the crime scene, Ballard had seen a rusting old Cadillac parked in the lot. Its trunk was open and there was a beer keg sitting in a bed of ice inside it.

“Were you with anyone by the Caddy?” Ballard asked.

“My girlfriend,” Gabriel said.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t want to get her in trouble or nothing.”

“She’s not in trouble. We’re just trying to figure out who was there tonight, that’s all.”

Ballard waited.

“Lara Rosas,” Gabriel finally said.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” Ballard said. “Do you know Lara from school or the neighborhood?”

“Uh, both.”

“And she went home?”

“Yeah, she left when we came here.”

“Did you see what happened to your father?”

“No, I just saw after. Him lying there.”

Gabriel was exhibiting no emotion and Ballard saw no tear lines on his face. She knew this meant nothing. People process and express shock and grief in different ways. Unusual behavior or a lack of obvious emotion should not be considered suspicious.

“Did you see anybody at the party that you thought was strange or didn’t belong?” Ballard asked.

“Not really,” Gabriel said. “There was a guy there at the keg who didn’t look like he belonged. But it was a street party. Who knows.”

“Was he asked to leave?”

“No, he was just there. He got his beer and then I guess he left. I didn’t see him no more.”

“Was he from the neighborhood?”

“I doubt it. I never saw him before.”

“What makes you say that he didn’t look like he belonged?”

“Well, he was a white guy, plus he seemed kind of dirty, you know. His clothes and stuff.”

“You think he was homeless?”

“I don’t know, maybe. That’s what I thought.”

“And this was before the shooting that you saw him?”

“Yeah, before. Definitely. It was before everyone started looking up.”

“You said his clothes were dirty. What was he wearing?”

“A gray hoodie and blue jeans. His pants were dirty.”

“Was it dirt or grease?”

“Like dirt, I think.”

“Was the hoodie up or down? Could you see his hair?”

“It was up. But it kind of looked like he had a shaved head.”

“Okay. What about his shoes, do you remember them?”

“Nah, I don’t know about his shoes.”

Ballard paused and tried to commit the details of the stranger to memory. She was not writing anything down. She thought it would be better to maintain eye contact with Gabriel and not possibly spook him by taking out a notebook and pen.

“Who else did you notice who wasn’t right?” she asked.

“Nobody else,” Gabriel said.

“And you’re not sure if the guy in the hoodie hung around after getting his beer?”

“I didn’t see him again.”

“So, when you last saw him, how long was that before midnight and all the shooting started?”

“I don’t know, a half hour.”

“Did you see anybody like your dad ask him what he was doing there or ask him to leave?”

“No, because it was like a block party. Everybody welcome.”

“Did you see any other white people at the party?”

“A few, yeah.”

“But they weren’t suspicious.”

“No.”

“But this other guy was.”

“Well, it was like a party and he was dirty. And he had the hoodie up, you know?”

“Your father had a work shirt on. Was that usual?”

“’Cause it had his name on it. He wanted all the neighbors to know who he was. He always did that.”

Ballard nodded. It was now time to ask more difficult questions and hold this kid to her side as long as she could.

“Did you fire any weapons tonight, Gabriel?” she asked.

“No, no way,” Gabriel said.

“Okay, good. Are you associated with Las Palmas Thirteen?”

“What are you asking me? I’m no gangster. My dad said no way.”

“Don’t get upset. I’m just trying to figure out what’s what. You’re not associated, that’s good. But your father was, right?”

“He quit that shit a long time ago. He was totally legit.”

“Okay, that’s good to know. But I heard there were guys from Las Palmas in the shop yard for the party. Is that true?”

“I don’t know, maybe. My father grew up with these people. He didn’t just throw them in the trash. But he was legit, his business was legit, he even had a white man as his partner. So don’t go starting no shit about ‘gang related.’ That’s bullshit.”

Ballard nodded.

“Good to know, Gabriel. Can you tell me, was his partner there?”

“I didn’t see him. Are we done here?”

“Not yet, Gabriel. What is the partner’s name?”

“I don’t know. He’s a doctor up in Malibu or some shit. I only seen him once when he came in with a bent frame.”

“A bent frame?”

“His Mercedes. He backed into something and bent the frame.”

“Got it. Okay, I need two more things from you, Gabriel.”

“What?”

“I need your girlfriend’s phone number and I need you to step outside to my car for a minute.”

“Why should I go with you? I want to see my father.”

“They’re not going to let you see your father, Gabriel. Not till later. I want to help you. I want this to be the last time you have to talk to the police about this. But to do that, I need to wipe your hands to make sure you’re telling the truth.”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t fire a gun tonight. I wipe your hands with something I have in my car and we’ll know for sure. After that, you’ll only hear from me when I come by to tell you we caught the person who did this to your father.”

Ballard waited while Gabriel considered the options.

“If you won’t do it, I have to assume you lied to me. You don’t want that, do you?”

“All right, whatever, let’s do it.”

Ballard walked over to the group first to ask Moore for the car keys. Moore said they were in the car. She then led Gabriel out to the ambulance bays. Here she pulled a notebook out of her back pocket. After writing down the cell number for Gabriel’s girl, she jotted down his description of the man in the hoodie. She then opened her car’s trunk. She took out a packet of wipe pads for gunshot-residue testing, used separate pads to wipe both Gabriel’s hands, then sealed them in plastic bags to be submitted to the lab.

“See, no gunpowder, right?” Gabriel said.

“The lab will confirm that,” Ballard said. “But I already believe you, Gabriel.”

“So, what do I do now?”

“You go in and be with your mother and your sisters. They’re going to need you to be strong for them.”

Gabriel nodded and his face contorted. It was as though telling him to be strong had kicked his strength out from beneath him.

“You okay?” Ballard asked.

She touched his shoulder.

“You’re going to catch this guy, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” Ballard said. “We’re going to catch him.”

6

Ballard didn’t get back to the station until almost 3 a.m. She went up the stairs off the back hallway and into the room shared by the Gang and Vice units. It was long and rectangular and usually empty because both units worked the streets. But now the room was crowded. Officers from both squads, in uniform like Ballard, sat behind desks and at worktables going down the length of the room. Most of them were not wearing masks. The large crowd could be explained in a number of ways. First, it was difficult to work vice and gangs in full uniform, as dictated by the department’s tactical alert. This meant the alert, which was supposed to put as many officers on the street as possible during the New Year’s celebration, was having the opposite effect. It could also mean that, because it was beyond the witching hours of midnight to 2 a.m., everyone had returned to the house on break. But Ballard knew that it could also be that this was the new LAPD — officers stripped of the mandate of proactive enforcement and waiting to be reactive, to hit the streets only when it was requested and required, and only then doing the minimum so as not to engender a complaint or controversy.

To Ballard, much of the department had fallen into the pose of a citizen caught in the middle of a bank robbery. Head down, eyes averted, adhering to the warning: nobody move, and nobody gets hurt.

She spotted Sergeant Rick Davenport at the end of one of the worktables and headed toward him. He looked up from a cell phone to see her coming, and a maskless smile of recognition creased his face. He was mid-forties and had been working gangs in the division for over a decade.

“Ballard,” he said. “I hear El Chopo got it tonight.”

Ballard stopped at the table.

“El Chopo?” she asked.

“That’s what we called Javier back in the day,” Davenport said. “When he was a gangster and using his padre’s place as a chop shop.”

“But not anymore?”

“He supposedly went straight after his wife started dropping kids.”

“I was surprised I didn’t see you out at the scene tonight. That why?”

“That and other things. Just doin’ what the people want.”

“Which is staying off the street?”

“It’s pretty clear if they can’t defund us, they want to de-see us, right, Cordo?”

Davenport looked for affirmation to a gang cop named Cordero.

“Right, Sergeant,” Cordero said.

Ballard pulled out the empty chair on Davenport’s right side and sat down. She decided to get to the point.

“So, what can you tell me about Javier?” she asked. “Do you believe he went straight? Would Las Palmas even allow that?”

“The word is that twelve or fifteen years ago, he bought his way out,” Davenport said. “And as far as we know, he’s been clean and legit ever since.”

“Or too smart for you?”

Davenport laughed.

“There’s always that possibility.”

“Well, do you still have a file on the guy? Shake cards, anything?”

“Oh, we’ve got a file. It’s probably a little dusty. Cordo, pull the file on Javier Raffa and bring it to Detective Ballard.”

Cordero got up and walked to the line of four-drawer file cabinets that ran the length of one side of the room.

“That’s how far this guy goes back,” Davenport said. “He’s in the paper files.”

“So definitely not active?” Ballard pressed.

“Nope. And we would have known if he was. We follow some of the OGs. If they were meeting, we would have seen it.”

“How far up was Raffa before he dropped out?”

“Not far. He was a soldier. We never made a case on the guy but we knew he was chopping stolen cars for the team.”

“How did you hear he bought his way out?”

Davenport shook his head like he couldn’t remember.

“Just the grapevine,” he said. “I can’t name you the snitch offhand — it was a long time ago. But that was what was said, and as far as we could tell, it was accurate.”

“How much does something like that cost?” Ballard asked.

“Can’t remember. It might be in the file.”

Cordero returned from the cabinets and handed a file to Davenport instead of Ballard. He in turned handed it to Ballard.

“Knock yourself out,” he said.

“Can I take this?” Ballard asked.

“As long as you bring it back.”

“Roger that.”

Ballard took the file, got up, and walked out. She had the feeling that several of the men were watching as she left the room. She was not popular in the office after a year of cajoling and then demanding intel and help in her investigations from people bent on doing as little as possible.

She went down the stairs and into the detective bureau, where she saw Lisa Moore at her desk. She was typing on her computer.

“You’re back,” Ballard said.

“No thanks to you,” Moore said. “You left me with those people and that kid cop.”

“Rodriguez? He probably has five years on the job. He worked Rampart before coming here.”

“Doesn’t matter. He looks like a kid.”

“Did you get anything good from the wife and daughters?”

“No, but I’m writing it up. Where is this going anyway?”

“I’m going to keep it for a bit. Send whatever you’ve got to me.”

“Not to West Bureau?”

“They’re running all teams on a double murder. So I’ll work this until they’re ready to take it.”

“And Dash is okay with that?”

“I talked to him. It’s not a problem.”

“What do you have there?”

She pointed to the file Ballard was carrying.

“And old Gang file on Raffa,” Ballard said. “Davenport said he hasn’t been active in years, that he bought his way out when he started a family.”

“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” Moore said.

The sarcasm was clear in her voice. Ballard had long realized that Moore had lost her empathy. Working sex cases full-time probably did that. Losing empathy for victims was a self-protective measure, but Ballard hoped it never happened to her. Police work could easily hollow you out. But she believed that losing one’s empathy was losing one’s soul.

“Send me your reports when you’re ready to file,” Ballard said.

“Will do,” Moore said.

“And nothing on the Midnight Men, right?”

“Not yet. Maybe they’re lying low tonight.”

“It’s still early. On Thanksgiving we didn’t get the callout till dawn.”

“Wonderful. Can’t wait till dawn.”

The sarcasm again. Ballard ignored it and grabbed an empty desk nearby. Because she worked the late show, she didn’t have an assigned spot. She was expected to borrow a desk in the room whenever she needed one. She looked at a few of the knickknacks on the one shelf in the cubicle where she sat and quickly realized it was the workstation of a dayside Crimes Against Persons detective named Tom Newsome. He loved baseball, and there were several souvenir balls on little pedestals on the shelf. They had been signed by Dodgers players past and present. The gem of the collection was in a small plastic cube to protect it. It wasn’t signed by a player. Instead the signature was from the man who had called Dodgers games on radio and TV for more than fifty years. Vin Scully was revered as the voice of the city because he transcended baseball. Even Ballard knew who he was, and she thought that Newsome was risking the ball getting stolen, even in a police station.

Opening the file in front of her, Ballard was greeted by a booking photo of Javier Raffa as a young man. He had died at age thirty-eight, and the photo was from a 2003 arrest for receiving stolen property. She read the details on the arrest report the photo was clipped to. It said Raffa had been pulled over in a 1977 Ford pickup truck with several used auto parts in the bed. One of these parts — a trans-axle — still had the manufacturing serial number embossed on it, and it was traced to a Mercedes G-wagon reported stolen in the San Fernando Valley the month before.

According to the records in the file, Raffa’s lawyer, listed as Roger Mills, negotiated a disposition that got the twenty-one-year-old Javier probation and community service in exchange for a guilty plea. The case was then expunged from Raffa’s record when he completed probation and 120 hours of community service without issue. The file noted that his community service included painting over gang graffiti on freeway overpasses throughout the city.

It was the one and only arrest record in the file, although there were several field interview cards paper-clipped together there. These were all dated before the arrest and went back to when Raffa was sixteen years old. Most of these came out of basic gang rousts — patrol breaking up parties or Hollywood Boulevard cruise lines. Officers taking down names and associates, tattoos, and other descriptors to be fed into Gang Intel files and databases. As the son of a body shop owner, Raffa was always driving classic and restored cars or low riders that were also described on the shake cards.

From early on in the cards Raffa had the nickname El Chopo ascribed to him. It was an obvious riff on the moniker of one of the biggest cartel kingpins, known as El Chapo, which meant Shorty in Spanish. One note that caught Ballard’s eye and was repeated on the four cards written and filed between 2000 and 2003 was the description of a tattoo on the right side of Raffa’s neck. It depicted a white billiard ball with an orange stripe and the number 13 — a reference to Las Palmas 13 and its association with and deference to la eMe, the prison gang also known as the Mexican Mafia. The 13 was a reference to M, the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.

Ballard thought about the discoloration she had seen on Raffa’s neck. She realized it was laser scarring from when he’d had the tattoo removed.

There was a photocopy of an intel report in the file dated October 25, 2006, that was a bullet-point recounting of multiple nuggets of unsubstantiated bits of gossip and information from a confidential informant identified as LP3. Ballard assumed that the informant was a Las Palmas insider. She scanned through the separate entries and found the one about Raffa.

• Javier Raffa (El Chopo) DOB 02/14/82 — said to have paid Humberto Viera $25K cash tribute for no-strings separation from the gang.

Ballard had never heard of someone buying their way out of a gang. She had always known of the blood in, blood out, till death do us part rule of gang law. She picked up the desk phone. Newsome had taped a station phone directory to it. She called the extension next to GED and asked for Sergeant Davenport. While she waited for him to come on the line, she picked one of the baseballs off its pedestal and tried to make out the signature scribbled on it. She knew little about baseball or Dodgers players past and present. To her, the first name of the signature looked like Mookie but she thought she had to have that wrong.

Davenport came on the line.

“It’s Ballard. Got a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Humberto Viera of Las Palmas, is he still around?”

Davenport chuckled.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘around,’” he said. “He’s been up in Pelican Bay for at least eight, ten years. And he isn’t coming back.”

“Your case?” Ballard asked.

“I was part of it, yeah. Got him on a couple of one-eight-sevens of White Fence guys. We flipped the getaway driver, and that was it for Humberto. Bye-bye on him.”

“Okay. Anyone else I could talk to about Javier Raffa buying his way out of the gang?”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. That goes pretty far back, as far as I remember. I mean, there are always OGs around, but they’re original gangsters because they toe the line. But for the most part, these gangs turn over membership every eight or ten years. Nobody’s going to talk to you about Raffa.”

“What about LP-three?”

There was a pause before Davenport answered. And it was clear that earlier, when he had claimed not to remember the snitch, he was lying.

“What do you think you’ll get out of her?”

“So it’s a woman?”

“I didn’t say that. What do you think you’ll get out of him?”

“I don’t know. I’m looking for a reason somebody put a bullet in Javier Raffa’s head.”

“Well, LP-three is long gone. That’s a dead end.”

“You’re sure now?”

“I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Sergeant. I’ll catch you later.”

Ballard put the phone in its cradle. It was clear to her from Davenport’s gaffe that LP3 was a woman and possibly still active as an informant. Otherwise he would not have been so clumsy in trying to cover up his slip of the tongue. Ballard didn’t know what it meant in terms of her case, considering that Raffa had apparently separated from the gang fourteen years earlier. But it was good to know that if the case turned toward the gang, the GED had an insider who could provide insight and information.

“What was that about?” Moore asked.

She was sitting across the aisle from Ballard.

“Gang Enforcement,” Ballard said. “They don’t want me talking to their Las Palmas CI.”

“Figures,” Moore said.

Ballard wasn’t sure what that meant but didn’t respond. She knew Moore was one and done on the late show. Her involvement in the case would end when the sun came up and her shift was over, the tactical alert was ended, and all officers returned to their normal schedules. Moore would be back on dayside, but Ballard would be left alone to work in the dark hours.

It was exactly the way she wanted it.

7

Ballard began putting together the murder book on the Raffa case. This effort started with the tedious job of writing out the incident report, which described the killing and identified the victim but also included many mundane details such as time of the initial call, names of responding patrol officers, ambient temperature, next-of-kin notification, and other details that were important in documenting but not solving the case. She then wrote summaries of the witness interviews she had conducted and collected from Lisa Moore, though Moore’s reports were short and perfunctory. A summary of the interview with Raffa’s youngest daughter had only one line: “This girl knows nothing and can contribute nothing to the investigation.”

All of this was put into a three-ring binder. Lastly, Ballard started a case chrono that recorded her movements by time and included mention of her discussion with Davenport. She then made copies of the documents in the GED file and put them in the binder as well. She got all of this done by 5 a.m. and then got up and approached Moore, who was looking at email on her phone. Their shift ended in an hour but that didn’t matter to Ballard.

“I’m going to go downtown to see what Forensics collected,” Ballard said. “You want to stay or go?”

“I think I’ll stay,” Moore said. “There’s no way you’ll be back by six.”

“Right. Then do you mind taking the GED file back up to Davenport?”

“Sure, I’ll take it. But why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Running with the case. It’s a homicide. You’re just going to turn it over to West Bureau as soon as everybody wakes up over there.”

“Maybe. But maybe they’ll let me work it.”

“You’re giving the rest of us a bad name, Renée.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just stay in your lane. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt, right?”

Ballard shrugged.

“You didn’t say that about me jumping on the Midnight Men case,” she said.

“That’s rape,” Moore said. “You’re talking about a homicide case.”

“I don’t see the difference. There’s a victim and there’s a case.”

“Well, put it this way: West Bureau will see a difference. They’re not going to be nice about you trying to take away one of theirs.”

“We’ll see. I’m going. Let me know if our two assholes hit again.”

“Oh, I will. And you do the same.”

Ballard went back to her borrowed desk, closed her laptop, and collected her things. She pulled up her mask for the walk down the back hallway to the exit. There was a prisoner lockdown bench there and she wanted the extra protection. There was no telling what the arrested bring into the station.

After leaving the station, she took the 101 toward downtown, driving through the pre-dawn grays toward the towers that always seemed lit at any hour of darkness. Traffic had generally been cut in half during the pandemic, but the city at this hour was dead, and Ballard made it to the 10 east interchange in less than fifteen minutes. From there it was only another five minutes before the exit to the Cal State L.A. campus. The Forensic Science Center, the five-story lab shared by the LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, was at the south end of the vast campus.

The building seemed just as quiet as the streets. Ballard took the elevator up to the third floor, where the crime scene techs worked. She buzzed her way in and was met by a criminalist named Anthony Manzano, who had been out at the Javier Raffa crime scene.

“Ballard,” he said. “I was wondering who I was going to hear from.”

“It’s me for now,” Ballard said. “West Bureau is running with a double and it’s all hands on deck there.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Everybody but me is working it. Come on back.”

“Must be a hairy case.”

“More like a TV case and they don’t want to look bad.”

Ballard had been curious about why no media had turned up at the Gower Gulch case. She had thought that the initial theory, that someone was killed by a falling bullet, would be catnip to the media, but so far, there had been no inquiries that she was aware of.

Manzano led her through the lab to his workstation. She saw three other criminalists at work in other pods and assumed they were on the West Bureau case.

“What’s the case out there?” she asked casually.

“Elderly couple robbed and murdered,” Manzano said.

After a pause he delivered the kicker.

“They were set on fire,” he said. “While alive.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ballard said.

She shook her head but immediately thought, yes, the media would be all over that case, and the department would throw several bodies on it to give the appearance of leaving no stone unturned. That meant she stood a good chance of being able to keep the Raffa case if she could get the approval of Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds.

There was a light table in Manzano’s pod, and spread across it was a wide piece of graph paper on which he had been in the process of sketching the crime scene.

“This is your scene right here and I’ve been plotting the locations of the casings we collected,” Manzano said. “It looked like the shootout at the O.K. Corral out there.”

“You mean the firing into the sky, right?” Ballard said.

“I do, and it’s interesting. We have thirty-one shells recovered and I think it adds up to only three guns in play — including the murder weapon.”

“Show me.”

Beside the graph paper was a clipboard with Manzano’s notes and drawings from the scene. There was also an open cardboard box containing the thirty-one bullet casings in individual plastic evidence bags.

“Okay, so thirty-one shots produced thirty-one shells on the ground,” Manzano said. “We have three separate calibers and ammunition brands, so this becomes pretty easy to figure out.”

He reached into the box, rooted around in it, and came out with one of the bagged bullet casings.

“We have identified seventeen casings as nine-millimeter PDX1 rounds produced by Winchester,” Manzano said. “You will have to get confirmation from FU, but to me, as a nonexpert, the firing-pin marks on these look alike, and that would suggest they all came from a nine-millimeter weapon that would hold sixteen rounds in the clip and one in the chamber if fully loaded.”

Manzano had referenced the Firearms Unit, which was no longer called that because of the other meaning associated with the acronym. It had been updated to Firearms Analysis Unit.

“I think you are probably looking at a Glock seventeen or similar weapon there,” Manzano said. “Then we have thirteen casings that were forty-caliber and manufactured by Federal. I looked at our ammo catalog, and these likely were jacketed hollow points, but FU would have an opinion on that. And of course these could have been fired by any number of firearms. Twelve in the clip, one in the chamber.”

“Okay,” Ballard said. “That leaves one.”

Manzano reached into the box and found the bag containing the last casing.

“Yes,” he said. “And this is a Remington twenty-two.”

Ballard took the evidence bag and looked at the brass casing. She was sure it was from the bullet that killed Javier Raffa.

“This is good, Anthony,” she said. “Show me where you found it.”

Manzano pointed to an X on the crime scene schematic that had the marker number 1 next to it and was inside the rectangular outline of a car. To the right of the car was a stick figure that Ballard took to be Javier Raffa.

“Of course, the victim was transported before we got there, but the blood pool and EMT debris marked that spot,” he said. “The casing was nine feet, two inches from the blood and located under one of the wrecks in the tow yard. The Chevy Impala, I believe.”

Ballard realized that they had caught a break. The ejected shell had gone under the car and that made it difficult for the gunman to retrieve it before people started to notice that Raffa was down.

She held up the evidence bag.

“Can I take this to Firearms?” she asked.

“I’ll write a COC,” Manzano said.

He was talking about a chain-of-custody receipt.

“Do you know if anyone is over there?” Ballard asked.

“Should be somebody,” Manzano said. “They’re on max deployed like everybody else.”

Ballard pulled her phone and checked the time. Tactical alert would end in fifteen minutes. It was Friday and the January 1 holiday. The Firearms Analysis Unit might possibly go dark.

“Okay, let me sign the COC and get over there before they leave,” she said.

The FAU was just down the hall and Ballard entered with ten minutes to spare. At first she thought she was too late — she didn’t see anyone. And then she heard someone sneeze.

“Hello?”

“Sorry,” someone said. “Coming out.”

A man in a black polo shirt with the FAU logo stepped out from one of the gun storage racks that lined one wall of the unit. The unit had collected so many varieties of firearms over the years that they were displayed in rows of racks that could be closed together like an accordion.

The man was carrying a feather duster.

“Just doing a little housekeeping,” he said. “We wouldn’t want Sirhan’s gun to get dusty. It’s part of history.”

Ballard just stared for a moment.

“Mitch Elder,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”

Ballard identified herself.

“Are you about to leave at the end of the tac alert?” she asked.

“Supposed to,” Elder said. “But... whaddaya got?”

It had been Ballard’s experience that gun nuts always liked a challenge.

“We had a homicide this morning. Gunshot. I have a casing and was looking for a make on the weapon used, maybe a NIBIN run.”

The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network was a database that stored characteristics of bullets and casings used in crimes. Each carried markings that could be matched to specific weapons and compared crime to crime. Casings were a better bet than bullets because bullets often fragmented or mushroomed on impact, making comparisons more difficult.

Ballard held up the clear evidence bag with the casing in it as bait. Elder’s eyes fixed on it. He didn’t take long.

“Well, let’s see what you got,” he said.

Ballard handed him the bag and then followed him to a workstation. He put on gloves, removed the casing, and studied it under a lighted magnifying glass. He turned it in his fingers, studying the rim for marks left by the weapon that had fired it.

“Good extractor marking,” he finally said. “I think you’re looking for a Walther... but we’ll see. This will take a little time for me to encode. If you want to go get breakfast, I’ll be here when you get back.”

“No, I’m good,” Ballard said. “I have to make a call.”

“Then maybe we can get breakfast after we’re done.”

“Uh... I think I’ll probably need to keep moving with the case. But thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’m going to find an empty desk.”

She walked away, almost shaking her head. She was annoyed with herself for adding the thanks at the end of the rejection.

She found a workspace that was completely bare except for a phone on the desk. She pulled her own phone and called Robinson-Reynolds, clearly waking him up.

“Ballard, what is it?”

He seemed annoyed.

“You told me to update you no matter the time.”

“I did. Whaddaya got?”

“I think our shooting was a homicide — a murder — and I want to stick with it.”

“Ballard, you know it needs to go to—”

“I know the protocol but West Bureau is running with a big media case and I think they would welcome me taking it off their hands — at least until they come up for air on the double they’ve got.”

“You’re not a homicide detective.”

“I know, but I was. I can handle this, L-T. We’ve already conducted witness interviews and I’ve been to Forensics and now I’m at Firearms running NIBIN on the shell we found.”

“You shouldn’t have done any of that. You should have turned it over as soon as you knew it wasn’t an accidental.”

“West Bureau was busy; I ran with it. We can turn it over now but they won’t jump on it, and hours and maybe days will go by before they do.”

“It’s not my call, Ballard. It’s their call. Lieutenant Fuentes over there.”

“Can you call him and grease this for me, L-T? He’ll probably be happy we want to take it off his hands.”

“There is no ‘we’ on this, Ballard. Besides, you are supposed to be off duty starting ten minutes ago. I got no overtime for you.”

“I’m not doing this for OT. No greenies on this.”

“Greenies” was a reference to the color of the 3 x 5 cards that had to be filled out and signed by a supervisor authorizing overtime work.

“No greenies?” Robinson-Reynolds asked.

“Nope,” Ballard promised.

“What about the Midnight Men, and where is Moore in all of this? You’re supposed to be working together.”

“She stayed at the station to start putting together the murder book and writing up witness statements. Nothing came up on the Midnight Men but I’ll still be working that. I’m not dropping it.”

“Then that’s a lot on your plate.”

“I wouldn’t ask for this if I couldn’t handle my plate.”

There was a pause before Robinson-Reynolds made a decision.

“Okay, I’ll make the call to Fuentes. I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, L-T.”

The lieutenant disconnected first and Ballard walked back over to Elder’s workstation. He was gone. She looked around and saw him sitting at a computer terminal by the window that looked out on the 10 freeway. It meant he was on the NIBIN database. She walked over.

“Ballard, you’ve got something here,” Elder said.

“Really?” Ballard said. “What?”

“Another case. The bullet is linked to another murder. Almost ten years ago up in the Valley. A guy got shot in a robbery. The shells match. Same gun was used. A Walther P-twenty-two.”

“Wow.”

Ballard felt a cold finger go down her spine.

“What’s the case number?” she asked.

Elder dictated a number off the computer screen. Ballard grabbed a pen out of a cup next to the computer terminal and wrote the number in her notebook.

“What’s the vic’s name?” she asked.

“Lee, Albert, DOD two-two-eleven.”

She wrote it all down.

“It’s an open case?” she asked.

“Open-unsolved,” Elder said. “An RHD case.”

Robbery-Homicide Division, Ballard’s old unit before she was unceremoniously shipped out to work the late show in Hollywood. But 2011 was before her time there.

“Does it say who the I/O is?” she asked.

“It does but it’s out of date,” Elder said. “Says here the investigating officer is Harry Bosch. But I knew him and he’s been retired awhile.”

Ballard froze for just a moment before managing to speak.

“I know,” she then said.

8

Ballard pulled to a stop in front of the house on Woodrow Wilson. She yawned and realized that going home first had probably been a mistake. Changing out of the stiff uniform was a good thing, but then dozing on the couch for an hour had somehow only served to underline her exhaustion, not knock it down.

She could hear music coming from the house as soon as she opened the car door. Something high velocity but more bluesy than she was used to hearing from Harry Bosch. And there were vocals. It made her think that maybe someone else was inside listening.

She knocked loudly on the door to be heard over the music. It was immediately cut off and then the door opened. It was Bosch.

“Well,” he said. “The prodigal detective.”

“What?” Ballard said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I just haven’t heard from you in a long time. Thought you forgot about me.”

“Hey, you were the one who went off to the dark side, working for that defense lawyer. I thought there was no time for me.”

“Really?”

“Really. So, you get the vaccine yet? How do you feel about having visitors inside? I’ve got antibodies and can keep my mask on.”

Bosch stepped back for her to enter.

“You can come in and you can lose the mask. I haven’t got the vax yet but I’ll risk it. And for the record, I didn’t work for Mickey Haller. I work for myself.”

Ballard crossed the threshold, ignoring the comment about Haller and keeping her mask on.

“It sounded like you were having a party in here.”

“I mighta had the volume up a bit.”

The house was unchanged. The galley kitchen was to the right of the entry area and she stepped forward toward the view, passing by the dining area into the living room. The sliders were open to the deck and the view of the Cahuenga Pass. She pointed to the open doors.

“Letting everybody in the canyon hear your beats,” she said. “Nice.”

“Is that what this is?” Bosch asked. “A noise complaint?”

She turned and looked at him.

“Actually, it’s a complaint but about something else.”

“Great way to start off the new year — with the LAPD mad at me. Might as well hit me with it.”

“Not the LAPD. So far. Just me. This morning I drove all the way out to Westchester to the new homicide library they opened out there. You know, where they keep all the murder books from open cases. They finally put them all in one central place. And I asked for a book from one of your old cases and they told me it was gone, last checked out by you.”

Bosch frowned and shook his head.

“I read about that place in the paper,” he said. “Sponsored by the Ahmanson family. But the grand opening was long after I was out the door at LAPD. I’ve never set foot in that place, let alone checked out a book.”

Ballard nodded like she anticipated his response, and had an answer.

“They moved the archives from the divisions over one at a time,” she said. “If a book was checked out, they moved the checkout card over so there would be a space on the shelf at Ahmanson. The card on your case was from 2014 — three years after the murder and before you pulled the pin.”

Bosch didn’t respond at first, like he was checking facts in his head.

“The case was 2011?” he finally asked. “What was the name?”

“Albert Lee. Killed with a Walther P-twenty-two. You recovered the casing, apparently. But that’s about all I know, because you took the damn murder book. I need it back, Harry.”

Bosch held up his hand like he was trying to stop the accusation.

“I didn’t take the book, okay?” he said. “When I left, I copied the chronos of every case I still had open. On some I copied everything. But I never took a book. And with the archives in the divisions, anybody could have taken that book and put my name on the checkout card. There was no security around the books. We supposedly didn’t need it, because they were considered safe — they were in police stations, after all.”

Ballard folded her arms across her chest, not ready to give in on the point just yet.

“So, you’re saying you might have the chrono but you don’t have the book?”

“Exactly. I kept the chronos in case they ever got cleared and I got pulled into court to testify about the initial investigation. I wanted to be able to refresh my memory, that sort of thing. I remember the Albert Lee case. It wasn’t the kind of case where I’d even want to steal the book.”

Ballard shifted her stance and looked back at the dining room table. She saw a six-inch stack of documents she had not noticed when she had entered. The top page was clearly the front page of an autopsy report. She pointed to it.

“And what’s that?” she asked. “That looks like a whole book at least.”

“It’s parts of about six books,” Bosch said. “But it isn’t Lee. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Why would I lie to you about this, Renée?”

“I don’t know. But stealing books is not cool.”

“I agree. That’s why I never did it.”

She walked over to the table and used a hand to spread the stack out over the table so she could see some of the documents. One of the documents had what looked like a surveillance photo attached to it. It showed a man getting into a car in what was clearly the parking lot of an In-N-Out restaurant. There was no time-and-date stamp, so it wasn’t an official stakeout shot.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“It’s not the Lee case,” Bosch insisted. “It’s something else entirely, okay?”

“I’m just asking. Who is it?”

“Finbar McShane.”

Ballard nodded. It explained the stack. Some cases spawn many murder books. Especially the unsolved cases.

“I thought so,” she said. “Can’t let it go, can you?”

“And what, you think I should?” Bosch asked. “He killed a whole family and got away with it. I should let it go?”

“I’m not saying that. I know it’s your white whale, Harry. We’ve talked about it.”

“Okay, then you know.”

Ballard wanted to switch the conversation back to her case.

“You said Lee wasn’t the kind of case you’d copy a whole book for,” she said. “What do you mean by that?”

“It didn’t get its hooks into me,” Bosch said.

“Why not?”

“Well, as you know, or as I guess you will come to know, some people are sort of the architects of their own demise. And others, they get hit by the bus. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they did nothing to bring on their fate. They’re innocent.”

Bosch gestured to the pile of documents spread out on his table.

“And they’re the ones who get their hooks in you,” he said.

Ballard nodded and was silent for a moment, as if giving all those who were innocent her respect.

“Hooks or no hooks, can you tell me what you remember about Lee?” she asked. “I’ve made a ballistic connection to the killing of a man in Hollywood last night.”

Bosch raised his eyebrows. He was finally intrigued.

“Last murder of the year, huh?” he said.

“Actually, the first,” Ballard said. “When the shooting started at midnight, somebody put one in my victim’s head.”

“Audio camouflage. Clever. Who’s the vic?”

“Harry, you’re not the one asking questions here. Tell me about Lee first, then we can talk about my case. Maybe.”

“Got it. You want to sit?”

He gestured toward the table instead of the more comfortable living room. He moved behind it, where his back would be to a wall of unkempt stacks of books, files, CDs, and LPs, and sat down. Ballard sat across from him.

As Bosch spoke, he pushed the files Ballard had spread out back into a squared-off pile.

“Albert Lee, black male, I think he was thirty-four when he died. Maybe thirty-three. He had a good idea. Rappers were becoming stars overnight, making their own tapes, coming right out of the ghetto and all of that. He borrowed money and opened a recording studio up in North Hollywood. It was nice, it was out of the gang territories of South Central, and people could come in, rent time in the studio, and lay down their raps. It was a great idea.”

“Until it wasn’t.”

“Right, until it wasn’t. I mentioned he borrowed the money. He had a monthly nut he had to pay, plus rent and other expenses. Plus some of these people who came up to his place to record—”

“Were gangsters.”

“No. I mean, yeah, they were, but what I was going to say was they had no money for studio time, and Albert — he had a soft side — he’d let them record if they signed over a piece of whatever they made off the beats, you know?”

“Got it. Just try to collect on that down the line.”

“Exactly, and a few of these people hit it sort of big, but even then collecting was slow. He sued a couple of those guys and it got all tied up in the courts.”

“He was going out of business?”

“That would have been the case but he took on an investor. Do you know what factoring is?”

“Nope.”

“It’s a high-interest business loan that is sort of a bridge loan. It’s secured by your accounts receivable. Make sense?”

“Not really, no.”

“Say your company is owed a hundred dollars but it’s not going to come in for a couple months. A factor loan would give you the hundred so you can keep the business rolling, but it’s not secured by property or equipment, because none of that stuff is owned by the company. It’s all rented. The only value the company has for securing a loan is what it’s owed — accounts receivable.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“So that’s what Albert Lee did. Only these are high-interest loans — it gets right up to the edge of loan-sharking but doesn’t cross the line. It’s legal and that’s the road Albert went down. He took out three different loans totaling a hundred thousand, got upside down, and couldn’t pay them because his lawsuits were delayed and delayed. So, soon his loan guy takes over the business. He leaves Albert in charge and running the place, he pays him a salary, and — and this is the thing — he makes him take out a key person insurance policy in case something happens to him.”

“Oh, shit. How much?”

“A million.”

“So Albert gets whacked and the loan guy gets paid.”

“Exactly.”

“But you couldn’t make a case.”

“Couldn’t get it there.”

Bosch gestured to the stack of documents on the table.

“Like this one. I have a pretty good idea who did it, but I can’t get it there. But unlike this family, Albert went down the road with his killer. For some people, the wolf breaks into the house. With people like Albert, they invite the wolf in.”

“So no sympathy for the guy who invites the wolf in. How does that fit with ‘everybody counts or nobody counts’?”

“The guy who opens the door still counts. But the innocents come first. When I get all of those solved, we can talk about the next wave. Everybody still counts. There are only so many hours in the day and days in the year.”

“And this is why a guy who kills an entire family is on the top of your pile.”

“You got it.”

Ballard nodded as she digested Bosch’s view of what it took to either get hooked by a case or be able to put it at the end of the line.

“So,” she finally said. “On the Albert Lee case, who was the factor?”

“It was a doctor,” Bosch said. “A dentist, actually. His name was John William James. His offices were down in the Marina and I guess he made so much money capping teeth that he started factoring.”

“You said ‘was.’ His name ‘was’ John William James.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be a problem with your case. John William James is dead. A couple years after Albert Lee got murdered, James got himself whacked as well. He was sitting in his Mercedes in the parking lot outside his office when somebody put a twenty-two in his head too.”

“Shit.”

“There goes your lead, huh?”

“Maybe. But I’d still like to see if you can find the chrono on the case, and whatever else you’ve got.”

“Sure. It’s either in the carport closet or under the house.”

“Under?”

“Yeah, I built a storage room under there after I retired. It’s pretty nice. I even have a bench for when I go down and look through cases.”

“Which I’m sure you do often.”

Bosch didn’t respond, which she took as confirmation.

“By the way,” Ballard said. “How are you doing with everything... from the radiation case?”

She hesitated saying the word leukemia.

“I’m still kicking, obviously,” Bosch said. “I take my pills and that seems to keep it in check. It could come back but for now I’ve got no complaints.”

“Good to hear,” Ballard said. “So do you mind looking for that chrono now?”

“Sure, I’ll be right back. It might take me a few. You want me to put the music back on?”

“That’s okay, but I was going to ask, what was that you were playing when I pulled up? It had a groove.”

“‘Compared to What.’ Some people say it was the first jazz protest song: ‘Nobody gives us rhyme or reason. Have one doubt, they call it treason.’”

“Okay, put it back on. Who is it?”

Bosch got up and went to the stereo to hit the play button. Then he adjusted the volume down.

“Originally Eddie Harris and Les McCann, but this version is John Legend and The Roots.”

Ballard started to laugh. Bosch hit the button again.

“What?” he asked.

“You surprise me, Harry, that’s all,” Ballard said. “I didn’t think you listened to anything recorded this century.”

“That hurts, Ballard.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll be right back.”

9

Ballard was in the garage of her condominium complex, grabbing her kit bag out of the back, the printouts from Bosch under her arm, when a man approached her. She tensed as she scanned the garage and saw no one else around. Her gun was in the kit bag.

“Hello, neighbor,” the man said. “I just wanted to introduce myself. You’re twenty-three, right?”

She knew he meant her apartment number. She’d been in the building just a few months, and though there were only twenty-five units, she had not yet met all of her neighbors.

“Uh, yeah, hi,” she said. “Renée.”

They bumped elbows.

“I’m Nate in thirteen, right below you,” he said. “Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year to you,” Ballard said.

“My partner is Robert. He said he met you when you were moving stuff in.”

“Oh, right, yeah, I met Robert. He helped me get a table into the elevator.”

“And he said you’re a cop.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I guess it’s not a great time to be a cop these days.”

“It has its moments. Not all good, not all bad.”

“Just so you know, I did join the Black Lives Matter protest. Don’t hold it against me.”

“I won’t. And I agree, Black lives matter.”

Ballard noticed he was carrying a helmet and wearing cycling gear, including the tight biking shorts with padding in the butt that look awkward whenever you’re off the bike. She wanted to change the subject without being rude to a neighbor.

“You ride?” she asked.

It was a dumb question but the best she could manage.

“Every chance I can,” Nate said. “But I sure see that you have a different hobby.”

He pointed to the boards Ballard had propped against the garage wall in front of her Defender. One was her paddleboard for flat days, the other her Rusty Mini Tanker for surfing the Sunset break. The rest of her boards were in the condo’s storage room, but her closet was full and she knew leaving her most used boards in the garage risked theft. She hoped the cameras on the exits were a deterrent.

“Yeah, I guess I like the beach,” she said, immediately not liking her answer.

“Well, good to meet you and welcome,” Nate said. “I should also tell you I’m current president of the homeowners association. I know you rent from the corporate owners — we approved that — but if you need anything HOA-related, knock on my door on the first floor.”

“Oh, okay. I will.”

“And I hope to see you at one of the mixers down in the courtyard.”

“I haven’t heard about that.”

“First Friday of every month, not including today, of course. Happy hour. It’s BYOB but people share.”

“Okay, good. Maybe I’ll see you there. And nice to meet you.”

“Happy New Year!”

“Same.”

Ballard was still getting used to having neighbors and felt awkward during the meet and greets — especially when it came out that she was a cop. She had spent most of the last four years alternating between a tent on Venice Beach and using her grandmother’s house in Ventura for sleeping. But Covid-19 shut the beaches, while the growing homeless population in Venice made it a place she didn’t want to be. She had rented the apartment, which was only ten minutes from the station. But it meant having neighbors above and below and to the left and right.

Nate headed toward the elevator, while she decided on the stairs so she wouldn’t have to ride with him and make more small talk. Her phone started to buzz and she struggled to pull it from her pocket without dropping the paperwork from Bosch. She saw on the screen that it was Lisa Moore calling.

“Fuck me,” Lisa said by way of hello.

“What’s wrong, Lisa?” Ballard asked.

“We got a case and I’m five minutes from the Miramar with Kevin.”

Ballard interpreted that to mean the Midnight Men had claimed another victim and Moore was almost to the resort in Santa Barbara with her boyfriend, a sergeant at Olympic Division.

“What’s the case?” she asked.

“The victim didn’t call it in till an hour ago,” Moore said. “I thought we were clear.”

“You mean she was raped last night but just reported it now?”

“Exactly. She sat in a bathtub for hours. Look, they took her to the RTC.... Is there any chance you can handle it, Renée? I mean, it will probably take me two-plus hours to get back from here with the traffic and shit.”

“Lisa, we were on call the whole weekend.”

“I know, I know, I just thought that after we talked, I was clear, you know? We’ll turn around. It’s uncool to ask you.”

Ballard turned around and headed back to her car. It was a big ask from Moore, not just because this was technically her case. Ballard knew that any trip to the rape treatment center would leave a mark on her. There weren’t any uplifting stories to come out of the RTC. She opened the door of her Defender and put the kit bag back in.

“I’ll handle it,” she said. “But at some point Dash is going to check in and he might call you. You’re the one from Sex. Not me.”

“I know, I know,” Moore said. “I was thinking I would call him now and say we got the call and one of us will update him after we talk to the victim. If you call him later, that should cover me. And if you need me tomorrow, I’ll come back.”

“Whatever. I just don’t want my ass in a sling for covering for you.”

“It won’t be. You’re the best. I’ll call you later to check in.”

“Right.”

They disconnected. Ballard was annoyed. It wasn’t because of Moore’s lack of work ethic. After a year of pandemic and anti-police sentiment, commitment to the job was sometimes hard to find. The why-should-we-care disease had infected the whole department. What annoyed her was the disruption of her plan to spend the evening at home, ordering in from Little Dom’s, digging into the chronological record on the Albert Lee killing, and looking for connections to the Javier Raffa killing. Now that she had pulled a fresh Midnight Men case, Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds would be sure to turn the Raffa investigation over to West Bureau Homicide first thing in the morning.

“Shit,” she said as she started the Defender.

The RTC was an adjunct to the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. Ballard had been there many times on cases, including the time she herself was examined for evidence of rape. She knew most of the women — it was all women who worked there — on a first-name basis. She entered the unmarked door and found two dayside uniforms she recognized as McGee and Black — both males — standing in the waiting room.

“Hey, guys, I can take it from here,” she said. “How’d the call come in?”

“She called it in,” Black said. “The victim.”

“She thought about it all day and then decided she’d been raped,” McGee said. “Whatever evidence there was went down the bathtub drain.”

Ballard stared at him for a moment, trying to read the sentiment behind such an asshole statement.

“Well, we’ll see about that,” she finally said. “Just so you know, I’m guessing she had no doubt about whether she was raped, okay, McGee? Her hesitation was most likely about making a report to a department and officers who don’t give a shit and don’t view rape as much of a crime.”

McGee’s cheeks started to blotch red with either anger or embarrassment or both.

“Don’t get upset, McGee,” Ballard said. “I didn’t say I was talking about you, did I?”

“Yeah, bullshit,” McGee said.

“Whatever,” Ballard said. “She told you it was two suspects?”

“She did,” Black said. “One got in, then let the other one in.”

“What time was this?” Ballard asked.

“Right about midnight,” Black said. “She said she didn’t stay up to see in the new year. Got home from work around nine-thirty, made some dinner, then took a shower and went to bed.”

“What was the address?” Ballard asked.

“She lives up in the Dell,” Black said.

He pulled a field interview card out of a back pocket and handed it to Ballard.

“Shit,” Ballard said.

“What?” McGee asked.

“I was sitting under the Cahuenga overpass at midnight,” Ballard said. “Right when these guys were up there behind me.”

The Dell was a hillside neighborhood a few blocks north of the overpass where Ballard and Moore had waited out the New Year’s fusillade. Looking at the field information card, she saw that the victim, Cynthia Carpenter, lived up on Deep Dell Terrace. It was almost all the way up the hill to the Mulholland Dam.

Ballard held the card up as if to ask, is this all you’ve got?

“You’ll do the IR today, right?” she asked.

“As soon as we get out of here,” Black said.

Ballard nodded. She needed the incident report as the starting point of the investigation.

“Well, I’ve got it from here,” she said. “You can go back to the six and write it up.”

“And you can go to hell, Ballard,” McGee said.

He didn’t move. Black grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Let’s just go, dude,” he said. “Let it go.”

Ballard waited to see how McGee wanted to play it. There was a tense moment of silence and then he turned and followed his partner out to the parking lot.

Ballard took a breath and turned toward the admittance desk. The receiving nurse, Sandra, smiled at her, having heard the exchange.

“You tell ’em, Renée,” she said. “Your victim’s in room three with Martha. I’ll let her know you’ll be in the hallway.”

“Thanks,” Ballard said.

Ballard went behind the desk and down the short hallway, which had doors to four examination rooms. Ballard had been there at times when all four contained victims of sexual assault.

The hallway was pastel blue and a mural of flowers had been added, growing from the baseboard, in an attempt to make things seem more pleasant in a place where horrors were documented. On the wall between rooms 1 and 3 was a billboard with various posted offerings of post-traumatic stress therapy and self-defense classes. Ballard was studying a business card tacked to the board that offered firearms instruction from a retired LAPD officer named Henrik Bastin. She found herself hoping that he got a lot of business out of this place.

The door to room 3 opened and Dr. Martha Fallon stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her. She smiled despite the circumstances.

“Hey, Renée,” she said.

“Martha,” Ballard said. “No holiday for you, huh?”

“I guess when rape takes a holiday, we’ll get one, too. Sorry, that sounded trite and I didn’t mean it that way.”

“How is Cynthia?”

“She prefers Cindy. She’s, uh, well, she’s on the dark side of the moon.”

Ballard had heard Fallon use the phrase before. The dark side of the moon was where people lived who had been through what Cindy Carpenter had just been through. Where a few dark hours changed everything about every hour that would come after. The place that only the people who had been through it understood.

Life was never the same.

“You may have heard — she bathed,” Fallon said. “We didn’t get anything, not that it really matters.”

Ballard took that last part to be a reference to the backlog of rape kits waiting to be opened at the Forensics Unit for DNA typing and other evidentiary analysis. That fact alone seemed to stand for where the department and half of society, let alone Officer McGee, located sexual assault on the spectrum of serious crime. Every few years, there was a political outcry and money was found to process the backlog of rape cases. But then the furor subsided and the cases started backing up again. It was a cycle that never ended.

Fallon’s report was no surprise to Ballard. There had been no DNA recovered in the other two Midnight Men cases either. The unknown perpetrators planned and executed their crimes carefully. The cases were connected simply by modus operandi and the rarity of a tag team pair of rapists. It was in fact so rare that it had its own acronym, MOSA — multiple offender sexual assault.

“Are you finished?” Ballard asked. “Can I talk to her?”

“Yes, I told her you were here,” Fallon said.

“How is she?”

Ballard knew the victim wasn’t doing well. Her question referred to the level of psychological trauma within the range known to Fallon from treating thousands of rape survivors over the years, with stranger rapes being the most difficult to deal with.

“She’s not good,” Fallon said. “But you’re in luck, because right now she’s angry, and that’s a good time to talk. Once she has more time to think, it will be more difficult. She’ll pull into her shell.”

“Right,” Ballard said. “I’ll go in.”

“I’ll get her some take-home clothes,” Fallon said. “I assumed you would take her walk-in clothes and bagged them.”

The women went in opposite directions. Ballard moved to the door to room 3 but stood outside for a moment and read what Officer Black had put down on the FI card he had filled out while transporting Cindy Carpenter to the RTC.

Carpenter was twenty-nine years old, divorced, and the manager of the Native Bean coffee shop on Hillhurst Avenue. Ballard suddenly realized she might recognize this victim because the coffee shop was in her neighborhood in Los Feliz, and while Ballard had only moved in a few months prior, Native Bean had become her go-to spot to pick up coffee and an occasional blueberry muffin in the mornings after work, especially if she wanted to stave off sleep and head to the ocean.

Ballard knocked lightly on the door and entered. Cindy Carpenter was sitting up on an examination table and still in a gown. Her clothes, even though she had dressed after bathing, had been collected as evidence and were in a brown paper bag on the examination room counter. It was protocol and the bag had been sealed by Dr. Fallon. There was a second evidence bag in which Black and McGee had had the presence of mind to place the nightgown Carpenter had on when attacked as well as the sheets, blanket, and pillowcases from her bed. That was standard procedure but it was often overlooked by patrol officers. Ballard had to grudgingly give McGee and Black high marks for that. Also on the counter was a prescription written by Fallon for the morning-after pill as well as a card with instructions for how to access the results of HIV and STD testing that would follow the RTC examination.

Ballard did indeed recognize Carpenter. She was tall and thin and had shoulder-length blond hair. Ballard had seen her through the take-out window many times at Native Bean. She had ordered from her on some of those occasions, though it was clear Carpenter was more than a barista and was in charge of the business. Ballard had been looking forward to the day when the interior of the shop would reopen post-pandemic and she could go in and sit at a table. She always did good work in coffee shops. It had been one of the things she missed most in the last year.

Nothing on the FI card or from what Fallon had said in the hallway had prepped Ballard for Carpenter’s physical condition. She had hemorrhagic bruising around both eyes from being choked and lacerations on her lower lip and left ear from being bitten. There was also an abrasion on one eyebrow that Ballard knew from the prior cases had likely occurred when a mask that had been taped over her eyes had been roughly pulled off. And lastly, her layered blond hair was imbalanced by a purposely haphazard cut by her attackers, an indignity that Ballard knew Carpenter would tell her came at the end, and was a creepy coup de grâce of the assault. The rapists would have taken the hair with them.

“Cindy, my name is Renée,” Ballard said, trying to be informal. “I’m a detective with the Hollywood Division of the LAPD. I’m going to be investigating this case and I need to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”

Left alone in the room, Carpenter had been crying. She was holding a tissue in one hand, her cell phone in the other. Ballard wanted to know who she had been calling or texting, but that could come later.

“I almost didn’t call you people,” Carpenter said. “But then I thought, what if they come back? I wanted someone to know.”

Ballard nodded that she understood.

“Well, I’m glad you did call,” Ballard said. “Because I’m going to need your help catching these men.”

“But I can’t help you,” Carpenter said. “I didn’t even see their faces. They were wearing masks.”

“Well, let’s start right there. Did you see their hands? Other parts of their bodies? Were they white, black, brown?”

“Both were white. I could see their wrists and other parts of their bodies.”

“Okay, good. Tell me about the masks.”

“Like ski masks. One was green and one was blue.”

This was consistent with the other two attacks. The connection between the three cases was now more than theory. It was confirmed.

“Okay, that is helpful,” Ballard said. “When did you see the ski masks?”

“At the end,” Carpenter said. “When they ripped the mask off my eyes.”

This was an unusual part of all three attacks. The Midnight Men brought premade tape masks they put on their victims, only to remove them at the end of the assaults. It indicated that they didn’t want to leave the masks behind as evidence. But more important, it was an indication that they weren’t masking the women to prevent them from seeing them. Their own ski masks protected their identity. It meant they wanted to hide something else from their victims.

“Did you see anything else about them? Or just the ski masks?”

“One of them was pulling on his shirt. I saw a bandage on his arm.”

“Which guy, green or blue?”

“Green.”

“What kind of bandage? What did it look like?”

“It was like one of the biggest ones you can get? It was square. Right here.”

She pointed to the inside of her upper arm.

“Do you think it was to cover up a tattoo?”

“I don’t know. I only saw it for, like, half a second.”

“Okay, Cindy, I know this is difficult, but I want to go through what they did to you, and I also need to take my own photos of your injuries. But first I want to ask, Did they say anything to you, anything at all, that might mean that they knew who you were before last night?”

“You mean, like, that it wasn’t random? No, I didn’t know these guys. At all.”

“No, what I mean is, do you think they saw you somewhere, like the coffee shop or where you shop or anywhere else, and decided to target you? Or was it the opposite? They targeted your neighborhood and picked you that way.”

Carpenter shook her head.

“I have no idea,” she said. “They didn’t say stuff like that, they just threatened me and said shit. Like, you think you’re so cool and so high-and-mighty. They—”

She stopped to bring the tissue up as a wave of tears came. Ballard reached out and touched her arm.

“I’m sorry to put you through this,” Ballard said.

“It’s like I’m having to relive it,” Carpenter said.

“I know. But it will help us catch these two... men. And stop them from possibly hurting other women.”

Ballard waited a few moments for Carpenter to compose herself. Then started again.

“Let’s talk about last night before anything happened,” she said. “Did you go out or stay in for New Year’s?”

“Well, I worked till nine, when we closed the shop,” Carpenter said.

“You’re talking about Native Bean?”

“Yes, we call it the Bean. One of my girls has Covid and the schedule is all messed up. I had to work the last shift of the year.”

“I like your shop. I moved over to Finley a few months ago and I’ve been getting my coffee there. Your blueberry muffins are fantastic. Anyway, so you closed up at nine and then you went home? Or did you stop somewhere?”

Ballard guessed she would say she stopped at the Gelson’s supermarket on Franklin. It would be on her way home, and one of the other victims had shopped there the night of her attack.

“I went right home,” Carpenter said. “I made dinner — leftover takeout.”

“And you live alone?” Ballard asked.

“Yes, since I got divorced.”

“What did you do after dinner?”

“I just took a shower and went to bed. I was supposed to open this morning.”

“You open most mornings, right? That’s when I’ve seen you.”

“That’s me. We open at seven.”

“Do you usually take your shower in the morning, before going to work?”

“Actually, no, I’d rather sleep later, so I— Why is this important?”

“Because at this point we really don’t know what’s important.”

Ballard’s disappointment in not getting the Gelson’s connection had disappeared when Carpenter mentioned taking a shower. The two previous victims had said they showered before going to bed on the nights they were assaulted. With only two victims saying this, it could be coincidence. But three out of three became a pattern. Ballard felt her instincts stirring. She believed she might have something to work with.

10

Cindy Carpenter refused further medical attention to her physical injuries. She told Ballard she just wanted to go home. It was a long ride back from the RTC to the Dell, and Ballard used it to go through the story again. By now Carpenter was wrung out and tired but she cooperated, telling the story again in all its humiliating detail, telling what the rapists made her do, what she had heard, and what she had managed to see when the mask taped over her eyes began to come loose. From the first telling at the RTC to the second in the car, Carpenter told the same story, adding or subtracting a few details here and there, but not contradicting herself at any point in the narrative. This was good, Ballard knew. It meant she would be a good witness in terms of the investigation and at trial, should a case ever be made.

Ballard complimented her and told her why. It was important to keep Carpenter cooperating. Often victims grew reluctant when they started to weigh their psychic recovery against trusting the system.

Ballard had purposely not recorded either session. A recording taken in the hours after the assault could be gold in a defense lawyer’s hands. She — yes, smart rapists often employed female attorneys for jury optics — could take any inconsistency between court testimony and a first recounting to tear a hole in the case wide enough for a bus called reasonable doubt to carry the jury through. Ballard always had to think about the moves ahead while trying to solve the present case.

Carpenter had supplied numerous details that incontrovertibly connected her assault to the two previous cases. Chief among these were the time of the attacks, the specific acts of sexual assault the women endured, and the measures taken by the rapists to avoid leaving evidence behind. These efforts included wearing gloves and condoms and, notably, bringing with them a Dustbuster, which was swept over the victim and locations in the house before the suspects exited.

A couple new details did come up in Cindy’s telling of her story in the car. One was that Mr. Green, as they had taken to calling the suspect with the green ski mask, had red pubic hair, while Mr. Blue had dark, near-black pubic hair. Assuming their body hair matched their scalp hair, Ballard now had partial descriptions of both perpetrators. The previous two victims had never seen anything, because the tape placed across their eyes had never come loose. While all three of the victims had said that they could tell by the touch of the rapists that they wore gloves, Carpenter revealed during the drive that she had seen their hands when the tape had come loose, and the gloves they wore were disposable black latex. Ballard knew such gloves were widely available. It wouldn’t be strong evidence of guilt, but it was one of the many details that could be important if suspects were ever identified.

There was another piece of evidence connecting the three cases as part of the MO. During the car-ride questioning, Ballard had focused on how the men spoke and the instructions they gave Carpenter. Ballard did not prompt Carpenter with specific examples because that might lead to a false confirmation of connection. She had to ask Carpenter more generally to try to remember what had been said to her, but the young woman came through with a key connection.

“At the end, before they left, one of them — I think it was Mr. Blue — said, ‘You’re going to be all right, doll. You’ll look back on this one day and smile.’ Then he laughed and they were gone.”

Ballard had been waiting for this. The half apology at the end. The other two victims had reported the same thing, right down to the throwback vernacular of calling the victim “doll.”

“You’re sure he said that? He called you ‘doll’?”

“I’m sure. Nobody’s ever called me that before. It’s like 1980s or something.”

Ballard felt the same way, but that played against Carpenter’s estimate, based on what she had seen of her attackers’ bodies through the loose tape, that they were in their late twenties or early thirties.

There was still an hour or so of light by the time they pulled to a stop in front of the small bungalow where Carpenter lived on Deep Dell Terrace. Ballard wanted to check the house to see if she could find a point of entry and determine if it would be worth calling for a full forensic examination of the premises. She also wanted to walk the neighborhood in daylight and then return after midnight so she could judge the lighting conditions and vigilance of other residents of the hillside neighborhood.

Once inside, Ballard asked Carpenter to sit on the couch in the living room while she conducted a quick sweep of the house.

“You think they’ll come back?” Carpenter asked.

There was the tightness of fear in her voice.

“It’s not that,” Ballard said quickly. “I want to look for anything the patrol guys may have overlooked. And I want to figure out how the bad guys got in. You’re sure nothing was left open or unlocked?”

“Nothing. I’m OCD about locking the doors. I check them every night, even when I know I haven’t gone out through them.”

“Okay, just give me a few minutes.”

Ballard started moving around the house alone, pulling on a pair of latex gloves from her pocket. There was a door in the kitchen that she assumed led directly to the attached single-car garage. It had a simple push-button lock on the knob and no dead bolt. The door was currently unlocked.

“Does this door in the kitchen go to the garage?” she called out.

“Yes,” Carpenter called back. “Why?”

“It’s unlocked. Is that the way you had it?”

“I don’t think so. But I may have missed it because the trash cans are in the garage and the garage is always locked anyway.”

“You mean closed? Or closed and locked?”

“Well, closed and locked. From the outside you can’t open it without the remote.”

“Is there also an outside door into the garage? Besides the overhead door?”

“No. Just the overhead.”

Ballard decided not to open the door to the garage, even with gloves on, until Forensics checked it. It could have been the means of entry. She also had to consider that either McGee or Black had opened the door while checking the house during the initial callout. She could ask them but she knew that neither would admit to such a gaffe. She would only know for sure whether they had opened the door if one of them had left fingerprints on the knob.

Ballard decided she would view the garage last, coming in from the outside. She moved into a hallway that led to two bedrooms and a bathroom. She checked the bathroom first and saw no evidence of intrusion through the small window over the bathtub.

She moved into the master bedroom, where the assault had occurred. There she found a window that had been sealed shut by several coats of paint applied over many years. She looked at the bed. Carpenter had said she had not known of the intrusion until she woke up with one of the men on top of her and putting tape over her eyes and mouth. He then tied her hands to a railing of the bed’s brass headboard. He told her not to move or make a sound and then she heard him leave the room and open the front door for his partner.

Ballard got down on her knees and looked under the bed. It was clear except for a few books. She slid them out and saw that they were all written by female authors: Alafair Burke, Steph Cha, Ivy Pochoda. She slid them back under and got up. She swept her eyes across the room again but nothing stood out to her. She stepped back into the hallway and checked the second bedroom. This was neat and spare, obviously a guest room. The closet door was four inches ajar.

Ballard opened the closet all the way without touching the knob. Half the space was crowded with stacked cardboard boxes marked as Native Bean supplies. The other half was empty, apparently for the use of guests. She got down on her knees again to study the carpeted floor. She saw nothing on the carpet but there was a distinct pattern in the weave that was indicative of recent vacuuming. Still on her knees, she leaned back on her heels and called for Cindy to come to the room.

She came right away.

“What is it?”

“You said you have no Dustbuster, no vacuum at all, right?”

“No, why?”

“This closet was vacuumed. I think this is where he hid.”

Cindy stared down at the carefully manicured carpet.

“We put that in because the previous owner had stored paint cans there and some had spilled on the floor. It looks awful underneath.”

“‘We’?”

“My husband and I. We bought the place and then after the divorce, I kept it.”

“The door — do you leave it open? Like, to keep air circulating in there or something?”

“No, I keep it closed.”

“You’re sure you closed it after the last time you got stuff out for the coffee shop?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. Listen, I’m sorry, I know you probably just want to be left alone but I want Forensics to come here and process the closet and maybe the rest of the house.”

Carpenter was crestfallen.

“When?” she asked.

“I’ll call them right now,” Ballard said. “I’ll get it done as fast as possible. I know it’s an intrusion but we want to get these guys and I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. I don’t think you do either.”

“Okay, I guess. Will you be here?”

“If they can come now, I’ll stay. But in a few hours I start another shift. I’ll have to go check in at the station.”

“Try to get them to come now, please.”

“I will. Uh, you mentioned your husband. Is he still in L.A.? What is your relationship with him?”

“He’s here and we’re fine because we don’t see each other. He lives in Venice.”

But there was a clear tension underlying the way she said it.

“What’s he do?” Ballard asked.

“He’s in the tech industry,” Carpenter said. “Works for start-ups and stuff. He finds investors.”

Ballard stood up. She had to take a step to hold her balance. She realized that sleep deprivation was manifesting.

“You all right?” Carpenter asked.

“I’m fine — not enough sleep,” Ballard said. “How was your ex with you getting the house?”

“He was fine. Why? I mean he didn’t like it, but... What is this about?”

“I just have to ask a lot of questions, Cindy, that’s all. It’s not a big deal. Is he the one you were texting?”

“What?”

“When I came into the examination room today, you looked like you were texting or making a call.”

“No, I was texting Lacey at the shop, telling her she had to hold things together till I got back.”

“You told her what happened?”

“No, I lied. I said I was in an accident.”

She gestured to the injuries to her face.

“I have to figure out how to explain this,” she said.

This gave Ballard pause because she knew that what Carpenter told people now could come back around to haunt the case if it ever went to trial. As crazy as it seemed, a defense that the sex was consensual might gain support in a juror’s mind if there was testimony from the alleged victim’s friend that she had never mentioned being assaulted. It was a far-fetched possibility but Ballard knew she would need at some point to school Carpenter on this. But now was not the time.

“So, will you tell your ex about this?” she asked. “About what happened?”

“I don’t know, probably not. It’s not his business. Anyway, I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“I understand. I’m going to call Forensics now, see if I can get them out. You’re going to have to stay in the living room, if you don’t mind. I want them to do your bedroom.”

“Can I go get my book to read? It’s under the bed.”

“Yes, that’s fine. Just try not to touch anything else.”

Carpenter left the room and Ballard pulled her phone. Before calling for a forensics team, she squatted down and took a photo of the closet carpet, hoping the vacuum pattern would be discernible in the shot. She then called Forensics and got an ETA of one hour.

In the living room Ballard told Carpenter that the forensics tech would be at the house soon. She then asked if there was a remote in the house that opened the overhead garage door. She explained that she didn’t want to touch the knob on the door from the kitchen. Even a gloved hand might destroy fingerprint evidence.

“I use the garage for storage and just park out front or in the driveway,” Carpenter said. “So I have a clicker in my car that opens it, and there’s a button on the wall just inside the garage next to the kitchen door.”

“Okay,” Ballard said. “Can we go out to the car and use the clicker?”

They stepped out and Carpenter used a remote key to unlock her car. The parking lights blinked but Ballard did not hear a distinctive snap of the locks.

“Was your car locked?” she asked. “I didn’t—”

“Yes, I locked it last night,” Carpenter said.

“I didn’t hear the locks click.”

“Well, I always lock it.”

Ballard was annoyed with herself for not first checking to see whether the car had been locked. Now she would never know for sure.

“I’m going to enter from the passenger side,” she said. “I don’t want to touch the driver’s door handle. Where is the garage clicker?”

“On the visor,” Carpenter said. “On the driver’s side.”

Ballard opened the door and leaned into the car. She had pulled her own set of keys from her pocket and used the end of her apartment key to depress the button on the garage remote. She then exited the car and watched the garage door open with a loud screeching of its springs.

“Does it always make that sound?” she asked.

“Yeah, I have to get it oiled or something,” Carpenter said. “My husband used to take care of things like that.”

“Can you hear it from inside when it opens?”

“I could when my ex still lived here.”

“Do you think it would wake you up in the bedroom?”

“Yes. It shook the whole house like an earthquake. You think that’s how they—”

“I don’t know yet, Cindy.”

They stood on the threshold of the open garage. Carpenter had been right. There was no room for a car. The single bay was crowded with boxes, bikes, and other property, including three containers for trash, recycling, and yard waste. It looked like Carpenter stored more supplies from Native Bean in the garage as well. There were stacks of cups and snap-on covers in clear plastic sleeves as well as large boxes of various sweeteners. Ballard went to the door leading to the kitchen. She noted the button that operated the garage door on the wall to the left of the doorjamb.

She bent down to look at the keyhole in the knob but could not see any sign that it had been tampered with.

“So, we don’t know for sure that this door was locked,” she said.

“No, but it is most of the time,” Carpenter said. “And like I said, the garage was definitely closed.”

Ballard just nodded. She did not tell Carpenter her current theory, that one of the rapists got into the house before she even came home from work and hid in the guest room closet until she had showered and gone to sleep. He then made his move, incapacitated her, taped her mouth and eyes, and let the other rapist in.

A workbench to the right of the kitchen door was crowded with equipment that Ballard guessed had come from the coffee shop. There was an open toolbox with tools haphazardly piled on a top tray. She saw a screwdriver sitting on the bench by itself, as if it had been taken out of the toolbox and left there. She wondered if the rapists brought their own tools to break in or relied on finding something in the garage of a home lived in by a single woman.

“Is this screwdriver yours?” she asked.

Carpenter stepped over to look at it. She reached a hand out to pick it up.

“No, don’t touch it,” Ballard said.

“Sorry,” Carpenter said. “It might be. I can’t really tell. All of this stuff, the tools, were left by Reggie.”

“Your ex.”

“Yes. Do you think they used it to get in? Then how did they get in the garage?”

There was a shrill note in her voice.

“I don’t know the answer to either question,” Ballard said. “Let’s see what Forensics finds.”

Ballard checked her phone and said Forensics was now due in forty-five minutes. While she was looking at her screen, a call came in. It was Harry Bosch.

“I need to take this,” she said to Cindy. “Why don’t you go back to the living room for now.”

Ballard headed out of the garage to the street and answered the phone. But then she turned quickly to stop Carpenter from touching the knob of the kitchen door.

“Cindy, no,” she called. “I’m sorry, can you come out this way and go in through the front door?”

Carpenter did as instructed and Ballard returned to the call.

“Harry, hi.”

“Renée, sounds like you’re in the middle of something. I was just checking in. You get anything out of the chrono that helps?”

It took Ballard a moment to remember what case and what chrono he was talking about.

“Uh, no,” she said. “I got sidetracked, called out on a case.”

“Another murder?”

“No, serial rapists we’ve been looking for.”

“Plural? MOSA?”

“Yeah, weird,” she said. “It’s a tag team. Last night we got a third victim but she didn’t call it in till after I’d been by your place.”

There was a silence.

“Harry, you there?”

“Yeah, I was just thinking. A tag team. That’s pretty rare. MOSAs are usually gang rapes. Not two guys with the same psychopathy.”

“Yeah. So, I’ve been running with that all afternoon. We’re calling them the Midnight Men.”

“When you get two guys like that... you know, who think the same way...”

He went silent.

“Yeah, what about it?” Ballard asked.

“It’s just that one and one doesn’t make two, you know?” Bosch said. “They feed off each other. One and one makes three... they escalate, get more violent. Eventually the rape is not enough. They kill. You have to get them now, Renée.”

“I know. Don’t you think I know that?”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re on top of it. Anyway, I’ve got a book here somewhere that you should read.”

“What book?”

“It’s about the Hillside Strangler case way back. Bob Grogan — he was a legend in RHD. But on that one, it turned out it was two stranglers, not one. Grogan caught them and there’s a book about it. I have it here somewhere. It’s called Two of a Kind.”

“Well, if you find it, let me know. I could come up and get it. Maybe it will help me understand these two creeps.”

“So then, if you’re going to be running with the rape case, how about I do a little work on the other thing? The shooting last night.”

“I have a feeling that it’s going to be taken off my plate. We now have three connected rape cases. They’ll keep me on this and kick the homicide to West Bureau.”

“Well, until then I could be working. I’d need to see what you’ve got, though.”

Ballard paused for a moment to think. Bringing in an outsider on a live case — even if it was someone with the experience of Harry Bosch — could put her into the shit. Especially after Bosch had worked with the defense lawyer Mickey Haller the year before on a highly publicized murder. No one in command staff would approve of that. No one in the whole department would.

It would have to be extracurricular.

“What do you think?” Bosch prompted.

“I think, if you find that book, we might be able to trade,” Ballard said. “But this is dangerous — department-wise — for me.”

“I know. Think about it. If I see you, I see you.”

11

While waiting for Forensics to show up, Ballard took a walk around the neighborhood and started thinking in terms of what made this assault different from the first two. She had no doubt that it was the same perpetrators. There were too many similarities. But there were also things about this latest occurrence that were unique.

Ballard started listing these in her head as she walked. The primary difference was geographic location. The first two cases occurred down in the flats in gridded neighborhoods that afforded the rapists multiple escape routes should something go wrong. Not so with Deep Dell Terrace. It was a road that led to a dead end. It was also a winding, narrow mountain road in a neighborhood that ultimately had only two or three ways up and back down. There was no route in this neighborhood that led over the mountains. This was an important distinction. It was riskier to pick a victim in this neighborhood. If things had gone wrong for the rapists and a help call had gone out, the escape routes could easily have been covered by a police response. At the same time that she mentally marked this difference in pattern she also acknowledged that patterns evolved. The success of the first two rapes could have emboldened the rapists, leading them to new, riskier hunting grounds.

The second aspect that was notably different from the first two cases was topography. Ballard, as well as Lisa Moore, had been operating according to the theory that the assaults were carefully planned. Once a victim was targeted, the rapists watched her routines and prepped for the break-in and assault. This most likely meant walking into the neighborhood from outside. Each of the prior victims lived a few blocks from main east-west thoroughfares — Melrose Avenue in the first case and Sunset Boulevard in the second. It was theorized that the rapists walked in and then stealthily moved about, casing the victim, her home, and the routines of the area. Therefore, a gridded, flat neighborhood allowed better access to the prey and escape after the crime. But as Ballard walked down Deep Dell Terrace, it was immediately clear that this sort of prep and exit strategy would be difficult here, if not impossible. Access to the back of Cindy Carpenter’s house was severely restricted by the steep mountainside. The houses backing it on the next street up the hill were cantilevered out over an almost sheer rock facing. There was no moving between and behind houses here. These homes didn’t even need fences and gates; the natural topography provided security.

All of this told Ballard that they had been looking in the wrong direction. They had been looking for a pair of wanderers, voyeurs, who came into the neighborhood off a busy commercial street, moved between and behind houses, and discovered their prey while looking through windows, possibly to strike then or to come back later. This was backed up when interviews of the victims and the limited cross-matching of their habits and movements in the prior days found no nexus that linked the two women. They moved in different circles with no overlap.

By all indications, the third case changed all that. The third case indicated that the victim had been targeted as prey somewhere else and followed to her home. This changed things about the investigation and Ballard silently scolded herself for time wasted looking the other way.

Ballard got an email alert on her phone and opened the app to see that Officer Black had sent her a copy of the incident report. She opened it and scanned through the two pages on her small screen. Nothing stood out in the details as new information. She was closing down the app when she was startled by a silent vehicle whooshing by her. She turned and recognized it as one of the BMW electrics that were used by the forensics teams.

The department had bought a fleet of them for use by detectives, but the sixty-mile range per battery charge limited their usefulness when detectives needed to go farther while riding the momentum of a case. The advertised range also dropped considerably in freeway driving, and it was a rare thing to conduct an investigation in L.A. without driving on a freeway. Stories of detectives being marooned with dead batteries abounded, and the cars were withdrawn and parked on the roof of a city garage for more than a year before being distributed again, this time to units like Forensics and Audio/Visual, which conducted single-destination trips to crime scenes and then back to the mother ship.

Ballard started walking back toward Cindy Carpenter’s house and met the forensics tech as he was getting out of the BMW. He popped the rear hatch.

“Ballard, Hollywood Division,” she said. “I called.”

“I’m Reno,” the man said. “Sorry if I scared you back there. These things are so quiet. I’ve had people literally walk in front of me without looking.”

“Well, maybe if you slowed down some, that wouldn’t happen.”

“Do you know the speed on these things? You barely touch the pedal and you’re at forty. Anyway, what do you need here?”

He closed the rear hatch and stood ready, holding the handle of a large equipment case in one hand, its weight tilting his shoulders. He was a slightly built man in dark blue coveralls. SID was stitched in white letters over a breast pocket.

“We had a hot prowl rape with two suspects last night,” Ballard said. “I cannot find point of entry but I think it was the garage. I want you to start in there. There’s a screwdriver on a workbench — maybe we get lucky with that. After that, there’s a closet in the guest room I want you to take a look at.”

“Okay,” Reno said. “Victim in the hospital?”

“No, she refused further medical. She’s inside.”

“Oh.”

“She knows you’re coming and I’ll stay with you. But I want you to do the car, too.”

She pointed to the Toyota parked on the street behind Reno’s car.

“Was it in the garage?” Reno asked.

“No, but she left the remote in the car, and I’m thinking they got in the car, then got in the garage, then got in the house. Just a knob lock on the door into the kitchen.”

“Wasn’t the car locked?”

“Not sure. Possibly. The remote’s on the visor.”

“Got it.”

“Be quick, okay? She’s had a very bad day.”

“Sounds like it. I’ll be quick.”

“And I’ll go get the key to open the car.”

While Reno was organizing his equipment, Ballard stepped back into the house and asked Cindy for her car key. She explained why and Cindy seemed to take it as another level of violation — her house, her body, and now even her car had been invaded by these evil men. She started crying.

Ballard recognized that Cindy was moving into a very fragile state. She asked if there was a friend or family member she could call to see if they could stay with her. Carpenter said no.

“I saw on the incident report that you listed your ex-husband as closest relative,” Ballard said. “Would he come?”

“Oh my god, no,” Carpenter exclaimed. “And please don’t call him. I only put him down because I couldn’t think straight. And he’s the only one in L.A. My entire family is down in La Jolla.”

“Okay, I’m sorry I asked. It’s just that you seem kind of fragile.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

Ballard realized she had walked right into that one.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was stupid. What about Lacey from the shop?”

“You don’t seem to understand. I don’t want people to know about this. Why do you think I thought about it for so long before calling you people? I’m fine, okay? Just do what you have to do and then leave me alone.”

There was no comeback to that. Ballard excused herself and took the key out to Reno. He was already using silver powder on the driver’s-side door handle, looking for fingerprints.

“Anything?” she asked.

“Just smears,” Reno said.

“Like it was wiped?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

That was useless. Ballard put the car key on the roof of the car.

“I’m going to knock on a few doors. I should be back before you’re finished. If not, have coms call me. I don’t have a rover.”

“And she knows I’m coming in?”

“Yes, but knock first.”

“Got it.”

“Her name is Cindy.”

“Got that too.”

Ballard stuck with the houses on the east side of Carpenter’s house, her thinking being that there was a better chance of the residents on that side seeing something unusual, because the west side led to the dead end. Anyone leaving Carpenter’s house by foot or car would have to go east.

Canvassing a neighborhood after a rape was a delicate thing. The last thing a victim needed was for everyone on the street to know what had happened. Some victims steadfastly refused to be stigmatized but others ended up feeling ashamed and losing confidence after such an attack. On the other hand, if there was a danger in the neighborhood, residents needed to know about it.

In addition, Ballard was handcuffed by the law. Under California statutes, victims of sexual assault are granted full confidentiality unless they choose to waive that right. Ballard had not even broached the subject with Cindy Carpenter and was for the moment bound by law not to reveal her as a rape victim to anyone outside of law enforcement.

Ballard pulled her mask all the way up and was holding her badge up when the door of the house next door to Carpenter’s was opened by a woman in her sixties showing one of the signs of being locked down for nine months. She had a thick band of gray at the base of her brunette hair, marking the last time she had been to a salon for a dye job.

“LAPD, ma’am. I’m Detective Ballard and I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m talking to all the neighbors in the area. We had a crime on this street last night after midnight and I am just asking if you saw or heard anything at all unusual during the night.”

“What kind of crime?”

“It was a break-in.”

“Oh my gosh, which house?”

Her asking which house instead of whose house indicated to Ballard that this woman might not know her neighbors personally. That wouldn’t matter if she had heard or seen something. But it did mean she might not start a gossip line with neighbors after Ballard left. This was good. Ballard didn’t want neighbors already knowing she was coming when she knocked on their doors.

“Next door,” Ballard said. “Did you hear or notice anything unusual last night?”

“No,” the woman said. “Not that I remember. Was anyone hurt?”

“Ma’am, I can’t really discuss the details with you. I’m sure you understand. Do you live alone here?”

“No, it’s my husband and I. Our kids are grown. Was it the girl next door? The one who lives alone?”

She pointed in the direction of Cindy Carpenter’s house. But calling her “the girl” instead of using her name was another indication that this woman did not know her neighbors well, if at all.

“Is your husband home?” Ballard asked, ignoring the questions. “Could I speak to him?”

“No, he went golfing,” the woman said. “At Wilshire Country Club. He’ll be home soon.”

Ballard pulled a business card and gave it to the woman, instructing her to have her husband call if he remembered hearing or seeing anything unusual the previous night. She then took the woman’s name for her records.

“Are we safe?” the woman asked.

“I don’t think they’ll be back,” Ballard said.

“They? It was more than one?”

“We think it was two men.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“Did you happen to see two men on the street last night?”

“No, I didn’t see anything. But now I’m scared.”

“I think you’re safe, ma’am. Like I said, we don’t expect them to come back.”

“Was she raped?”

“Ma’am, I can’t talk about the case.”

“Oh my god, she was raped.”

“Ma’am, listen to me. I said it was a break-in. If you start spreading rumors, you are going to cause a lot of pain for your next-door neighbor. Do you want that?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Then please don’t. Tell your husband to call me if he heard or saw anything unusual last night.”

“I’ll call him right now. He should be driving home.”

“Thank you for your time.”

Ballard walked back to the street and went to the next house. And so it went. In the next hour she knocked on seven more doors and had conversations with residents at five of them. Nobody had any useful information. Two of the homes had a Ring camera on their door but a review of video from the night before provided nothing useful.

Ballard got back to Cindy Carpenter’s house just as Reno was packing the back of his electric ride.

“So, what’d you get?” Ballard asked.

“A big fat nothing,” Reno said. “These guys were good.”

“Shit.”

“Sorry.”

“What about the screwdriver in the garage?”

“Wiped clean. Which means you were probably right. They used it to pop the door, then wiped it. Thing is, that garage door is loud. The springs creak, the motor grinds. If they got in that way, how come it didn’t wake her up?”

Ballard was about to explain to Reno that she thought at least one of the intruders was already in the house when Carpenter got home from work. But she suddenly realized the fallacy of that theory. If they opened the garage with the remote from the car, then the car had to have been back at the house, meaning Carpenter was home from work. This changed her thinking on what connected the three victims.

“Good question,” Ballard said.

She wanted to get rid of him so she could work these new thoughts.

“Thanks for coming out, Reno,” she said. “I’m going to go back in.”

“Anytime,” Reno said.

Ballard went back up to the front door, knocked, and then entered. Carpenter was sitting on the couch.

“He’s leaving and I’ll get out of your hair as well,” Ballard said. “Are you sure there’s no one I can call for you?”

“I’m sure,” Carpenter said. “I’ll be fine. I’m getting a second wind now.”

Ballard wasn’t sure what a ‘second wind’ could be considering the trauma that had occurred. Carpenter seemed to read her.

“I’m thinking about my father,” she said. “I don’t remember who said it but he always quoted some philosopher when I would skin my knee or have something bad happen. He’d say, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. Something like that. And that’s what I’m feeling now. I’m alive, I survived, I’ll get stronger.”

Ballard didn’t respond for a moment. She took out another business card and put it down on a small table near the door.

“Good,” she said. “There are my numbers if you need me or think of anything else.”

“Okay,” Carpenter said.

“We’re going to get these guys. I’m sure of it.”

“I hope so.”

“Can you do something for me and then maybe we talk tomorrow?”

“I guess.”

“I’m going to send you a questionnaire. It’s called a Lambkin survey. It’s basically questions about your recent history of movements and interactions — both in person and on social media. There is a calendar to track your whereabouts that you will be asked to fill out as best as you can. I think it goes back sixty days but what you really want to focus on are the last two to three weeks. Every place that you can remember. These guys saw you at some point and some place. Maybe it was the coffee shop but maybe it was somewhere else.”

“God, I hope it wasn’t the shop. That’s awful.”

“I’m not saying it was. But we have to consider everything. Do you have a printer here?”

“Yes. It’s in a closet.”

“Well, if you could print out the survey and fill it in by hand, that would be best.”

“Why is it called a lamb-whatever-you-said?”

“It’s the name of the guy who put it together. He was the LAPD’s sex crime expert until he retired. It’s been updated with the social media aspects. Okay?”

“Send it to me.”

“As soon as I can. And I can come by tomorrow and go over it with you if you want. Or just pick it up once you’re finished.”

“I have to open tomorrow and probably will be there all day. But I’ll take it with me and fill it out when I can.”

“Are you sure you want to go in tomorrow?”

“Yes. It will help take my mind off things.”

“Okay. And I’m going to be in the neighborhood a little while longer. Just so you know, my car will be out front.”

“Are you telling the neighbors what happened to me?”

“No, I’m not. Actually, under California law I can’t anyway. I’m just saying there was a break-in in the neighborhood. That’s it.”

“They’ll probably know. They’ll figure it out.”

“Maybe not. But we want to catch these monsters, Cindy. I have to do my job, and maybe one of your neighbors saw something that can help.”

“I know, I know. Did anybody tell you they saw something?”

“So far, no. But I still have this end of the street to go.”

She pointed west.

“Good luck,” Carpenter said.

Ballard thanked her and left. She walked to the house next door. An old man answered, who proved to be no help, even revealing that he took out his hearing aids at night to sleep better. Ballard then crossed the street and talked to another man, who said he saw nothing but provided a helpful piece of information when asked what he heard.

“You being directly across from the garage across the street, do you ever hear when that goes up or down?” Ballard asked.

“All the F-ing time,” the man said. “I wish she’d oil those springs. They squawk like a parrot every time the door goes up.”

“And do you remember whether you heard it last night?”

“Yeah, I heard it.”

“Do you remember what time, by any chance?”

“Uh, not exactly, but it was sort of late.”

“Were you in bed?”

“No, not yet. But about to hit the sack. I never watch any of that New Year’s stuff. It’s not my thing. I just go to bed and it’s one year and then I wake up and it’s the next. That’s how I do it.”

“So, before midnight. Do you remember what you were doing or watching on TV? I’m trying to narrow in on a time.”

“Hold on, I got it for you.”

He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and opened up the text app. He started scrolling through messages.

“I got an ex-wife in Phoenix,” he said. “We couldn’t live together but now we’re friends because we don’t. Funny how that works. Anyway, she watches the ball drop in New York so she can go to bed early. So I texted her happy new year on New York time. That was when I heard the garage.”

He held the phone’s screen out to Ballard.

“There you go.”

Ballard leaned in to look. She saw a “Happy New Year” text sent to someone named Gladys that went out at 8:55 the night before.

“And this is the same time you heard the garage?”

“Yep.”

“Did you hear it open and close, or just open?”

“Open and close. Not as loud going down as it is going up, but I hear it.”

Ballard asked the neighbor his name for her records and thanked him. She didn’t tell him that he had just helped her drop a piece of the puzzle into place. She was sure that he had heard the Midnight Men entering Cindy Carpenter’s house. Cindy had worked till 9 p.m. and didn’t park in the garage anyway.

Ballard could think of no other explanation. One of the rapists had entered the garage, used the screwdriver to easily open the kitchen door, and then waited in the guest room closet for Cindy to come home.

But adding a piece of the puzzle pushed another one out. If Cindy Carpenter was still at work and her car was with her, then how did the Midnight Men open the garage?

12

Harry Bosch’s house was in a neighborhood just across the freeway from the Dell. She called him once she started heading his way.

“I’m nearby,” she said. “Did you find that book?”

“I did,” he said. “You’re coming now?”

“I’ll be there in five. I need to borrow your Wi-Fi too.”

“Okay.”

She hung up. She knew that she should be going to Hollywood Division to sit in on the roll call for the start of her watch, but she wanted to keep moving. She instead called the watch office to see which sergeant would be handling roll call and then asked to speak to him. It was Rodney Spellman.

“Whaddaya got, Ballard?” he said by way of a greeting.

“We had a third hit by the Midnight Men last night,” she said. “Up in the Dell.”

“Heard about it.”

“I’m out running with it and won’t make roll call. But can you bring it up and ask about last night? Especially, the fifteen and thirty-one cars? I want to know if they saw anything, jammed anybody, anything at all.”

“I can do that, yes.”

“Thanks, Sarge, I’ll check back later.”

“That’s a roger.”

She disconnected. She crossed the 101 on the Pilgrimage Bridge and soon was on Woodrow Wilson, heading up to Bosch’s place. Before she got there, she got a call from Lisa Moore.

“What’s happening, sister Ballard?” she asked.

Ballard guessed she was already hitting the wine, and her salutation rang false and annoying. Still, Ballard needed to talk to somebody about her findings.

“I’m still working it,” Ballard said. “But I think we need to rethink this. The third case is different from the first two and we might be looking the wrong way.”

“Whoa,” Moore said. “I was hoping to hear I’m okay to stay up here till Sunday.”

Ballard’s patience with Moore ran out.

“Jesus, Lisa, do you even care about this?” she said. “I mean, these two guys are out there and—”

“Of course I care,” Moore shot back. “It’s my job. But right now it’s fucking up my life. Fine, I’m coming back. I’ll be in tomorrow at nine. I’ll meet you at the station.”

Ballard immediately felt bad about her outburst. She was now sitting in the car outside Bosch’s house.

“No, don’t bother,” she said. “I’ll cover it tomorrow.”

“You sure?” Moore said.

She said it a little too quickly and hopefully for Ballard.

“Yes, whatever,” Ballard said. “But you’re taking my shift, no questions asked, next time I need it.”

“Deal.”

“Let me ask you something. How did you do the cross-referencing of the first two victims? Interview, or did you have them fill out a Lambkin survey?”

“That thing’s eight pages long now with the updates. I wasn’t going to ask them to do that. I interviewed them and so did Ronin.”

Ronin Clarke was a detective with the Sexual Assault Unit. He and Moore weren’t partners in the traditional sense. They each carried their own caseload but backed each other up when needed.

“I think we should give them the survey,” Ballard said. “Things are different now. I think we had the victim acquisition wrong.”

There was silence from Moore. Ballard took this as disagreement, but Moore probably felt she could not voice an objection after having split town, leaving Ballard working the new case solo.

“Anyway, I’ll handle it,” Ballard said. “And I should go now. Got a lot to do and I have my shift tonight.”

“I’ll check in tomorrow,” Moore said helpfully. “And thank you so much, Renée. I will pay you back. You name the day, I’ll take your shift.”

Ballard disconnected and put on her mask. She got out with her briefcase. Bosch’s front door opened before she got to it.

“Saw you sitting out there,” Bosch said.

He stood back against the door so she could enter.

“I was just being a fool,” Ballard said.

“About what?” Bosch asked.

“My partner on the rapes. Allowing her to run off for the weekend with her boyfriend while I’m working two cases. I’m being stupid.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Santa Barbara.”

“Are places open up there?”

“I don’t think they plan on leaving the room much.”

“Oh. Well, like I said, I’m here and I can help. Wherever you need me.”

“I know. I appreciate it, Harry. It’s just the principle of it. She’s totally burned out. No empathy left. She should ask for a transfer from sex crimes.”

Bosch gestured toward the table in the dining room, where he already had his laptop open. They sat down facing each other. There was no music playing. Also on the table was a hardcover book with yellowed pages. It was Two of a Kind, by Darcy O’Brien.

“It does hollow you out, sex crimes,” Bosch said. “What’s happening since we talked?”

“It’s going upside down,” Ballard said. “Like I told you, three cases definitely linked, but this third one — it’s different from the first two. It changes things.”

Ballard put her briefcase on the floor next to her chair and slid out her laptop.

“You want to run it by me, since your partner is gone?” Bosch asked.

“What, are you like my favorite uncle that I never had?” Ballard asked. “Are you going to give me a dollar bill for candy when I leave?”

“Uh...”

“I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t mean — I’m just out of sorts with Lisa. I’m mad at myself for letting her skate like that.”

“That’s okay. I get it.”

“Can I still use your Wi-Fi?”

She opened her laptop and Bosch walked her through connecting to the Internet. His password to the Wi-Fi account was his old badge number, 2997. Ballard pulled up a blank copy of the Lambkin survey and sent it to Cindy Carpenter, getting her email off the report Black had sent her. She hoped Carpenter wouldn’t ignore it.

“You know what will teach your partner a lesson?” Bosch said. “Bagging these assholes before she gets back.”

“That’s highly unlikely. These guys... they’re good. And they just changed the game.”

“Tell me how.”

Ballard spent the next twenty minutes updating Bosch on the case, all the while thinking she should be updating Lisa Moore in such detail. When she was finished, Bosch had the same conclusion and opinion as Ballard. The investigation needed to shift. They had been wrong about the Midnight Men and how they acquired their victims. It was not the neighborhood that was chosen first. It was the victims. They were picked and then followed to their neighborhoods and homes. All three women had crossed the perpetrators’ radar somewhere else.

Ballard now had to find that crossing point.

“I just sent the latest victim a Lambkin questionnaire,” Ballard said. “I hope to get it back tomorrow or Sunday. I have to talk the first two victims into doing it, because Lisa thought it was too much to ask of them at the time. The first rape was back at Thanksgiving and I doubt the victim will have as good a memory now as she would’ve if she’d been asked to do it in the first place.”

“Now I’m getting annoyed with this Lisa,” Bosch said. “That was lazy. Are you going to send it to the other two now?”

“No, I want to call and talk to them first. I’ll do that after I leave here. Did you know Lambkin when he was in the department?”

“Yeah, we worked some cases. He knew what he was doing when it came to assaults like this.”

“Is he still in town?”

“No, I heard he retired out of state and has never come back. Somewhere up north.”

“Well, we still use the cross-referencing survey with his name on it. I guess that’s some kind of legacy. You want what I’ve got on Javier Raffa?”

“If you’re willing to share.”

“You have a printer?”

“Down here.”

Bosch reached down to one of the bottom shelves of the bookcase behind his chair. He brought up a boxlike printer that looked like it might have been put into service in the previous century.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ballard said.

“What — this?” Bosch responded. “I don’t do a lot of printing. But it works.”

“Yeah, probably five pages a minute. Luckily I don’t have much to share. Give me the connector thing and plug it in. You have paper?”

“Yes, I have paper.”

He handed her the connector to her laptop. While he plugged the printer in and loaded paper, she pulled up the case file on her screen and started sending the documents she had put together on her last shift into the print queue. She wasn’t wrong. The printer was slow.

“See, I told you it works,” Bosch said. “Why do I need a fancy-ass printer?”

He seemed proud of his techno-stubbornness.

“Maybe because I’d like to get to work sometime tonight,” Ballard said. “I still haven’t even looked at the stuff from your case.”

Bosch ignored her and took the first two pages — the only two pages so far — out of the printer’s tray. Ballard had sent him the two-page incident report first, followed by the Investigative Chronology, witness statements, and the crime scene map. She wasn’t sure what he could do with it all but the chrono was most important because it contained step-by-step summaries of the moves Ballard had made through the night. Though she didn’t hold out any hope of being able to keep the case much longer, she knew that if Bosch could come up with a line of investigation that led from the Raffa case back to his old case, the killing of Albert Lee, then she might have something to bargain with when the powers that be came to take Raffa from her.

She waited patiently for the pages to print but she was feeling anxious about not getting to the station and showing her face, let alone tackling the work that was waiting for her on the Midnight Men cases.

“You want something to drink? I could brew some coffee,” Bosch said. “This could take a while.”

“Will the coffee be faster than this printer?” Ballard asked.

“Probably.”

“Sure. I could use some caffeine.”

Bosch got up from the table and went into the kitchen. Ballard stared at the decrepit printer and shook her head.

“After you came by here this morning, you didn’t get any sleep, did you?” Bosch called from the kitchen.

The printer was not only old, it was loud.

“Nope,” Ballard called back.

“Then I’ll use the heavy-duty stuff,” Bosch said.

Ballard got up and went to the slider leading to the deck.

“Can I go on the deck?”

“Sure.”

She opened the door and stepped out. She removed her mask so she could breathe freely. At the railing she saw sparse traffic down on the 101, and it was clear that the multilevel parking garage at Universal City was empty. The amusement park was closed due to the pandemic.

She heard the printer stop. Putting her mask back on, she went inside again. After making sure everything had printed, she disconnected her laptop and shut it down. She stood up and was about to tell Bosch never mind the coffee, when he came out of the kitchen with a steaming cup for her.

“Black, right?” he asked.

“Thanks,” Ballard said, accepting the cup.

She pulled her mask down and turned away from Bosch to sip the hot liquid. It was scorching and strong. She imagined she could already feel the caffeine coursing through her body while it was still going down.

“That’s good,” she said. “Thanks.”

“It’ll keep you going,” Bosch said.

Ballard’s phone started to buzz. She unclipped it and checked the screen. It was a 323 number but no name came up.

“I think I should take this,” she said.

“Sure,” Bosch said.

She connected.

“This is Detective Ballard.”

“Detective, it’s Cindy Carpenter. I got the survey thing you sent and I’ll work on it. But I just remembered something.”

Ballard knew that often a crime victim had details of the event emerge hours and sometimes days after the experience. This was a natural part of processing the trauma, even though in court defense lawyers often had a field day accusing victims of conveniently manufacturing memories to fit the evidence against the defendant.

“What did you remember?” Ballard asked.

“I must’ve blocked this out at first,” Carpenter said. “But I think they took my picture.”

“Which picture are we talking about?”

“No, I mean a photo. They took my photo... you know, when they were raping me.”

“Why do you think this, Cindy?”

“Because when, you know, they were making me do oral, one of them grabbed my hair and tilted my head back for a few seconds and sort of held it. It was like he was posing me. Like some kind of a sick selfie.”

Ballard shook her head, though Carpenter could not see this. She felt it was likely that Carpenter had accurately guessed what the rapists were doing. She thought maybe this was the reason behind the masking of the victims as well as the ski masks. They didn’t want the victims to know the attacks were photographed or possibly recorded. This opened a new set of questions as to why the rapists were doing this but it still advanced Ballard’s thinking on their MO.

And it renewed her resolve to catch these two men, no matter what help she got or did not get from Lisa Moore.

“Are you there, Renée?” Carpenter said. “Can I call you Renée?”

“Sorry, I’m here — and yes, please call me Renée,” Ballard said. “I was just writing that down. I think you’re right and it’s a good detail to know. It helps us a lot. We find that photo on their phone or computer, then they go away. It’s ironclad evidence, Cindy.”

“Well, then good, I guess.”

“I know it’s another painful thing but I’m glad you remembered it. I’ll be writing up a crime summary that I’ll want you to review and I’ll put it in.”

“Okay.”

“Now, on the survey I just sent you. There’s a section where it asks you to make a list of anybody you know who might want to hurt you for whatever reason. That’s very important, Cindy. Think hard about that. Both people you know and people you don’t really know. An angry customer at the coffee shop, someone who thinks you offended them in some way. That list is important.”

“You mean, I should do that first?”

“Not necessarily. But I want you to be thinking about it. There is something vindictive about this. With the photo and the cutting of your hair. All of that.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Then I’ll talk to you tomorrow to see how you’re doing with your homework.”

Carpenter was silent and Ballard felt that her attempt to inject humor with the homework angle had fallen flat. There was no humor to be found in this situation.

“Uh, anyway, I know you have to work early tomorrow,” Ballard continued clumsily. “But see what you can get done and I’ll check in with you in the afternoon.”

“Okay, Renée,” Carpenter said.

“Good,” Ballard said. “And Cindy? You can call me anytime you want. Goodbye now.”

Ballard disconnected and looked at Bosch.

“That was the victim. She thinks they took a photo during the oral cop.”

Bosch’s eyes went off her as he registered this and filed it in his knowledge of the evil things men do.

“That changes things some,” he said.

“Yes,” Ballard said. “It does.”

13

After dropping her briefcase off at a desk in the detective squad room, Ballard headed to the watch office to make an appearance and see if there was anything working in the division that might call for a detective. The watch lieutenant was a lifer named Dante Rivera who was closing in on his golden ticket. Thirty-three years in meant a maximum pension of 90 percent of his final salary. Rivera was just five months out, and there was a countdown calendar on the wall of the watch office. He tore off a page every day, not only to keep the count but to remove the profane comments written on the date by a dayside wiseass.

Rivera had spent most of his years working various assignments at Hollywood Division. He was considered an old-timer by department standards, but as he had joined early, he was still not even close to sixty years old. He’d take his 90 percent, supplement it with a part-time security job or a PI ticket and do nicely the rest of his days. But his years on the job had also wrapped him in a tight cocoon of inertia. He wanted each midnight shift to go by as smooth as glass. He wanted no waves, no complications, and no issues.

“L-T,” Ballard said. “What do we have happening tonight in the big bad city?”

“Nada,” Rivera said. “All quiet on the western front.”

Rivera always used that phrase, as if Hollywood were at the edge of the city. Perhaps at night that was valid, as the wealthy neighborhoods out west usually grew quiet and safe. Hollywood was the western front. Most nights, Ballard hated hearing him say all was quiet, because she was looking for a case or something to join in on. But not this night. She had work to do.

“I’ll be in the D-bureau and on my rover,” she said. “I have follow-ups on last night’s capers. Have you seen Spellman around?”

“Sergeant Spellman?” Rivera asked. “He’s next door.”

Ballard noted the correction as she left the watch office, and walked into the central hallway. She went down to the next office, which was informally called the sergeant’s office because it was a spot where the supervisors could separate themselves from the troops to make calls, write reports, or decide whether to write up officers for breaking procedure. Spellman was alone in the room and sitting at a long counter, looking at a video on his laptop. He immediately closed the laptop when Ballard walked in.

“Ballard, what’s up?”

“I don’t know. Came in to ask you what’s going on and to see if anything came up in roll call about my case up in the Dell.”

It looked like he had been watching body cam footage of an approach to a parked car. That was part of his job, so his quickly closing the laptop made Ballard think that what was on camera was one of the two Fs: use of force or people fucking — both of which could happen on any traffic or stationary car stop.

“Oh, yeah, forgot to get back to you,” Spellman said. “Things got hectic in roll call because we had Vice come in for an intel session, and then I had to get people out on the streets. But I grabbed Vitello and Smallwood at the kit room before they went out. They had nothing remarkable last night. Plus they got pulled out of their zone on a couple backups.”

“Okay,” Ballard said. “Thanks for asking.”

She turned and headed out of the room. It was small and stuffy and smelled like whatever cologne Spellman was wearing.

Ballard took the long way back to the D-bureau so she would not have to walk through the watch office again. She figured out of sight meant out of mind with Rivera. Back at the desk she had borrowed, she got out a notebook, opened her laptop, and called up her files on the Midnight Men cases. She found the cell number for the first victim, Roberta Klein, and called it. She checked the clock on the wall over the TV screens as she waited for an answer. She wrote 9:05 p.m. on a page in the notebook so she would have it when she updated the chrono. Roberta Klein picked up on the sixth ring.

“Hi, Bobbi, it’s Detective Ballard at Hollywood Division.”

“Did you catch them?”

“No, not yet, but we’re working the case — even on the holiday. I’m sorry to call so late.”

“It scared me. I thought, ‘Who’s calling me now?’”

“I’m sorry. How are you doing?”

“Not good. I don’t hear from you people. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m scared. I keep thinking they might come back, because the LAPD can’t catch them.”

Once more Ballard found herself annoyed with Lisa Moore. Sex assault cases required a lot of hand-holding of victims. They needed to be kept informed, because the more they knew what the police were doing, the safer they felt. The safer they felt, the more likely they were to cooperate. In a rape case, cooperating could mean staring down your attacker in a lineup or in court. That took guts and it took support. Here was just another situation where Lisa had dropped the ball. This was her case. Ballard was only the nightside detective — she wasn’t lead. Until now, apparently.

“Well, I promise we’re on this case full-time, and that’s why I’m calling,” Ballard said.

“I left my job,” Klein said.

“What do you mean?”

“I quit. I don’t want to leave my house until they’re caught. I’m too scared.”

“Have you seen any of the therapists we told you about?”

“I hate Zooming. I stopped. It’s so impersonal.”

“Well, I think you should maybe reconsider that, Bobbi. It could help you get through this time. I know it’s diff—”

“If you didn’t catch them, why are you calling me?”

It was clear that Klein wasn’t interested in hearing how a therapist on a computer screen could help her through the dark hours.

“Bobbi, I’m going to level with you because I know you are a strong individual,” Ballard said. “We need to refocus the investigation and we need your help with it.”

“How?” Klein asked. “Why?”

“Because we were looking at this case from a neighborhood angle. We thought that these men chose the neighborhood first and then looked for a victim in it — because there was easy and quick access in and out.”

“And that’s not what happened?”

“Well, we think maybe it was victim-specific targeting.”

“What does that mean?”

Her voice became a bit shrill as she began to understand.

“They may have crossed paths with you in a different way, Bobbi. And we need to—”

“You mean they picked me specifically?”

There was a sharp scream, reminding Ballard of times when she had inadvertently stepped on her dog’s paw.

“Bobbi, listen to me,” Ballard said quickly. “There is nothing to be afraid of. We really don’t think they will come back. They have moved on, Bobbi.”

“What does that mean?” Klein asked. “Is there another victim? Is that what you’re saying?”

Ballard realized that the whole conversation had gotten away from her. She had to steer it back on course or end it and move to the next victim, using everything she had learned from mishandling this call on the next one.

“Bobbi, I need you to calm down so I can talk to you and tell you what’s going on,” Ballard said. “Can you do that for me?”

There was a long silence before the woman on the other end responded.

“Okay,” she said in an even tone. “I’m calm. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“There was another victim, Bobbi,” Ballard said. “It happened early this morning. I can’t tell you the details but it has changed our thinking on this. And that’s why I need your help.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“First of all, I need you to tell me if you ever go to the Native Bean coffee shop in Los Feliz.”

There was a pause while Klein considered the question.

“No,” Klein said. “I’ve never been there.”

“It’s on Hillhurst,” Ballard said. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Is that—”

“Do you know anyone who works there?”

“No, I never even go over that way.”

“Thank you, Bobbi. Now I want—”

“Was someone there attacked?”

“I can’t really discuss that with you, Bobbi. Just as you have protections against being identified, so do other victims. Now, I have your email. I’m going to send you a document. It’s a questionnaire about your life and your movements and it will help us figure out where you might have initially crossed paths with these men.”

“Oh my God, oh my God.”

“There is nothing to panic about, Bobbi. It will—”

“Nothing to panic about? Are you kidding me? Those men could easily come back here and hurt me again. Any fucking time.”

“Bobbi, that is not going to happen. It’s very unlikely. But I’ll go to the watch office as soon as we’re finished here and ask the lieutenant to increase patrols on your street. I’ll make sure they do it. Okay?”

“Whatever. That’s not going to stop them.”

“Which brings us to the survey I want you to fill out. This will help us stop them. Can you take some time tonight and tomorrow and do it for me? You can email it back to me or if you want to print it out and work on it, I’ll come by and get it as soon you’re finished. Just call me.”

“What about Detective Moore? Where is she?”

Good question, Ballard thought.

“We’re working this together,” she said. “I’m handling the survey.”

Ballard proceeded to give the same instructions she’d given earlier to Cindy Carpenter. Being given a task that would distract her from her fears at least temporarily seemed to calm Klein and she finally agreed to fill out the questionnaire. Ballard, in turn, promised to come by to pick it up and to do a security survey of the house. By the time the call ended, Bobbi Klein was talking calmly and seemed ready to go to work.

Ballard was wrung out after the call, and she was feeling exhaustion creeping into her muscles. She decided to put off phoning the second victim. She got up and went to the station break room, where she brewed a cup of coffee on the Keurig machine. It was not as good as Bosch’s blend nor as strong. She then went to the watch office and asked Rivera to have the car assigned to the RA encompassing Bobbi Klein’s neighborhood do a few extra drive-bys on her street. Rivera said that he would.

When Ballard got back to the desk, she decided to follow through on an idea that had been gestating since she had received Cindy Carpenter’s call about her rapists possibly taking a photo of her.

She went on the desk computer, signed in, and pulled up the original crime report and victim addendum. She found the listing for Reggie Carpenter, Cindy’s ex-husband, and ran his name through the DMV database. There were several hits, but only one of them carried an address in Venice, where Cindy had said her ex lived. She then ran the name and birth date through the crime database and learned that Reginald Carpenter had both a DUI arrest and an assault on his record from seven years earlier. He got probation for both and had apparently kept a clean record ever since.

Ballard called the number on the victim information sheet that Cindy had provided for her ex-husband. When it was answered, Ballard heard multiple voices — men and women — in the background before one said hello.

“Mr. Carpenter, this is Detective Ballard with the LAPD. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Wait— Shut the fuck up! Hello? Who is this?”

“I said, this is Detective Ballard with the LAPD. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Uh, well, what’s this about?”

Ballard decided to use a play to see if it would elicit information.

“I’m investigating a crime in your neighborhood — a break-in.”

“Really? When?”

“Last night. Shortly after midnight — which I guess would technically make it today. I’m calling to see if you were home at that time and whether you happened to see any suspicious activity on your street.”

“Uh, no. I wasn’t here. I didn’t get home till pretty late.”

“Were you nearby? Maybe you saw something from wherever—”

“No, I wasn’t nearby. I was in Palm Springs for New Year’s and just got back a couple hours ago. Which place got hit?”

“One-fifteen Deep Dell Terrace. We do think that the perpetrators watched the place before choosing when to—”

“Let me stop you right there. I don’t live on Deep Dell anymore. Your information is bad.”

“Really. My mistake. So, you have not been in that neighborhood?”

“No, my ex-wife lives there, so I make it a practice to stay away.”

There was laughter in the background. It emboldened Carpenter.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Ballard. Detective Ballard.”

“Well, I can’t help you, Detective Ballard. What happens there is really not my concern anymore.”

He said it in an officious way that drew more laughter from the people he was with. Ballard maintained a flat tone, thanked him for his time, and disconnected. She was unsure why she had even made the call. She was riffing off something she had picked up in Cindy Carpenter’s voice when she spoke of her ex-husband. It had been a note of apprehension, maybe even fear.

Back on the computer, Ballard opened the county courts system’s database and went through the portal to the family courts division. She looked up the Carpenter’s divorce, but as she expected, the records were sealed, other than the front page of the original petition to dissolve the marriage. This was not unusual. Ballard knew that most divorce cases were sealed because the parties usually hurled negative accusations at each other, and public dissemination of these could damage reputations, especially without offers of proof.

Ballard was able to glean two facts from the limited information. One was that the divorce action had been initiated by Cindy, and the other was the name, address, and phone number of her attorney. Ballard googled the attorney’s name — Evelyn Edwards — which led her to a website for a law firm called Edwards & Edwards specializing in family law. According to the website, the law firm offered its services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Ballard pulled up the bio on Edwards and saw a smiling photo of an African-American woman in her late thirties. Ballard decided to test the firm’s claim of being there for you 24/7.

She called the number from the divorce filing and reached a robot answering service that asked her to leave a message and assured her that Ms. Edwards would call back as soon as possible. Ballard left a message.

“My name is Renée Ballard, I’m a detective with the LAPD and I need Evelyn Edwards to call me back tonight. I am investigating a violent crime involving one of her clients. Please call me back.”

Ballard disconnected the call and sat unmoving for a long moment, half expecting Edwards to call back immediately. Yet she knew that was unlikely. She started thinking about next moves and the need to start a cross-referencing file into which she would put the data she would receive from the three victims of the Midnight Men.

She opened a new file folder on her laptop, but before she could even name it, her phone buzzed. It was Evelyn Edwards.

“Sorry to interrupt your Friday night.”

“Detective, I must say, that was not the kind of message one would like to receive on any night. Which of my clients has been victimized?”

“Cindy Carpenter. You handled her divorce two years ago.”

“Yes, she’s my client. What happened?”

“She was the victim of a home invasion. Because we have an open investigation, I’m not going to go into details. I hope you understand that.”

There was a moment during which Edwards read between the lines.

“Is Cynthia okay?” she asked.

“She’s safe and doing better,” Ballard said.

“Was it Reginald?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because I don’t understand why you would call me if this didn’t have anything to do with her divorce and her ex-husband.”

“I can tell you that her ex-husband is not a suspect at this time. But any thorough investigation includes looking at all possibilities, so that’s what we’re doing. I looked up the divorce records and saw that they were sealed. This is what brings me to call you.”

“Yes, the records are sealed for a good reason. I would be in violation of a court order as well as my obligations to attorney-client privilege and confidentiality if I were to discuss such matters with you.”

“I thought maybe there was a work-around on that, that you could tell me about the relationship without breaking the seal, so to speak.”

“Did you not ask Cynthia?”

“I did and she was reluctant to talk about it today. I didn’t want to press it. She’s had a difficult day.”

“What are you not telling me, Detective?”

It was always the lawyer who wanted to ask questions instead of answer them. Ballard ignored this.

“Can you tell me this...” Ballard said. “Who asked the judge to seal the records?”

There was a long pause while Edwards apparently reviewed the rules of law to determine if she could answer.

“I can tell you that I asked that the judge seal the record,” she finally said. “And that request would have been in open court.”

Ballard got the hint.

“You know I am not going to be able to find a transcript of that hearing on a Friday night,” Ballard said. “Maybe not even on Monday. Would it break the rules for you to summarize why you asked the judge in open court to seal the record?”

“Without first consulting my client, I will only tell you this,” Edwards said. “The cause of action in the divorce contained allegations of things Mr. Carpenter did to my client to humiliate her. Terrible things. She didn’t want those allegations contained in any public record. The judge agreed, the file was sealed — and that’s all I can tell you.”

“Reggie’s a bad guy, isn’t he?”

It was a shot in the dark. Ballard thought maybe she’d get a response, but Edwards didn’t bite.

“What else can I do for you, Detective Ballard?” she asked instead.

“I appreciate your time, Ms. Edwards. Thank you for calling me back.”

“Not at all. I hope you get whoever it was who committed this crime.”

“I intend to.”

Ballard disconnected. She leaned back in her chair to consider what she had learned from Edwards and the call to Reginald Carpenter. She had just pulled on a string without much reason other than her gut feeling about the way Cindy Carpenter talked about her ex. But this case was about two serial rapists who had attacked three different women. That this would connect to Reginald Carpenter, whether he was an abusive husband or not, seemed far-fetched. Plus, he claimed he had been in Palm Springs. She doubted he would have mentioned that to a detective if it could not be backed up.

Still, the information gleaned from the two calls stuck with Ballard and she decided that at some point she needed to talk to Cindy Carpenter about her ex, despite it obviously being a subject she wanted left alone. She decided in the meantime to go back to the new focus of the case: finding the nexus that connected the three known victims.

She called the second victim, Angela Ashburn, and talked her into filling out the questionnaire that would be emailed to her. Ashburn did not exhibit the same fear and upset that Bobbi Klein had. Though expressing reluctance to reopen thoughts about the assault, she ultimately agreed to work on the Lambkin survey the next day, since she would be off from work. Ballard thanked her and said she would check in with her Saturday afternoon.

Ballard went back to work on her laptop, setting up a file in which she would collate the information that would come in from the victims. She had just begun the task when she heard her call sign come up on the rover she had placed on the desk. She could tell it was Lieutenant Rivera by the slight accent in his voice.

“Go for six-William-twenty-six.”

She waited thirty seconds for Rivera to come back up on the radio.

“Code six, Adam-fifteen, Cahuenga and Odin.”

This meant patrol officers needed help with an investigation and were requesting a detective. It didn’t indicate what the investigation or crime was about. Ballard was often called to a scene where she did not know the details ahead of time. Nine out of ten times a detective was actually not needed and the call was an attempt by patrol officers to lay off some of their responsibilities and work on her. In this case she knew the Adam-15 car was Vitello and Smallwood, and she expected this to be one of those times. But she responded in the affirmative to Rivera without asking for additional information.

“Roger, six-William-twenty-six.”

She closed her laptop, put it in her briefcase, and grabbed the rover. Then she went down the back hallway to the station house door.

14

Coming out of the station’s parking lot, Ballard went east one block, passing the fire station, and took a left onto Cahuenga. It was a straight shot up to the Cahuenga Pass, where she saw the blue flashers up ahead at the intersection with Odin. She pulled in behind the patrol car, which was behind a dark coupe. Vitello and Smallwood stood between the two cars with a man who had his wrists cuffed behind his back.

Ballard got out with her rover in hand.

“Fellas,” she said. “What’s up?”

Smallwood signaled her to follow him to the front of the coupe so they could talk out of earshot of the man in cuffs.

“Hey, Mallard, we got one of the dirtbags you’re looking for,” Smallwood said.

Ballard ignored the play on her name from the officer whose own name provided so much more comedy in the division.

“What dirtbags?” Ballard asked.

“You know, the tag team,” Smallwood said. “The rapists that hit last night. This guy’s one of them.”

Ballard looked over Smallwood’s shoulder at the man in handcuffs. He stood with his head down in shame.

“And how do you know that?” she asked. “Why’d you stop him?”

“We stopped him on a deuce,” Smallwood said. “But check out the floor of the back seat. We didn’t search in case you need a warrant or something. We didn’t want to fuck anything up, you know?”

“Let me see your light. Did you talk to this guy at all?”

“Not at all. Didn’t want to fuck up.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

Smallwood gave her his flashlight and she walked down the side of the coupe and pointed the beam through the windows into the car. She scanned the front seats and center console before moving to the back. In the footwell on the passenger side she saw an open cardboard box, and in it she could see rolls of duct tape and blue tape and a box cutter. She felt the beginning of an adrenaline rush.

She stepped behind the car and put the light on the man in handcuffs, blinding him and forcing him to turn away. He had dark, curly hair, was mid-thirties, and had acne scars on his cheeks.

“Sir, where were you coming from when the officers stopped you?”

“I was up on Mulholland.”

“You were drinking?”

“I had a couple beers after I finished my work. When I was parked at the overlook.”

Ballard picked up what sounded like a slight English accent. None of the victims of the Midnight Men had reported that either of the rapists had an accent. Still, she knew it could be a ploy.

“Where were you going just now when you got stopped?”

“Um, just home.”

“Where’s that?”

Vitello handed her a driver’s license. She put the light on it and read it as the man gave the matching address. He was Mitchell Carr, thirty-four years old and living on Commonwealth in Los Feliz. Ballard realized he could be her neighbor. She handed the license back to Vitello.

“You run him?” she asked.

“He’s clean except for motor vehicle violations,” Vitello said.

“I only had two beers,” Carr added helpfully.

Ballard looked at him. She noticed something clipped to his belt and put the light on it. It was a retractable tape measure. The adrenaline buzz started to ebb. This didn’t feel right.

“Where are you from?” she asked. “Originally.”

“New South Wales,” Carr said. “A long time ago.”

Vitello leaned toward her confidentially.

“Australia,” he whispered.

Ballard raised her hand and gestured him back without touching him.

“What do you do for a living, sir?” she asked.

“Interior design work,” Carr said.

“You’re a designer?”

“Well, no, I work for an interior designer.”

“Doing what?”

“Delivering and installing furniture, hanging pictures, taking measurements, that sort of thing.”

Ballard looked at Smallwood, who had joined them between the cars. She handed him back his flashlight and turned back to Carr.

“What’s with the box cutter and the tape in your car?” she asked.

“I was taping out furniture dimensions in a house,” Carr said. “So the owner could see where everything was going to go. How it would fit.”

“This was up on Mulholland?”

“Actually, it was on a street up there called Outpost. Right by Mulholland.”

“Do you carry a hand vacuum on your job?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like a battery-operated vacuum — a Dustbuster type of thing.”

“Oh. No, not really. I supervise furniture installations and those guys usually do the cleanup after.”

“Do you mind if we look in your trunk, Mr. Carr?”

“Go ahead. What do you think I did?”

Ballard ignored the question and nodded to Smallwood. He went to the open driver’s door, took a few seconds to locate the trunk release, and finally popped it open. Ballard stepped over to look, Vitello following.

“Stay with him,” Ballard instructed.

“Right,” Vitello said.

Ballard checked the trunk. There were more open boxes containing equipment for Carr’s stated profession — rolls of tape, more box cutters, small cans of paint and industrial cleaners. No hand vacuum, coveralls, ski masks, or premade eye masks.

“Thank you, Mr. Carr,” she said.

Ballard turned to Smallwood and Vitello.

“And thank you two for wasting my time.”

She pushed past them and started back toward her car, bringing the rover up to her mouth and radioing the com center that she was clearing the scene. Smallwood followed her.

“Mallard,” he said. “Are you sure?”

Returning to her car, Ballard said nothing. As she opened the door, she stared back at Smallwood, who was still waiting for a response.

“Did you check the height on his DL?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” Smallwood said.

“Five eleven. We’re looking for guys about five six, five eight max.”

She got in the car, checked her side mirror, and then pulled out, leaving Smallwood standing there.

Since she was already out and about, she decided to follow through with her plan to drive up into the Dell to check things out in the dark hours. She slowly cruised down the street, passing Cindy Carpenter’s house. The living room lights were on behind drawn curtains. Ballard also saw down the side of the house a light in what would be the guest bedroom. She thought Cindy had probably moved to that room to sleep, leaving behind the room where she had been attacked. She wondered if Cindy would sleep with the lights on from now on.

Deciding to walk up and down the street, she drove down to the cul-de-sac and pulled to the curb. The chill of the night might reinvigorate her and she would see all the shadows and dark places.

The first thing she noted as she walked was that, while the street seemed quiet, the background sound from the nearby 101 freeway was noticeable. Earlier she had been on Harry Bosch’s back deck that overlooked the same freeway from the other side, but the traffic noise had not been as intrusive as it was up here. She also imagined that the neighborhood would hear the faint sounds of the Hollywood Bowl, which was positioned directly across the freeway. That was probably a good sound to hear, and would have been missed for almost a year now with the pandemic closure.

The streetlights were positioned too far apart to provide continuous lighting on the street. There were pockets of darkness, and the Carpenter house was in one of these, shaded deeper because the nearest streetlight — at the east end of the property — was out. Ballard pulled out the small light she always carried in the pocket of her Van Heusen jacket and put it up toward the opaque glass globe at the top of the post. It was an antique streetlamp, the kind favored by the residents of the wealthy hillside neighborhoods, where they were more concerned with design and aesthetics than the need for light as a deterrent to crime. Many of the neighborhoods in the hills and wealthy communities were still lit by the dim glow of these lamps. In L.A., decisions about style, intensity, and number of streetlights were left to neighborhood homeowner groups to decide. Consequently, there were dozens of different designs all through the city and most homeowner associations fought any effort to modernize the streetlamps.

The fogged glass top of the light appeared to be intact. Ballard could not determine whether it had been damaged or tampered with. She tracked her flashlight beam down the precast stone post to the base, where there was a steel plate through which the light’s internal wiring could be accessed. She was about to stoop down to look for signs of tampering on the plate, when she was startled by a man’s voice from behind her.

“That’s an acorn.”

Ballard whipped around and put her light into the eyes of an old man carrying a small dog in both arms. The dog looked like a Chihuahua and appeared just as old and decrepit as its owner. The man tried to raise a hand to block the light but could not reach high enough without possibly dropping his dog. Ballard lowered the light and pulled her mask up over her mouth and nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You startled me.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to,” the man said. “I see you’re admiring our acorn.”

“You mean the light?”

“Yes, we call them acorns because of the shape of the globe, you see. We are very protective of them.”

“Well, this one isn’t doing too well.”

“It’s been reported to the BSL. I called personally.”

“You live on this street?”

“Oh, yes. More than fifty years. I even knew Peter the Hermit back in the day.”

Ballard had no idea whom or what he was referencing.

“I’m a police officer,” she said. “A detective. Do you walk this street often at night?”

“Every night. Frederic here has gotten too old to walk, so I carry him. I know he likes it.”

“When did you report that this... acorn... was out?”

“Yesterday morning. I wanted it fixed before the holiday but they didn’t get it done. But I told them, you people screwed it up, get back out here and fix it. I didn’t want it put to the back of the line. I know how the BSL works.”

“And what is the BSL? And who screwed what up?”

“The Bureau of Street Lighting. But I say it means Bull Shit Lies. They’re supposed to preserve but they don’t care about history. Or beauty. They want the whole city to look the same. The ugly orange glow from their big steel poles. Sodium vapor. That’s why they’re out here sabotaging us, if you ask me.”

At that moment, Ballard became very interested in the old man.

“What is your name, sir?”

“Jack. Jack Kersey. Chairman of the street-lighting committee, Hollywood Dell Association.”

“When did you notice that this one was out?”

“Wednesday night on our walk — day before yesterday.”

“And you think it was sabotaged?”

“I know it was. I saw them up here with their van. How many BSL guys does it take to unscrew a streetlight? I guess the answer’s two. They were here and then that night it never came on.”

Ballard had been pointing her light at the ground. She now pointed the beam back at the access plate at the base of the streetlight.

“They were working on it here?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Kersey said. “By the time I grabbed Frederic and got up here, they were turning around to leave. I waved at them but they just drove on by me.”

“Did you get a look at either one of them?”

“Not really. The guy driving was white. He had red hair, I remember that.”

“What about the other guy?”

He shook his head.

“I was just looking at the driver, I guess.”

“Tell me about their van. What color was it?”

“It was white. Just a van.”

“Were there markings on it — like Bureau of Street Lighting or a city seal or anything?”

“Uh... yeah, I saw it. BSL — right on the door when they blew by me.”

“You mean you saw the letters — BSL?”

“Yeah, right on the door.”

“And could you tell what kind of van it was?”

“Not really. One of their work vans.”

“For example, did it have a flat front like the old-style vans with the engines between the front seats? Or more like a sloping front — like the newer vans have?”

“Yes, sloping front. It looked new.”

“What about windows? Did it have windows running down the sides, or was it what they call a panel van?”

“Panel. You really know your vans, Detective.”

“It’s come up before.”

She didn’t bother mentioning that she had owned several vans in her life when she was carrying multiple surfboards around.

Ballard put her light on the plate at the bottom of the post again. She could see that two screws held it in place. She had a basic set of tools in her kit bag in the car.

“Mr. Kersey, where do you live?” she asked.

“Just down at the end,” he said. “At the intersection.”

He gave a specific address and pointed four houses down to the residence at the next streetlight. Ballard realized it was one of the houses where no one had answered her knock earlier in the day.

“Were you out earlier today?” she asked. “I knocked on your door.”

“I was at the store, yes,” he said. “Otherwise, I was home. Why’d you knock? What’s this about?”

“There was a break-in on the street last night. I’m investigating. The light might have been put out by the perpetrators.”

“Oh, my. Whose home?”

Ballard pointed to the Carpenter house.

“That one.”

“And things had just started to settle down there, too.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there was a guy living there. He was loud, always yelling, throwing stuff around. A hothead is what I’d call him. Then I think she kicked him out, and things got quiet again. Peaceful.”

Ballard nodded. She was realizing how lucky she was that Kersey had taken his dog out while she was on the street. His information was important.

“You didn’t happen to notice anything unusual in the neighborhood last night, did you?” she asked.

“Last night... I don’t think so,” Kersey said.

“Nothing at all after eight or so?”

“Nothing comes to mind. Sorry, Detective.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Kersey. I’m going to go get some tools out of my car, which I parked at the cul-de-sac. I need to open that plate up. I’ll be right back.”

“I probably should be putting Frederic to bed. He gets tired, you know.”

Ballard asked him for his phone number in case she wanted to follow up with any questions or show him photos of vans.

“Thank you, Mr. Kersey,” she said. “Have a good night.”

“You too, Detective,” Kersey said. “Good night and stay safe.”

He turned and headed back down the street, murmuring words of comfort to the dog in his arms.

Ballard walked up the street to her car, got in, and drove it down to where the darkened streetlight was. She popped the trunk and opened the plastic mini tool set she kept in the kit bag. After pulling on gloves, she returned to the streetlight with a screwdriver and quickly removed the access plate. The screws were tight but turned easily. It was not what she expected for something that was essentially an antique. She noticed a faded manufacturer tag on the plate that said Pacific Union Metal Division.

Once she had removed the plate, she pointed the beam into the opening and saw a tangle of wires hanging from a metal conduit that she assumed ran up the post to the light assembly. One of the wires had been cut, its copper center still shining brightly in the flashlight beam. The copper was not degraded or oxidized at all, indicating that it had been freshly cut.

Ballard had no doubt. The Midnight Men had cut the wire and killed the light on Wednesday before coming back Thursday night to break into Cindy Carpenter’s house to rape her. They had been as unlucky with Jack Kersey as she had been lucky. He had seen them and he knew something about streetlights. His basic description of the van driver having red hair matched Cindy’s description of one of her attackers.

She now felt bad about giving Smallwood and Vitello shit for calling her out on the traffic stop. If they had not done that, she might not have cruised the neighborhood at the right time and run into Jack Kersey. Things felt as though they had aligned for her somehow, and now she was a step closer to the Midnight Men.

She screwed the access plate back into place and then headed back to her car. She wanted to drive south and check the streetlights outside the homes of the first two victims.

15

The streetlights were all now burning brightly on the streets where the first two Midnight Men attacks had occurred. Ballard did, however, get a direct example of the eclectic nature of the city’s street-lighting program. The two streets carried different styles of globes and posts, including ornate iron posts and double-globed lights on one street and simple acorns on the other. Ballard was annoyed at herself that she was a detective who worked the midnight shift but had never noticed the difference in streetlights from neighborhood to neighborhood. It served as a reminder to always be observant, to look for the details that made a difference.

She was pulled to the side of the road, looking up an address for the Bureau of Street Lighting, when she got another callout for the night detective. She needed to respond to a death scene under the Gower Street overpass. She noted the address of the nearest BSL office — there were actually many — and started the drive to Gower. She knew she was headed to one of the most crowded, ugliest homeless communities in Hollywood. During the pandemic it had grown from a few tents to a full community of tents, lean-tos, and other ragtag structures — some built with amazing ingenuity — belonging to a homeless community that numbered at least one hundred people. In the past ten months Ballard had twice been called out to death scenes in Gower Grim, as the homeless zone had been termed by officers in the division. One of these deaths had been attributed to Covid-19, the other to an opioid overdose.

She came up from Hollywood Boulevard, the terrain gently rising toward Beachwood Canyon, the hillside community east of the Dell. She could see the flashers from two patrol cars, which told her a patrol sergeant was on the scene. She parked behind one of the patrol cars and saw the huddle of two P2s and Sergeant Spellman outside a small cubicle with sides made from shipping pallets. On the concrete wall that supported the freeway overpass someone had spray-painted the slogan “No Mask, No Vax, No Problem.”

Ballard pulled up her mask, got out, and joined the group of fellow officers.

“Ballard,” Spellman said. “Need you to sign off on this one. It’s another OD. Looks like fentanyl.”

Ballard was there to determine whether to call out the homicide team or write this one off as an accidental death, or “death by misadventure” — the phrase the Medical Examiner’s Office liked to use. Her decision would determine whether the whole machinery of homicide investigation would be cranked up, with detectives and forensic units being called out in the middle of the night.

The P2s were La Castro and Vernon, both young men fresh off their probation year and newly assigned to Hollywood from the quiet Devonshire Division in the Valley. They had not yet experienced the open and hostile environment that would return to Hollywood once the pandemic was over.

Ballard snapped on gloves and pulled out her mini-light.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

A piece of blue plastic tarp used as a door had been flipped up over the top of the makeshift shack. There was not enough room for anyone other than Ballard to enter. The space was smaller than a cell at the old county jail. There was a dirty mattress on the ground and on it the body of a fully dressed man with unkempt hair and a straggly beard. Ballard estimated that he was in his twenties even though he looked like he was in his thirties, his body aged by drug use and living on the streets. He was on his back, his eyes open in rictus and cast upward. There was no roof. Twenty-five feet above them was the steel underside of the freeway. It rumbled every time a car crossed it, and even at midnight the traffic up there was constant.

Ballard squatted and moved the light in closer to the body. The lips were bluish purple, the mouth slightly open. She could see dried, yellowish vomit on the lips, in the beard, and on the mattress next to the dead man’s right ear. She moved the light down the body and noted that the fingers of both hands were curled tightly toward the palms.

A truck rumbled heavily by overhead, causing the pallets to shudder. Ballard moved the light about and saw that the dead man had insulated his home with collapsed cardboard boxes nailed to the pallets. She saw that one box had contained a flat-screen television, the depiction of which was positioned so the man could look at it from his dirty mattress.

There was debris on and around the mattress. Overturned boxes, a dirty backpack pulled inside out, an empty mayonnaise jar that might have contained coins collected at street corners. Whatever else had been there was gone now. The fellow residents of Gower Grim had been sure to pick through the dead man’s belongings before alerting the police.

It was difficult with the homeless to determine death by overdose on-site. There were no empty or half-filled pill bottles left behind to help the investigator. The addicted in the homeless camps couldn’t afford the luxury of surplus supply, or if they did, it was long gone by the time police were on scene. But more often than not, the threadbare existence determined that the pill that killed them was the last pill they could afford. This man’s cause of death would certainly be determined by autopsy and toxicity testing, but she had to make the call now as to whether to crank up the machine. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly. The safe thing to do would be always to call out Homicide. But that would often mean crying wolf. That would start a rumble in the ranks that would result in distrust of Ballard. In more than four years on the late shift, she had called out Homicide several times, but she had never been wrong.

She stood up and moved back out to the street. She saw the white coroner’s van with the blue stripe down the side pulling in.

“Well?” Spellman asked.

“Purple Haze,” Ballard said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Jimi Hendrix asphyxiated on his own vomit after taking too many pills. So did this guy. Did anybody get an ID?”

Spellman started laughing.

“That’s good, Ballard,” he said. “I gotta remember that.”

Ballard immediately regretted using the phrase. It was callous and now this callous patrol sergeant would use it again. It would get passed on and add another layer of callousness to the department.

“ID?” she prompted, to get things back on course.

“No, no ID found,” said La Castro. “We asked around — people here just knew him as Jimmy.”

“Holy shit!” Spellman said. “Purple Haze is right.”

He turned away to jerk his mask down so he could laugh unbound. Ballard saw several of the homeless people watching from the openings in their tents and lean-tos. Ballard felt all their hollow eyes on her as the originator of the joke that had made the sergeant laugh.

Ballard remained at the scene for the next half hour while the coroner’s investigator conducted the same overview as she had and came to the same conclusion. The death would not be ruled a homicide. While she waited, she used her rover to call for the unit that carried a mobile thumb reader. If the dead man had ever given a thumbprint while obtaining a California driver’s license or being booked into a jail or prison, his identity would come up. The readers were expensive and not distributed to every patrol car or detective.

When the reader arrived, Ballard took it into the dead man’s shack and placed his right thumb on the screen. It came back negative. No hits. The man was not in the system. This was unusual — almost unheard of — for a homeless drug user. Ballard took another read off his thumb and again the result was negative. This meant the coroner’s office would have to do a deeper dive to identify the man and notify next of kin. If that failed, his body would be kept in refrigeration for a year and then burned, his ashes buried under a number in Evergreen Cemetery in East L.A.

After the body was loaded into the blue-striped van, Ballard drove back to the station to get her paperwork done before end of watch. She first updated the chrono on the Midnight Men investigation, then wrote up the reports on the death of the unidentified man. She learned from the coroner’s investigator at the scene that he would be identified in records as John Doe 21-3 until his true identity was determined. Ballard realized that meant that only twenty-four hours or so into the new year, there were already three unidentified bodies in the Big Crypt at the coroner’s office. That so many were anonymous and uncounted in this city carried through even in death.

When finished, she printed out her reports and left copies in the mailbox for the detective lieutenant. He would not see them until Monday, when he was scheduled to come back into work. She also emailed the updated chrono to Lisa Moore. This was not necessary but she wanted the sex crimes investigator to see how far she had moved the investigation forward without her help.

The paperwork took Ballard to the end of her shift at six. But she needed to kill another hour because she wanted to swing by Native Bean when it opened at seven. She spent the time checking email and surfing the Web, first putting “Peter the Hermit” into the search engine. She discovered that he had been a legendary denizen of the Dell. He had lived on Ivar Avenue and had long white hair and a beard, which got him work in movies with biblical themes in the 1920s and ’30s. He was also credited with being one of the first to work the character impersonator trade on Hollywood Boulevard, posing in his biblical robes for tourists in exchange for tips. He was a mainstay in the Dell into the 1960s, when he passed.

She then found herself going to the Wags and Walks website to check out the latest offering of dogs up for rescue. Ballard was still mourning the loss of her dog Lola, who had succumbed to bone cancer eight months earlier. With increasing frequency she found herself checking out rescue sites, looking at photos and thinking about bringing a dog home. Lola had been a pit bull mix and her look had intimidated more than a few people on Venice Beach. Ballard never had to worry about her belongings when she took her paddleboard out and left Lola at her tent.

But now that she was living in the new apartment, there was a weight limit on acceptable animals and Ballard was looking more for companionship than protection.

She scrolled through the photos and read some of the accompanying stories — all from the dog’s point of view. She finally came to Pinto, a Chihuahua mix with golden eyes and a sincere look. He had caught Ballard’s eye two weeks ago when he first showed up on the carousel of photos of dogs needing homes. He was still there at the shelter and still available.

Ballard looked up at the clock on the wall. It was time to go catch Cindy Carpenter as she opened the coffee shop for business. She looked back at Pinto. He was brown and white and had a longer snout than a pure-bred Chihuahua — like Frederic, the dog Jack Kersey carried. She clicked on a button under his photo and an email form came up. She typed, “I want to meet Pinto.” She hesitated, but only for a second or two, and then added her cell number and clicked the send button.

She was dead tired when she crossed the station parking lot to her Defender. But she was hopeful about Pinto.

She counted the hours since she had slept and it came to almost a solid day. She wanted to take her board out to the Sunset break and let the Pacific restore her, but she knew sleep was imperative. She would go by Native Bean, check on Cindy, then get to her apartment to sleep until at least noon. She drove out of the station lot and up to Sunset. She took a right and it was a straight shot to Hillhurst.

Ballard arrived at Native Bean at seven and saw four people already in line at the window. She parked across the street, pulled up her mask, and got out.

When it was Ballard’s turn, she was not waited on by Cindy. Ballard ordered a decaf black and could see Cindy in the background, making the drinks. She called out to her and waved.

“You got a minute?”

“Uh, not right— Let me get these orders out. There’s a table on the side.”

Because Ballard had not ordered a fancy coffee concoction, she received her cup right away. She took it around the side of the building, where there were four tables spaced properly along the sidewalk of the cross street. She sat at the table next to the side door of the shop and waited. She didn’t want the coffee she had just bought, even though it was decaf. She wanted to be able to sleep.

Carpenter came out with her own cup of coffee after about five minutes.

“Sorry, we got busy.”

She sat across the table from Ballard. The bruises on her face were spreading and had turned a deep purple. The lacerations were just starting to scab over.

“No problem,” Ballard said. “I didn’t tell you I was coming. I just wanted to check on you and see how you’re doing.”

“I’m all right,” Carpenter said. “I guess. Considering.”

“Yeah, you’ve been through something nobody should have to experience.”

“Is there any news? Did you—”

“No, not really. I mean, no arrests. When we get them, I will let you know right away, day or night.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Did you have time to work on the questionnaire?”

“Yes, but I’m not finished. It’s a lot. I brought it with me and I’ll work on it after the morning rush.”

As if on cue, the screen door of the shop opened and the woman who had taken Ballard’s order at the window leaned out.

“We have orders,” she said.

“Okay,” Carpenter said. “I’ll be in.”

The employee let the door bang shut.

“I’m sorry,” Carpenter said. “I really need to be in there.”

“That’s okay,” Ballard said. “We can talk later when you finish the questionnaire. I just wanted to ask if anything else came to mind. You know, you remembered about the photo, so I wanted to see if more details had come to you.”

Carpenter got up from the table.

“No, not really,” she said. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, nothing to be sorry about,” Ballard said. “But one other thing real quick. One of your neighbors saw a white van on the street before the attack on you. Two men, supposedly working on a streetlight, but the light is definitely out. I was up there. So I think it was them and they were disabling the light to make it darker outside your house.”

“That’s creepy,” Carpenter said. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll check with the Bureau of Street Lighting to see if they had somebody up there, but I kind of doubt it. One of the wires in that lamppost was cut. Anyway, I just wanted to ask. You don’t know anybody who owns a white van, do you?”

“Uh, no.”

“Okay, I’ll let you get back to work.”

After Carpenter went back inside, Ballard got up and dropped her untouched coffee into a trash can. It was time to go to sleep.

16

The buzz from her cell phone infiltrated her sleep, pulling Ballard out of a dream about water. She pushed the sleep mask up onto her forehead and reached for the phone. She saw that it was Bosch calling and it was exactly noon.

“Harry.”

“Shit, you were sleeping. Call me back when you’re awake.”

“I’m awake, I’m awake. What’s going on?”

“I think I found the nexus.”

His use of the word nexus sent Ballard’s thoughts toward the victims of the Midnight Men. That was the case she had been running with until exhaustion drove her down into the deep sleep Bosch had just roused her from. She flipped the comforter over, swung her legs to the edge of the bed, and pulled herself up into a sitting position.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “What are you saying? You connected the three women? How did—”

“No, not the women,” Bosch said. “The murders. Javier Raffa and Albert Lee.”

“Oh, yeah, got it. Sorry. I have to wake up.”

“When did you go down?”

“About eight.”

“That’s not enough time. Go back to sleep, call me later.”

“No, I won’t be able to sleep now. I’ll be thinking about the case. Tell you what, you hungry? I never ate anything yesterday. I could bring something up to the house.”

“Uh, yeah. If you’re sure.”

“I am. What do you want?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“I’m going to take a shower and then I’ll leave. Text me what you want from Birds. It’s on the way. The menu’s online.”

“I already know what I want. Quarter chicken with baked beans and coleslaw. And I’ll take the regular barbecue sauce.”

“Text me anyway so I don’t forget.”

She disconnected, then sat on the bed for a long moment, wondering if she should have taken Bosch’s advice and tried to go back to sleep. She turned and looked back at her pillow. After four years on the night shift, working eight to six four nights a week, she had learned that cheating sleep could have bad consequences.

She pushed herself off the bed and headed to the bathroom.

An hour later she pulled to a stop in front of Bosch’s house. She carried her laptop and the bag from Birds. The restaurant was only a few minutes from her condo and had become her go-to place during the pandemic for takeout. They also gave anybody with a badge a discount, not that LAPD officers were supposed to take such perks.

Bosch took the bag from her and put it on the dining room table, where he had cleared space amid his laptop, printer, and paperwork. He started to take out the cartons containing their food.

“I got the same as you,” Ballard said. “Should be easy. You okay with me taking the mask off to eat? I have the antibodies. Supposedly.”

“Yeah, I’m okay. When did you get it?”

“November.”

“How bad?”

“I was down a few weeks but obviously I was luckier than others. You think the new president’s going to hurry the vaccine along? I don’t know anybody in the department who’s gotten it so far.”

“Hope so.”

“What about you? You’re eligible.”

“I never leave this place. Might be more dangerous for me to go out to get it.”

“You should make an appointment, Harry. Don’t turn it into a thing.”

“You sound like my daughter.”

“Well, your daughter’s right. How is Maddie?”

“Good. She’s doing well in the academy and has a boyfriend now.”

He offered nothing else but Ballard guessed that this meant he didn’t see her very often. She felt bad about that.

They both ate out of the sectioned cartons the meals came in. Bosch already had real silverware out and waiting, so they left the plastic stuff in the bag.

“In the old days, they used to give cops a discount,” Bosch said. “At Birds.”

“They still do,” Ballard said. “They like having cops as customers.”

She gave him some time to savor his first bite of rotisserie chicken slathered in barbecue sauce. It was the kind of food that made you bring a napkin to your mouth after every bite.

“So, tell me about this nexus you found,” she said.

“All I have is the public records that you can get online,” Bosch said. “Corporate records filed with the state. You’re going to have to go deeper with your access to confirm.”

“Okay, and what am I confirming?”

“I think it’s like the factoring that happened in the Albert Lee case. Ownership of the body shop, including the property it sits on, was transferred from Javier Raffa three years ago to a corporation owned by Raffa and a partner.”

“Who’s the partner?”

“A dentist named Dennis Hoyle. Office in Sherman Oaks.”

“Another dentist. Dennis the dentist. The dentist in the Albert Lee case was down in the Marina, right?”

“Yeah, John William James.”

“Any connection between Hoyle and James?”

“That’s the nexus.”

Ballard could tell Bosch was proud of whatever it was he had found, and of doing so without even leaving his house. She hoped she would still have that mojo if she was around and working cases at his age.

“Tell me,” she said.

“All right, you start with Hoyle and James being dentists,” Bosch said. “Completely different practices. James, he’s down in the Marina with that crowd: celebrities, singles, actors, whatever. Your guy, Hoyle, he’s up in the Valley, different clientele, probably more of a family practice. So it looks like never the twain shall meet, right?”

“I guess. Maybe they knew each other from professional associations. You know, Teeth Pullers of Los Angeles, or something like that.”

“Close. These guys — dentists — when they put in a crown or an implant or what have you, most of them don’t make that stuff in-house. They make a mold of the patient’s tooth and send it out to a dental lab that makes crowns and dentures.”

“They sent to the same lab.”

“They owned the same lab. They were partners — until somebody whacked James. It’s all in state corporate records. If somebody wants to spend the time chasing it through a maze of holding companies, it’s right there.”

“And you spent the time.”

“What else am I going to do?”

“Chase your guy Finbar McShane?”

“Finbar’s a white whale. You said so yourself. But this? This is real.”

Bosch wiped his hands thoroughly on a clot of napkins and then reached over for a sheaf of documents at the side of the table. Ballard could see the state seal of California on the top sheet.

“So you’ve been printing,” she said. “That must have taken all morning.”

“Funny,” Bosch said. “These are the incorporation filings behind a joint business venture called Crown Labs Incorporated. It’s located in Burbank up by the airport. Four other corporations own it, and these I traced to four dentists: James, Hoyle, and two guys named Jason Abbott and Carlos Esquivel.”

“How can James still own it if he’s been dead for seven years?”

“His company is called JWJ Ventures. Corporate records show the vice president of that company upon its founding was Jennifer James, who — I’m going to take a wild guess — was his wife. Seven months after he gets murdered, the records are amended and Jennifer James is now president. So he’s dead but she has his piece of the lab.”

“Okay, so James — when he was alive — knew Hoyle and was in business with him.”

“And each had an association with a business where the principal owner/operator is murdered.”

“With the same gun.”

Bosch nodded.

“With the same gun,” he repeated. “Very risky. The shells connect the case more solidly than the corporate records. There’s got to be a reason.”

“Well, twenty-twos are hard to match,” Ballard said. “They mushroom, shatter. It was about the shells. And in the Raffa kill, we got a break. The shell went under a car and wasn’t readily retrievable.”

“Same with Albert Lee — the shell wasn’t quickly retrievable. You get into coincidences now, and I don’t buy coincidences like that.”

“So, maybe we have other kills where there were no shells left behind and we just got lucky with these two.”

They both were silent for a moment as they considered this. Ballard thought, but didn’t say, that there had to be another reason the killer kept the gun. It belied the planning and precision of the hits. She knew it was something that would need to be answered in the course of the investigation.

“So...,” Ballard said, moving on. “Let’s suppose that Hoyle’s connection to Javier Raffa came out of a factoring deal. These dentists had to have somebody who set these things up. Somebody who knew about these men — Albert Lee and Javier Raffa — needing money.”

“Exactly. The factor man.”

“And that’s who we’ve got to find.”

“You have to go back to the Raffa family and find out when he hit a financial crunch and who he went to about it.”

“Well, I know one thing. He had to buy his way out of the gang. Our intel is that he paid Las Palmas twenty-five grand in cash to walk away.”

“Where’s a guy like that get that kind of cash — without robbing a bank?”

“He could have refinanced the business or the property.”

“What, and tell the bank he needed the money to buy his way out of a street gang? Good luck with that.”

Ballard didn’t respond as she thought it through.

“What about the other two dentists?” she finally said. “Abbott and Esquivel.”

Bosch tapped his stack of printouts.

“I got ’em here,” he said. “One of them’s got a practice in Glendale, the other’s in Westwood.”

“That’s weird,” Ballard said. “I just remembered Raffa’s son said the other night that his father’s partner was a white guy from Malibu.”

“Maybe Hoyle lives out there and commutes in to Sherman Oaks. Malibu puts him closer to James in the Marina. You’ll have to run all of them through DMV to get home addresses.”

“I will. When did Crown Labs first incorporate?”

“In ’04.”

“So these guys, they’ve been around.”

“Oh, yeah. James was thirty-nine when he got his ticket punched seven years ago.”

Ballard finished off the cup of coleslaw that came with her chicken. She then wiped her mouth with a napkin for the final time and closed the to-go carton.

“There is not much I can do to formally run all the connections down with the state till Monday,” she said. “And that’s only if I’m still on the case.”

“There is that,” Bosch said.

“Whether I’m on it then or not, what I feel like doing today is skeeing a few of these places. The lab, Hoyle’s house, maybe his office. See how high on the hog he’s living. I’ll run the other two through DMV and put them on the map. But right now there’s no real connection to them. That’s why I’m going to go skeeing. I want to see what I’m up against. Then I’ll go talk to Raffa’s family.”

Skeeing was pure LAPD jargon — a less formal word for surveilling. It meant doing a drive-by of a person of interest, taking a measure of him. Its origin was debated: One camp thought it derived from the word schematic, meaning getting the physical parameters of a suspect’s place of business or residence. Others said it was short for scheming — taking the first step in a plan to hit a house of criminal activity. Either way, Ballard did not have to translate for Bosch.

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

“You sure?” Ballard asked.

“I’m sure,” Bosch said. “I’ll grab a mask.”

17

The skee patrol started at the dental lab near the airport. On San Fernando Road in an industrial zone that backed up to the 5 freeway, it was a large single-level building with a gated parking lot on the side. A small sign identifying the business was on the door along with a logo: a cartoon tooth with eyes and a bright smile.

“It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” Ballard said.

“The four entities own it but it most likely does work for dentists all over the city,” Bosch said.

“You’d think a place like this would make them enough money that they didn’t need to be involved in factoring and murder schemes.”

“Some people can never have enough money. And then again, maybe we’re completely wrong and they are completely legit.”

“It’s not looking that way.”

“You want to try to go in?”

“They’re closed. No cars in the lot. Besides, we don’t want to give them early warning that we’re sniffing around.”

“Good point. But drive down to the end, see what we can see.”

Ballard drove along the fence line until they could see a third side of the building. There was an emergency exit here by a trash dumpster.

“Okay,” Ballard said. “What’s next?”

Bosch had brought his printouts and had mapped out the order in which they should conduct the skee. Their next stop was nearby Glendale. They drove by a shopping plaza on Brand Boulevard, where Carlos Esquivel had a family dentistry practice. It was on the second level of the plaza and reachable by an outdoor escalator, which had been turned off for the holiday weekend.

“Looks like a nice practice he’s got here,” Ballard said.

“Let’s drive around behind,” Bosch said. “See what the parking situation looks like.”

Ballard followed his instruction and found an alley that ran behind the plaza and where there was reserved parking for building employees. They saw Esquivel’s name on a placard reserving one spot. Right next to it was a spot reserved for a Dr. Mark Pellegrino.

“Looks like he has a partner,” Bosch said.

Next stop was Esquivel’s home in the hills above Glendale: a multimillion-dollar contemporary with white walls, hard lines, black window frames, and a gated driveway.

“Not bad,” Bosch said.

“He’s doing all right,” Ballard said. “I guess drillin’ teeth is drillin’ for gold.”

“But can you imagine that life? No one’s ever happy to see you.”

“You’re the guy who’s going to stick your fingers and metal instruments in my mouth.”

“Sucks.”

“Not that different from being a cop. These days, people don’t want to see us either.”

And so it went. They next traversed the Valley, checking out Dennis Hoyle’s office and home. DMV records showed that he had previously lived in Malibu, but his current residence was in the hills off Coldwater Canyon. It was a gated property with a view of the whole San Fernando Valley. Next they dropped down through the Sepulveda Pass to the Westwood location, where Jason Abbott practiced dentistry, and then over to the other side of the freeway in Brentwood, where he lived.

They headed south for the final drive-by — the places the late John William James worked, lived, and died. But before they got there, Ballard took an unexpected turn in Venice. Bosch thought she was making a driving mistake.

“This is not it,” he said.

“I know,” Ballard said. “I just want to make a little detour. One of my Midnight Men victims — the latest one — has an ex that lives down here. And I thought, since we’re on skee patrol, that I’d just take a run by and scope it out.”

“No problem. You think he’s one of the Midnight Men?”

“No, it’s not that. But there’s something there. They divorced two years ago but she seems afraid of him. I hit him up last night on a pretext call to see what his reaction would be and he sounded like an asshole. He’s in the tech-investment field.”

“They’re all assholes. What address are we looking for?”

“Number five Spinnaker.”

They were on a narrow street a block from the beach. The homes were all modern, multilevel, and expensive. Reginald Carpenter was apparently doing better financially than his ex-wife. They found his home two houses off the beach. It was three levels sitting on top of a three-car garage with just enough space between the very similar houses on either side to store trash cans.

“I hope he has an elevator,” Bosch said.

There was a door to the right of the garage with a NO SOLICITING sign on it. Ballard leaned toward her window so she could look up the facade of the home. She could see the tip of a surfboard leaning over the railing of a balcony.

“I wonder if I knew this guy from when I used to stay out here,” she said.

Bosch didn’t answer. Ballard turned the car around and headed back to Pacific Avenue.

Pacific ran alongside the Ballona Lagoon, which separated Venice from Marina del Rey. They took it to Via Marina and then were cruising by homes valued even higher than those in overpriced Venice. They cruised by the condo complex where James had lived and then went out to Lincoln Boulevard, where his dental practice was located in a shopping plaza that backed up to the vast complex of docks and boats that made up the area’s namesake marina. Here, the skeeing paid off. The James family dentistry practice was still in business seven years after his unsolved murder. The name listed on the door was Jennifer James, DDS.

“Well, that explains some things,” Ballard said.

“She inherited her husband’s partnership and his practice,” Bosch said. “Unless maybe it was a joint practice all along.”

“I wonder what she knew or knows about the factoring.”

“And the murders, including her own husband’s.”

Bosch pointed to an empty parking space in the corner of the parking lot.

“Right there, that’s where he was parked,” he said. “The gunman supposedly came over from the Marina, crossed the lot, and shot him right through the window. Two head shots, very clean, very fast.”

“I take it no brass was left behind?” Ballard asked.

“None.”

“That would’ve been too easy. And the slugs?”

Bosch shook his head.

“It wasn’t my case,” he said. “But from what I remember, no go on the slugs. They flattened when they hit bone.”

Ballard drove out of the parking lot onto Lincoln Boulevard and headed north toward the 10 freeway.

“So, what else do you know about that investigation?” she asked.

Bosch explained that the John William James murder case was handled by Pacific Division Homicide, where it was determined that there were not enough reasons or evidence to connect it to the Albert Lee killing.

“I tried to get it there,” Bosch said. “But they wouldn’t listen. A guy named Larkin on the table at Pacific worked it. I think he was a short-timer, had, like, three months till he pulled the pin, and wasn’t looking for a big conspiracy case. By then I was two years in on Lee and I could not make the connection that would force the issue. Last thing I heard was that they were calling it robbery. James wore a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex his wife had given him. It was gone.”

“His wife who inherited his ownership in the lab as well as his practice,” Ballard said. “When did she give it to him?”

“That I don’t know. But as far as I do know, the case was never cleared. It would now be a cold case and the murder book would be at the Ahmanson Center.”

“You want me to make a U-turn?”

“It all depends on what else you’ve got going today.”

“I have my shift tonight and need to call my victims on the Midnight Men thing. They’re all working up surveys for me.”

“Another nexus to be found.”

“Hopefully. I also want to get to Raffa’s wife to ask about his twenty-five-thousand-dollar loan.”

Ballard saw an opening and made a U-turn on Lincoln. She headed south toward Westchester, the area of the city near LAX.

“What a treat!” she said. “We get to hit airport traffic from two airports in the same day.”

“This traffic is a breeze,” Bosch said. “Wait till the pandemic is over and people get out and want to travel. Good luck then.”

The Ahmanson Training Center was on Manchester Boulevard and was part of the LAPD network of training facilities for new recruits. The department had long outgrown the academy in the hills surrounding Dodger Stadium and had ancillary facilities here and up in the Valley. The citywide homicide archive was also housed here. It had opened only a few years before, when the glut of unsolved cases — six thousand since 1960 — had overburdened filing space in the department’s divisions. The murder books were on shelves in a room as big as a regular neighborhood library, and there was an ongoing project to digitize cases so there would always be space for more.

“You have your retiree badge or ID card with you?” Ballard asked. “In case they ask.”

“I have my card in my wallet,” Bosch said. “Didn’t think I’d be badging anybody.”

“You probably won’t need it. On weekends and holidays they just have a couple recruits on shit duty keeping the place open. They’ll probably be too intimidated by the likes of you to ask for ID.”

“Then I guess it’s good to know I can still bring it.”

“Why don’t you bring your printouts so we can get the date for the book we want to pull.”

After parking, they went up the front steps and into a grand hallway with large LAPD do-gooder photographs lining the walls. In a previous incarnation the center had been the corporate headquarters for an oil company. Ballard imagined the walls had then been lined with do-gooder oil-production photos.

The homicide library was on the first floor at the end of the grand hall. Its double doors were unmarked, the thinking likely being that it was not the best thing to advertise that the city had a whole library of murder books from unsolved cases.

There was a lone cadet behind the counter, sitting in a swivel chair and playing a game on his phone. He went on full alert when Ballard and Bosch entered, probably his only visitors of the day. He was the same kid who had been on duty the previous day when Ballard came in for the Albert Lee book. Still, she flipped her badge while Bosch put his printouts down on the counter and started spreading them out.

The recruit was in a training uniform with his name on a patch over the right breast pocket. It was attached by Velcro so it could be easily ripped off should the recruit wash out of the academy. His name was Farley.

“Ballard, Hollywood Division. I was here yesterday. We need to pull another book. This one from a 2013 case.”

She looked down at the printout Bosch was focused on. It was his copy of the chrono from the Albert Lee case, and he was running his finger down the page of 2013 entries. He found the one detailing his inquiries to Pacific Division Homicide about the John William James murder. He called out the case number and Farley dutifully wrote it down.

“Okay, let me go look,” he said.

He left the counter and disappeared into the warren of shelves lined with plastic binders, each one cataloging a life taken too soon and still with no justice in response.

Farley seemed to be taking a long time to locate the murder book. They were filed chronologically, so it seemed like it would be an easy errand to locate the 2013 shelves and find the John William James binder.

Ballard impatiently drummed her fingers on the counter.

“What the hell happened to him?” Bosch asked.

Ballard stopped drumming as some kind of realization came to her.

“It’s not there,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

“I just realized. The Albert Lee book is gone, so why would they leave this one?”

“They? Who’s they?”

Before Ballard could come up with an answer, Farley returned from his errand without a murder book in his hands. Instead, he had a lined manila checkout card like the one Ballard had seen when she came for the Albert Lee book.

“It’s checked out,” Farley said.

“That makes me oh for two,” Ballard said. “Who checked it out?”

Farley read a name off the checkout card.

“Ted Larkin, Homicide Unit, Pacific Division. But it says he checked it out five years ago. That was before this place was even here. Like the other one you asked for.”

Ballard slapped a hand down on the counter. She could guess that it was probably checked out after Larkin had retired. Somebody had impersonated the lead detectives on the two cases to enter two different police stations and steal the murder books, leaving behind what would be viewed as plausible checkout cards.

“Let’s go,” Ballard said.

She turned from the counter and headed to the door. Bosch followed.

“Thanks, Farley,” she called over her shoulder.

Ballard marched down the wide hallway toward the main entrance, leaving Bosch struggling to keep up.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he called after her. “Where are you running? There’s nothing you—”

“I want to get out of here,” Ballard said. “So we can talk outside.”

“Then we can only go as fast as I can go. So slow down.”

“Okay. I’m just fucking pissed off.”

Ballard slowed her pace and Bosch caught up.

“I mean, this is bullshit,” she said. “Somebody’s stealing murder books in our own damn department.”

The urgency of her voice caught the attention of two cadets walking by in the hall.

“Just wait,” Bosch said. “You said let’s talk outside.”

“Fine,” Ballard said.

She held her tongue until they were out the doors, down the steps, and heading across the parking lot to her car.

“They have somebody inside,” she said.

“Yeah, we know that.” Bosch said. “But who is ‘they’? The dentists? Or is there a go-between?”

“That’s the question,” Ballard replied.

They got in the Defender, and Ballard tore out of the parking lot like she was on a code 3 call. They drove in silence for a long time, until Ballard drove onto the entrance ramp of the 10 freeway.

“So, now what?” Bosch asked.

“We’re going to make one last stop,” Ballard said. “Then I need to go back to work on my other case. I told the victims I’d be calling.”

“That’s good. What stop are we making?”

“Dodger Stadium.”

“The academy? Why?”

“Not the academy. The stadium. I’m going to get you vaccinated, Harry. You’re eligible, and I get the feeling that if I don’t help you get it done, it will never happen.”

“Look, just take me home. I can get that done on my own time and not waste yours.”

“Nah, we’re going. Get it done now. Trust the science, Harry.”

“I do. But there are a hell of a lot of people who deserve it ahead of me. Besides, you need an appointment.”

Ballard pulled the badge off her belt and held it up.

“Here’s your appointment,” she said.

18

After Ballard cleared roll call without being pulled into anything new, she told the watch commander that she was going up to the Dell for a second interview with the latest victim of the Midnight Men. He told her to make sure she had a rover.

She could have handled Cindy Carpenter by phone, but face-to-face visits with victims were always better. Not only was it reassuring to them to see a detective in person, but there was a better chance of them sharing newly recalled details of the crime. The brain protects itself by switching to essential life support in a time of physical trauma. Only after safety returns do the full details of the trauma start to come back. Carpenter’s remembering having the sense that she was filmed or photographed was an example of this. Ballard was hoping that a continuation of the bond between detective and victim would emerge in this visit.

But Carpenter, still wearing her work polo with the Native Bean logo on it, answered the door with “What?”

“Hey, everything all right?” Ballard asked.

“Everything’s fine. Why do you keep coming back?”

“Well, you know why. And I was hoping you’d have the questionnaire finished for me.”

“I’m not done.”

She made a move to shut the door and Ballard put her hand out to stop it.

“Is something wrong, Cindy? Did something happen?”

Ballard quickly reset her goals for the visit. She now just wanted to get inside.

“Well, for one, you called my ex-husband and I asked you not to do that,” Carpenter said. “Now I have to deal with him.”

“You didn’t tell me not to call him,” Ballard said. “You told me you didn’t want to talk about him, but you also gave the responding officer his name and number as your closest contact. And it—”

“I told you I don’t know why I did that. I was confused and terrified. I couldn’t think of anybody else.”

“I understand all of that, Cindy. I do. But I have an investigation going and I need to follow it wherever it takes me. You put your ex’s name down on the incident report, then you don’t want to talk about him. That raised a flag for me. So, yes, I called him. I didn’t tell him that you were attacked. In fact, I worked my way around it. I take it he called you. What did he say?”

Carpenter shook her head like she was annoyed with how smoothly Ballard was handling this confrontation.

“Can I come in?” Ballard asked.

“Might as well,” Carpenter said.

She stepped back from the door. Ballard entered and tried to further diffuse the situation.

“Cindy, I hope you understand that my sole purpose right now is to find the men who attacked you and put them away forever. No matter what moves I make on the investigation, none are intended to cause you further harm or upset. That’s the last thing I want to do. So, why don’t we sit down and start with what happened after I talked to Reginald.”

“Fine.”

Carpenter took the spot on the couch where Ballard had last seen her the day before. Renée sat in a stuffed chair across a low-level coffee table.

“He called you?” Ballard prompted.

“Yes, he called me,” Carpenter said. “He asked what happened and I ended up telling him.”

“And was he sympathetic to you?”

“He acted like he was, but he always made it sound like he cared about me. That was the problem — it was always an act with him. But...”

“But what?”

“This is why I’m pissed off about you calling him. He now has this to hold over me.”

Ballard waited for her to say more but she didn’t.

“I don’t understand, Cindy. What is he holding over you?”

“I left him, okay? I was the one who wanted out.”

“Okay.”

“And he told me, he said I would regret it. And now, thanks to you, he knows what happened to me and, like I said, he pretended to be sympathetic, but I could tell he wasn’t. He was saying I told you so without saying it.”

Carpenter turned her face and looked out the window toward the street. Ballard was silent while she thought about the story of the Carpenter marriage. Finally, she landed on a question.

“Cindy, do you remember, when he asked you what happened, did you get any sense that he already knew?”

“Of course he did. You told him.”

“I didn’t tell him you were sexually assaulted. I said it was a break-in. Did he already know you were attacked?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try to remember, what exactly did he say?”

“He said, ‘I heard that some guys broke in and are you all right.’ Things like that.”

Ballard paused for a moment. She wanted to get the next question right.

“Cindy, think back to that call. Did he say ‘some guys’ broke in? He used the plural?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. I might have told him it was two guys, because I told him what happened. The point is, he now knows and I really wish he didn’t.”

Ballard knew that she had not mentioned that there were multiple suspects when she talked to Reginald on the phone. But now Cindy Carpenter couldn’t reliably remember who brought that fact into their conversation. It further advanced Ballard’s suspicions, because Cindy’s recounting of the conversation revealed more about their marriage. Her description of her ex-husband made him sound petty, selfish, and vengeful.

Again, though, she had to ask herself why she kept coming back to Reginald. He presumably had an alibi. And there was no known connection between Cindy or Reginald Carpenter and the other two victims of the Midnight Men.

“Did Reginald happen to say where he was on New Year’s?” she asked.

“He said he’d just gotten back from a golf trip in the desert when you called him,” Carpenter said. “He didn’t say exactly where that was and I didn’t ask. It was the last thing I cared about. Why are you asking that?”

“He just seemed preoccupied when I called him.”

“Please stop calling him.”

“I already have.”

Palm Springs qualified as the desert. As much as Ballard disliked Reginald Carpenter, it seemed unlikely that he was involved in the Midnight Men attacks. She decided to put the ex-husband aside and continue her hunt for a nexus between the three victims.

“How much of the questionnaire did you get through?” she asked.

“I’m almost finished,” Carpenter said. “It’s right here.”

She pulled a folded sheaf of papers off the side table and tried to fling it across the coffee table to Ballard. She missed badly and it ended up on the other end of the couch.

“Oops, sorry,” Carpenter said.

Ballard got up and picked up the papers.

“The calendar in there goes back sixty days,” Carpenter said. “I can barely remember where I was a week ago. So it’s definitely incomplete. But I got the rest of it done.”

“Thank you,” Ballard said. “I know this was a headache for you to do right now, but it is really valuable to the investigation.”

She flipped through the pages and read some of the answers Carpenter had provided in the calendar section. These included restaurants and shopping destinations. The week before Christmas and the day itself were marked with “La Jolla.”

“La Jolla?” Ballard asked.

“My parents live down there,” Carpenter said. “I always go down at Christmas.”

Ballard finished scanning.

“You went the whole month without putting gas in your car?” she asked. “What about gassing up to go down to La Jolla?”

“I didn’t know you wanted that kind of stuff,” Carpenter said.

“We want everything, Cindy. Anything you can remember.”

“I get gas at the Shell at Franklin and Gower. It’s on my way to work.”

“See, that’s exactly what we want. The locations of your routines. When did you last get gas?”

“On my way back from my parents’ the day after Christmas. Somewhere in Orange County off the five.”

“Okay, we don’t care about that, I don’t think, since it’s a one-off. What about disputes? Anybody at work or elsewhere?”

“Not really. I mean, customers complain all the time — we just give them another coffee and that’s it.”

“So nothing’s ever gotten out of hand? Especially recently?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“You have down here Massage Envy — is that the one on Hillhurst?”

“Yes, my employees gave me a gift certificate for Christmas and I used it one day when I got off work early. Nothing happened.”

“Male or female masseuse?”

“Female.”

“All right. I will probably have more questions after I look through this.”

What she did not say was that she might have questions after she cross-referenced Carpenter’s answers with those from the other two victims.

“So, did you find out anything about the street-lighting guys?” Cindy asked.

“No, not yet,” Ballard said.

“Do you think it was them?”

“It could have been. The questionnaire is important because we need to find out where your attackers crossed paths with you. We want to try to understand who would target you, and why.”

Carpenter slapped her hand down on her thigh like she was fed up.

“Why is it my fault?” she said angrily. “Why is it because of something I did?”

“I’m not saying that,” Ballard said quickly. “I’m not saying that at all.”

Ballard felt her phone buzz. She checked the screen and saw that it was the inside line at Hollywood Station. It was the watch commander and she realized she had left the rover in the charging dock in her city car. She put the phone away without answering the call.

“Well, it sure seems like it,” Carpenter said.

“Then I’m sorry,” Ballard said. “So let me make it clear: You did nothing to deserve or attract this. What happened to you was not your fault in any way. We’re talking about the attackers here. I’m trying to learn where and under what circumstances these sick, twisted individuals decided to choose you. That’s all, and I don’t want you thinking that I’m looking at it any other way.”

Carpenter had her face turned away again. She murmured a response.

“Okay,” she said.

“I know that sometimes the investigation is just an ongoing reminder of what you were put through,” said Ballard. “But it’s a necessary evil, because we want to catch these assholes and put them away.”

“I know. And I’m sorry I’m being a bitch.”

“You’re not, Cindy. And you have nothing to be sorry about. At all.”

Ballard stood up and folded the Lambkin questionnaire in half.

“You’re going?” Carpenter asked.

After turning her face from her and repeatedly pushing back at her questions, Carpenter now seemed upset that Ballard was leaving.

“It looks like I have another call,” Ballard said. “I need to go. But I can check in later if you want me to.”

“Okay.”

“Are you working tomorrow?”

“No, I’m off.”

“Okay, I’ll check in with you if I have anything to report.”

Ballard left the house and headed to her car, looking at her phone for a message from the watch office. There was none. When she got to her car, she looked back at the streetlight at the front corner of Cindy Carpenter’s property. It was still out.

19

Before she got to her city ride Ballard’s phone buzzed again. This time it was her detective commander calling. This meant that the watch commander had roused Robinson-Reynolds at home to complain that she was not responding to radio or cell calls.

“L-T,” she said. “I’m about to check in with the watch commander.”

“What the hell, Ballard?” Robinson-Reynolds said.

“I was with my rape victim. She was very emotional and it wasn’t a good time to take the call. Plus I pulled a dead rover when I left the station. It’s charging in my car.”

“Well, they fucking need you at a scene.”

“I’m on my way. What is it? Where is it?”

“I don’t know, some kind of an assault in Thai Town. Get the details from the watch commander.”

“I’ll call him next.”

“I don’t like getting calls about my people, Ballard. You know that.”

“I do, L-T. It won’t happen—”

Robinson-Reynolds disconnected.

“—again.”

She had hoped to keep him on the line so she could update him on the cases she was working. Now she would have to wait till Monday. A lot could happen between now and then.

It was a good thing Ballard liked working alone, because the department had a freeze on promotions and hiring until the world cleared the pandemic. But what made solo work difficult was not having a partner to divvy up responsibilities with. Ballard had to cover everything and still fight to keep the cases she wanted to keep. Once in the car, she called the watch lieutenant on the rover. She chose this because the conversation would go out live on the radio. A cell call would have given him carte blanche to harangue her for not answering the initial calls.

Because it was a holiday weekend and people with seniority were taking days, there was yet another watch commander on duty, making it three in three nights. Lieutenant Sandro Puig kept a modulated tone when he told Ballard to respond to an address on Hobart Avenue to investigate a home invasion and assault. She asked if there were any Thai officers on duty and he responded that 6-A 79 — the designation for the patrol unit assigned to the Thai Town area — included an officer who could translate.

It took Ballard five minutes to wind her way down and out of the Dell and then another five to get to the address, which was a 1950s two-level apartment building with parking underneath. It looked like the last time anyone had taken a run at painting the place was the previous century. She parked behind a patrol car. She saw no EMT wagon yet, even though the call was billed as an assault.

The entrances to the apartments were along an outside walkway. As she headed up the steps toward apartment 22, a shirtless man with a bloody eye suddenly appeared on the upper landing, saw Ballard coming up, and charged down the stairs toward her.

At the same moment, she heard a woman’s shrill voice yell, “Hey! Stop!”

Muscle memory took over. Ballard took a sideways step into the middle of the concrete staircase and brought her arms and hands up to take on the body charging at her from an upper angle. The man hit her with all of his weight. He was small but the impact was solid and she was propelled backward and down. She landed butt-first on the lower landing with the man’s weight coming down on top of her. After impact, he immediately started to roll off her. She tried to grab him, but without a shirt, there was no purchase on his sweat-slick body. As fast as the collision had occurred he was up and gone. Ballard could see a female officer coming down the steps toward her. The officer hit the landing, jumped over Ballard’s sprawled body, and continued the chase, yelling something that sounded like “Yood, yood, yood!”

Ballard realized she had hit her head on the concrete. She wanted to get up and join the chase but the world was beginning to spin. She turned onto her side and then her stomach and then finally raised herself onto her hands and knees.

“Ballard, are you all right?”

She turned her head toward the stairs and saw another officer coming down. Soon she felt a hand on her arm as someone tried to help her up.

“Wait,” Ballard said. “Give me a second.”

She paused and then looked up at the second officer. It was Victor Rodriguez, her translator from the night of Raffa’s killing.

“V-Rod,” Ballard said. “Who the fuck was that?”

“That was our goddamn victim,” Rodriguez said. “He suddenly jumped up and took off.”

“Go after your partner. I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

“Go.”

Rodriguez hurried off, and Ballard, grabbing the staircase rail, climbed up into a standing position. She was hit with vertigo and held on to the railing for support. Her head finally cleared and she tentatively let go of the railing. After taking a few steps to see if everything was working, she swung her hand up under her jacket to the small of her back to check for blood or other damage but found nothing. She touched the back of her head. There was no blood but she felt a bump swelling at the impact point.

“Shit.”

Soon she heard a helicopter cutting across the sky above and knew the officers had called out an airship to help find the running man.

But it was not to be. Rodriguez was soon back with the other officer, Chara Paithoon. Both were huffing from the unsuccessful foot pursuit.

“He got away,” Rodriguez said.

“You okay, Renée?” Paithoon asked.

“I hit my head,” Ballard said.

Paithoon was one of the few Thai-born officers in the department. She was short and compactly built and wore a short haircut with shaved sidewalls and a waxed front wave. Ballard knew that plenty of female officers adopted utility hairstyles to ward off the unwanted attention of male officers.

“Can I see?” Paithoon said. “Let me check your eyes.”

Paithoon snapped on a flashlight. She held the light so the outer edge of its beam touched lightly on Ballard’s face. Paithoon was standing in close, looking up at her eyes.

“You’ve got some dilation,” she said. “You should have the EMTs check it.”

“Yeah, where are they?” Ballard asked. “I thought this was an assault.”

Paithoon stepped back and put away her light.

“We called them but I guess they’re tied up,” Rodriguez said.

“So what exactly happened here?” Ballard said.

“Neighbor called it in, said there was a fight in twenty-two,” Rodriguez said. “We got here, and suspects were gone on arrival. Chara was talking to the guy and then suddenly he pushes her into me and takes off. You know the rest.”

“Was he illegal?” Ballard asked.

“Never got to it,” Paithoon said. “He wasn’t Thai, though. The neighbor who called it in was Thai but this guy was Cambodian. I think this was ABZ business and he was afraid we were going to arrest him, so he hightailed it.”

Ballard knew that ABZ meant Asian Boyz, a gang that preyed upon immigrants, legal and otherwise, from Southeast Asia.

Two paramedics entered the apartment building’s central courtyard, and Paithoon greeted them.

“Our victim is GOA but you need to take a look at Detective Ballard here,” she said. “She took a tumble and hit her head.”

The paramedics agreed to check Ballard but wanted to do it at their truck. Paithoon and Rodriguez stayed behind to do mop-up on what was turning out to be an assault call without a victim.

Ballard sat under a light on the fold-down tail of the EMT wagon while a med tech checked her vitals as well as her eyes for dilation and her scalp for bruising and swelling. The name patch on his uniform said SINGLE.

“Is that your name or relationship status?” Ballard asked.

“It’s my name but I get asked that a lot,” Single said.

“Of course you do.”

“So, I think you have a slight concussion. We’ve got a little bit of dilation of the pupils, some elevated blood pressure.”

He used his gloved fingers to press the skin around Ballard’s eyes. She could see the concentration in his expression as he worked. He wore a mask but he had sharp brown eyes and full brown hair and was maybe a few years younger than her. One of his pupils had a notch in it slightly off center at five o’clock.

“Coloboma,” Single said.

“What?” Ballard asked.

“You’re looking at my eye. The notch in my pupil is caused by a birth defect in the iris called coloboma. Some call it a keyhole pupil.”

“Oh. Does it...”

“Affect my eyesight? No. But I have to wear sunglasses when the sun is out. So, most of the time.”

“Well, that’s good. About your eyesight.”

“Thanks. And so you’re on the other side of the wall, right?”

“What?”

“Hollywood Division?”

“Oh, yeah, Hollywood. You’re at the firehouse, then?”

“Yep. Maybe I’ll see you in the parking lot someday.”

“Sure.”

“But what I think you need to do now is punch out and go home and rest.”

“I can’t do that. I’m the only detective on duty tonight.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to be much of a detective if your brain swells and you go into seizure.”

“Seriously?”

“You took a good knock on the head. Coup and contrecoup injuries — bruising of the brain, swelling — can develop over time. I’m not saying you have that, because there is only mild dilation exhibited, but you definitely want to take it easy. You can sleep but you want somebody to wake you and check on you every couple hours or so. Just keep a watch on this. You have somebody at home who can check on you through the night?”

“I live alone.”

“Then give me a number, and I’ll call you every few hours.”

“You’re serious?”

“Totally. You don’t want to mess around with an injury like this. Call your supervisor and tell him you’re going home. If he wants to talk to me, I’ll tell him what I just told you.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it.”

“Give me a number to call.”

Ballard gave him a business card that had her name and cell phone number on it. She remained skeptical that he would call to check on her. But she hoped he would. She liked his look and his manner. She liked the keyhole in his eye.

“So, am I okay to drive?” she asked. “I have a city ride I should turn in and then get my car.”

“I can drive your ride back, since we’re going back to the station. Where do you live?”

“Los Feliz.”

“Well, maybe you can get an Uber or one of the patrol guys can drive you home.”

“Sure. I can work on that.”

“Good. And I’ll call to check on you in a couple hours.”

20

It seemed that every time Ballard dropped deeply into a dream, she was pulled out by the buzz of her cell phone, and it was EMT Single making good on his promise to check in on her. This cycle continued through the night into Sunday morning, when he finally said that it was safe for her to sleep uninterrupted.

“You mean now that the sun is up I can get a good night’s sleep?” she asked.

“I thought this would be your normal schedule,” Single said. “You do work the night shift, right?”

“I’m just giving you a hard time. Thank you for checking on me. It means a lot.”

“Anytime. Your next concussion, call me.”

She ended the call with a smile on her face despite the headache behind her eyes. She got up, wobbled as she got her footing, and went into the bathroom. After splashing cold water on her face, she looked closely at herself in the mirror. She saw bluish shadows under her eyes but the dilation of her pupils seemed to be back to normal, at least compared to what it had been when she got home the night before. She then thought of EMT Single’s keyhole pupil and smiled again.

It was 8 a.m. and she was still tired after the repeatedly interrupted sleep cycle. She stayed in her sweats and got back into bed, thinking she would doze for a little while longer. She knew there was a lot to do but she needed to be rested and ready for her next shift that night. She closed her eyes and soon all of that was forgotten.

In her dream, Ballard could breathe underwater. There was no need to charge to the surface for air. No burning in her lungs. She looked up through the blue to the sun, its rays penetrating the water with warmth and comfort. She twirled onto her back and moved languidly in the current, looking up and realizing that the sun was shaped like an acorn and was not the sun at all.

The phone’s buzz seemed to wake her as soon as she had shut her eyes, but as she reached for it, she saw the time was 3:50 and that she had been asleep for nearly eight hours. The call was from Bosch.

“Have you gotten my messages?”

“No. What? What happened? You called?”

“No, I texted. There’s a memorial service for Javier Raffa today.”

“Shit, when? Where?”

“It starts in ten minutes at St. Anne’s on Occidental.”

Ballard knew that wasn’t far from her. She put Bosch on speaker so she could scroll through her missed texts and emails. There were three from Bosch and one from her lieutenant. One of the emails that had come in was from Bobbi Klein, the first victim of the Midnight Men. The others were not important.

“I don’t know how I slept through all of— I got a concussion last night.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. Are you at the memorial?”

“I’m here but I didn’t go in. I think I’d stick out. I’ve got a good spot and I’m watching people arrive. I think Hoyle is here. At least there’s one white guy that I think is him.”

“Okay, I’m on my way. Thanks for the wake-up.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Ballard quickly dressed and headed down to the garage. Her car was there because she had disregarded EMT Single’s orders and driven herself home after checking out with the watch lieutenant the night before.

She took Hillhurst all the way to Beverly and then over to Occidental. She found a spot at the curb a half block away and called Bosch.

“I’m here. Are you still in place?”

“I’m here.”

“Okay, I’m going to go in. I’ll see if we can talk to the widow after.”

“Sounds good.”

“Anybody else of note arrive?”

“There’s a lot of obvious bangers, tattooed to the ears. You want me to go in with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. Do you think it’s worth following Hoyle, if it was Hoyle you saw?”

“I don’t know. Where’s he going to go on a Sunday night? He’s probably just here for appearances. There might be suspicions if he didn’t show — you know what I mean?”

“Yeah. But wait till the widow Raffa finds out what’s going on.”

“You’re going to tell her in there?”

“No, I’ll wait. Okay, I’m going now.”

Ballard disconnected and exited her car. She walked up the street and followed a few stragglers arriving late. She hurried to follow them in and use them as cover. The memorial was in a chapel to the side of the main church. That made it too crowded to enter and Ballard stood in the hallway outside with the stragglers. There were speakers in the ceiling, so she heard the testimonials and tearful memories from friends and co-workers as well as a hymn sung by the crowd. The hymn and most of the testimonials were in Spanish. Ballard understood enough to know that many people were lamenting that Javier Raffa had left the violent life to raise a family and run a business, yet in the end, violence still found him and took it all away.

After forty-five minutes, the ceremony ended and the immediate family left the chapel first to form a receiving line outside the door. Ballard hung back and watched from one of the archways that lined the walkway that ran down the side of the church.

She soon saw Javier Raffa’s silent partner, Dr. Dennis Hoyle, emerge in the line from the chapel. Ballard recognized him from the studio photos on his family dentistry website. He was all angles: thin, sharp shoulders and elbows. He had graying hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee.

Ballard realized this might be the best time to talk to him, when he least expected to be questioned by the police. She quickly texted Bosch her plan and then watched when it was Hoyle’s turn to go down the family line. It was clear he was meeting them for the first time, even the widow. He hugged none of them and gave the widow a two-handed sympathy grasp. He leaned forward to say something to her or possibly identify himself, but Ballard’s read on the widow’s facial expression and body language was that she had no idea who he was.

Javier Raffa’s son, Gabriel, was at the end of the receiving line. Hoyle simply nodded once and gave the young man a hang-in-there clap on the shoulder, then headed away with a look of pure relief on his face. Ballard used her arm to hold her jacket closed over the badge on her belt. She let Hoyle pass by and then turned to follow him.

As Hoyle headed toward the street, Ballard could see Bosch standing out on the sidewalk. He was wearing a suit, just in case he needed to go into the memorial service. But the suit also worked for what they were about to do.

Ballard followed Hoyle out and picked up speed to catch up. Bosch positioned himself in the middle of the sidewalk, slowing Hoyle down as he decided which way to go.

“Dr. Hoyle?” Ballard said.

Hoyle spun around as if shocked that anyone in this part of town would know him by name.

“Uh, yes?” he said.

Ballard pulled her jacket open to show the badge as well as her gun holstered on her hip.

“I’m Detective Ballard with the LAPD. This is my colleague Harry Bosch.”

She gestured to Bosch, who was now behind Hoyle. The dentist whipped back to look at Bosch and then forward again at Ballard.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m investigating the murder of Javier Raffa,” Ballard said. “I would like to ask you a few questions, if you have the time.”

“Me?” Hoyle said. “Why would you want to ask me questions?”

“Well, for starters, you were his partner, were you not?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t know anything about what happened. I mean, I wasn’t even there.”

“That’s okay. We need to be thorough and talk to anybody who knew him. If you were his partner, you must have known him pretty well.”

“It was a business investment, that’s all.”

“Okay, that’s good to know. Where are you parked? Maybe we should get away from the church and talk.”

“Um, I’m over here but I—”

“Lead the way.”

Hoyle drove a four-door Mercedes and by coincidence had parked right behind Bosch’s old Jeep. Neither Bosch nor Ballard mentioned this, because it would possibly put cracks in the charade that Bosch was an LAPD detective. When they got to Hoyle’s car, he pulled the remote key from his pocket and unlocked the doors. He then turned to Ballard and Bosch.

“You know, right now is not a good time to talk,” he said. “I’ve just been to my friend’s memorial and I’m kind of emotional about it. I just want to go home. Can we—”

“How did you know?” Ballard interrupted.

“How did I know he was dead?” Hoyle said. “It was in the paper — online.”

Ballard paused for a moment in case Hoyle sputtered out something else. He didn’t.

“No, I mean how did you know he was looking for a partner?” she said. “An investor. Somebody to buy him out of the gang.”

For a second, Hoyle’s eyes widened. He was surprised by her knowledge.

“I... Well, I have advisers for this sort of thing,” Hoyle said.

“Really?” Ballard asked. “Who is that? I’d like to speak to them.”

“I told you, now is not a good time. Can I go?”

Ballard held her hands wide as if to say she wasn’t keeping him from leaving.

“So I can go?” Hoyle said.

“It would be better for you, Dr. Hoyle, if we cleared some of this up now,” Ballard said.

“Cleared up what? You just said I could go.”

“No, I said it would be better for you to talk to us right now, right here. I don’t think you want us coming by your office, do you?”

Hoyle flung the door of his car open and it promptly swung back closed. Exasperated, he opened it again and held it.

“I’ve done nothing wrong and you are harassing me!”

He jumped in the car and slammed the door. He fired up the engine and took off from the curb, driving by Ballard and Bosch.

“If he thinks that was harassment, he hasn’t seen anything yet,” Ballard said.

Bosch stood next to her and they watched the Mercedes drive north on Occidental.

“Did I come on too strong?” Ballard asked.

“He thinks so,” said Bosch.

“Fuck ’im.”

“He’s probably calling his partners right now. Did you want that?”

“I wanted them to know I’m here.”

21

Ballard and Bosch went back to the church to see if the family was finished with the procession of well-wishers. There was no one at the door of the chapel. Ballard looked inside and saw the widow and the daughters but not the son, Gabriel.

“I need to find Gabriel so he can translate if needed,” she said. “Stay here in case they start to leave.”

“I’ll stall them,” Bosch said.

Ballard went back down the hallway and looked through the double doors leading to the larger cathedral. She saw Gabriel sitting in a pew by himself. She entered and quietly walked down the center aisle. Gabriel was using a penknife to scratch something into the wooden bench. It said “GOD S,” and she didn’t think after the last three days that he was working on the word “SAVES.”

“Gabriel,” she said. “Stop.”

He was so badly startled that he dropped the knife and it clattered to the marble floor. Ballard could see smeared tears on his face.

“Look,” she said. “I know what has happened to your family is horrible. If you want to help do something about it, help me talk to your mother. Come.”

She stepped back into the aisle. He hesitated, then started to reach down for his knife.

“Give me that,” Ballard said. “You don’t need it, and it will only get you into trouble. Let’s go talk to your mother.”

Gabriel came out of the pew and handed her the knife. He walked with his head down all the way to the chapel. Ballard folded the knife closed and put it in her pocket.

“What was done to your father wasn’t right,” Ballard said. “But he got out of the street life and that’s what he wanted for you. Don’t let him down, Gabriel.”

“I won’t,” Gabriel said.

“You told me the other night that your father had a partner — a white guy from Malibu. Did he come to the memorial today?”

“I think so. He was the white guy, right?”

“I don’t know, Gabriel. I’m asking you. Do you know his name?”

“No, I don’t remember it. I only saw him one time when he came to the shop.”

Bosch was waiting outside the door of the chapel. He nodded to Ballard, indicating that the rest of the family was still inside.

Ballard and Gabriel entered. Bosch followed but hung back by the door. Ballard reintroduced herself to the family and said she needed to ask some questions. She said Gabriel had volunteered to translate if necessary. The mother was named Josefina and she agreed to talk to Ballard. She looked as if the tears of the last days had left permanent lines on her brown face. She had the look that Ballard had seen a hundred times before on women whose men were taken by violence — the look that asks, How do I live? How do I take care of my family?

“First, I want to assure you that we are doing everything we can to find out who did this to Javier,” Ballard began, speaking slowly. “We have some leads that we are following and hopefully they will bring us to an arrest. I can’t tell you everything we’re doing, so some of my questions might seem strange. I just ask you to be patient and to know the information you provide is important. Do you understand, or would you like Gabriel to translate?”

“I understand, yes,” Josefina said.

“Good. Thank you. Let me start with what we asked the other night at the hospital. Do you know of anyone who wanted to harm Javier?”

“No. Who would do this? Javier was good man.”

“Did he say anything recently about angry customers or employees?”

“No. Everybody happy. It was a happy place.”

“Did Javier have a will?”

Josefina’s face showed confusion. Ballard looked at Gabriel, trying to think of how to explain. Bosch called from the back of the chapel.

“Ultimo testamento.”

Ballard looked back at him and nodded, realizing he’d had many such conversations in his years as a homicide detective. She looked back at Josefina, who spoke to her son in Spanish.

“She doesn’t know,” Gabriel said.

“Did he have a lawyer?” Ballard asked. “Abogado?”

“Sí, sí, sí,” Josefina said. “Dario Calvente es su abogado.”

Ballard nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. “We’re going to call on him and he may ask you for permission to talk to us.”

Gabriel translated and Josefina nodded.

“Did Mr. Calvente come today?”

Josefina nodded.

“Did you know your husband’s business partner?” Ballard asked.

“No,” Josefina said.

“Was he here today? Dr. Hoyle?”

“I don’t know.”

It was clear to Ballard that Josefina knew little about Javier’s business dealings and that she needed to talk to the lawyer for clarity on things like the will, insurance, and records pertaining to the partnership.

“Josefina, did you know that Javier had to pay his way out of the Las Palmas gang?” Ballard asked.

Josefina nodded and seemed to take a moment to compose her answer. She spoke in Spanish and Gabriel translated.

“We could not have a family if he was doing these things with the gang,” he said.

“How much did he have to pay?” Ballard asked.

“Veinticinco,” Josefina said.

“Twenty-five thousand?”

“Sí. Yes.”

“Okay. Where did he get that money?”

“El dentista.”

“His partner.”

“Sí.”

“How did he know the dentist? Who brought the dentist?”

Gabriel translated the question but there was no answer to translate back. Josefina shook her head. She didn’t know.

Ballard said that she would be in touch when she had something more to report on the investigation and asked Gabriel to translate for Josefina to make sure she understood. She and Bosch left then and walked to his car.

“Should we see if we can run down Dario Calvente, the abogado?” Ballard asked.

“It’s a Sunday,” Bosch said. “I doubt he’ll be in his office.”

“We can find him. Let’s take my car. I’ll bring you back afterward.”

“Perfect.”

Ballard googled the lawyer’s name on her phone and found his website. Before she got to the car, she was leaving a message on his office line. Like Cindy Carpenter’s attorney, Calvente’s website promised 24/7 service.

“I’ll run his DMV and get his home address if he doesn’t call back pretty quick,” she told Bosch.

They got into the Defender and almost immediately Ballard got a call with a blocked ID that she assumed was Calvente.

“Detective Ballard.”

“Ballard, are you ducking my calls?”

She recognized the voice of Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds.

“L-T, no. I, uh, was in a church so I had my phone off.”

“I know it’s Sunday, Ballard, but I didn’t think you were the church type.”

“It was a memorial for my homicide victim. I needed to speak to the family and, you know, see who showed up.”

“Ballard, you should not be working. You should be in the hospital.”

“I’m fine, Lieutenant. It was just a knock on the head.”

“Look, the overnight report said an EMT told you to go home. I don’t want this on an EMT, okay? I want you to go to an ER and get checked out before you do any more work.”

“I’m following a lead and I’m telling you, I’m—”

“This is not a suggestion, Detective. This is an order. We are not going to risk anything with a head injury. Go to the ER and get checked out. Then call me back so I know.”

“Fine. I’ll finish up here and go.”

“Tonight, Detective. I want to hear from you tonight.”

“You got it, L-T.”

She disconnected and told Bosch about the order.

“Sounds like a smart move,” he said.

“You too now?” she said. “I’m fine and this will be a big waste of time.”

“You’re a cop. They’ll get you in quick.”

“Well, I’m not going to do it until I’m on duty. I’m not wasting my own time. And speaking of time, I’m not going to wait for this abogado to call back. Twenty-four-seven, my ass.”

She called the com center, identified herself and gave her serial number, then asked for a DMV check on Dario Calvente. She got lucky. There was only one that had a Los Angeles address. She thanked the operator and disconnected.

“Silver Lake,” she said. “You still want to go?”

“Let’s do it,” Bosch said.

It took them fifteen minutes to drive over. Calvente lived in a 1930s Spanish-style house across from the reservoir. They climbed a set of stone stairs to get to the front porch. There was a large picture window with a view of the lake, but it was covered with a sign that said BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Ballard knocked on the door and had her badge off her belt and in her hand. The door was answered by a man of about forty whom Ballard recognized from the receiving line at the memorial. He still had his suit on but the tie was gone. He had a thick mustache and brown eyes as dark as Bosch’s.

“Mr. Calvente, LAPD,” Ballard said. “Sorry to bother you at home, but we left a message at your office and you didn’t return it.”

Calvente pointed at her.

“I saw you today,” he said. “At the memorial for Javier.”

“That’s right,” Ballard said. “My name is Renée Ballard and this is my colleague Harry Bosch. Josefina Raffa told us you were her husband’s attorney and we would like to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Calvente said. “I did some work for Javier, yes, but it was in trade for work on my car. I wouldn’t call myself his lawyer per se.”

“Do you know if he had another lawyer?”

“No, I don’t think so. This is why he asked me if I could help.”

“And when was this?”

“Oh, a few months ago. My wife, she had an accident and I had the car towed to Javier’s. When he found out I was a lawyer, he asked me to do some work.”

“What was the work? Can you tell us?”

“There was privilege involved but it was a contract he had signed. He wanted to know how to dissolve a partnership.”

“Was this for his business?”

Calvente looked past them and out at the reservoir. He canted his head back and forth as if weighing whether to answer. Then he looked at Ballard and nodded his head once.

“Were you able to help him?” Ballard asked.

“Contract law is not my specialty,” Calvente said. “I told him that I saw no place in the contract that I thought he could attack. And I told him he should seek a second opinion from a contract attorney. I asked if he wanted a referral and he said no. And for this he gave me a discount on the repairs of our car. That was it.”

“Do you remember, was the partner named Dennis Hoyle?”

“I think that was the name but I can’t be sure. It’s been a few months.”

“Did he tell you anything about why he wanted to break the contract?”

“He just said it was not a good situation, because he had long ago paid off a debt to this man but he had to keep paying him out of the profits. I remember the contract had no termination. It was a full partnership for the life of the business.”

“What was Hoyle’s stake in the business?”

“I think twenty-five percent.”

“If this review was all you did for him, why did you go to the memorial today?”

“Well, I, uh, wanted to express my condolences to the family and say I was available for anything they might need. In a legal capacity, of course.”

“How did you know, by the way, that he had been the victim of a homicide?”

“I saw the memorial scheduled at the church when I attended this morning. I did not know it was a homicide until I was there today. It was a terrible thing for the family.”

Ballard turned to Bosch to see if he had any questions that she had missed. He shook his head and she looked back at Calvente.

“Thank you, Mr. Calvente,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“You’re welcome,” Calvente said.

Bosch took the steps down to the street slowly. Ballard had to wait for him. When he reached the sidewalk, he whispered under his breath.

“Ambulance chaser. He barely knows the guy and he goes to his memorial?”

“Yeah. You ever see that Sidney Lumet movie The Verdict?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t go to a lot of movies anymore.”

“It’s an old one with Paul Newman. I went through a Paul Newman phase. Anyway, he’s a lawyer — a drunk, actually — and he tries to drum up business by going to funerals and passing out business cards.”

Bosch looked back up at the house.

“This guy must go to a lot of funerals,” he said.

“Well, what he gave us was good,” Ballard said. “Javier wanted out of the contract. There’s a motive in that.”

“There is. But Hoyle’s going to be protected by the contract. Calvente said it was legit. We still need to find the factor man and hope he leads us to the man with the Walther P-twenty-two.”

“Tonight I’ll go back to Gang Intel. They had a snitch who told them years ago that Javier bought his way out of Las Palmas. I think it was a woman. They wouldn’t give me her name before but I’ll make them give it to me now. She might know who set him up with Hoyle.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Fifteen minutes later Ballard had just dropped Bosch at his car and was on her way to the ER at Hollywood Presbyterian when she got a call from EMT Single.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m on my way to the ER,” she said.

“Oh, no, what’s happening?”

“Nothing, I’m fine. My boss won’t let me go back to work tonight unless I get a clean bill from the ER. I told him a very good EMT had cleared me today but they’re making me go anyway.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I was about to invite you to a firehouse dinner.”

“Wow, I’ve never had an invitation like that before. What are you guys having?”

“All kinds of stuff. Grilled cheese, chili. I think somebody dropped off a couple of apple pies. We’ve got some salad, some corn on the cob.”

“Well, I’d take a salad and grilled cheese.”

“Ooh, it sounds like we’ve got a veggie on our hands.”

“Just no red meat anymore.”

“Not a problem, but I thought you’re going to the ER.”

“I’d rather come for dinner and go to the ER on company time.”

“Well, come on over. Dinner’s in thirty-five minutes. Unless we catch a call and go out on a run.”

“On my way. But are you allowed to invite a guest?”

“One of us can. One guest allowed a night. I traded with a guy to get tonight ’cause I hoped you’d like firehouse chili. But grilled cheese is just as good.”

“All right, cool. See you in a bit. One last question...”

“Sure.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Oh, it’s Garrett.”

“Garrett. Cool. I’ll see you soon, Garrett.”

After disconnecting, Ballard created an entry with Single’s full name in her contact list. She hoped it would stay in there for a while. She parked her car behind the police station. Before going over to the firehouse, she ducked into the locker room in the station and put on some light makeup. She was only going to a firehouse for a grilled cheese dinner, but she wanted to make an impression.

22

The dinner was fun, with Single introducing Ballard to his colleagues and her receiving a round of applause. And the grilled cheese was not bad, but the food and fun were cut short when EMT Single and his rescue team were called out on a traffic accident at Highland and Hollywood, one of the busiest intersections in the city. They raced off to the scene, and Ballard carried the second half of her grilled cheese sandwich on a napkin around the wall that separated the firehouse from the police station. She finished eating in the station while sitting in on the mid-watch roll call. Mid-watch rolled out at eight — Ballard’s usual start time — and it was small squad, making roll calls less crowded and more informal. No one objected to her finishing her sandwich.

After, she went directly down the second-floor hallway to the GED squad room to look for Sergeant Davenport. He was sitting where she had last seen him three nights earlier. If he wasn’t in different clothes, she might have thought he had never moved. She pulled the file he had given her out of her briefcase and dropped it on his desk. She pointed at the file.

“LP-three,” she said. “I need to talk to her. For real this time.”

Davenport took his legs off the upside-down trash can where they had been propped up and sat up straight.

“Ballard, you know I can’t just hand out the name of a CI,” he said.

“I do know,” Ballard said. “You have to go through the captain. Or you could go see the CI and I could tag along. Either way is fine with me but this is now a premeditated murder case that’s connected to another premeditated murder case and I need to find out what she knows. So how do you want to play that?”

“First of all, I told you, I’m not saying it’s—”

“A woman, yeah, I know. Let’s just say I guessed. Are you going to help or hinder this investigation?”

“If you would stop cutting me off and just listen, you would learn that LP-three is no longer active — hasn’t been active in years — and is not going to be interested in talking to reminders of her dirty history.”

“Okay, then. I’ll call the captain at home.”

Ballard turned toward the door.

“Ballard, come on,” Davenport said. “Why do you always have to be such a bi—”

Ballard turned back to him.

“What?” she said. “Such a bitch? If you call wanting to solve a homicide being a bitch, then fine, I’m a bitch. But there are still people in this department who want to get off their asses and knock on doors. I’m one of them.”

Davenport’s temples grew pink with either rage or embarrassment. As a Sergeant II he was one rank above her Detective II, but though he was in street clothes, he was not a detective, and that difference knocked down his rank advantage. Ballard could say what she wanted to say to him without consequence.

“Okay, look,” Davenport said. “It’s going to take me a while to reach her and talk her into it. I’ll do that and let you know.”

“I want to meet tonight,” Ballard said. “This is a homicide. And by the way, you just revealed again that she’s a woman.”

“It was pretty much out of the bag, wouldn’t you say, Ballard?”

“I have to run over to Hollywood Pres for a few minutes and then I expect to hear from you that we have a meet set up.”

“Fine, you do that.”

“I’ll call you when I’m clear.”

Ballard checked out a rover and drove her city car over to the hospital, where she badged her way to the front of the line at the ER. She was checked out and cleared by a doctor and then, back in the car, called Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds at home and gave him the news.

“That’s good, Ballard,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I told you I was,” Ballard said.

“Yeah, well, we had to make it official,” he said. “Those paramedics are a bunch of yahoos. If my mother was the one thrown down the stairs, I’d want a doctor looking at her, you know what I mean?”

Ballard didn’t know which part of that to object to or whether it was even worth it. But the part about her being thrown down the stairs could have later consequences in terms of how Robinson-Reynolds viewed her and her capabilities.

“I don’t know what you were told, L-T, but I wasn’t thrown down the stairs,” she said. “I was going up the stairs when the so-called victim came running at me. I grabbed him and we both went down.”

“Semantics, Ballard,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “So, you’re ready to go back to work?”

“I’ve been working. I never stopped.”

“Okay, okay, my bad. So, why don’t you just tell me what you’ve been doing, since you never stopped working. Where are we on the cases?”

Ballard took a moment to think.

“On the Raffa case — the homicide — I’m setting up a meeting with a gang snitch that I hope gives us a line on a money man with a motive to kill Raffa.”

“What’s the motive? He owed him money? That’s never a good motive. Why kill the guy who owes you money? Then he can’t pay you.”

“That’s not the motive. Raffa took money — twenty-five thousand — from this money man back in the day to buy his way out of Las Palmas. That got him a silent partner. With Raffa now dead, the silent partner gets the business, the insurance policy, if there is one, and, most important, the land the repair shop sits on. That’s where the money and the motive is.”

“Got it, Ballard. That’s good. Real good. But you know this is probably all going to West Bureau when they come up for air.”

“I know, Lieutenant, but do you want me to just babysit it or hand them a case to be made? I mean, this reflects on you, doesn’t it?”

Robinson-Reynolds was silent but it didn’t take him long to connect those dots.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “I don’t want you sitting on it. I want it worked until we have to hand it off. Did they do an autopsy?”

“Not yet,” Ballard said. “Right now I’m lead investigator, so they’ll call when they’re ready to go. Probably tomorrow sometime.”

“Okay. And on this snitch, you going to take backup?”

“Rick Davenport in Gangs is setting it up. He’ll be there.”

“Okay, what about the Midnight Men and the new case?”

“We have all three victims filling out Lambkin surveys and tomorrow I expect the whole sex crimes team will start cross-referencing and seeing where that gets us. We’re now looking at victim acquisition differently, based on the new case.”

We. Ballard was annoyed with herself for continuing to cover for Lisa Moore.

“Okay,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “I’ll get into it with Neumayer tomorrow morning.”

Matthew Neumayer was the detective in charge of the division’s three-person sex crimes unit and Lisa Moore’s immediate supervisor.

“Then I guess I’ll get back to it,” Ballard said.

“Sure,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “I’ll be in early tomorrow, maybe catch you before you clock out.”

Ballard disconnected and immediately called Davenport.

“Ballard.”

“So, are we going to do this tonight or not?”

“Don’t get so pissy. We’re going to do it. I will get her and bring her to meet you. What time? She doesn’t want you anywhere near where she lives.”

Ballard felt a charge go through her. She was going to get to LP3.

“How about in an hour?”

“An hour’s good.”

“Where?”

“The beach lot at the end of Sunset.”

Ballard knew it well from her many mornings surfing there after work. But it was a trek to get all the way out there.

“I’m on duty and that pulls me forty minutes out of the division. If I get a call, I’m fucked.”

“Do you want to talk to her or not? Her life’s over there now and she’s not coming back to Hollywood.”

Ballard felt she had no choice.

“Okay, one hour. I’ll be there.”

“And Ballard, no names. Don’t even ask her.”

“Fine.”

She knew she could get the name later if she needed to for court reasons. Then the powers that be would come down on Davenport and make him give her up. Right now, Ballard was only interested in whether LP3 could get her closer to the man with the Walther P-22.

After ending the call with Davenport, she drove back to the station and informed the watch lieutenant that she would be off radar and out of the division for the next two hours. It was Rivera on duty for the last night of the holiday weekend and he didn’t seem to care much as long as Ballard had a rover with her, in case, as he said, all hell broke loose.

Afterward, she went to the squad room to print out a photo of Javier Raffa, put fresh batteries in her mini-recorder, and grab a fully charged rover out of the dock before heading back out to the car.

Traffic on Sunset dropped off quickly once she made it through the Strip and into Beverly Hills. Even with all the clubs and restaurants closed down for nearly a year, the crawl of people cruising slowed things down. Ballard felt the temperature drop as she drove west. It was a clear and crisp night. She knew she’d have to put on the down jacket she kept in the trunk for long nights at crime scenes. The wind off the Pacific would chill the parking lot where she was going to meet the informant, and she didn’t know if they would talk in the open or be in a car.

It was said that anyone who wanted to know Los Angeles needed to drive Sunset Boulevard from Beginning to Beach. It was the route by which a traveler would come to know everything that is L.A.: its culture and glories as well as its many fissures and failings. Starting in downtown, where several blocks were renamed Cesar E. Chavez Avenue thirty years ago to honor the union and civil rights leader, the route took its travelers through Chinatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Los Feliz before turning west and traversing Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and the Palisades, then finally hitting the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, its four lanes moved through poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods, by homeless camps and mansions, passing iconic institutions of entertainment and education, cult food and cult religion. It was the street of a hundred cities and yet it was all one city.

Thinking about it made Ballard think of Bosch. She pulled her phone and called him, putting it on speaker.

“I’m going to meet LP-three.”

“Now? By yourself?”

“No, my GED contact, Davenport, will be there. He set it up. He’s getting her and bringing her to the meet.”

“Where?”

“Sunset Beach. The parking lot.”

“That’s kind of weird.”

“I wasn’t too happy about it myself. She’s out of the gang life and lives out there. I had no choice, according to Davenport.”

“And this is going down now?”

“In about forty-five minutes. I’m on my way there.”

“Okay, look, if something goes wrong, send up a flare or something. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there.”

“What? Harry, nothing’s going to go wrong. Davenport will be there. And this CI is a square Jane now. Just stay at home and I’ll call you after. Besides, you just got the shot yesterday, so you should lie low till you’re sure there are no side effects.”

“I’m fine, and you’re forgetting something. The only way those murder books could have disappeared out of two different divisions is if somebody inside the department took them. I’m not trying to frag Davenport, but he was at Hollywood when I was there and I didn’t like the guy. I’m not saying he’s dirty, but he was lazy and he liked to talk. And we don’t know who he’s been talking to about this.”

Ballard didn’t respond at first as she thought about Bosch’s concerns.

“Well, I can confirm he’s lazy but I thought that was more of a recent thing,” she said. “His personal answer to defunding. But I don’t think there’s going to be a problem. I told my lieutenant what I’m doing and the watch L-T, because I’m going so far out of the division. I’m not going to stop you from coming, Harry — we can even meet and talk after. But I think it’s going to be fine.”

“I hope you’re right, but I’ll be there. And I should leave now.”

They disconnected and Ballard thought about Bosch’s words the rest of the way as she followed the curving lanes of Sunset Boulevard.

23

After the last curve, Sunset dropped down to the beach, and Ballard saw a vast parking lot next to a closed tourist restaurant. There was only one car in the lot and it did not have the boxy lines of a city ride. Ballard had forgotten that Davenport likely drove undercover wheels for his gang work. While she waited for the traffic light to change, she called him.

“You there yet?”

“We’re here waiting and you’re late.”

“What car are you driving? I’m about to pull in.”

“It will be obvious, Ballard. We’re the only car in the lot. Just get in here.”

He disconnected. Ballard looked at the glowing red light in the traffic signal. She acknowledged to herself that Bosch had spooked her. She checked the gas station on the corner and the supermarket parking lot beyond it and didn’t see Bosch’s old Cherokee. There was no way he could have gotten here from his house so quickly.

The light changed to green and she crossed into the parking lot. The arm was up on the ticket dispenser because it was after hours. She drove toward the car parked in the middle of the lot at an angle that put her headlights through the driver’s-side window. As she got close, she recognized Davenport behind the wheel. She then made a looping turn and saw his passenger was in the front seat. She pulled her car up alongside so they could speak window to window and dropped the transmission into park. Before she killed the engine she took out her mini-recorder, turned it on, and started recording. She slid it into the side air-conditioning vent, where it would not be seen by the informant but would catch every word. She then held the rover up and called in her location to the com center so there would be a record of her last location should anything go wrong.

She lowered her window and killed the engine.

The woman sitting three feet away in Davenport’s undercover ride was Latina and maybe forty years old. She had heavy eye makeup, long brown hair, and a high collar on her blouse that Ballard thought probably hid tattoos or the scars left by their removal.

Davenport leaned forward so he could see around his passenger to Ballard.

“What’s with the cloak-and-dagger, Ballard? And you called this in? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Robinson-Reynolds told me to.”

“You shouldn’t even have told him about this.”

“I had to. You pull me forty minutes out of the division and I had to tell someone. He told me to tell coms when I—”

“Yeah, well, he’s a fuckhead. You’ve got twenty minutes, Ballard. Ask your questions.”

Ballard looked at the woman. She seemed put out by the shouting coming from Davenport beside her.

“Okay, what’s your name?” Ballard asked.

“No names!” Davenport yelled. “Jesus Christ, Ballard, I told you. No. Names.”

“Okay, okay, what do you want me to call you?” Ballard asked. “I want this to be a conversation and I’d like to have a name for the person I’m talking to.”

“How about Jane Doe?” Davenport yelled.

He pronounced the J like an H.

“Okay, never mind,” Ballard said. “Let’s start with what your association was with Las Palmas Thirteen.”

“My fiancé — at least the man I thought was my fiancé — was a leader at the time I was with him,” the woman said. “A shot caller.”

“And you were an informant at that time?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Why?”

The woman spoke without hesitation or trace of an accent. She spoke matter-of-factly about the potentially deadly double life she had led.

“He started fucking around on me. Stepping out with other girls. Gang whores. And nobody does that to me.”

“So you didn’t leave him. You became an informant.”

“That’s right. And I was paid too. My information was good.”

She glanced back at Davenport as if to get confirmation. Davenport said nothing. Ballard had to guess that the fiancé she was talking about was Humberto Viera, who Davenport said went away to Pelican Bay and was never coming back. Ballard was talking to the living embodiment of the scorned-woman warning. Hell hath no fury.

“Fifteen minutes,” Davenport helpfully called out.

“You told your LAPD handler about fourteen years ago that Javier Raffa bought his way out of Las Palmas,” Ballard said. “He paid twenty-five thousand dollars to Humberto Viera. Do you remember that?”

“I do,” the woman said.

“How did you come up with that piece of intel at the time?”

“I saw the money. I saw him deliver it.”

Her seeing the transaction seemed to further confirm that Viera was her fiancé and that his sentence to Pelican Bay was in part due to her vengeance.

“How did that deal come about?” Ballard asked. “Did Raffa just make the offer?”

“It was negotiated,” the informant said. “Raffa wanted out and knew there was only one way — in a box. But my man was greedy. He always thought about himself before the gang. And before me. He told Raffa he could pay his way out. He set the price and helped Raffa get it.”

“Chopping cars?”

“No, Raffa was already doing that. That was his job. He was even called El Chopo by them. Like a joke.”

“So then, where did he get the money?”

“He had to get a loan.”

“Where do you get a loan to get out of a gang?”

“There was a man. People knew him. A banquero callejero. He went to him.”

“A street banker.”

“Yes, he got the money from him. The banquero knew people to get it from. People who wanted to make a loan.”

“Do you remember his name or who he was?”

“I heard he was a cop.”

Davenport flung his door open and came around the front end of the car to Ballard’s window.

“What are you doing?” Ballard said.

His arm came at her and she ducked back. He reached in and pulled her key out of her car’s ignition.

“That’s it,” he said. “No more.”

“What are you talking about, Davenport?” she said. “This is an investigation.”

“And I didn’t sign up to drag no cop into this. Not on my fucking watch.”

“Give me my key.”

Davenport was already moving around his car again, back to his open door.

“I’ll bring it back after I get her where you can’t fucking find her.”

“Davenport, give me the key. I will fucking one-twenty-eight you on this if you—”

“Fuck you, Ballard. I’ll one-twenty-eight you right back. We’ll see who they believe. You are one beef from the fucking door.”

He jumped back in the car and slammed the door. Ballard focused on the woman.

“Who was the cop?” Ballard asked.

“Don’t you fucking answer,” Davenport yelled.

He looked down at his left, and the passenger window started going up.

“Who was it?” Ballard asked again.

Davenport started the car. The informant just stared at Ballard as her window closed. The car took off, racing across the parking lot to the exit.

“Goddammit!” Ballard yelled. “Shit!”

Then her phone started to buzz and she saw Bosch’s name on the screen.

“Harry!”

“What just happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. Where are you? Can you see them?”

“You mean the other car? Yeah, he just blew the light and started up the PCH toward Malibu.”

“Can you follow him? He grabbed my key and I’m stuck. He’s taking her home and I need to know who she is and where she lives.”

“I’m on it.”

Ballard heard the phone clunk into the center console as Bosch fired up his car and took off. Ballard jumped out of her car and scanned the businesses and parking lots along Pacific Coast Highway. She saw the squared-off Jeep Cherokee coming out of the supermarket lot onto the PCH and heading through the light at Sunset and toward Malibu.

“Get ’im, Harry,” she said out loud.

24

Davenport didn’t come back for nearly forty minutes. Ballard was leaning against the side of her car with her arms crossed as she watched his car come across the lot to her. He held his arm out the car window, the key to Ballard’s car dangling from his hand. He wasn’t staying. He kept his eyes cast forward through the windshield as he spoke.

“Had to do it, Ballard.”

Ballard grabbed the key out of his hand.

“Why?”

“Because we’re sinking, Ballard. All we need is to drag another cop into another scandal. Don’t you get that?”

“No, Davenport, I don’t get it. Who’s the cop you’re protecting?”

Now he turned his face to her.

“I don’t know and I didn’t ask her, because I don’t want to know. It’s the department I’m protecting, Ballard, not the cop. That’s why if you beef me and I beef you, you’re going to lose. The department always comes first. The department always wins. Think about that.”

He hit the gas and his car took off. Ballard didn’t flinch or move. She tracked the wide turn he made to go back to the gate, then pulled her phone and called Bosch.

“Harry, you got her?”

“She’s in a house up here on PCH. On the water just past the light at Topanga Canyon. What happened? Did he bring back your key?”

“I have it. Give me the address and I’ll come to you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Ballard pulled to the side of Pacific Coast Highway behind Bosch’s Jeep. She got out, walked up, and got into the passenger seat next to him.

“It’s that one with the portholes,” Bosch said.

He pointed across the street. The road was lined with houses cantilevered over the rocks, sand, and water. They were jammed next to each other like teeth in a mouth, so close that it was impossible to tell they were on the ocean save for the sound of the waves echoing from behind them. The house Bosch pointed at was a two-story with a single-slot carport. It was gray wood with white trim and two round windows on the second level. Ballard knew the view would be on the other side. There would be big glass looking out over the ocean.

“They pulled up,” Bosch said. “He walked her in, stayed two or three minutes, and then left. What’s going on, Renée?”

“She was about to name the money man,” Ballard said. “She called him the street banker and said he was a cop. Then Davenport jumped in and shut it down. He acted all noble like he was trying to protect the department. But I don’t buy it. I think she was about to reveal something he knew about.”

“He’s dirty?”

“Where’s the line on dirty? I think he at least knows something about the department that could damage it. His decision is to cover it up rather than clean it up. If that’s dirty, then, yeah, he’s dirty. But whatever it is, he didn’t know she was going to spill it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have set up the meeting.”

“Makes sense. So, what do you want to do?”

“I want the street banker’s name.”

“Then let’s go get it.”

It was a Sunday night and Malibu had emptied out at the end of the holiday weekend. There was little traffic and no threat to Ballard and Bosch as they crossed four lanes of PCH in the dark. The front door to the house where the informant apparently lived was off the carport near the driver’s side of the Porsche Panamera parked there. Ballard banged hard with the side of her fist so it would be heard over the sound of the waves crashing behind the house.

The door was opened before she had to hit it again. A man stood there. He was in his sixties, white, with the cliché attempts to look younger on full display: earring, bracelets, dyed hair and chin beard, fraying blue jeans, and a gray hoodie. It all went with the Porsche.

“Yes?” he asked.

Ballard badged him.

“We’re here to see the woman dropped off a half hour ago,” Ballard said. “I believe she may be your wife.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It’s midnight and this is out—”

He was interrupted by the informant walking up behind him to see who was at the door.

“You,” she said. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” Ballard said. “I want the name.”

Ballard stepped forward and her intimidating bearing made the man step back, even as he protested.

“Wait a minute here,” he said. “You can’t just—”

“Is this your wife, sir?” Ballard asked.

“That’s right,” he said.

“Well, step back unless you want this conversation to take place in a police station,” Ballard said.

She then looked directly at the informant.

“You wouldn’t want that, would you?” she said. “Going back to the old neighborhood. You never know who from Las Palmas might be on the lockdown bench when we go in the back door at the station.”

“Gene,” the informant said. “Let them in. The sooner I deal with them, the sooner they leave. Go out on the deck.”

“Smart girl,” Ballard said.

“It’s cold out there,” Gene said.

“Just go,” the informant commanded. “This won’t take long.”

“Jesus,” Gene protested. “You said this sort of shit was over.”

He sauntered toward a set of sliding doors leading to the deck. Beyond the deck, the blue-black waves were beautifully lit by spotlights anchored under the house. The informant waited to speak until Gene was out on the deck and had closed the slider to muffle the sound of the ocean.

“I don’t like this,” she said. “Davenport told me not to speak to you anymore. And who the fuck are you?”

This last part was directed at Bosch.

“He’s with me,” Ballard said. “That’s all you need to know. And I don’t care what Davenport told you or whether you like this. You’re going to tell me about the banker or you’re going to be in the kind of trouble that Gene’s money can’t help you with.”

“I haven’t broken any laws,” the informant said.

“There are state laws, and there are gang laws,” Ballard said. “You think Humberto Viera up in Pelican Bay thinks you’re innocent? You think he doesn’t want to know where you’ve been these last ten years?”

Ballard could see the threat pierce the informant’s armor. Ballard had put things together correctly. Viera was the philandering fiancé and he now had the rest of his life in maximum security to consider who had wronged him.

“Sit down over there,” Bosch said, pointing to a couch. “Now.”

He had read the situation as well. The informant had just gone from tough ex-gang girl to kept woman, scared that her carefully ordered life with a wealthy older man could suddenly change.

She did as she was told and went to the couch. Ballard took a swivel chair across a bamboo coffee table from her, turning it from a view through the sliders to a view of the informant. Bosch walked over to the sliders and stayed standing with his back to Gene, who was trying to watch through the glass.

“What’s your name?” Ballard asked.

“I’m not giving my name,” the informant said.

Resentment was written all over her face.

“I need something to call you by,” Ballard insisted.

“Then call me Darla,” the woman said. “I always liked that name.”

“Okay, Darla, tell me about the street banker. Who was he?”

“All I know is that he was a cop and his name was Bonner. That’s it. I never saw him. I don’t know what he looks like. Please leave now.”

“What kind of cop?”

“I don’t know.”

“LAPD? Sheriff’s?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“What was his first name?”

“I don’t know that either, or I would have told you.”

“How do you know he was a cop? How did you know his last name?”

“From Berto. He talked about the guy.”

“He said he was a street banker?”

“He said he was the guy who could get money for Raffa. He told him. I was there.”

“Where?”

“We drove to Raffa’s father’s place. Where they fixed cars up front and chopped ’em up in the back. Raffa came to the car and Berto told him. He gave him a number to call. And he also warned El Chopo that Bonner was a cop. He said he had to be careful about dealing with him because he was a cop and he was serious people.”

“What does that mean, ‘serious people’?”

“You know, like don’t cross him. There are consequences for shit like that.”

“Did that mean he was a killer?”

“I don’t know. It meant he was serious.”

“Okay. Were there other times Bonner was mentioned?”

“Yeah, when Raffa brought the money to Humberto. He said Bonner got it for him from a doctor and he had to sign papers and all of that.”

“What kind of doctor?”

“I didn’t hear that part or they didn’t talk about it. Just a doctor is what I remember.”

“How come you never told this to your handler at the LAPD — about the banker being a cop?”

“Because I’m not a fool.”

“What’s that mean?”

“For one thing, if something happened, Berto would know it came from me because he told me about Bonner in the first place. And the other thing is that you don’t rat out cops to cops. That’s just stupid. Next thing you know, somebody rats you out to your man. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I do. How do you think Berto met Bonner in the first place?”

“I don’t know that. They just got together somehow. They knew each other before I was in the picture.”

Ballard knew that was a key connection to make.

“When was that?” she asked. “When you entered the picture?”

“Me and Berto got together when I was seventeen,” Darla said. “That was ’04. And we were together for six years.”

Ballard had some respect for Darla and her path. To come out of East Hollywood and end up on the beach was an unlikely journey. She could see that Darla carried a certain pride in it, despite the choices of men she used to get there.

“Do you know if there were other transactions between Berto and Bonner?” Ballard asked. “I mean besides the deal with Raffa.”

“Yeah, they had business,” Darla said. “Like when someone needed big money, they would, like, talk and shit. I think there were other deals.”

Ballard looked at Bosch to see if he had any questions she had not covered. He nodded.

“How did Berto and Bonner communicate?” he asked.

“By phone mostly,” Darla said. “Sometimes they would meet up.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Darla looked away when she answered. It was the first time in the conversation that Ballard had seen a tell indicating untruthfulness. Ballard glanced at Bosch and he nodded slightly. He had seen it too.

“You sure?” Ballard asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Darla said. “You think I asked Berto about his business all the time? That would get me killed.”

Darla looked away again while making her protest. Ballard knew she was hiding something. She thought about how to pull it free and considered what Darla would be self-conscious about discussing. Then she hit on what it probably was.

“Come on, Darla, tell us.”

“I already told you. I don’t know.”

“You did see Bonner, didn’t you?”

“I told you, no.”

“You followed him. Humberto. You followed him because you thought he was going to see a girl, but it was Bonner. You saw them together.”

Darla rocked back on the couch as though shocked by Ballard’s jump.

“Where’d they meet?” Ballard pressed. “It’s important, Darla.”

Darla flipped a hand in the air as if to say Why not? You’ve gotten everything else.

“They went up to that place on Franklin where the chicken’s so good.”

Ballard glanced at Bosch.

“Birds?” she asked.

The place that gave cops a discount.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Darla said. “I saw them and then I turned around and left.”

“What did Bonner look like?” Ballard asked.

“I don’t know, white. He was a white guy.”

“What color hair?”

“He had a shaved head. Fucker thought he was Vin Diesel.”

Ballard thought about the description Gabriel Raffa had given of the man in the hoodie.

“Was Bonner in uniform?” she asked.

Darla laughed.

“Yeah, OG Berto Viera having lunch with a cop in uniform.”

“Okay, no uniform. What else do you remember, Darla?”

“That’s it. No more.”

“You sure. That’s the only time you ever saw them?”

“Only time.”

Ballard nodded. She had enough for the time being. And she knew where she could find Darla if she needed to. She looked at Bosch and he nodded. He was finished as well. To punctuate the finality of the interview, Gene knocked on the glass from the deck and held his hands wide.

He was cold and wanted to come in.

Ballard waved him in and then looked at Darla.

“Thank you... Darla,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“You going to pay me?” Darla said. “The gang guys always did.”

“We do that and we have to open a new snitch jacket on you. I don’t think you want that.”

Darla looked at Gene as he came through the glass doors, the booming sound of a crashing wave coming in with him.

“No, I guess not,” Darla said.

Ballard thanked the happy couple and exited with Bosch. There was no traffic and they crossed PCH at a steady walk.

“That was a nice jump you made with her,” Bosch said. “About her following him to check if he was seeing a girl.”

“Thanks,” Ballard said. “It just suddenly hit me.”

They stood between their cars.

“Now what?” Bosch asked.

“I’m going to run down Bonner,” Ballard said. “See where it goes from there. Her description matches the one the victim’s son gave me of a white guy at the New Year’s party. A bald guy in a hoodie.”

“There’s something that doesn’t fit in her story.”

“What?”

“If the banker — Bonner — was a cop, why didn’t Humberto use that to deal his way out of a life sentence?”

Ballard nodded. It was a good point.

“Maybe he tried to and there were no takers,” she said. “Or maybe this Bonner is so ‘serious’ that he was afraid to. Maybe he thought Bonner being a cop meant he could get to him in County.”

“A lot of maybes.”

“There always are.”

“Let me know what you get. I’ll be around if you need me.”

“Thanks, Harry. And thanks for being there tonight. We wouldn’t be to this point if you hadn’t thought Davenport was bent in some way.”

“Then I guess we both made good jumps tonight.”

“What a team. High five.”

Ballard put up her hand.

“We’re not supposed to be doing that during Covid,” Bosch said.

“Come on, Harry,” Ballard urged. “You can do it.”

Bosch reached up and half-heartedly slapped her hand.

“We’ll have to work on that,” Ballard said.

25

After checking in at the watch office with Lieutenant Rivera, Ballard went to the detective bureau to attempt to identify Bonner. The department’s active roster was easily accessible through their internal website. There were two Bonners currently on the job but one was a female, Anne-Marie, and the male, Horatio Jr., had not been in the department at the time Javier Raffa bought his way out of the Las Palmas 13. At best, these two could be legacies of the Bonner she was looking for. But asking them was not an option. Their loyalties would be with their father or uncle or whoever it was. They’d alert the Bonner that Ballard was looking for before she could get to him.

Every division had what was called a pension book. It was a binder updated annually with the roster of retired officers receiving pensions — meaning they were still alive. Dead officers were the hardest of all to trace. The listings in the pension book included the ex-officer’s contact details as well as badge number, serial number, beginning- and end-of-watch dates, and final division assignment before retirement. The book was used to reach out to former officers in the course of investigations that touched on their activities while on the job. It was particularly handy in cold cases.

Hollywood Division’s copy of the pension book was kept in the detective lieutenant’s office, which was locked at the moment because Robinson-Reynolds was off on a Sunday night. Undaunted, Ballard used a set of lockpicks she kept in her file cabinet to work the simple knob lock open. The white binder she was looking for was on a shelf with an assortment of department manuals behind the lieutenant’s desk. Knowing she was trespassing, she made it an in-and-out operation. She opened the book on the lieutenant’s desk and quickly looked through the alphabetical listings for a Bonner.

She found two: Horatio Bonner, who retired in 2002, so could not be the one Ballard was looking for but presumably was the father of at least one of the Bonners currently employed by the department; and a Christopher Bonner, who had retired seven years earlier after twenty years on the job. His rank and last assignment were listed as detective first grade in Hollywood detectives. This was curious to Ballard. She had never heard of Christopher Bonner. She had arrived in the division two years after he had left but, still, she could not recall ever seeing or hearing about a case that had his name attached to it. What added to the puzzle was that Bosch had not reacted to the name, and it seemed as though their time working in Hollywood might have overlapped, though she was not sure what year Bosch left Hollywood Division for the Open-Unsolved Unit downtown.

After laying the binder open on the desk, she pulled out her phone and took a photo of the entry for Christopher Bonner. As she did so, she noticed a yellow Post-it pad to the side of the desk’s center work area. Robinson-Reynolds had written “Ballard” on the top sheet and nothing else. It was obviously a note written to remind him to tell Ballard something or get something from her. Or possibly to talk to someone else about her. Ballard could not think of what that might be, since the last time Robinson-Reynolds was in his office to write the note was during the day shift on New Year’s Eve. Nothing she was involved in now had even occurred by then, except for the ongoing investigation of the first two Midnight Men assaults.

She pushed the question aside for the moment, put her phone in her pocket, and then returned the pension book to its spot on the shelf. She left the office as she had found it and locked the door behind her.

At her borrowed desk, Ballard transferred the info on Bonner from her photo to her computer screen. Bonner lived in Simi Valley — at least that was where his pension checks were sent — which was a cop haven outside L.A. in Ventura County. It was close enough that he could have lived there while he was with the LAPD. Many cops did. It also put him close to the San Fernando Valley, where the nexus of the four dentists was centered at Crown Labs Incorporated.

Ballard got up and walked back to the watch office, where Lieutenant Rivera was at his desk, holding a cupcake. There was a tray of cupcakes on a counter nearby. As Ballard approached, he pointed at the tray with the cupcake in his hand.

“Citizen appreciation,” he said. “Help yourself.”

“These days you should have those checked by the lab first,” Ballard said. “Senna glycoside, you know?”

“What the hell is that?”

“A laxative. The active ingredient in Ex-Lax.”

Rivera stared down at the chocolate-frosted cake in his hand, visions of cupcake eaters lining up at the restroom likely playing in his head. He had already peeled off the paper baking cup. Hesitantly, he put it down on a napkin on his desk.

“Thanks a lot, Ballard,” he said.

“Just watching out for you, L-T,” she said. “Want me to call the lab?”

“Why are you here, Ballard? It’s all quiet on the western front.”

“I know. I wanted to ask you about Christopher Bonner.”

“Bonner? What about him?”

“You know him?”

“Of course. He worked here.”

“He supposedly worked here as a detective.”

“Yeah, he had your job.”

“What?”

“Worked the late show right up until the day he pulled the pin.”

Ballard was shocked by the coincidence but it helped explain why his name was unfamiliar to her. Midnight-shift detectives usually turned their cases over to dayside detectives. As a result, they weren’t formally listed as leads on many cases. This could also help explain why Bosch didn’t recognize the name.

“So, you must have known him pretty well then,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Rivera said. “Just like you, he worked for me.”

Ballard didn’t bother correcting him about who she actually reported to.

“You said ‘the day he pulled the pin,’” she said. “Did something happen with him that made him quit?”

“I don’t know, Ballard,” Rivera said. “He just quit. Maybe he got fed up with all the shit out there. I don’t need to tell you what you see out there on the night shift.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Why are you asking about Chris?”

“Oh, his name came up in the homicide from Thursday night. He knew the family from back in the day. I was just curious about him, is all.”

Ballard hoped her answer would satisfy Rivera without suspicion. As a distraction, she bent down over the tray of cupcakes, holding her hair back so it didn’t flop onto the icing.

“You know,” she said. “I think these look all right. Mind if I take one?”

“Knock yourself out,” Rivera said.

She picked one with vanilla cake and icing.

“Thanks,” she said. “Hard to hide something in vanilla.”

She headed to the door.

“I’m around if you need me,” she said.

“I’ll call you,” Rivera said.

When she got back to the detective bureau, she dumped the cupcake in the trash can under the desk she was borrowing. She then pulled her phone and called Bosch, hoping he had not already gone to bed.

“You find him?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. “And get this — he had my job here at Hollywood.”

“What do you mean? Late-show detective?”

“That’s right. He retired two years before I got here, and I think he might have been here when you were.”

“I must be losing it. I don’t remember that name.”

“You probably never came across him. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Is he still local?”

“Simi Valley.”

“Well, that puts him in our frame of reference. Looks like he’s the money man. Is he also the man with the P-twenty-two?”

“We’re not there yet.”

“How are you going to work it?”

“Not much I can do with it till tomorrow. But I can go through records, see if there’s anything that connects the dots.”

“Good idea.”

“Yeah, so let me do that, you get some sleep, and I’ll let you know if I get anything in the morning after shift. By then I’ll also probably know if I still have the case.”

“Happy hunting.”

This was the homicide detective’s sign-off. It was a show of respect, and Ballard thought there was no one in the entire department whose respect she would take over Harry Bosch’s.

Before going to work on the department database, she pulled her phone, checked her email, and learned that a woman named Daisy from Wags and Walks had responded to her request to meet the Chihuahua mix named Pinto. The message was that Pinto was still available for adoption and would be happy to meet Ballard.

Ballard, not knowing what the day ahead would bring, responded with a request to see the dog on Tuesday. Since Tuesday was one of Ballard’s regular days off, she said in the email that Daisy could name the time of the appointment and she would make it work. She added that she was very excited to meet Pinto.

Ballard put the phone aside and used the desk terminal to enter the department database. She started with the biggest net that she could throw: all cases with Bonner’s name and serial number in the reports.

The department was digitized going back to the mid ’90s, so Bonner’s entire career was covered. The search engine took more than a minute to come back with over 14,000 hits. Ballard thought that was actually low considering that Bonner had put in twenty years. She guessed that by the time she hit her twenty years, she would have more than double that number of engagements in the database.

Checking through that many reports, even those easily dismissed, could take days. Ballard needed to cut it down to hours — at least initially. She pulled up her chrono on her laptop and checked the date of the intel report that Javier Raffa had bought his way out of the Las Palmas gang. It was dated October 25, 2006, meaning that Bonner was already associated in some way with shot caller Humberto Viera at that time. Ballard resubmitted her search for reports with Bonner’s name on them, chopping the net down to three years on either side of the date of the report.

This time the search took less time and the computer coughed up 5,403 hits. She then cut this down to 3,544 by searching only two years on either side of the 2006 marker.

Ballard looked up at the clock and saw that it was nearly three. Her shift ended at six but she was going to wait until Robinson-Reynolds came in to work, and that would be between seven and eight, and more likely later than earlier. After that, she planned to meet with Matt Neumayer, head of the Sex Assault team, whether or not Lisa Moore was back from her sojourn in Santa Barbara.

Ballard decided that if she got lucky and there were no callouts, and if she kept herself from going computer blind, she could get through all the reports by the time of her meetings the next morning.

She set to work with a quick protocol for reviewing the reports. She would scan only the front sheet, which contained the name of the victim, suspect — if there was one — and type of crime or callout. This would allow her to quickly move past trivial reports of minor crimes and citizen interactions. If something intrigued her, she would open the full report to read further, looking for connections to Humberto Viera or anyone else whose name had come up so far in the Raffa investigation.

It was Sunday night and calm out on the streets. No calls came in to interrupt Ballard. She got up once an hour for a few minutes to take her eyes off the computer screen and to get coffee or walk up and down the aisles of the detective bureau. At one point a patrol officer came in to find a desk to type up a report, and Ballard sent him to use a terminal on the other side of the room because he wasn’t wearing a mask.

Two hours into the search, she had reached the date of October 25, 2006, in the reports and had nothing to show for it. There had been no report with reference to Bonner that involved an arrest, investigation, or interaction with a member of the Las Palmas 13 gang. That in itself was a revelation, because it was hard for Ballard to believe that one could go a solid two years as a midnight-shift detective without a single interaction with a Las Palmas gangster in some form. It told her that Bonner had avoided gang cases, if not overtly looked the other way when it came to gang crimes.

It also told her that she needed to reframe her search. She didn’t see going through the next two years of records as the best use of her time. Instead she went back to the search engine and asked for records from 2000 to 2004, producing 3,113 reports with Bonner’s name on them.

These reports began with Bonner as a patrol officer in Hollywood Division. He then got a promotion to detective in early 2002 and was assigned to the third watch, which was considered an entry detective position at the time. It still was, but it had not been an entry position for Ballard. Her assignment to the dark hours had come as punishment for pushing back against one of the many ills of the department: sexual harassment. She had lost a departmental skirmish with her boss at the Robbery-Homicide Division and was banished to the night shift in Hollywood.

An hour later, Ballard found the needle in the digital haystack of reports: a report dated October 5, 2004, in which Bonner was listed as the late-show detective who responded to a call about a shooting into an occupied dwelling. The incident occurred at 3:20 a.m. at a home on Lemon Grove Avenue near Western Avenue. The summary stated that the occupants of the home were asleep when a drive-by shooting occurred, a gunman spraying automatic fire from a passing car. No one was hurt and the occupants might not have even called the police, but several neighbors did.

The report listed the occupants of the house as Humberto Viera and his girlfriend, Sofia Navarro. Ballard believed she now knew Darla’s real name.

A follow-up report written by Bonner, who at this point had been a detective for less than a year, described Viera and Navarro as uncooperative. The summary described Viera as a high-ranking member of the Las Palmas 13 street gang.

The summary also stated that information from GED indicated that Viera was suspected of having been involved in an abduction attempt of a rival gang member named Julio Sanz. According to the intel, Sanz was a member of the White Fence street gang, which operated out of Boyle Heights but was encroaching on Las Palmas turf. The abduction was an attempt to gain leverage in brokering an agreement between the gangs on the turf border.

Ballard tried one more shot at backgrounding Bonner. The Hollywood Division had always enjoyed the support of a local citizens group called Blue Hollywood. The group supplied equipment, paid for the Christmas party, and staged neighborhood meetings. It also welcomed new transfers and thanked those retiring, often with a story and photo on their website.

Ballard went to bluehollywood.net and put Bonner’s name into the search window. She was rewarded with a mention and photo in the monthly “Comings and Goings” column that ran seven years before. It was the formal photo that had been on the division’s organization chart outside the captain’s office when Bonner had served. Ballard enlarged the photo on her screen and studied it. Bonner had deep-set eyes and a shaved head. His neck was tight against the collar of his uniform. He was not smiling in the photo.

Ballard leaned back and rubbed her eyes. Dawn’s light was just beginning to come in through the casement windows that ran along the top of the walls of the detective bureau.

She had directly connected Bonner and Viera, which lent credence and confirmation to what Darla/Sofia had revealed: Viera had put Javier Raffa in touch with Bonner when Raffa needed a big sum of money. She had also found a visual on Bonner that was consistent with the description she had received from both Darla and Gabriel Raffa.

The next connection that had to be made was between Bonner and the dentists and their factoring operation. The money Bonner had arranged and delivered for Raffa came from somewhere, and most likely not from Bonner’s own bank account. But Ballard had no idea where the late-show detective and the daytime dentists had crossed paths.

She printed out all the reports on the drive-by shooting incident. And while she waited, she put the name Julio Sanz into the search window and learned that he had been murdered in November 2004, just five weeks after the drive-by shooting of Humberto Viera’s house.

Despite her eyes being tired and unable to hold focus on the computer screen, Ballard pulled up the reports on that murder. Sanz had been gunned down in Evergreen Cemetery, where he had gone to visit his father’s grave on the anniversary of his death. He was found sprawled across the grave, shot once in the head execution-style.

The case was never solved.

Ballard leaned back from the screen again and considered this latest piece of information. Five weeks after Humberto Viera’s home got strafed, and five weeks after Viera met Detective Christopher Bonner on that case, the man thought to be behind the drive-by was murdered in an East L.A. cemetery.

Ballard saw no coincidence in that. She was beginning to see the relationships between elements in her investigation. It was all moving in one orbit, circling the killing of Javier Raffa.

26

Ballard didn’t know how early Robinson-Reynolds would be coming in after the holiday weekend. She decided to use the time waiting to switch gears from the Raffa case to the Midnight Men investigation.

She knew that most city services departments began work at seven. She left the station and drove into East Hollywood, where the Bureau of Street Lighting had a service lot at Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil Avenue. Its location was marked by a procession of the various types of streetlights found in Los Angeles, all planted on the sidewalk in front of the work-and-storage yard. Over at the county museum, there was an art installation of L.A. streetlights that tourists and art aficionados flocked to for selfies. Here was the real thing. Ballard pulled into the yard and parked in front of the office. She knew she needed to be cautious here. It was not outside the bounds of possibility that one or both Midnight Men worked for the BSL. It might explain their familiarity with the various neighborhoods of Hollywood, and their knowing which wire to cut to disable the light outside Cindy Carpenter’s house without cutting the line that fed power to all the lights on the street. Ballard had seen a tangle of wires behind the access panel but only one had been cut.

As she got out, she looked around the work yard and into the open bays of a garage. She assumed that most of the BSL trucks were already out in the field by now, but there were two trucks parked in the repair bays. They were white but they were not vans, and each carried a city seal on the driver’s-side door with BUREAU OF STREET LIGHTING printed beneath it. Jack Kersey had not mentioned the city seal in his description of the van he had seen up on Deep Dell Terrace.

Ballard stepped into the office, showed her badge, and asked to see a supervisor. She was ushered in to see a man named Carl Schaeffer, who had a cubbyhole office where the time cards and time clock were in his sight and a work schedule dominated the wall behind his desk. His title was yard supervisor. Ballard closed the door and took a good look at Schaeffer. He was in his fifties and far outside the age range the victims had estimated for the Midnight Men.

“I need to confirm some information related to streetlight repairs,” Ballard said.

“We cover Alvarado to Westwood and the ten north to Mulholland,” Schaeffer said. “If that’s where you’re looking, then I’m your guy. How can I help?”

“I’m looking for repair records for Deep Dell Terrace for... let’s go back the last two months.”

“Okay, that one I know without looking because we’re sending a truck up there today.”

“What’s going on up there?”

“Sounds like we have a tampering situation. A homeowner says two of our guys cut power to the post, but we didn’t have any guys up there. Sounds like it was vandalism.”

“When was this?”

“Happened December thirtieth according to the homeowner.”

“Can you cancel the service up there today?”

“Uh, sure I can. How come?”

“I’m going to have the post and access plate processed for fingerprints. There was a crime committed in the area and the suspects may have cut the light ahead of time.”

“What kind of crime? Was it a murder?”

“No.”

Schaeffer waited for Ballard to say more but she didn’t. He got the message.

“But you think somebody cut the light so no one could see them?”

“Possibly. Do you have any records of other work orders for Deep Dell?”

“No. I can go back and look but I would remember anything recent. They got a guy lives up there — whenever they lose a light, we hear from him, and this one on Deep Dell Terrace was the first time I’ve heard from him in about a year.”

“Jack Kersey?”

“Sounds like he calls you folks, too.”

“I ran into him up there.”

“He’s a character. Keeps us on our toes, I’ll tell you that.”

“I can tell.”

“What else can I do for you, Detective?”

“I have two other streets I want to check to see if you’ve had repair orders there recently.”

She did not give him the dates or exact addresses of the first two sexual assaults. She just asked if there had been any repairs to streetlights in the last three months in the 600 block of Lucerne Boulevard or the 1300 block of Vista Street. For these Schaeffer could not answer from memory. He punched the addresses into his computer and then sent two pages to his printer.

“The answer is yes,” he said. “I’m printing it out for you. We got calls on both streets. On Lucerne we got the complaint December second and repaired it the fourth. On Vista it came in on the twenty-eighth and we were shorthanded because everybody wants that week off. Repairs on Vista are going out today as well.”

“I want you to stop that repair too,” Ballard said.

“Not a problem.”

“Thank you. I have a couple more questions. On the Lucerne repair, did you get a report on what the problem was there?”

“Yeah, it’s on the printout. That was vandalism — wires cut at the base.”

“Multiple wires?”

Schaeffer checked his computer screen.

“We had to replace the whole circuit there,” he said. “The feed line and the loop.”

That was the street where the first rape occurred. Ballard considered that the Midnight Men had cut two wires there because they didn’t know which was the feed. By the time of the Deep Dell attack they had learned.

“So they actually disabled several lights at once?” she asked.

“Exactly,” Schaeffer said. “And we got complaints from multiple residents.”

By learning to cut just one light — the one nearest the intended victim’s house — the Midnight Men were improving their MO and less likely to draw immediate attention to their nefarious efforts.

“Okay,” Ballard said. “I noticed that most of your trucks are out in the field, but there are two in the bays. Do you use white vans for service calls?”

“Vans? No. We use flatbeds, so when we have to replace a post or a whole light assembly, we can take what we need on the work truck. You can’t put a fourteen-foot streetlight in a van, and that’s what we’re most often doing — replacing the whole assembly. People like hitting them with their cars.”

He smiled at his own attempt at humor.

“Got it,” Ballard said. “And your flatbeds are clearly marked as city vehicles? With the city seal and department name?”

“Always,” Schaeffer said.

“No vans?”

“Not a one. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Is somebody doing some shit and saying he’s with us?”

“I wish I could tell you, Mr. Schaeffer — you’ve been very helpful. But I can’t, and I need you to keep this confidential. Don’t talk about it with anyone.”

“What am I going to tell? I don’t know what’s going on.”

Ballard reached into her pocket for a business card. It had her cell number on it.

“One last thing,” she said. “I need to know about any reported light outages in the Hollywood area for the next two weeks. I don’t care if it’s a weekend or not, I need you to call me as soon as a report comes in that there’s a streetlight out. I don’t need to know about car accidents. Just lights that are burned out, malfunctioning, vandalized, whatever. Can you do that?”

“Of course, not a problem,” Schaeffer said.

“Thank you, sir. When this is all over, I’ll be able to tell you more about it.”

“Whatever it is, I hope you catch the bastard. Especially if he’s the one out there cutting our wires.”

He handed her the printouts with the details of the first two streetlight outages. Ballard thanked him again and left. As she returned to her car, she acknowledged to herself that it was more likely than not that the next report of a vandalized streetlight in Hollywood would come in after it was too late and the next attack had already occurred.

From the work yard, Ballard drove by the exact locations of the streetlights noted on the printouts. In each case, the light where the wiring had been cut was in close proximity to the house where one of the sexual assaults had taken place. It left Ballard with no doubt that the Midnight Men had tampered with the lights before the attacks to further cloak their activities in darkness. She also noticed that in both locations the streetlights were different from the glass acorns in the Dell.

She called SID and requested that a print tech come out and process the access plate at the base of the light on Vista, as well as the light up on Deep Dell Terrace. It was a long shot but Ballard knew that long shots never paid off if you didn’t take them. A fingerprint could change the trajectory of the investigation in an instant. She left the Lucerne address off the request because that light had already been repaired and any fingerprint evidence left by the Midnight Men would likely be gone.

She checked her phone and saw that it was almost eight and her lieutenant should be in his office by the time she got back.

Along the way, she took a call from an autopsy coordinator at the County Medical Examiner’s Office. With more than a thousand autopsies conducted a week, the coroner needed a coordinator just to set the schedule and make notifications to investigators and families of the dead. She was informed that the autopsy of Javier Raffa was set for 11 a.m. with deputy medical examiner Dr. Steven Zvader.

Ballard said she would be there.

Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds was behind his desk when Ballard got back to the detective bureau. Ballard knocked on the window next to his open door and he signaled her in.

“Ballard,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d already gone home. How’s the head?”

“I’m good,” Ballard said. “I was just out doing an interview on the Midnight Men thing.”

“You need to fill out an IOD.”

“I’m okay, L-T.”

“Look, you want to get paid for Saturday night when you went home early? Fill out the form.”

Ballard knew that filling out an Injured On Duty form would take the better part of an hour and its only purpose was to serve as a record of injuries in case the officer later took action against the department or sought an early retirement due to injury. The city would not cover or accept any financial or retirement request based on injuries not detailed in the IOD form. It didn’t matter that some injuries became an issue long after they initially occurred. Bosch was an example. He was exposed to radioactive material on a case. Ten years later, when it manifested as a form of leukemia, the city tried to look the other way because he had never filed an IOD form. Luckily, he had good doctors and a good lawyer and came out okay.

“All right,” Ballard said. “I’ll get to it before I leave. I have to hang around for the autopsy on Raffa anyway.”

“Right,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “We should talk about that. Sit down, Ballard.”

Ballard sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. As she did so, she noticed a small black leather pouch on the corner of the desk. It was blocked from Robinson-Reynolds’s view in his seat because of a vertical file in front of it. He must have missed it when he entered the office earlier, probably reading the overnight note as he entered.

The pouch contained Ballard’s lockpick set. She had put it down on the desk after entering the office the night before to get to the pension book. She had then forgotten it when she left. If the lieutenant found it, he would not be able to trace it back to Ballard but he would know that someone had been in his office over the holiday weekend, and she knew suspicion would likely fall on her. She was trying to think of a way to surreptitiously grab it, when Robinson-Reynolds told her she was off the Raffa case.

“Wait, what?” she asked.

“I talked to West Bureau, and they’re ready to take it off your hands,” Robinson-Reynolds said.

“I don’t want it taken off my hands. I was working it all night and have identified a suspect and want to keep rolling with it.”

“That’s great and I’m sure they will welcome all your good work. But it’s not your job. You’re not a homicide detective. We have been over this before and I goddamn hate it that every time you don’t want to give up a case, you try to make it out as a betrayal. I’m not your enemy, Ballard. There is an established protocol and we must follow it.”

“The autopsy’s in two hours. Who takes that?”

“I’m assuming you do. But then you call this guy and arrange to hand it all off.”

He handed a Post-it Note across the desk to her. It had her name on the top — it was the Post-it she had seen earlier — but now it had another name and a number written under hers: Detective Ross Bettany. Ballard had never heard of him, but he would be the one to take her good work and close the case.

“Tell me about this suspect,” Robinson-Reynolds said.

Ballard knew that if she mentioned that she had linked two murders and that the likely hit man was an ex-LAPD cop, she wouldn’t even get the autopsy. Robinson-Reynolds would skip over her and West Bureau and go straight to the Robbery-Homicide Division downtown. They would grab it like a hawk snatching a sparrow out of the air. She didn’t want that. If she couldn’t be lead, she wanted to give it to Bettany in such a way that she still retained a piece of it. That way, Bettany and his partner would need her and her knowledge to close it.

“We think it was about money,” she said. “As I told you on the phone yesterday, Raffa’s shop was sitting on a valuable piece of land. He had a silent partner and he was trying to break their contract. We think the partner hired a hitter — the go-between who brought them both together in the first place.”

Ballard thought she had walked the tightrope without a net. Nothing she had said was false. She just didn’t tell the whole story.

“‘We’?” Robinson-Reynolds asked.

“What?” Ballard said.

“You said, ‘We think it was about money.’ Who’s ‘we’?”

“Oh, sorry, just an expression. I meant ‘we’ as in the LAPD as a whole. We think.”

“You sure?”

“Uh, yeah. Last I checked, the department hasn’t filled my partner’s slot because of the freeze.”

The lieutenant nodded like all of that was true.

“You know a guy named Harry Bosch?” he asked. “Retired LAPD. Worked here at Hollywood for a lot of years, in fact.”

Ballard realized that she had just walked into a mantrap. She went in one door and it had locked behind her. The next door had to be opened from the other side. And Robinson-Reynolds was the guy on the other side.

“Uh, yeah, I know him,” she said carefully. “We’ve crossed paths on things before. Why?”

She wanted to get as much from Robinson-Reynolds as she could before she tried walking across the tightrope again.

“Because I got a report here on my desk that came from GED,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “They had your victim’s memorial service under surveillance so they could see what guys from Las Palmas showed up. Instead, they got photos of you standing with an old guy identified as Harry Bosch and talking to another guy who didn’t look too happy about being talked to.”

Ballard’s mind was racing as she tried to put together an answer.

“Yeah,” she said. “That was Bosch and that was the silent partner I was just talking about. Dennis Hoyle.”

She doubted that Robinson-Reynolds would go for the distraction of Hoyle, but it gave Ballard time to think her way through this confrontation. She knew one thing: Davenport was behind this. He had sent the surveillance photos to the lieutenant. Ballard decided she would find a way to deal with him later.

“And Bosch?” Robinson-Reynolds said. “Why was he there? Why was he with you?”

He held up a surveillance photo, and there was Bosch next to Ballard as they confronted Hoyle at his car. Ballard knew that her only way out was to come clean about the first murder. Bosch’s case. If she gave that to Robinson-Reynolds, she might survive this.

“Well, you see,” she began. “I took—”

“Let me see if I can put it together,” the lieutenant said, cutting her off. “You’ve got a full plate. You catch a murder New Year’s Eve and West Bureau’s overwhelmed so you have to run with that through the weekend. Then the Midnight Men jump up again and now you’ve got that. You’ve got no help because even Lisa Moore’s abandoned you for Santa Barbara — yes, I know about that. So you’re up against the wall, and you remember Harry Bosch, the retired guy who wishes he wasn’t retired. You think, ‘I could reach out to him for help and advice, but how do I get to him?’ So you pull out your little black bag of lockpicks and you break into my office to get the pension book that has Bosch’s number. The only problem besides getting photographed by the GED is that you forgot the little black bag and you put the pension book back in the wrong spot. How am I doing?”

Ballard stared at him in awe. The mantrap door was opening.

“You’re a detective, L-T,” she said. “That’s amazing. But there’s another reason I called Bosch.”

“And what’s that?” Robinson-Reynolds asked.

“Ten years ago he worked a homicide here in Hollywood. I connected the Raffa case to his case through ballistics. His case is still open. I wanted to talk to him about it and we agreed to meet at the Raffa memorial.”

Robinson-Reynolds leaned back in his chair as he considered this.

“And when were you going to tell me this?” he asked.

“Today. Now. I was waiting for the chance.”

“Ballard...”

He decided not to say what he was going to say.

“Just make sure Ross Bettany gets everything you’ve got on the case,” he said instead.

“Of course,” Ballard said.

“And look, I don’t mind what you did. But I mind how you did it. You’re lucky I think Davenport up there in GED is an empty suit. Why he’s mad at you, I don’t know. Sounds like professional jealousy. But what I do mind is you breaking into my office. That can’t happen again.”

“It won’t, sir.”

“I know it won’t. Because I’m going to get one of those Ring cameras and put it in here so I get an alert anytime somebody comes in.”

Ballard nodded.

“That’s a good idea,” she said.

“So take your little black bag and go call West Bureau and arrange to hand off the case,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “Then call Bosch and tell him his services on the case are no longer needed. That West Bureau will take it from here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then I want you to get together with the Sex team to figure out next moves on the Midnight Men. I want to be briefed before you split.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can go now, Ballard.”

Ballard stood up, took the lockpicks off the corner of the desk, and headed for the door. Before leaving, she turned back to the lieutenant.

“By the way, I’m off the next three nights,” she said. “Did you put somebody on call yet?”

“Not yet,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “I’ll figure it out.”

“How did you know about Lisa and Santa Barbara?”

“Because I was in Santa Barbara. I’m walking on the beach and hear this voice and I look, and there is Moore in a cabana in front of the Miramar.”

“Did you say something?”

“Nope. I’m going to bring her in here like I did with you. See if she tells me a story or tells me the truth. And don’t you warn her, Ballard.”

“I won’t.”

“If she tells me the truth, we’ll be fine. If she lies to me... well, I can’t have that.”

“I understand.”

Ballard left the office and took an immediate right turn, away from the squad room and toward the station’s front hallway. She went to the break room to brew a cup of coffee. She knew it was going to be a few hours before she would get to sleep. She also didn’t want to be in the detective bureau when Lisa Moore showed up for work and the lieutenant summoned her to his office. She didn’t need to have Moore blaming her for not giving her a warning.

As the coffee dripped, Ballard considered firing a text to Moore telling her not to lie to the L-T.

But she didn’t. Moore could make her own way and deal with the consequences.

27

Ballard walked into the squad room through the back hallway and saw Matt Neumayer and Ronin Clarke at their workstations in the Crimes Against Persons pod. Lisa Moore’s station was empty. Ballard walked over, put her coffee down on one of the half walls that separated the workstations. It was a six-person pod; one half was the Sexual Assault Unit and the other was the actual CAPs Unit, which handled all assaults that were not sexually motivated.

“Lisa coming in?” Ballard asked.

“She’s here,” Clarke said. “L-T called her in for a powwow.”

Ballard glanced toward the lieutenant’s office and through the glass could see Lisa sitting in front of Robinson-Reynolds’s desk.

“You know, Ronin, you’re not supposed to use words like that anymore,” Neumayer said.

Ballard looked at Neumayer. It did not look like he was serious.

“Powwow?” Clarke said. “My bad — I’ll add it to my list. I guess I’m just not woke enough.”

Clarke then turned to Ballard.

“So, Ballard, are you Indian?” Clarke said. “You look like there’s something going on there.”

He made a gesture as if circling her face.

“You mean Native American?” Ballard asked. “No, I’m not.”

“Then what?” Clarke persisted.

Neumayer cut in before Clarke could put both feet across the line.

“Renée, sit down,” he said. “Tell me about the weekend.”

She sat in Moore’s station and had to adjust the seat up so she could see both Neumayer and Clarke over the dividers, though she was going to talk mostly to Neumayer.

“You know about the new Midnight Men case, right?” she asked.

“Lisa told us before she got called in,” Neumayer said.

“Well, I think we need to change the focus a little bit,” Ballard said.

“Why?” Clarke asked.

“The new case is up in the hills,” Ballard said. “The Dell. And it’s not the kind of neighborhood you walk into to peep in windows and find a victim. She was targeted and followed there. At least that’s my take. So that changes how we should look at victim acquisition. The first two, the thinking was that the suspects picked the neighborhood because of access and then found their victims. That doesn’t work with victim three. So there’s something about these victims that connects them, and whatever that is — a place or an event either real or virtual — that’s what put them on the suspects’ radar.”

“Makes sense,” Neumayer said. “Any idea where that... point is?”

“The nexus?” Ballard said. “No, not yet. But victim three runs a coffee shop in Los Feliz. That means she has many interactions with strangers on a daily basis. Anyway, that’s what I stuck around for. To talk it out with Lisa and you guys.”

“Well, here she comes now,” Neumayer said. “Let’s all go into the task force room. Nobody’s using it.”

Moore walked up to the pod. She had either gotten a sunburn over the weekend or was colored with embarrassment or anger.

Ballard started to get up from her chair.

“No, that’s okay, Renée,” Moore said. “Take it. You earned it.”

“What are you talking about?” Ballard asked.

“You got my job,” Moore said. “Might as well start today.”

Now she had the attention of Clarke and Neumayer, who was already gathering files to take to the task force room.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ballard said.

“Sure you do,” Moore said. “Next deployment I’m on the late show and you’re on Sex. And don’t play stupid. You set me up.”

“I didn’t set anybody up,” Ballard said. “And this is news to me.”

“Me too,” Clarke said.

“Shut up, Clarke,” Moore said. “This is between me and this backstabbing bitch.”

Ballard tried to remain calm.

“Lisa, wait a minute,” Ballard said. “Let’s go back into L-T’s office and—”

“Fuck you, Ballard,” Moore said. “You know I’m a single mother. I’ve got kids — how the hell am I going to work midnights? And all because you got pissed that you had to cover for me.”

“Lisa, I did cover for you,” Ballard said. “I did not tell the lieutenant one thing about you or this—”

“He already knew, Lisa,” Neumayer said. “He knew about the Miramar.”

Moore jerked her laser focus off Ballard and onto Neumayer.

“What?” she asked.

“He knew,” Neumayer said. “The Miramar, right? Santa Barbara? Dash told me Thursday he was going up there for the weekend. If that’s where you were when you should have been working with Ballard, then he probably saw you. Did he just ask you how the weekend was?”

Moore didn’t answer but didn’t have to. Her face betrayed her. She was realizing that the trap she had just walked into in the lieutenant’s office had been set by herself.

“Bang, the penny drops,” Clarke said. “You fucked up, Moore.”

“Shut up, Clarke,” Moore said.

“Okay, can we put this little dustup aside for now?” Neumayer said. “Let’s all go to the TFR. We’ve got a pair of rapists to catch.”

There was a lull before Moore made a sweep of her hand toward the hallway that led to the task force room.

“Lead the way,” she said.

The men got up from their stations and Neumayer did lead the way, a white binder tucked under his arm. Clarke quickly caught up to him, perhaps sensing that the tension between the two women was not something he wanted to get in the middle of.

Ballard followed at a ten-yard distance and Moore took fourth position in the parade. She spoke to Ballard’s back as they walked.

“I suppose you want an apology,” she said.

“I don’t want anything from you, Lisa,” Ballard said.

Ballard suddenly stopped short and turned to Moore. They were standing in the back hallway where only the shoeshine guy could hear them.

“You know, you may have fucked yourself but you also fucked me,” Ballard said. “I like my job. I like the dark hours and now I’m going to be dayside thanks to you.”

Ballard turned and continued down the hall, passing by the shoeshine station.

Once all four of them were settled in the TFR, Neumayer asked Ballard to summarize the weekend’s occurrences, since it was now apparent that Moore had played hooky. Ballard gave a concise update and told them about her reaching out to the three victims.

“I have victim three’s Lambkin survey here,” she said. “The other two should be completed by now. You just have to call them today to collect. When you compare them, see if we get any triple matches. Or even double matches.”

Clarke groaned at the idea of desk work.

“Thanks, Ballard,” he said. “Why don’t you stick around to help?”

“Because I’m going to be sleeping, Clarke,” Ballard said. “I worked all night and I’ve been working this case all weekend. I’m out of here as soon as we’re done with this meeting.”

“You’re cool, Renée,” Neumayer said. “We’ll handle it from here.”

“Good, because I’m supposed to have the next three days off,” Ballard said.

“All right,” Neumayer said. “Why don’t you give us victim three’s survey and we’ll take it from there. You can go home.”

“We also may have caught a break,” Ballard said. “These scumbags cut the power to the streetlights near each victim’s house. They wanted it dark.”

“Holy shit,” Clarke said.

“How’d you get that?” Neumayer asked.

“A resident up in the Dell told me the light outside the victim’s house was out the night before the attack. This morning I went to the BSL to check work orders and—”

“BSL?” Moore asked.

“Bureau of Street Lighting,” Ballard said. “On Santa Monica near Virgil. I checked work orders, and lights on the other victims’ streets were cut around the same time as the attacks. Exact times are not known, because they work off complaints. But the complaint records are in line. I think these guys cut the lights to darken the streets for when they came back to do their evil shit. I asked Forensics to print the posts and access plates on the lights, but my guess is that’s a long shot.”

“That’s good, Renée,” Neumayer said.

“But what’s it get us?” Clarke asked.

“Dipshit, MLK weekend is in, like, two weeks,” Moore said. “We need to wire the BSL, and maybe we get up on them for their next hit.”

Ballard nodded.

“Exactly,” she said. “And they’re already wired. I’ll get a call every time a light is reported out between now and then.”

Clarke looked hurt that he had not put the obvious together.

“Sounds excellent,” Neumayer said. “Maybe we’re getting the upper hand on these guys. But we still have to run with the surveys. Ronin and Lisa, pick a vic. Go get the surveys and then let’s meet back here and start cross-referencing. Renée, good work. You go home and get some sleep now.”

Ballard nodded. She didn’t mention that she had an autopsy to go to.

“Call me if you come up with something,” she said.

“Oh, one thing before we grab and go,” Neumayer said. “I wanted to talk about the media. We’ve been lucky that they haven’t picked up on this. But now, a third case, it’s going to get out. Somehow it always does. Now that we have this streetlight lead, I’m still inclined to try to keep the investigation under wraps. But it’s dangerous.”

It was always a no-win situation. Going public alerted your suspects and allowed them to change the MO being used to track them. Not going public left the department wide open to criticism for not warning people of the menace that was out there. In typically cynical fashion, the decision of whether to go public would be made purely along political lines for the department and with no consideration of the victims who might have been saved from trauma.

“I’ll talk to the L-T about it,” Neumayer said. “But if this leaks, we are not going to look good. They’ll scream that we should have warned the public.”

“Maybe we should,” Ballard said. “These two are already looking at life for multiple rapes. As soon as they figure that out, they’ll probably escalate. They’ll stop leaving live victims.”

“And that’s the risk we take,” Neumayer said. “Let me talk to the lieutenant, and he may want to talk to media relations. I’ll let you know what is decided.”

As they returned to the squad room, Moore said nothing to Ballard. The friendly and professional relationship they once shared seemed completely and permanently gone.

Ballard crossed the room and knocked on Robinson-Reynolds’s open door. He signaled her in.

“Ballard, I thought you’d left.”

“I stayed around to brief the Sex team. And now I have the autopsy to go to.”

“Then you probably heard about the next deployment. You’re off midnights, Ballard. I was going to tell you myself.”

“Yeah, I heard. And L-T, I gotta ask, Why am I getting punished for Lisa’s sins?”

“What are you talking about? You’re not being punished.”

“She said I’m off the late show and she’s on.”

“That’s exactly right. You go to the Sex table, where I’m sure we’ll see vast improvements. You and Neumayer will make a great team. Clarke is a deadweight but generally harmless.”

“That’s the point. I like the late show. By punishing Lisa, you’re punishing me. I wasn’t looking to leave midnights.”

Robinson-Reynolds paused. Ballard saw his mind churning. He had started with the assumption that no detective liked working the midnight shift. But that was his view of it, not Ballard’s.

“I see where I may have fucked up,” he said. “You don’t want to move.”

Ballard shook her head.

“The only move I’d want is back to Homicide downtown, and we know that isn’t going to happen. So, I like midnights. Good variety of cases, no deadweight partner to carry, out of sight and out of mind. It’s perfect for me.”

“Okay, I’ll rescind the order. When the next deployment comes out, you’ll still be third watch.”

“What about Lisa?”

“I don’t know about her. Probably she’ll stay where she is and I’ll ding her personnel jacket. But Ballard, don’t tell her I rescinded. I want her to stew about it for a week till the new DP is posted. That’ll be her punishment.”

Ballard shook her head.

“L-T, she’s got kids and she’s going to start making arrangements to get cover on the nights. I think you should tell her. Write her up, put it on her record, like you said, but don’t leave her swinging like that.”

“This needs to be a learning experience, Ballard. And don’t you tell her. Not a word. That’s an order.”

“Roger that.”

Ballard left the station, dejected.

It sometimes seemed to her as though the biggest barricades in the so-called justice system were on the inside, before you even got out the door.

28

The autopsy was routine, except that seeing Javier Raffa’s naked body on the exam table showed Ballard the lengths to which he had gone to escape the gang life and set an example for his son, Gabriel. In addition to what she had already seen on the neck, there were laser scars all over the chest, stomach, and arms, a painful map of tattoo removal. She guessed it had taken years to get rid of all the ink. It reminded Ballard of the monks who practiced self-flagellation with whips and other instruments to repent for their sins. Whatever Javier Raffa’s sins were, he had paid a painful price.

There was only one tattoo left on the body. It was a rising sun over water on the left shoulder blade. It showed no symbols or words of gang affiliation.

“Well, he got to keep one,” said Dr. Zvader, the deputy medical examiner handling the autopsy. “A setting sun.”

Ballard realized there was no telling whether it was a rising or setting sun, even though they might have significant differences in meaning.

“Funny,” she said. “I was thinking it was a rising sun.”

“It’s California,” Zvader said. “Has to be going down.”

Ballard nodded. He was probably right but it made her feel bad. A setting sun meant the end of day. A rising sun was a start. It was promise. She wondered if Raffa knew that his time was short.

Ballard stayed in the autopsy suite until Zvader found the bullet that had killed Raffa embedded in the cartilage of the nose. It had traversed the brain after entering near the top of the skull, killing Raffa instantly and lodging behind the nose.

“I think he was looking up at the fireworks when he died,” Zvader said.

“That’s so sad,” Ballard said.

“Well, it’s better than knowing it’s coming and being afraid,” Zvader replied.

Ballard nodded. Maybe.

The slug was heavily damaged, first by the impact on the skull and then by the cartilage. Zvader bagged the projectile and put his name and coroner’s case number on the package before handing it to Ballard.

Ballard headed to the Ballistics Unit to drop off the slug for comparison analysis in the NIBIN database. It was an even longer shot than the shell casing comparison because of the damage to the slug. The database was essentially for casing comparison. So much so that projectile comparison was back-burnered, and Ballard knew she would not be waiting around for a tech to conduct the analysis. She would be lucky to hear anything within a week.

Along the way, she took a call from Carl Schaeffer, the BSL yard supervisor.

“We got one. A new one.”

“A streetlight out?”

“Yeah, call just came in. On Outpost.”

“First of all, Mr. Schaeffer, thank you for remembering to call.”

“Not a problem. I got your card right here on the desk.”

“Do you have any details yet?”

“No, she just said that the light outside her house is burned out. I was going to send a truck but thought I’d check with you first.”

“Thank you. Don’t send a truck. Let me make a call and see if I can get the print car out there first. I or one of my colleagues will call you when it’s clear to repair.”

“You got it, Detective.”

“And Carl, I don’t want you to forget to call me when these come in, but I’m not sure I want my card on your desk. Remember, I want this low profile, and I noticed you have the time clock in your office. Everybody punches out there, right?”

“Right, I got you. It goes in the drawer now.”

“Thank you, Carl. Can you give me the exact address or location of the streetlight we’re talking about and the name of the person who called it in?”

Schaeffer gave her the information. The streetlight in question was on lower Outpost Drive, a winding hillside road that went north from Franklin Avenue all the way up to Mulholland Drive. Ballard considered dismissing the call from Schaeffer because it was still eleven days from the next holiday weekend and in the previous cases the streetlight had been tampered with just a day or so before the Midnight Men attacked. But Outpost was just across the Cahuenga Pass from the Dell. The first two assaults had occurred in generally the same area — the same patrol zone, at least. The Dell case could be the start of a second cluster.

She also had to consider that a fourth attack had already occurred over the past holiday weekend and had not yet been reported. The bottom line was that she couldn’t dismiss the tip from Schaeffer.

After dropping off the bullet that killed Javier Raffa at the Ballistics Unit, Ballard drove to Outpost and located the streetlight in question. She stopped the car at the curb to get out and take a closer look. It was an acorn-style light like those in the Dell. She saw no obvious signs of tampering on the access plate at the bottom of the post. The light was located directly across the street from the house from which the complaint had come. The woman who lived there and had called in the complaint was named Abigail Cena. The house was what Ballard always called a Spanish rambler. It was one level and spread wide, with a red barrel-tile roof and a white stucco facade. There were bushes and other vegetation lining the front, going beneath every window. There was also an attached garage that reminded Ballard of Cindy Carpenter’s house and the suspected access route of the men who assaulted her.

Ballard first called the Forensics Unit to request that the print car come out and process the streetlight’s access plate. She then called Matt Neumayer and told him about the call from Carl Schaeffer at the BSL yard.

“What do you think?” Neumayer asked. “Are they changing things up? This MO doesn’t fit.”

“I can’t tell,” Ballard said. “But we also have to consider that if this is them, it may have already happened over this past weekend. That they hit two women, and the streetlight’s just been reported now.”

“Oh, shit, you’re right. It could be a nonreported case.”

“I can come out and sit on the neighborhood tonight — not being obvious about it — but I have to get some downtime now. I’m running on fumes. I was thinking your crew could run down who lives in the neighborhood, maybe determine if this Abigail Cena lives alone or if any other women do in this immediate quad of homes.”

“Yeah, we’ll do it. You go get some sleep. And don’t worry about tonight. I know you’re off. If we want to stake the place, we’ll set it up. Maybe I should get Lisa used to working nights.”

That told Ballard that Robinson-Reynolds had not told Neumayer that he was rescinding Moore’s reassignment to the late show. She felt bad about holding it as a secret from a good guy like Neumayer, but she was bound by the order from the lieutenant. And she wanted no part in the command games he was playing.

“Roger that,” Ballard said. “Shoot me an email if you set it up. I’d just like to know what’s happening.”

“You got it, Renée. Pleasant dreams.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about— Oh, wait, did Lisa and Ronin pick up the other Lambkin surveys?”

“They’re out now getting them. They went together rather than split up.”

“Got it. Well, let me know about that too. It would be nice if we found a triple cross with all three of them.”

“Would make our job easier.”

“Roger that.”

Ballard disconnected and decided she had to stop using “Roger that” as a sign-off. It was getting old. As she was leaning forward to turn the key in the ignition, she saw movement to her left and turned to see the garage door at Abigail Cena’s house going up.

There was a silver Mercedes G-wagon in the bay and soon she saw its brake lights flare, followed by its reverse lights. The Mercedes backed out of the garage and then the big door rolled back down. Ballard could only see a silhouette of the driver because of the tinting of the windows, but she thought the hair profile indicated a woman. The Mercedes backed into the street and then headed down to the traffic signal at Franklin two blocks away.

Ballard was dead tired but her investigator’s curiosity — both a blessing and a curse — got the better of her. She made a U-turn and followed the G-wagon. She wanted to get a look at Abigail Cena — if it was her — and see if she fit the victim profile established with the first three victims of the Midnight Men.

She trailed the Mercedes east on Franklin toward Los Feliz. Ballard thought that at least she would be near home when this little exercise ended.

A call came in on her cell from an unknown number. She answered with a simple hello since she was technically off duty.

“Detective Ballard, Ross Bettany, West Bureau Homicide. We need to get together so I can pick up that gangbanger case and see what you’ve got.”

Ballard paused to compose an answer.

“I just left the autopsy and it’s not a gangbanger case.”

“I was told the guy was Las Palmas.”

“Was. He got out of the gang a long time ago. This wasn’t a gang thing.”

“Well, my last two were, so this will be a welcome change. When can we get together? My partner, Denise Kirkwood, is out today — added a vacay day to the weekend — but back tomorrow. Maybe we could come see you then?”

Ballard was relieved. She needed to get some sleep. She saw the Mercedes she was following turn off Franklin into the parking lot of the Gelson’s supermarket at Canyon Drive. A little charge of adrenaline sparked in her exhaustion because she knew from Cindy Carpenter’s Lambkin survey that she shopped at this Gelson’s as did one of the other victims.

“Tomorrow would be good,” Ballard said. “I’m heading home to sleep for the first time in about twenty-four hours. What time? Where?”

“We’ll come see you at Hollywood,” Bettany said. “Then we can go scope things out, pick up where you left off. How is nine at Hollywood Division? Will you have gotten enough sleep?”

He asked the last question good-naturedly but Ballard was stuck on “where you left off.” Those words bothered her, and once again she hesitated in handing the case off. Her good work. Bosch’s good work. She wanted to be there when they hooked up the four dentists and Christopher Bonner. If Bettany and Kirkwood managed to hook them up.

“You still there, Ballard?” Bettany prompted.

“Yeah, nine at the station is fine,” Ballard said. “If you want to do something today, you could write up a search warrant for the victim’s business records. I haven’t had the time to go through his office at the shop.”

“Gotcha. I’ll probably wait till tomorrow. Denise does the writing.”

Ballard knew that routine. The male detective assumes the alpha role, makes the female do the housekeeping and paperwork.

“So, Hollywood Division — where?” Bettany asked.

“We can meet in the task force room,” Ballard said. “It’s not being used.”

“What’s a task force, right?” Bettany said.

The question was rhetorical. He was referring to the drought of proactive police work going on these days. Ballard decided not to engage with that.

“I’ll see you then,” she said.

She put her cell away and watched as the Mercedes G-wagon she was tailing parked in a blue-painted disabled parking slot in front of the store. Ballard just stopped in the parking lot aisle to watch. She checked her mirror and saw another car pull into the lane behind her, but he had room to go around. After a few seconds, the door opened on the G-wagon and a woman used the side step on the vehicle to get down to the ground.

She looked like she was in her sixties, with white hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a black mask with big red lips printed on the front. It was garish but Ballard figured the woman probably thought it was funny. She carried her reusable shopping bags toward the automatic door to the store. She did not appear to have a physical handicap.

The woman was far outside the age range of the three known victims. Ballard guessed that if the streetlight across from her house was put out by the Midnight Men, then their intended victim was someone else on Outpost. She decided she would check with Neumayer on their follow-up on Outpost after she had slept.

From Gelson’s it was only ten minutes to her building. After entering her apartment, she went directly to the bedroom, put her gun, badge, and cuffs on the bed table, dropped her clothes right there on the floor, and changed into the sweats she had left on the bed from the last time she’d slept. She set a six-hour alarm on her phone, then crawled under the covers of her unmade bed, too tired even to brush her teeth.

She put in foam earplugs from the bed table to help blunt the normal daytime sounds of the city and pulled on a sleep mask to keep out the light.

And she was gone from the world in ten minutes, plunging face-first into a deep sleep, where the water that swirled around her was black and there were garish red lips floating in the emptiness.