The Late Show

22

Ballard made her way to the 101 freeway and headed south toward downtown. She drove with internal momentum. She still didn’t have a shred of direct evidence but the interview with Beatrice Beaupre pushed Thomas Trent further across the line that separated person of interest and suspect. He was now Ballard’s one and only focus and her thoughts were exclusively on how to build a prosecutable case.

She was just taking the curve into the Cahuenga Pass when her phone buzzed, and she saw it was Jenkins. She connected her earbuds and took the call.

“Hey, partner, just checking in before heading in. I got any holdovers from you?”

Jenkins was on shift by himself for the next two nights. It was supposed to be Ballard’s weekend.

“Not really,” she said. “Hopefully you’ll have a quiet watch.”

“I wouldn’t mind sitting in the bureau all night,” Jenkins said.

“Well, at least for the first hour or so. I have the car.”

“What? You’re supposed to be up in Ventura, surfing. What’s going on?”

“I just came from an interview with the ex-wife of the suspect on the Ramona Ramone case. It’s him, no doubt. He’s our guy. Calls his crib the upside-down house, just like the victim said to Taylor and Smith.”

“All right.”

She could tell by his tone and the way he drew out the words that he was not as convinced.

“He also collects sets of brass knuckles,” she added. “With good and evil on them. You can see the letters in the bruising on Ramona. I went back to check and take pictures.”

Jenkins was silent at first. This was new information to him and it also was an indication of her obsession with the case. Finally, he spoke.

“You have enough for a search warrant?”

“I’m not there yet. But the victim was transferred to County, which I don’t think they could do if she was still in the coma. So I’m headed there, and if she’s awake, I’m going to have her look at a six-pack. If she makes the ID, then I’ll bring the package to McAdams in the morning and come up with a plan.”

There was only silence from Jenkins as he apparently dealt with having been left on the platform as the train sped by without stopping.

“Okay,” he finally said. “You want me to divert and meet you at County?”

“No, I think I’ve got it covered,” Ballard said. “You get in and take roll call, see what’s going on. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back with the car.”

County-USC used to be a dire place but in recent years it had gotten a face-lift and a paint job and it was no longer as cheerless as it had once been. Its medical staff were no doubt as dedicated and skilled as the crew at any private hospital in the city but, like with most giant bureaucracies, everything always came down to budget. Ballard’s first stop was at the security office, where she showed her badge and attempted to persuade a nighttime supervisor named Roosevelt to put extra eyes on Ramona Ramone. Roosevelt, a tall, thin man nearing retirement age was more interested in whatever was on his computer screen than in what Ballard was selling.

“No can do,” he said bluntly. “I put someone on that room, I gotta take him off the ER door, and no way those nurses down there will let me do that. They’d skin me alive if I left them unprotected like that.”

“You’re telling me you got one guy in the ER and that’s it?” Ballard said.

“No, I got two. One inside, one out. But ninety-nine percent of our violence happens in the ER. So we have two-step protection: one guy on the walk-ins, another to handle those that come in the back of an ambulance. I can’t lose either one.”

“So meantime my victim is up there naked — no protection at all.”

“We have security in the elevator lobbies, and I float. If you want extra protection up on that room, then I would invite you to ask the LAPD to provide it.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

“I got your name, Roosevelt. If anything happens, it’ll go in the report.”

“Make sure you spell it right. Just like the president.”

Ballard next went up to the acute-care ward, where Ramone was being treated. She was disappointed to learn that, while the patient had been conscious and semi-alert when transported from Hollywood Presbyterian, she had since been sedated and intubated after a setback in her condition. Choosing to find and interview Beaupre as the day’s priority had cost Ballard a chance to communicate with her victim. She nevertheless visited Ramone and took cell-phone photos as part of the continuing documentation of the depth of her injuries and treatment. She hoped someday to show them to a jury.

Afterward Ballard made a stop at the nursing desk on the ward and handed the duty nurse a stack of her business cards.

“Can you pass these around and keep one there by your phone?” she asked. “If anybody comes in to see the patient in three-oh-seven, I need to know. If you get any phone calls inquiring about her status, I need to know. Take a name and number and say you’ll get back to them. Then call me.”

“Is the patient in danger?”

“She was the subject of a vicious attack and left for dead. I checked with your security officer and got turned down on extra security. So all I’m saying is be vigilant.”

Ballard left then, hoping that putting the word in the duty nurse’s ear might get some results. Hospital security would find it harder to resist internal safety concerns than those from the LAPD.

Back at the station by midnight, Ballard was walking down the rear hallway toward the D bureau as Jenkins came down the stairs from the roll-call room. They walked into the bureau side by side.

“Anything going on?” Ballard asked.

“All quiet on the western front,” Jenkins said.

He held up his hand and she put the city-ride’s keys in his palm.

“Ramona look at a six-pack?” Jenkins asked.

“Nope,” Ballard said. “Missed my chance. I’m pissed at myself. I should’ve been there when she was awake.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Brain injury like that — chances are, she’s not going to remember a thing. And if she did, a defense attorney would go to town on the ID.”

“Maybe.”

“So you going to go up the coast now?”

“Not yet. I want to write up a summary on my witness from tonight.”

“Man, you act like this place still pays overtime or something.”

“I wish.”

“Well, get it done and get out of here.”

“I will. What about you?”

“Munroe says I have to write up a report about the witness bus from the other night. Somebody filed a notice of intent to sue, said they suffered pain and humiliation because they were locked up in a jail bus. I have to say they were never locked up.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“I wish.”

They went off to their respective corners of the room. Ballard got right to work on a witness statement drawn from the interview with Beatrice Beaupre, putting special emphasis on the revelation that Thomas Trent often referred to his home as the upside-down house. It would be ready to go into a charging package if Ramona Ramone ever IDed Trent.

Thirty minutes later, she completed the report. She was also finished for the night but then remembered she wanted to check the property report on the Dancers case. She went to her filing cabinet and looked through the thick ream of documents she had printed while going through Chastain’s files. She located the preliminary evidence report and took it back to her desk. The evidence list was seven pages long. It wasn’t the official evidence report from forensics but the ledger that an RHD detective would keep while at the crime scene. It served as a reference for the investigators on any evidence that had been collected while they awaited the official report. Ballard went through it twice but saw nothing listed that resembled the small black button she had seen Chastain scoop into an evidence bag. She became convinced that her former partner had taken evidence from the scene without documenting it. It was something small and something that sent him off the reservation, conducting his own investigation. An investigation that got him killed.

Ballard sat there motionless as she ran the image of Chastain at the crime scene through her mind. Her attention was then drawn to the other side of the room when she noticed Lieutenant Munroe enter the bureau from the front hallway and head toward where Jenkins was sitting.

Ballard thought Munroe was probably going to send her partner out on a call. She grabbed the evidence report and got up to go listen, in case it was a situation in which Jenkins would need a backup. She grabbed her rover as well and headed their way.

Though the desks Jenkins and Ballard used were in diagonally opposite corners of the squad room, there wasn’t a direct pathway between them. Ballard had to walk down an aisle along the front of the room and then down a second aisle to come up behind Munroe. As she approached, she saw an uncomfortable look on her partner’s face as he looked up at the watch commander, and she realized that Munroe wasn’t handing out an assignment.

“... all I’m saying is, you’re the lead, you call the shots, put her on the leash and—”

The rover in Ballard’s hand started broadcasting a call. Munroe stopped and turned to see Ballard standing there.

“And what, L-T?” she said.

Munroe’s face momentarily showed his shock and then he threw a glance back at Jenkins, registering his betrayal at not being warned of her approach.

“Look, Ballard... ” he said.

“So you want me on the leash?” Ballard asked. “Or are you just the messenger?”

Munroe held up both hands, as if trying to stop a physical rush from her.

“Ballard, listen to me, you... I... I didn’t know you were here,” he stammered. “You’re supposed to be off. I mean, if I knew you were here, I would’ve said the same thing to you as I said to Jenks.”

“Which was what?” she asked.

“Look, there are people who are afraid you’re going to fuck things up, Ballard, afraid you’re going to cross a line on this Chastain thing. It’s not your case, and you need to stand the fuck down.”

“What people, L-T? Olivas? Is he worried about me or himself?”

“Look, I’m not naming names. I’m just—”

“You’re naming me. You just went to my partner and said, ‘Put Ballard on a leash.’”

“Like you just said, I’m only the messenger here, Detective. And the message is delivered. That’s it.”

He turned and headed toward the rear hallway, taking the long way to the watch office rather than having to pass by Ballard.

Ballard looked at Jenkins when they were alone.

“Asshole,” she said.

“Fucking coward,” Jenkins said. “Took the long way back.”

“What would you have said to him if I hadn’t walked up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I would have said, ‘You got something to say to Ballard, tell her yourself.’ Maybe I would have said, ‘Fuck off.’”

“I hope so, partner.”

“So what exactly have you been doing that’s got their balls twisted?”

“That’s the thing. I’m not sure. But that’s the second socalled message I’ve gotten today. Some guy from Majors went up to Ventura and then down to the beach to find me and tell me the same thing. And I don’t even know what I did.”

Jenkins scrunched his face up in suspicion and worry. He wasn’t buying that she didn’t know what she had done. He was worried she would keep doing it.

“Watch yourself, kid. These people don’t fuck around.”

“I already know that.”

He nodded. Ballard stepped up to his desk and put down the rover for him to use.

“I think I’m going up to the suite,” she said. “Come get me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll probably catch you before you leave.”

“Don’t bother,” Jenkins said. “Sleep late if you can. You need it.”

“Just pisses me off that he comes in here to you because he thinks I’m out.”

“Look, I’ve been reading about Japan to Marcie, and they have this saying over there: The—”

“I’m talking about these men and you’re telling me about Japan?”

“Would you listen to me? I’m not one of ‘these men,’ okay? I read her books about places we never got to. She’s interested in Japanese history right now, so that’s what I’m reading to her. And there’s this saying they have about conformist society: The nail that sticks out gets pounded down.”

“Okay, so what are you saying?”

“I’m saying there’s a lot of guys in this department with hammers. Watch yourself.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

“I don’t know — sometimes I think I do.”

“Whatever. I’m going. I’m suddenly so tired of all this.”

“Get some sleep.”

Jenkins solemnly held up a fist, and Ballard bumped it with her own. It was a way of saying they were okay.

Ballard put the evidence report back in her file drawer and locked it, then left the bureau. She went up the stairs in the back hall to the station’s second floor, where, across the hall from the roll-call room, there was a room known as the Honeymoon Suite. It was a bunk room with three-tier bunks running along opposite walls. It was first-come, first-served, and on a counter at one end of the room were stacks of plastic-wrapped bunk packs: two sheets, a pillow, and a thin jail blanket.

The slide sign on the door was moved to occupied. Ballard took out her phone, turned on the light, and quietly opened the door and moved into the room. The switch for the overhead lights was taped into the off position so that nobody blasted sleepers. Ballard used her phone to check the bunks and saw that the two middle beds were taken by sleepers, one of whom was lightly snoring. She took off her shoes and put them in a cubbyhole, then grabbed two sleep packs and tossed them up onto one of the top bunks. She climbed the ladder and flipped the thin mattress over before crawling into the sleeping space. It took her five minutes to spread the sheets and get under a blanket. Clasping the two pillows around her head to ward off the sound of snoring, she tried to go to sleep.

As she tailed off into darkness, she thought about the two warnings to stand down that she had gotten during the day. She knew she had somehow triggered them with her actions the day before. She reviewed her steps, trying to remember every detail of every move she had made and still could not locate the land mine she had apparently stepped on.

Fighting sleep, she backed things up further into Friday night and then moved forward again, using her memory like a battering ram. This time she hit on something that had not stuck out before, because it had not gotten her anywhere. After reviewing Chastain’s chrono, she had tried to contact Matthew “Metro” Robison to see if he was the witness Chastain had been out wrangling on Friday night before he was killed. She never reached Robison but had left at least three messages on his phone.

Robison was missing and the task force was looking for him. When Carr came to question her on the beach, he knew that she had called him. What troubled Ballard now was that if Robison, wherever he was, had his cell phone with him — which he most likely did — how did Carr and the task force know she had been calling him through the night?

She remembered asking Carr that question but he hadn’t answered her. He had passed it off and said he had simply been given the information.

It was something that didn’t make sense. It gnawed at her until she finally slipped into sleep.