The Late Show

29

Ballard got to Ventura and her grandmother’s house by four p.m. She retrieved her wallet from her bedroom and used a credit card to pay the driver who had taken her up the coast. She tipped him well for not talking during the journey and for letting her rest her head against the window and fall into a dreamless sleep. Back inside the house, she locked the door and hugged Tutu in a long embrace, reassuring her that she was fine and that everything was going to be all right. As promised the night before, Tutu had gone to bed after doing the dishes. She had slept through Ballard’s abduction from the garage and only learned of it when the police arrived to make sure she was okay.

Ballard then hugged her dog and this time it was she who was reassured, by Lola’s calm and stoic presence. She finally went into the hallway bathroom. She sat on the floor of the shower and let the spray come down on her until she emptied the house’s hot-water tank.

As the water stung her shoulders and penetrated her scalp, she tried to come to terms with what had happened in the past twenty-four hours and the fact that she would never know exactly what had been done to her. More than that, she also examined for the first time the fact that she was a killer. It didn’t matter whether it was justified, she was now a part of the population that knew what it was to take a life. She had known from day one at the academy that she might one day use her weapon to kill someone, but this was somehow different. This was something that could never have been anticipated. No matter what she had repeatedly told the investigators, she had killed as a victim, not as a cop. Her mind kept flashing back to those moments during the struggle with Trent when she had gone at him like a prison assassin with a shank.

There was something inside her she didn’t know she had. Something dark. Something scary.

She had not one micron of sympathy for Trent, and yet she was beset by conflicting emotions. She had survived what no doubt was a kill-or-be-killed situation, and that thought brought a life-affirming euphoria. But the exhilaration was short-lived as questions intruded and she was left wondering if she had gone too far. In the internal courtroom, legal thresholds like I feared for the safety of myself and others held no meaning. They were not evidence of anything. The jury delivered its verdict based on evidence never shared outside the confines of the guilty mind. Inside, Ballard knew that Thomas Trent, no matter the size and content of his evil, should still be alive.

The thought of Trent’s death gave way to the unanswered questions: How did he know she was a cop? How did he find her in Ventura? The fact that he had turned against Beatrice Beaupre in the end told Ballard that she was not the source. She once again reviewed, as well as she could remember, her conversations with Trent at the car dealership, during the test-drive, and while she was driving to Ventura. She recalled nothing that could have revealed her as a law enforcement officer. She wondered if it had been the firm handshake she had used to elicit a response of pain in him. Was that the tell? Or was it her questions about the bruises that followed?

She then thought about the van. Trent had seen the van when she pulled into the dealership. Had he somehow been able to run the plate and get her true identity and the address of the house in Ventura? He worked at a car dealership, where DMV transactions were carried out dozens of times every day. Perhaps Trent had a source, a friendly DMV clerk who registered new plates and had access to the registrations on existing ones. During the abduction Trent spoke about her tan lines and her ethnic origins, revealing a fascination with her that was established during the dealership visit. Maybe, Ballard realized, Trent began stalking her because she was an intended target, not because she was a cop targeting him.

Again, the bottom line was that Trent was dead. Ballard might never get an answer to her questions.

She didn’t notice that the water had gradually turned cold until her body began to shake with chills. Only then did she get up and get out.

Lola sat dutifully at the door of the bathroom.

“Come on, girl.”

Ballard padded down the hallway to her room in bare feet, a large white towel wrapped around her body. She closed the door to her bedroom and noticed that Tutu had finished the laundry she had started the night before in the garage. Her clothes were neatly folded on the bed, and Ballard was overjoyed at the prospect of putting on fresh and clean things.

She put on a bra and underwear. But before getting dressed further, she checked her phone, which was charging on the bedside table, where she had left it. The screen said she had eleven new voice-mail messages. She sat on the bed and started playing them one by one.

The first two messages were from Jenkins and had been left before they had connected at the crime scene. He had gotten word about the investigation into an officer-involved death on Wrightwood Drive and wanted to know if she was okay. The second message was to let her know he was going to the crime scene to find her.

The next message was from an academy classmate Ballard maintained ties with. Rose Boccio had heard on the blue pipeline that Ballard was at the center of an officer-involved death being investigated in Studio City.

“Balls!” she said, using Ballard’s academy nickname. “Thank god you’re all right. Call me. We need to talk.”

The fourth message was similar. It was from Corey Steadman of RHD. Another friend hoping Ballard was okay.

The fifth caller was Rob Compton, parole agent and sometime lover. He evidently was not aware of what was going on with Ballard and was not calling about her abduction or killing of Thomas Trent.

“Hey, Renée, it’s Robby. Listen, we got a hot one. An ATF agent called me about the stolen Glock we recovered from our boy Nettles. Pretty interesting stuff. Hit me back, okay?”

It took Ballard a moment to place what Compton was talking about. The events of the past day had been so acute that they had completely crowded other cases and memories from her mind. Then she remembered. Christopher Nettles, the one-man crime wave. Compton had put in an ATF request on the three presumed stolen weapons recovered from Nettles and his room at the Siesta Village motel.

Ballard made a mental note to call Compton as soon as she got into the proper mental state to work cases. She thought that diving back into the Nettles caper would be a welcome diversion from her current situation.

The next message was from her direct supervisor, Lieutenant McAdams. He opened by telling Ballard he was relieved to hear that she was reasonably okay after the ordeal. That said, he began reading an order that had come to him from on high that put Ballard on light duty while the investigation of the officer-involved death proceeded.

“So I’m working on the schedule and I’ll get somebody paired up with Jenkins,” McAdams concluded after reading the order. “You’re riding the pine on dayside until FID finishes up and you get the all clear from BSU. It’s all pretty routine. Give me a call back or shoot me an e-mail to let me know you received and understand this order. Thanks, Renée.”

The next couple messages were from well-wishers within the department. One of these was Rogers Carr of Major Crimes.

“This is Carr and, wow, I just heard. Glad you’re okay, glad you’re good, and glad you took that big evil out of the picture. I’m around if you need anything.”

Ballard had been deleting the messages as she heard them but she saved the recording from Carr. She thought she might want to listen to it again, especially the part about taking big evil out of the picture. She thought that the message might be reassuring to listen to the next time her internal jury started deliberating the case and leaning toward a guilty verdict.

The next message was also a keeper. It was from Beatrice Beaupre. She was crying, as she had left it just an hour earlier.

“They finally let me go. They asked a lot of questions and then they asked them all over again. Anyway, Detective Ballard, I told them the truth. You saved my life. You saved both our lives. He was going to kill me, I know it. He told me so when he injected me. I thought that was it. Then you were there to save me. You were so good. You fought him and got the upper hand. I told them. I told them what I saw. Thank you, Detective Ballard. Thank you so much.”

Her voice trailed off into a sob as Beatrice hung up. The message, though heartfelt, gave Ballard pause. She knew Beatrice had not seen the fight with Trent. She was unconscious. The message indicated she had told the FID investigators she had seen what she hadn’t. Had Beatrice perceived that the FID was trying to fault Ballard in some way and turn it into a bad killing? She had to be careful here. She couldn’t call Beaupre back to inquire about these concerns. That might be viewed by the FID as witness tampering. It was a firing offense to try to manipulate an internal investigation. Ballard had to bide her time and be cautious. The call from Beatrice was a good heads-up.

Her feelings of concern seemed more than justified when she got to the last two messages. The first of these was from Lieutenant Feltzer of FID. He was requesting that they move up the hour of their appointment for a follow-up interview. He said that the crime scene investigation had been completed and all initial interviews conducted.

“We need to sit down with you and iron out the inconsistencies,” he said. “Please come to the FID office tomorrow morning at, let’s say eight o’clock. We’ll try to get you out of here as soon as possible.”

The first thing Ballard thought about was whether she should bring a union defense rep with her to FID. She had picked up an adversarial tone in Feltzer’s voice and given the message from Beatrice, she was growing more concerned the more she thought about what Feltzer had said about inconsistencies. Then it struck her. Her choice for a defense rep would have been Ken Chastain. He was smart. His analytical mind could have helped her decipher the moves being made against her. He would have been perfect in helping her form her answers to their questions.

But he had betrayed her and now he was dead. She had no one she felt comfortable asking to sit next to her. No one close, no one smart and cunning enough. Not Jenkins. Not Steadman. She was alone against this.

If that conclusion wasn’t depressing enough, the last message on her phone was the true chiller. It had come in less than thirty minutes ago while she had been in the shower. The caller was a reporter from the Times named Jerry Castor. Ballard had never spoken to him but he was known to her. She had seen him at various crime scenes and press conferences, especially during her time with RHD.

Reading the Times coverage of the department over time gave insight into the allegiances of different reporters. The angles the stories took often revealed the sources, even if unnamed, behind them. Castor was considered a Level 8 reporter by those in the department who monitored such things. This was a reference to the makeup of the PAB. The building was ten floors, with command staff and administration largely housed on floors eight through ten, with the chief on top.

It was believed that Castor was a reporter more plugged in on the three upper floors than on the seven below. It made dealing with him more career dangerous for the rank and file than with other reporters. That was one reason Ballard had always steered clear of him.

“Detective Ballard, Jerry Castor over at the Times,” his message began. “We haven’t met but I cover the cop shop and I’m working on a story over here about the death of Thomas Trent. I really need to talk to you about it today. My main question is about the fatal injuries Mr. Trent sustained. As I understand it, this man was unarmed and not charged with any crime but he ended up getting stabbed multiple times, and I’m curious to know if you’d care to comment on how that figures in with justifiable use of deadly force. My first deadline is at eight o’clock tonight, so I am hoping to hear from you by then. If not, the story will reflect our unsuccessful efforts to reach you for your side of things.”

Castor thanked her, left his direct number in the newsroom, and hung up.

What felt like a punch to Ballard’s gut wasn’t the reporter calling her out in terms of the deadly force. At the academy, they don’t teach you to shoot once when you need to fire your weapon. If deadly force is warranted, you use deadly force in whatever quantity is necessary to get the job done. Legally and departmentally, whether she stabbed Trent four times or only once didn’t matter. What got to Ballard was that someone inside the department had told the reporter the details of the killing and pushed them out into the uninformed public space. Someone had called Castor, knowing that the details provided would be cause for debate and vilification.

She felt like she had been cut loose from the department and was on her own.

There was a knock on the bedroom door.

“Renée?”

“I’m getting dressed. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Honey, I’m making fish tonight. I got some barramundi fresh from Australia. I hope you can stay.”

“Tutu, I told you, just because they call it fresh doesn’t mean it’s fresh. How can anything be fresh if it’s packed in dry ice and flown or shipped all the way from Australia? Stick with stuff you know is fresh. Halibut from the bay.”

There was silence and Ballard felt like shit for taking out the frustrations of the moment on her grandmother. She started dressing quickly.

“Does that mean you don’t want to stay?” Tutu asked through the door.

“I’m really sorry but it’s a work night and they’re calling me in early,” Ballard said. “I need to pick up a rental car and go soon.”

“Oh, sweetie, you’ve been through so much. Can’t you take the night off?” Tutu asked. “I’ll cook something else.”

Ballard finished buttoning her blouse.

“It’s not about the fish,” she said. “Cook your fish, Tutu. But I can’t stay. I’m sorry. Are you okay with Lola here for a couple more days?”

She opened the door. Her tiny grandmother stood there, worry clearly on her face.

“Lola is always welcome here,” she said. “She’s my buddy. But I want her owner here too.”

Ballard reached out and hugged her, holding her in a fragile embrace.

“Soon,” she said. “I promise.”

Ballard didn’t like lying to her grandmother but the full and honest explanation was too complicated. She had to get back to the city. Not only did she have the session with Feltzer the next morning and the psych exam to follow, but she knew that she couldn’t fight this battle from up in Ventura. She had to get to ground zero to make her stand.