The Late Show

36

Ballard didn’t get to Hollywood Division until almost five o’clock. She had spent most of the afternoon dealing with ATFE and FBI agents, explaining her moves that morning after the interview with Nettles. She left Compton out of it, telling the agents she had acted on her own after leaving Men’s Central. The upset of the feds was mollified to a small degree when she looked at a set of photos they had and identified the man she had seen in the driveway. They said Eugenio Santana Perez was an alias but refused to tell her what his real name was. It was clearly a we’ll-take-it-from-here situation with a heavy tone of you-fucked-this-up-and-now-we-have-to-unfuck-it to top it off.

The feds impounded the Camaro and were waiting on a warrant to enter the house on Serrano Place when Ballard was dismissed with a sarcastic thank-you from Agent Welborne. Back at the station, she pulled a gray interoffice envelope out of her mailbox and went to the lieutenant’s office to get her new desk assignment. McAdams was standing at his desk, taking his gun out of the drawer and clipping it to his belt, a sign that he was heading home. Things were winding down across the entire bureau.

“Ballard, you decided to show up,” he said.

“Sorry, I got tied up downtown, and while I was there, I went to check on my victim from the Trent case,” she said. “Is there a specific desk you want me to take?”

McAdams pointed out the window of his office to the desk on the other side of the glass. It was the worst desk in the house because it was right outside his office and the computer was positioned so that the lieutenant could see its screen at any time. It was known in the squad as the sitting-duck desk.

“I was going to put you there, but now it looks like I don’t even have to find somebody for the late show,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Ballard asked.

“Well, you must’ve talked a good game of it down there today, because, the L.A. Times be damned, I just got the word that FID is calling the Trent killing within policy. And not only that, you got your RTD too. Congratulations.”

Ballard felt a great weight lift off her shoulders.

“I hadn’t heard,” she said. “That seems quick.”

“Whoever your defense rep was, he’s going to be in high demand, I’ll tell you that,” McAdams said. “The picture the Times drew up this morning wasn’t pretty.”

“I didn’t use one.”

“Then that makes this one even more worth celebrating. But if there’s a K party, I don’t want to know about it.”

McAdams seemed to be giving a tacit nod of approval to a kill party. It had once been a secret tradition for officers to gather and drink after one of them had killed someone. It was a way of releasing the tension of a life-and-death encounter. Once the department formed the FID to seriously investigate all officer-involved killings, the parties were pushed back until after an FID recommendation was released. Either way, the K party was anachronistic, and if they occurred at all now, it was only under deep secrecy. The last thing Ballard was interested in doing was celebrating her killing of Thomas Trent.

“Don’t worry, no K party,” she said.

“Good,” McAdams said. “Anyway, I’m outta here. Since you’ve been at it all day, I’ll leave Jenkins solo tonight, and you go back on shift starting tomorrow. All good?”

“Yeah, all good. Thanks, L-T.”

Ballard looked around and saw an empty desk with a reasonably new computer monitor on it. It was far away from the lieutenant’s office and the sitting-duck desk. But when she got there, she noticed a mug of coffee and paperwork spread across the work space. She then did a pivot and spotted another desk nearby in the burglary row that looked empty and unused and had a decent monitor.

She sat down and the first thing she did was go online to see if the Times had anything on the FID investigation that corrected the morning’s story. There wasn’t anything yet. She pulled out one of the business cards she had gotten from Towson and started writing him an e-mail, detailing what she had heard from her lieutenant and reporting that there was no action on it so far from the Times. Her cell phone buzzed just as she hit the send button. It was Rogers Carr of Major Crimes.

“Hey, did you get my message?”

“I got it, thanks.”

“So how are you doing?”

“I’m doing all right. My L-T just told me I’m off the pine because FID is calling it within policy.”

“Of course it was within policy, are you kidding me? It was totally justified.”

“Well, you never know. This may come as a surprise to you but I’ve pissed some people off in the department.”

“You? I find that hard to believe.”

That was enough sarcastic banter for Ballard.

“So I heard you checked out my lead with the lawyer,” she said. “Towson.”

“Who told you that?” Carr asked.

“I have sources.”

“You were talking to the lawyer, weren’t you?”

“Maybe. So what’s the story?”

Carr didn’t say anything.

“Holy shit,” Ballard said. “You take my lead and run with it and now you won’t even tell me what you got from it? I think we’re having our last conversation, Detective Carr.”

“It’s not that,” Carr said. “It’s just that I don’t think you’re going to like what I tell you.”

Then it was Ballard who was silent, but not for too long.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Well, yeah, your lead has panned out,” Carr said. “Towson said Fabian told him he could deliver a bent cop. Then we got the ballistics back today and that sort of pivoted things around here.”

“‘Pivoted’? Why is that?”

“They didn’t match. The weapon used to kill Ken Chastain was not the same one used in the booth at the Dancers. The theory at the moment is two different shooters.”

“They’re saying the cases aren’t connected?”

“No, they aren’t saying that. Just two weapons, two different shooters.”

Ballard knew she didn’t have the full picture. If the two cases weren’t linked by a weapon, then there was something else.

“So what am I missing?” she asked.

“Well, that wasn’t the full ballistics report,” Carr said.

“Carr, come on, stop dicking around.”

“They identified the weapons off the slugs and brass. The gun in the booth was a ninety-two F. And in the garage, it was a Ruger three-eighty.”

Ballard knew that bullet casings collected at the crime scenes and the slugs from the bodies revealed markings identifiable to specific models of firearms. Firing pins and gunbarrel rifling left proprietary indentations and striations.

She also knew the significance of the weapons identified. The 92F was a 9-millimeter Beretta, and it was on the list of firearms approved by the department for carry by detectives. The Ruger was a small popper that was easily concealed and used for close-in work. It, too, was on the department’s approved list for backup weapons.

It also was a hitter’s gun.

Ballard was silent while she considered this information. The one piece she reluctantly added to it was her knowledge that Chastain carried a Beretta 92F, or at least he had when they were partners. It drew a question she hated to ask.

“Chastain carried a ninety-two F. Did they run his gun against the slugs from the Dancers?”

“They would have if they had his gun.”

That was new information.

“You’re saying whoever shot him then reached inside his jacket and took his gun?”

“Apparently. His weapon has not been recovered.”

“So what are they thinking?”

“I was redirected today. I was told to take a deep dive into Chastain. Dig up everything.”

“That is bullshit. He’s not the Dancers shooter.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. I knew him and this isn’t him.”

“Well, tell that to Lieutenant Olivas.”

“What exactly is he saying?”

“He’s not saying anything. At least to me. But one of those guys that got killed in the booth was mobbed up.”

“Yeah, Gino Santangelo. Out of Vegas.”

“Well, you can take it from there.”

Ballard thought for a moment.

“Take it where?” she said. “I totally don’t get this.”

“You’re the one who first said it was a cop. You were just looking at the wrong cop.”

“So Chastain is the booth shooter. He kills a mob guy and then the mob hits him back. That’s the working theory? Well, I don’t buy it. Why would Kenny do it?”

“That’s why we’re doing the deep dive. And actually, that’s why I called you.”

“Forget it. I’m not going to help you pin this on Chastain.”

“Listen to me, we’re not going to pin this on anyone. If it’s not there, it’s not there, but we have to look.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Four years ago you two were partners.”

“Yes.”

“He was in financial trouble then. Did he talk to you about it?”

The news was surprising to Ballard.

“He never said a word. What kind of trouble and how do you know?”

“Deep dive, remember? I pulled his credit history. He missed nine payments on the house and was in foreclosure. He was going to lose the house and then, all of a sudden, it all went away. The bank was paid off and he got solvent — like overnight. Any idea how?”

“I told you I didn’t even know about the problem. He never told me. Have you talked to Shelby? Maybe somebody in the family helped them out.”

“Not yet. We want to know more before we go to her. That’s not going to be pretty.”

Ballard was silent. She couldn’t remember a time when Chastain seemed to be under any sort of pressure from outside the job, financially or otherwise. He was always steady-going.

She thought of something Carr hadn’t covered.

“What about Metro?” she asked.

“Metro?” Carr said. “What do you mean?”

“The kid. The witness. Matthew Robison.”

“Oh, him. He calls himself Metro? We still haven’t found him. And frankly, we’re not expecting to.”

“But how does he fit into the theory?”

“Well, we know he called Chastain on Friday about five and Chastain went to find him. We think he thought Robison was a threat.”

“So he takes out Robison, hides or buries the body somewhere, and then goes home. Only there’s a mob hit man waiting there and he pops Chastain in the head before he can even get out of the car.”

“And takes his gun.”

“Right, and takes his gun.”

They were both silent for a long time after that. Until Ballard addressed the elephant in the room.

“Olivas is still steering all of this?”

“He’s in charge. But don’t go down that road, Renée. The ballistics are the ballistics. That’s not something you can steer. And the financials are what they are as well.”

“But why take the gun? The shooter in the garage. Why did he take the thing that would prove or disprove all of this? Without having that gun for comparison, this is all circumstantial. It’s theory.”

“There could be a hundred reasons why the gun was taken. And speaking of circumstantial, there is one other thing.”

“What?”

“We checked with Internal Affairs on Chastain, and there wasn’t an open file on him. But they had a string file, where they put the anonymous stuff that comes in. It runs from complaints about ‘some cop was rude to me’ to ‘some cop keeps coming into my store and taking orange juice without paying’ — ticky-tacky stuff like that.”

“Okay.”

“Well, like I said, they had no open file on Chastain, but there were two anonymous reports in the string file about an unnamed cop getting into card games and then not being able to cover his losses.”

“What card games?”

“Didn’t say, but you know if a guy wants to get into a high-stakes game in this town, then he can find a game. If you move in that world.”

Ballard shook her head, even though she knew Carr could not see this. She looked around to make sure her conversation wasn’t being heard. The squad room was almost empty now, as most detectives began to shut things down by four every day. Still, she leaned into the shelter of her cubicle and spoke quietly to Carr.

“I’m still not buying it,” she said. “You guys have nothing but a missing gun, and like you said, there could be a hundred reasons why it’s gone. It’s like you’re more interested in pinning this on Chastain than in finding out who killed him.”

“There you go with that word again,” Carr said. “We aren’t ‘pinning’ anything on anybody. And you know what, I really don’t understand you, Renée. Everybody knows that two years ago Chastain hung you out to dry, you lost the upward trajectory of your career and ended up working the late show. And here you are, defending him in a situation where there is clearly a lot of smoke. I mean, a lot of smoke.”

“Well, that’s the thing, right? A lot of smoke. Back when I worked downtown, before I supposedly ‘lost my upward trajectory,’ we needed more than smoke. We needed a lot more.”

“If there is fire, we’re going to find it.”

“Good luck with that, Carr. I’ll talk to you later.”

Ballard disconnected and sat frozen at the desk. She had started the theory that the Dancers shooter was a cop. Now that theory was a monster and had Chastain in its sights.

She wondered how long it would be before Carr found out that the backup gun on her ankle was a Ruger 380.