The Waiting

15

The badge buyer was fifteen minutes late. Ballard was getting anxious. She checked on Bosch through her binoculars once again. She could see him in the Cherokee, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He was anxious too. If the badge buyer didn’t show, they had no plan B.

The Cherokee was parked in an open area in the vast beach lot off Ocean Park in Santa Monica. On an overcast Wednesday morning, the spot drew only a handful of beach enthusiasts. The parking lot was so empty that a local roller-hockey club was able to set up their nets, delineate boundaries with orange cones, and play a game at the far end of the lot.

Ballard saw the door of the Cherokee open. Bosch climbed out and was careful not to glance in her direction. She was parked up on Ocean Boulevard with a down-angle view on the beach lot. They had chosen the meeting spot for this vantage point and because there was only one entrance and exit to the lot.

Bosch was holding the burner cell they had used to contact the unnamed badge buyer. Lionel Boden had provided the number after deciding his best move was to cooperate. Bosch leaned back against his car, hiked one leg up, and put his heel against the front wheel. He started typing on the phone. Ballard understood that he had gotten out of the car so she would see what he was doing: texting the badge buyer, probably to ask where the hell he was.

But before Bosch finished typing the message, Ballard saw a white Ford panel van cruise across the white lines on the empty asphalt and directly toward Bosch. It had not entered the lot just now — it had been there, parked near the scattering of vehicles belonging to the roller-hockey players. Ballard had thought it was the group’s equipment van, but now it was in the open and heading toward Bosch’s position.

Ballard kept the binoculars up and watched as the van made a circle around Bosch’s car and stopped in front of him. There were no markings on the van’s panels and she had gotten only a fleeting glance at its license plate. She noted the plate was bright yellow with a red design or lettering on it. But her view of it disappeared quickly when the van made the loop around Bosch and his car. New Mexico was the only state she could recall with bright yellow plates.

The visors on the van were down and Ballard could see only the driver’s bearded jaw from her angle. He stayed in the van and spoke to Bosch through an open window.

Bosch responded to the driver by opening his army-green field jacket to show his T-shirt — which advertised an organization engaged in preventing veteran suicides. He had chosen it based on a guess that the badge buyer was a veteran experienced with weapons. Bosch then pulled the shirt up, exposing his torso to show he was not wired or carrying a weapon. Through the binoculars, Ballard could see Bosch’s ribs and realized how much weight he had lost during his cancer treatment. She felt an immediate pang of guilt for drawing him into her problem.

The conversation in the parking lot continued briefly before Bosch pushed himself off his car and took a step toward the van.

“Don’t get in the van, Harry,” Ballard said out loud.

Bosch held his phone up to the van’s driver, and Ballard let out her breath. He was only showing the photos of machine guns they had downloaded to the phone for what they believed would be the play with the badge buyer. Bosch even offered the phone to the van driver so he could swipe through the photos. It was a move to possibly get fingerprints, but the driver was either too smart for that or had seen enough photos. He demurred.

The conversation soon ended. Through the binoculars, Ballard saw Bosch nod to the driver. It was the signal to Ballard that they were going to make a deal.

The van drove off with Bosch standing there. He turned back to his Cherokee. Ballard pushed the ignition button and put the Defender in drive. She was ready to follow the van once it left through the parking lot’s exit. Bosch would be on the move as well but he would hang far back, since the van’s driver had already seen his thirty-year-old car.

Ballard had a Bluetooth earbud in and wore her hair down, covering it. When Bosch called, she answered without taking her eyes off the van.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“He said he wants to deal,” Bosch said. “He wants four. But he could have been just bullshitting. Said he’d set up a meet for tomorrow for the exchange.”

“Did you get a look inside the van? Was he alone?”

“I didn’t want to be obvious. But I think he was alone.”

“I saw you tried to get his prints.”

“Yeah, that didn’t work.”

The white van exited the parking lot and turned left on Ocean. Ballard waited for traffic to clear and then pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn, and followed.

“So, what was he like?” Ballard asked. “I mean, formidable? Is he a player?”

“Uh... maybe,” Bosch said. “Forty, forty-five, white, thick beard. He seemed fit, no paunch, but he could’ve had a wheelchair in the back of the van for all I could see. He stayed behind the wheel.”

“He say his name?”

“No, no names.”

“I saw you delay when he drove away. Did you get the plate?”

“There is no plate. He’s got a Gadsden flag on there. Rattlesnake, the whole bit.”

“‘Don’t tread on me.’”

“Right.”

This told Ballard that the badge buyer was either claiming to be a sovereign citizen or posing as one. She knew from FBI bulletins and LAPD intel alerts that sovereigns were considered anti-government extremists who did not recognize any taxing, licensing, or law enforcement authority. The last alert she remembered stated that the number of sovereigns in the country had grown markedly since the twin ideological earthquakes of the COVID pandemic and the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The alert had concluded with the warning that all sovereigns should be considered armed and that law enforcement should approach with extreme caution. Because of this, most cops looked the other way when noticing the fake plates.

Ballard checked the van ahead and goosed the Defender to catch up and not be left behind at a traffic light.

“He has a bumper sticker on there too,” Bosch said. “‘Your Vaccine Is a Bioweapon.’”

“Nice,” Ballard said.

“These nutters like to stockpile weapons and they talk a good game, but they’re usually guys who just don’t want to pay taxes, whether it’s on income, property, or cars.”

“Not the case here, I don’t think. He’s up to something.”

“You sure?”

“No, but why buy guns illegally when you don’t have to? Why would a guy who supposedly doesn’t recognize the police as a legit authority buy a police badge?”

“There’s that.”

Both were quiet for a long moment as they contemplated the badge buyer and what he might be planning. Bosch finally spoke.

“I’m out of the lot now. I’ll hang back, but which way are you going?”

“North on Ocean. Coming up on Broadway now.”

“Okay, I’m five behind and will cut it to two.”

“Sounds good. Keeping the line open.”

Ballard kept her eyes on the white van, which was now about two blocks ahead of her in moderate traffic. She was watching the crosswalk countdowns and maintaining a pace that would keep her from getting stopped by a traffic signal.

She saw the van glide into the left-turn lane ahead and she prepared to follow suit. “Harry, he’s going down the California Incline.”

“Got it.”

Cars stacked up in the turning lane and Ballard ended up only three cars behind the van. She caught a glimpse of the badge buyer in the van’s rectangular side-view mirror. He was wearing sunglasses.

The arrow turned green and the van made the turn. Ballard followed, keeping the three-car separation. The traffic dropped down and the road merged with the Pacific Coast Highway. The van moved to the inner lane, indicating to Ballard that the guy would not be turning off anytime soon.

“On PCH, heading toward Malibu.”

“I missed the light at the Incline. You got him for now.”

“Not a problem.”

She thought about where the badge buyer might be headed. She knew that the sovereigns fit in nicely with most of the other extremist groups nowadays, from Aryan Nation to the Oath Keepers to the grab bag of other groups that had charged the Capitol three years before. That didn’t quite fit with Malibu, but beyond Malibu was Ventura County and towns like Oxnard and Fillmore, where such groups were known to have roots.

But the badge buyer stopped well short of Ventura County or even Malibu. Just past Sunset Beach, still within the city limits of Los Angeles, the van pulled to the side of the road across the coast highway from the beach at Castle Rock. The van eased into a spot behind a large RV that was parked in a line of other RVs, smaller campers, and vans below the cliff facings of the Pacific Palisades.

To Ballard, it looked like someone had been waiting there for the van and had moved an orange cone that had been used to reserve the spot so the badge buyer could slip into it.

Ballard drove by to avoid notice.

“Harry, he just pulled over on the east side at Castle Rock. I drove by and I’ll figure out a way to double back.”

“Got it. I’ll find a place to pull over short of there. Give me a meetup point when you’ve got one.”

Ballard pulled into the left-turn lane and cut quickly through an opening in the oncoming traffic into the parking lot on the beach side of the PCH. She worked her way through the lot and found a spot with an angle on the white van across the four lanes of highway.

“I went into the lot on the beach side,” she said. “I have eyes on the van but not the guy.”

Bosch didn’t respond but Ballard assumed he was maneuvering and wanted his hands free. He wasn’t a Bluetooth-and-earbuds kind of guy.

She took up the binoculars and tried to see into the van through its windshield, but there were curtains hanging down behind the front seats. She hadn’t noticed them earlier and thought the badge buyer might have gone into the back of the van and pulled the privacy curtains closed behind him.

“Harry, what’s your twenty?”

His answer was a knock on her front passenger window. Ballard unlocked the door and he climbed in.

“You see him?” he asked.

“No, I think he’s in the back of the van,” Ballard said. “There are curtains behind the front seats. Did you see that when you talked to him?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“The other thing was that it was like he knew that spot. Like it was waiting for him.”

“You see anybody else talk to him?”

“I think somebody moved a cone blocking the spot out of the way for him. But then I had to drive by and didn’t get a look.”

“So, is that reserved camper parking over there?”

“I don’t think so. Probably just unregulated mobile homeless people.”

The city was not enforcing most laws that were designed to help curtail the number of people living on the streets. Despite curfews and laws about sidewalk obstruction, encampments proliferated. Unenforced overnight-parking regulations had created a population of homeless people who lived in vans and campers that lined public streets at night.

“Great,” Bosch said. “Now we have homeless terrorists.”

“You really think that’s what he is?” Ballard asked. “A terrorist?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it. If he’s downloaded the sovereign bullshit, that could be exactly what he is. A lot of people like that stormed the Capitol.”

Ballard said nothing. She continued to stare across the street, her view of the van repeatedly interrupted by passing cars.

“So, what do you think?” Bosch asked.

“I think there’s a good chance that my badge is in that van,” Ballard said, “waiting for me to come get it.”

16

It was four hours before the badge buyer emerged through the curtains of his van and opened the door to step out. In the interim, Ballard checked the webcam of the pet day-care center where she left her dog, Pinto, when she was at work, and she dealt with calls from Colleen Hatteras, Tom Laffont, and Maddie Bosch. She told Hatteras and Laffont that she was working on non-cold-case matters and they should not expect to see her in the office until Thursday. She told Maddie Bosch that she had been cleared to begin work with the OU team the following day. She was welcome to come to the bullpen, take the desk her father had used the year before, and start looking at cases.

Ballard was careful not to call Maddie a volunteer, because she wasn’t. Ballard had received the green light from Captain Gandle to take the younger Bosch onto the team if the police union gave its approval. This was the most difficult step because the union, which represented the rank and file of the department, was not in the business of allowing its members to do unpaid police work and objected to such a precedent. Ballard handled that by agreeing to pay Madeline Bosch four hours of overtime per week as a member of the unit. If she chose to work more than those four hours, that was between her and the union. Ballard knew she could cover the overtime with money from a National Institute of Justice grant she had received to review cold cases. It was money she could use at her discretion and she decided that having Maddie Bosch and her sworn law enforcement powers on the unit was worth it. She could pay Maddie for four hours a week for at least five years before the grant money ran out.

“He changed clothes,” Bosch said.

He was watching through Ballard’s binoculars.

“He probably had a nice nap too,” Ballard said. “What’s he doing?”

“Talking to the guy from the RV in front of the van,” Bosch said. “They look like they’re very familiar with each other.”

“Why not? They’re neighbors. They’ve probably been camped out there for months, nobody from the city doing a thing about it.”

“What do you think the average house on the beach here goes for? A couple million?”

“Easy. Probably double that.”

“It must make them so happy to have these people out here.”

“Harry, that’s a heartless way to describe the unhoused.”

“I guess I’m not woke.”

“You, not woke? Shocking.”

Ballard knew Bosch wasn’t heartless. But like many in Los Angeles, he was losing patience and empathy as he watched the city he loved slide into chaos because of a problem the government and its citizens seemingly had no solutions for.

They lapsed into an uneasy silence as Ballard thought about the price of the double-wide she had bought a block off the beach in Paradise Cove last year. She had needed all of the inheritance from her grandmother and the proceeds from the sale of her house in Ventura to buy into what was known as the most expensive trailer park in the world.

Still, she didn’t regret it. The sunsets alone were worth the price of admission.

“So what’s the plan?” Bosch finally asked.

“No plan,” Ballard said. “I’m going to watch and wait. If I get a shot at that van, I’ll take it. But this is my thing. You don’t have to stay, Harry. Thank you for your help.”

“No, I’m cool. I want to know what this guy’s up to. I just thought you might have to bail for a hot date and I was going to say I would stay on watch.”

“A hot date?”

“It’s Valentine’s Day. I thought maybe—”

“Uh, no, no hot date. You’re my date if you’re staying.”

“Happy to. I wish I had flowers.”

An hour of intermittent banter went by. Ballard checked on Pinto again and sent a message to the day-care center informing them that he would likely be staying overnight.

The sun dropped behind the ocean. The badge buyer was seen in and out of the van, mingling with people from the other vehicles parked along the street. Ballard and Bosch took turns using the public restrooms on the beach, and eventually their cover became strained as beachgoers left with the sun. Soon the Defender stood out as one of the last few cars in the lot.

“We gotta move,” Ballard said. “We’re sitting out here in plain sight.”

“Where to?” Bosch asked.

“That’s the thing. I don’t see a better angle on the van. We could cross the street and park, but we wouldn’t have eyes on it.”

“So maybe we stick here.”

Ballard considered not moving.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’m going to take a walk over there, see what I can see and hear.”

“You sure?” Bosch asked. “If he sees you, you’re burned as far as any walk-bys tomorrow or after.”

“I got some things here that will help with that. I’m going to go.”

“Your call.”

Bosch’s tone suggested he thought she was making the wrong call, but Ballard got out and opened the back door of the car to get to her disguise box. She took off her jacket and pulled on an old gray hoodie. She added the Dodgers cap with the frayed edge to its bill that she had worn into the Eldorado and pulled the hood up over it. She took the Glock and its holster off her hip and put it in the box.

“You’re going naked?” Bosch asked.

“I’ve got my boot gun,” Ballard said. “I’m going to go a block north, then cut across and come back down like I’ve been walking. I’ve got my earbud in and I’ll call you on approach.”

“Got it. Be careful.”

“Always.”

Ballard walked to the north end of the parking lot, which was at least a hundred yards away from the badge buyer’s van. She waited a solid five minutes before there was enough of a break in the traffic for her to cross. She then walked south toward the line of parked vehicles. She kept her head down and her hands in the front pockets of the hoodie, one of them holding her phone.

As she approached, she pulled out her phone and called Bosch. He picked up right away.

“I see you,” he said. “It took you long enough.”

“Had to wait to cross,” Ballard said. “You see our guy anywhere?”

“The van is dark. I think he’s in one of the big RVs.”

“I’ll see what I can see.”

Ballard could see through the front windshields of the parked motor homes, giving her a limited angle on activities inside. She passed two campers and a large RV, and each was dark. The next RV had its interior lights on but appeared to be vacant.

Then she saw where everybody was. Two more vehicles down, an RV was parked in a spot where the cliff was concave enough to offer space for a circle of folding chairs around a flaming grill. The firelight shone on the faces of several men and women in the chairs, including a bearded man who Ballard believed was the badge buyer.

She reported all this to Bosch in a low voice as she approached the circle.

“They’ve got themselves a bonfire on the other side of one of the RVs,” she said. “I think our guy is in the circle.”

“Okay,” Bosch said. “What are you going to do?”

“Pick my way by and see if the van’s unlocked.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Ballard was now too close to the fire circle to risk speaking to Bosch. She kept her head down and worked her way around the circle. There was no sidewalk. She had to go between the line of campers and the cliff; otherwise she’d be in the traffic lanes. She counted five men and two women sitting around the flaming grill. They weren’t cooking anything, just warming themselves. One of the men called out to her as she passed.

“Hey, sweetie, you want a beer?” he said.

Ballard couldn’t tell which one had said it. “No, thanks,” she said.

She kept going, not turning toward the group.

“Then how about a ride?” the voice called.

Ballard didn’t respond.

“On my lap,” the man added.

This was met with raucous laughter from the circle. Even the women joined in, one issuing a high-pitched cackle that rose above the noise of traffic off the highway.

Ballard passed two more pickups with camper shells plastered with bumper stickers. Most had catchy slogans that derided liberal ideologies or the sitting president or both. She passed a thirty-five-foot-long RV with a name painted in script on the side: Road Warrior. She laughed to herself, remembering a game she played as a teenager with Tutu when they’d driven on a freeway. They would put the word anal in front of the RVs’ names.

“What’s so funny?” Bosch asked.

“Nothing, really,” Ballard said. “I’m passing by the Anal Road Warrior.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll tell you later. I’m going to check out the van.”

Ballard cut in front of the RV and started walking down the other side of the string of vehicles. This put her only a few feet from traffic and in the blinding glare of the headlights of cars whizzing by.

She got to the white van and saw that it was completely dark inside. She went to the driver’s door and tried the handle.

“It’s unlocked,” she said. “I’m going in. You got me?”

“I see you,” Bosch said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“He can’t see me from there and we need to know what he’s up to.”

“Still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Come on, Harry. You know you’d be in here if it were you.”

Ballard climbed into the driver’s seat and cautiously looked through the windshield in the direction of the circle. From this angle, she could see only one of the seated people, a woman in a folding chair with a built-in cupholder for her beer.

Ballard took a quick look through the glove box and storage areas in the front. She did not find her badge, but in a cupholder there was a key ring with two keys and a chip fob on it. It said YOU-STORE-IT on the fob and provided an address on Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica. The numbers 22 and 23 were stamped on the keys.

Ballard split the curtains behind the front seats and ducked into the back. The rear windows were blacked out and the interior was pitch-dark. Ballard’s face immediately came into contact with something wet and spongy.

“Shit.”

She struggled to get the light on her phone on.

“What is it?” Bosch said. “What’s wrong?”

She turned her light on. There was a damp beach towel hanging from a makeshift clothesline strung diagonally from the back corner of the van across its interior. The wet weight of the gray-and-white-striped towel made the line droop in the middle.

“Renée, what’s wrong?” Bosch repeated, his voice rising.

“Nothing,” Ballard said. “I walked into a wet towel on, like, a clothesline. It’s gross. But I’m in the back and I’ve got my phone light on. Let me know if you see it through the curtains.”

She did a quick sweep with the light across the rear of the van. “Anything?” she asked.

“Not really,” Bosch said. “But I’m a lot farther away than the people in the fire circle.”

“I’ll be quick.”

“What do you see?”

She swept the light across the space slowly.

“Queen-size mattress at the back,” she said. “Looks like it’s on top of a built-in box. A large plywood box for storage. The bed’s not made. There are clothes and other shit hanging in nets on the side walls.”

She moved toward the back. There was a sheet hanging off the unmade mattress and over the edge of the wooden box. Ballard swiped the sheet away to see if there was a latch or handle for opening the box.

There was a padlock.

“Shit,” she said.

“What?” Bosch responded, panic in his voice.

“The bed sits on this built-in storage unit. But it’s got a lock on it.”

“Did you bring picks with you?”

“No, but it’s a combo.”

“You see any hinges?”

“Hold on.”

She put the phone down on the carpeted floor of the van and moved to the bed. The mattress was no more than four inches thick. It was easy for her to push up and roll back so she could examine the top of the wooden box.

There was a seam halfway back on the top of the box and two metal hinges. She put the light close to one and saw three screws holding each side of the hinge.

“Two hinges, three screws each,” she said. “I need a Phillips-head.”

“That’ll take too long,” Bosch said. “Just get out of there. We’ll figure something else out.”

Ballard swept the light across the full rear compartment of the van. On the floor under the back of the driver’s seat there was a red metal box that was either for tools or first aid. She crawled over, pulled the box out, and flipped the lid open. The box contained tools, and there was a Phillips-head screwdriver clipped to the top of it.

“I have a screwdriver right here, courtesy of our badge buyer.”

“Just be quick, Renée, okay? I’m going to change position to see if I can get a direct look at the circle jerks.”

Ballard smiled. “I’ve got six screws to remove,” she said. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

She moved back to the box and went to work. It was a homemade job, and the screws anchoring the hinges to the plywood had loosened over time from the repeated opening and closing of the lid. They turned easily and Ballard had all six out in less than five minutes.

“How are we doing?” she asked. “Screws are out and I’m going to open the lid.”

“I’ve got eyes on the circle,” Bosch said. “I can’t see everybody, but I’ll be able to see if anybody moves toward the van.”

“Good.”

“But don’t waste time. See what’s there and get the hell out.”

Ballard didn’t respond. She held her phone light up with one hand and raised the lid with the other. She folded it down over the padlock.

The box was filled to the top with haphazardly folded clothing. She swept the light across. There were several pairs of jeans, jackets, and shoes. Still holding the light up, she started grabbing clothes and pulling them out of the box, digging down to the bottom.

Soon she saw the glint of metal and began uncovering weapons. There were rifles, handguns, boxes of ammo, combat knives, and more.

“There are enough weapons here to start a little war,” Ballard said, “but he still needs four machine guns. This guy’s—”

She stopped talking when she flipped over an assault vest with metal plates and saw LAPD stenciled across the front and back.

“What?” Bosch said. “I lost you.”

“He’s got an LAPD SWAT vest. What the fuck is this guy up to?”

“We’ll figure it out. What about your badge?”

“Not here, as far as I can tell.”

“Okay, then, why don’t you get the hell out of there. Now, Renée.”

“I can’t just leave it like this. He’ll know we’re onto his ass. I need to put everything back like I found it.”

“You’re going to give me a heart attack here.”

“I’m fine, Harry.”

“For now. Just hurry it up.”

“Yes, Dad.”

She put the phone down next to her knee so she could put everything back into the box. She had to carefully refold some of the clothes so they would look the way she had found them. She closed the lid and started screwing the hinges back into place.

She had just moved to the second hinge when she heard Bosch’s voice in her earbud.

“Renée, listen to me. He’s coming to the van. He and another guy. It’s too late to get out. You need to hide.”

“Hide? It’s a van, Harry.”

“I know, but they’re right there. Hide. Now.”

Ballard abandoned the hinge and flipped the mattress back down. She grabbed her phone and killed the light, then climbed onto the mattress, bunched an insulated blanket into a ball, and propped the two pillows on either side of it. She slid down between the pile and the back doors of the van. In the darkness she looked for a handle she could use to open the back doors if she needed to escape, but she saw nothing. The handle was beneath the level of the built-in storage box.

She reached down, slid the left leg of her jeans up, and pulled her Ruger out of her ankle holster.

She heard the voices of two men outside the van. The front doors opened and the men got in.

17

If the two men in the front of the van knew that Ballard was hiding in the back, they didn’t give any sign of it. Neither opened the curtain to look. The engine started, and Ballard felt the van jerk into motion. The driver pulled out onto the coast highway and started heading north. Ballard heard Bosch’s panicked voice in her ears.

“Renée, I’m right behind you in the Defender,” he said. “Can you speak? Probably not. What about text — can you text? I need some kind of a signal from you or I gotta stop this. I’ll figure out how to do it. If I don’t get something from you in three minutes, I’m going to stop the van, even if I have to run it off the road.”

Ballard raised her head slightly and looked over the pile of bedding to the front of the van. The curtains were still closed, and judging from the banter between the driver and passenger, they didn’t know of her presence. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked that it was set to silent mode, then texted Bosch an all-clear message.

She waited for Bosch to acknowledge.

“Okay, I got your text,” he said. “But if you say my name, that will be the signal for me to make a move. Anything goes sideways, just say my name. I don’t know if you can see where they’re going, but right now it’s north — actually, I guess it’s more west now — on PCH through Malibu.”

Ballard knew what he meant. Most of Malibu’s coast had a southern exposure as the coastline jutted out. It was what made several of its beaches good surfing breaks.

She thought of something and sent Bosch another text.

Bosch acknowledged verbally and she waited for his text to land. Soon she heard a phone ping, and the men up front started talking.

“Read this, I’m driving. It’s from the gun guy.”

“He says, ‘I’ve got another offer. You still need four?’ Fucking guy, just trying to jack up the price.”

“Doesn’t matter, we’re not going to pay for them. Tell him, yeah, we need four, and we can make the deal tomorrow. Tell him we also need shoulder slings and reload mags.”

There was silence; Ballard presumed the passenger was typing the text. Soon Bosch told her that they had responded and wanted to make the deal for four mini machine guns the next day.

“They want slings and extra magazines,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re up to but it sounds like they’re going to be carrying multiple weapons and lots of ammo.”

The van stopped and Ballard froze, wondering if they had heard something from the back.

“You’re at a traffic light,” Bosch said. “Las Flores Canyon.”

Ballard could picture it. She drove this road every day to and from work and when heading south to surf. They were at La Costa Beach and then it would be Carbon followed by the pier and then Malibu Lagoon.

The van took off again. Ballard thought about what she had heard and understood that if they were not going to pay for the mini machine guns, that meant they were going to either rob or kill the seller. But with the integrity of their plan — whatever it was — at stake, it seemed unlikely that they would only rob him.

Soon the van slowed and then jogged to the right and stopped. Ballard guessed that they had slipped into a parking space.

“It’ll be nice and crowded Monday,” the driver said.

“Perfect,” the other man said.

“Go back?”

“Let’s hit up Mickey D’s on the way.”

The van started moving again and almost immediately made a U-turn. Ballard wasn’t ready for it, and the centrifugal force threw her against the back of the van with a thud. She froze and then let her breath out slowly, trying to deflate her body, make it as low as possible behind the pile of bedding and pillows.

The light in the rear compartment changed and she knew that someone was looking through the curtain. Then the darkness returned.

“You gotta tie your shit down, man.”

“I do. I think it’s the spare. It’s underneath and it gets loose.”

Less than a minute later, the van made a ninety-degree turn and Bosch whispered in Ballard’s ear that they were in the drive-through lane of a McDonald’s.

Ballard listened while they ordered seven combo meals. They paid and waited for their order to be handed through the window. Ballard couldn’t see it but she could picture it. Then the men up front spoke.

“This will make that thing in Vegas look like child’s play,” one said. “The precision of it, you know?”

“Oh, yeah,” said the other.

Soon they had their food and were on the move again; they exited the drive-through and turned left onto the PCH. The smell of McDonald’s filled the van, and Bosch’s voice came to Ballard through her earbud.

“Looks like they’re heading back to the caravan with the food,” he said.

But Ballard barely heard him. She was concentrating on what she had heard from the front of the van and what it meant.

Ten minutes later there was another U-turn and the van parked. Ballard knew that they had returned to the original place in the line of campers. The hot food saved her from discovery as the men got out of the van without further investigating the sound they had heard from the back.

“Am I clear?” she whispered.

“They’re going back to the grill fire with the food,” Bosch said. “Get out of there.”

“Not yet. I have to finish putting the hinges back on.”

“Then hurry. Luck is a fluid thing, and you’ve been lucky so far.”

“I get it.”

Ballard rolled the mattress back to access the top of the box and the hinges. She had left the screwdriver and the screws there, and the mattress had held them in place. It took her less than five minutes to re-anchor the last hinge and put everything back.

“How does it look outside the van?” she asked.

“You’re clear,” Bosch said. “Use the driver’s-side door and they won’t have an angle on you.”

“Got it,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Back in the lot across the street.”

“On my way.”

Five minutes later Ballard was safely across the street. Bosch was still behind the wheel of her Defender, so she took the passenger seat.

“Before they made the first U-turn and went to the McDonald’s, they pulled over for a minute or so,” she said. “Where were we?”

“Yeah, I had to drive by them,” Bosch said. “They were in front of a vacant business. It looked like it used to be, like, a chicken-in-a-bucket place.”

The description didn’t match anything in Ballard’s memory. “What was across the street?” she asked.

“The Malibu pier,” Bosch said.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“They talked about how crowded it would be on Monday.”

“Monday’s a holiday. Presidents’ Day. A lot of people go to the beach if it’s warm enough. And the pier — they’ve got two restaurants there. What are they going to do?”

“Whatever it is, they said it would ‘make that thing in Vegas look like child’s play.’”

“The mass shooting at the concert?”

“I assume that’s what they meant. They already have an arsenal and now they want machine guns and extra ammo? Has to be something like that. They talked about ‘the precision’ of it. I assume that means it’ll be a close assault, not sniping from a faraway structure like in Vegas.”

Bosch was shocked into silence.

“At least we know when they’re planning to do it,” Ballard said.

“There’s that,” Bosch said.

He was staring across the street at the row of vehicles he called the caravan.

The biggest RV shielded their view of the grill fire but the glow from it climbed up the rock face of the cliff above the motor home.

“How many of them are involved in this, you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Ballard said. “They ordered seven combo meals at McDonald’s. When I walked by their bonfire, they all looked like they were pretty tight. It was five men and two women. Maybe they’re all in it, or maybe it’s just the two in the van.”

Bosch nodded.

“They want the guns,” he said. “All four. Maybe that’s where we set up a takedown.”

“They talked about that after you texted,” Ballard said. “And they aren’t planning to pay for the guns.”

Bosch nodded again. He knew what that meant.

“This has gotten too big,” Ballard said. “It started with me looking for a pissant car burglar and my badge, and now we’re talking about possible domestic terrorism. We can’t sit on this.”

“The bigger this thing is, the bigger the consequences for you,” Bosch said. “If the media gets hold of it and finds out that your badge ended up with terrorists who were going to shoot up the pier—”

“I know, I know, I’ll be lucky if they put me back on the late show in Hollywood.”

“You’ll be lucky if they put you back on patrol in Devonshire.”

“Thanks for being so supportive, Harry.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t support career suicide. Not when it’s your career.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“I don’t know, but the good thing is that we have some time. You heard them yourself. Monday is the day. That gives us four days to come up with a plan.”

“And what if we don’t?”

“Then, fine, you call in the troops.”

Ballard nodded. “Okay,” she said. “But I’m not waiting till Sunday night. Two days, Harry. We figure this out in two days or I take it to CTSOB and the sheriff’s department.”

The Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau handled all organized threats to public safety. The sheriff’s department had jurisdiction over Malibu and the pier.

“I’m good with that,” Bosch said.

“So what’s our next move?” Ballard asked.

He pointed across the street at the caravan. “We try to find out who these people are,” he said. “And why they needed a badge.”

Ballard nodded.

“I know a place we might want to start,” she said. “There was a key ring in the van with keys to a You-Store-It in Santa Monica. I think our badge buyer has a couple storage lockers there. There were numbers on the keys.”

“Sounds like a lead,” Bosch said. “Let’s go check it out.”

18

The you-store-it was on Lincoln a block from the eastbound entrance to the 10 freeway in Santa Monica. The office was long closed for the night by the time Ballard and Bosch arrived, but the facility offered those who rented storage space twenty-four-hour access. All that was needed to enter through its glass doors was the fob that came with every rental unit. But there was a pickup truck parked near the entrance and a man was standing at its open tailgate unloading five-gallon buckets of paint onto a dolly. It gave Bosch an idea.

“What tools do you have?” he asked.

“You mean here in the car?” Ballard asked.

“Yes, what tools?”

“Uh, none, really.”

“You don’t have a jack?”

“Yes, there’s a jack. I thought you meant like a toolbox.”

“Get me the crowbar from the jack and I’ll need that hat and hoodie.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to follow that painter in, so let’s hurry.”

They both got out and went to the back of the Defender. The spare tire and tire-changing tools were underneath the flooring of the rear compartment. Ballard had to take out her crime scene kit and the plastic tub containing surfing equipment to access it. In the meantime, Bosch put the disguise box on the ground and started looking through its contents.

“I don’t know what your plan is but there are going to be cameras in there,” Ballard said.

“I know,” Bosch said. “That’s why I need your hat and hoodie.”

She lifted the flooring and grabbed a rolled leather satchel containing tire-changing tools.

“Let me see it,” he said.

Ballard slid the tire iron out of the satchel and handed it to him. It was eighteen inches long with a bend near one end. That end had a socket that would fit the lug nuts of the car’s wheels, and the other end tapered to a flat edge that could be used as a wedge for popping off wheel covers.

“Perfect,” Bosch said. “Give me the hat and hoodie.”

He put the tire iron into the disguise box and accepted the Dodgers hat from Ballard. He put it on and pulled the brim down low over his forehead. He glanced over at the pickup, and Ballard followed his eyes. The man was closing the tailgate. The dolly was fully loaded with buckets of paint ready to go into storage until the next job.

“Hurry, put the hoodie in the box,” Bosch said.

Ballard pulled it off and threw it into the box.

“Okay, what were the numbers on the keys you saw?” Bosch asked.

“Twenty-two and twenty-three,” Ballard said. “What are you—”

“Perfect. I gotta go.”

He walked off, carrying the box with both hands.

“Wait, what do you want me to do?” Ballard said.

“Just stay there,” Bosch said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He picked up his pace and followed behind the man pushing the dolly toward the glass doors. Ballard watched as the man raised his hand and held a fob to an electronic reader at the side of the entrance.

The double doors split and slid open. The man started pushing the dolly again, and Bosch fell into step behind him.

“Hold the doors,” he said. He raised the box up so it blocked the lower half of his face when the man turned to see who had spoken.

The man showed no alarm. He even took one hand off the dolly’s push bar and signaled Bosch in.

Ballard smiled. It reminded her of her move to get into the lab earlier. “Fucking A,” she said to herself.

The automatic doors closed and Bosch disappeared inside. Ballard saw the interior lights of the facility, most likely on motion-activated circuits, illuminate.

Ballard closed the back of the car and walked to the front, leaned against the fender, and waited. Several minutes went by. When she saw the automatic doors open again, it was the man from the pickup who came out. She watched him get in his truck and drive out of the storage facility’s parking lot. That left only Bosch inside, and Ballard began to worry. She pulled her phone and called him but got no answer.

She called twice more with the same outcome and started to worry that the physical exertion of the day had caught up with Bosch. She knew she couldn’t leave him there but she wasn’t sure what to do. On the fourth call she even left a message: “Harry, what is going on? Call me back.”

She was no longer leaning nonchalantly on the fender. She began pacing, head down, thinking about how to call in the emergency to the Santa Monica police. No matter how she played it out, bringing the cops in didn’t end well for her or Bosch.

She had her back to the automatic doors when she finally heard Bosch calling her. She whipped around to see him standing in the open doorway, waving her in.

Ballard walked briskly toward the entrance but slowed as she got close.

“It’s clear,” he said. “You can come in.”

She entered slowly. “What about—”

“The cameras are taken care of.”

He pointed overhead as he stepped into a central hallway that fronted several tributary aisles of storage rooms. Ballard looked up and saw her Dodgers cap draped over a mounted camera at the top of the wall.

“This way,” Bosch said.

She followed him until he turned left and headed down an aisle without hesitation. Ballard entered behind him and saw the hood of her hoodie draped over another camera.

“Twenty-two and twenty-three are down at the end,” Bosch said.

As she followed, Ballard noted that each of the storage units they passed had a roll-down steel door that was locked with a padlock through a hasp bolted to the concrete floor. When she caught up to Bosch at the end of the aisle, he was standing by two side-by-side open doors. The tire iron was on the ground next to one of two broken hasps that had been pried out of their concrete moorings.

“Harry, what did you do?”

“We wanted to see what the guy had. Now we can.”

“But whoever runs this place will probably call him tomorrow and then he’ll know somebody’s onto him.”

“No, because they’ll tell him his was one of several units that got hit.”

He pointed to the other side of the aisle. Ballard saw that three other units’ padlocks and corresponding hasps had been pried out of the concrete. She turned back to Bosch and noticed the sweat on his forehead and cheeks. It had taken some muscle to break the security of the storage rooms.

“We probably shouldn’t waste time,” he said.

“No,” Ballard said. “We shouldn’t.”

“You take twenty-two and I’ll take twenty-three. Be quick.”

“Got it.”

They both disappeared into their respective units. Unit 22 was the size of a modest walk-in closet or a prison cell. It was stacked on both sides with cardboard boxes, each helpfully marked with a list of its contents. Ballard moved down the stacks, looking for a box that could be of importance to the investigation and also be a test of the reliability of the listed contents.

She came across one at the top of a four-box stack that was marked Taxes 2012–2022. She pulled the box down to the floor. It was heavy. When she took off the top, she saw that it was filled end to end with files with different years marked on the tabs. She took out the last file, marked 2022, opened it, and found a photocopy of an IRS tax return.

“I’ve got tax records here,” Ballard called out.

“What’s the name?” Bosch called back.

“Thomas Dehaven.”

“I’ve got that name on a couple of things over here. He must be the badge buyer.”

“Get this. I’m looking at an IRS return for last year. If this is our badge buyer, then the sovereign plate and all of that is bullshit. He’s a poseur.”

“What’s the address?”

“Uh, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

“Take a photo and let’s keep going. We can’t stay here all night.”

“Got it. Luck is fluid.”

“That’s right.”

Ballard used her phone to take a photo of the tax return. She replaced the file and put the top back on the box. Standing up, she counted the boxes in the small room. There were sixteen along one side and another thirteen on the opposite wall. The majority were marked Books followed by a classification of fiction or nonfiction. She went through all of these first, opening them to find in each a row of books spine out. Thomas Dehaven favored contemporary mystery and horror. Ballard saw the names of several authors she recognized, including some she had even read: Child, Coben, Carson, Burke, Crumley, Grafton, Koryta, Goldberg, Wambaugh, and many others.

“Guy doesn’t read Chandler,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Bosch said.

“There’s a book collection over here, mostly mystery and true crime. But no Chandler.”

“His loss.”

“What do you have over there?”

“A lot of junk. Clothes, ski equipment, fishing poles, and—”

His report was cut short by the sound of the automated doors at the front of the facility opening and closing. Someone had entered.

Ballard stepped out of unit 22 and into the aisle. Bosch was already there. They stood listening and heard muffled voices. More than one person was inside. Bosch held his hand out as if to stop Ballard from speaking even though she knew to be quiet.

There was a metallic bang and then the harsh sound of a metal door being rolled up. Whoever had come in had gone down one of the other aisles to a storage unit.

“Luck is fluid,” Ballard whispered.

“How much more time do you need?” Bosch whispered.

“I have four boxes left.”

“I have about the same. Let’s get it done.”

“Quietly.”

They returned to their respective units. Ballard went quickly through the last four boxes in hers. They contained household items like pots and pans, cooking utensils, dishware, and knickknacks that might have come off shelves in a kitchen: Thanksgiving salt- and pepper shakers that looked like pilgrims, a coffee cup with the previous president’s booking photo and the words Presidential Mug on it, and four ceramic coasters that said Keep Calm and Carry above the silhouette of a gun, a different gun on each.

Ballard heard the roll-down door from the other aisle shut with a bang. She stepped out of the storage unit and listened. She again heard muffled voices as whoever had entered earlier made their way back to the exit.

Bosch stood on the threshold of unit 23 listening as well. When he heard the automatic doors at the front open and then close, he nodded to Ballard and went back to work. Ballard followed him into 23. It was not as neatly kept as 22, though Ballard could not tell whether that was because of Bosch’s search or because it had been that way when he found it.

“Anything in twenty-two?” he asked.

“Not since I found the tax records in the first box I opened,” Ballard said. “What about here?”

“No, just that.” He pointed to a stack of three cardboard boxes.

Sitting on top of it was a white jewelry box. Ballard stepped over and opened it. The inside of the lid was a mirror. Below it were felt-lined sections containing gold and silver bracelets and earrings. Ballard rarely wore jewelry and was not equipped to judge the value of what she was looking at.

“Why do you have this out?” she asked.

“Because we need to take something if we’re going to convince him that this was a random burglary,” Bosch said.

“Come on. It’s one thing to break in here, but I don’t want to take anything. That’s a line I don’t think I can cross.”

“You don’t have to. I will.”

“Harry, we—”

“Look, these assholes — they’re up to something. Something big. An hour ago you said so yourself. Something that’s going to require four machine guns. So I’ll cross whatever line I have to if it stops whatever it is from happening. And I won’t second-guess myself for one minute.”

Ballard understood and nodded.

“Okay,” she said.

“So, I’m done in here,” Bosch said. “No badge.”

“No, no badge.”

“I’m beginning to think I know where it is.”

“Where?”

Bosch closed the jewelry box and put it under his arm, ready to go. He kicked the stack of boxes over.

“Clipped to his belt or on a chain around his neck,” he said. “It might be part of their plan, but it’s also his get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“How so?” Ballard asked.

“If he gets pulled over or stopped anywhere, he shows the badge,” Bosch said. “You know, says he’s working, maybe claims to be undercover. He uses it to talk his way out of getting his ass cuffed up.”

Ballard thought there had to be a bigger purpose for wanting the badge.

“Maybe,” she said.

“I know a way to test it out,” Bosch said.

“How?”

“Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you.”