“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.