The Gulch was now a shopping plaza with the fading facade of an Old West town and portraits of the Hollywood cowboys — from Wayne to Gene Autry — hanging on the outside wall of the Rite Aid drugstore. Going south from the Gulch, a stretch of studio stages as big as gymnasiums lined the east side all the way down to the crown jewel of Hollywood, Paramount Studios. The storied studio was surrounded by twelve-foot-high walls and iron gates, like a prison. But these barriers were constructed to keep people out, not in.
The west side of Gower was a contradiction. It was lined with a stretch of car repair shops sharing space with aging apartment buildings where burglar bars guarded all windows and doors. The west side was marked heavily by the graffiti of a local gang called Las Palmas 13, but the east-side walls of the studios were left unmarred, as if those with the spray paint knew by some intuition not to mess with the industry that built the city.
The shooting call took Ballard and Moore to a street party in the tow yard of an auto body shop. Several people were milling about in the street, most without masks. Most were watching officers from two patrol cars who were taping off a crime scene inside the gated and asphalt-paved yard, which was lined with vehicles in different stages of repair and restoration.
“So, we have to do this, huh?” Moore said.
“I do,” Ballard said.
She opened the door and got out of the car. She knew her answer would shame Moore into following. Ballard was pretty sure she was going to need Moore to help with this.
Ballard ducked under yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the business and quickly ascertained that the victim of the shooting was not on scene and had been transported. She saw Sergeant Dave Byron and another officer trying to corral a group of potential witnesses in one of the business’s open garages. Two other uniforms were stringing an inner boundary around the actual crime scene, which was marked by a pool of blood and debris left behind by the paramedics. Ballard walked directly over to Byron.
“Dave, what do you have for me?” she asked.
Byron looked over his shoulder at her. He was masked but she could tell by his eyes that he was smiling.
“Ballard, I have a shit sandwich for you,” he said.
She signaled him away from the citizens so they could talk privately.
“Folks, you all stay right here,” Byron said, holding his hands up in a stay-put motion to the witnesses, which Ballard took to mean that they might not understand English.
He joined Ballard by the front of the rusting body of an old VW bus. He looked at what he had jotted down in a small notebook.
“Your victim is supposedly Javier Raffa, owner of the business,” he said. “Lives about a block from here.”
He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the neighborhood west of the body shop.
“For what it’s worth, he has a known affiliation with Las Palmas,” Byron added.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “Where’d they transport him?”
“Hollywood Pres. He was circling.”
“What did the wits tell you?”
“Not much. Left them for you. Raffa apparently has the gates open and puts out a keg every New Year’s Eve. It’s for the neighborhood but a lot of Las Palmas shows up. After the countdown, there was some shooting of firearms into the sky, and then suddenly Raffa was on the ground. So far nobody is saying they actually saw him get hit. And you’ve got shell casings all over the place. Good luck with that.”
Ballard shot her chin toward a camera mounted on the roof eave over the corner of the garage.
“What about cameras?” she asked.
“The cameras outside are dummies,” Byron said. “Cameras inside are legit but I haven’t checked them. I’m told they are not in a position to be of much help.”
“Okay. You get here before the EMTs?”
“I didn’t, but a seventy-nine did. Finley and Watts. They said it was a head wound. They’re over there and you can go talk to them.”
“I will if I need to.”
Ballard checked to see if either of the uniforms who were marking the boundary was a Spanish speaker. Ballard knew basic Spanish but was not skilled enough to conduct witness interviews. She saw that one of the officers tying the crime scene tape to the sideview mirror of an old pickup was Victor Rodriguez.
“You mind if I keep V-Rod to translate?” she asked.
Ballard thought she saw the lines of a frown form on Byron’s mask.
“How long?” he asked.
“Preliminary with the witnesses and then maybe the family,” Ballard said. “I’ll get somebody from another unit if we transport anybody back to the station.”
“All right, but anything else comes up, I’m going to need to pull him back out.”
“Roger that. I’ll move fast.”
Ballard walked over to Rodriguez, who had been with the division for about a year after transferring from Rampart.
“Victor, you’re with me,” Ballard said.
“I am?” he said.
“Let’s go talk to witnesses.”
“Cool.”
Moore caught up to Ballard in step toward the group of witnesses.
“I thought you were staying in the car,” Ballard said.
“What do you need?” Moore said.
“I could use someone at Hollywood Pres to check on the victim. You want to take the car and head over?”
“Shit.”
“Or you can interview witnesses and family while I go.”
“Give me the keys.”
“I thought so. Keys are still in the car. Let me know what you find out.”
Ballard briefed Rodriguez in a whisper as they approached the witnesses.
“Don’t lead them,” she said. “We just want to know what they saw, what they heard, anything they remember before they saw Mr. Raffa on the ground.”
“Got it.”
They spent the next forty minutes doing quick interviews with the collected witnesses, none of whom saw the victim get shot. In separate interviews, each described a crowded, chaotic scene in the lot, during which most people were looking up at the stroke of midnight as fireworks and bullets cut through the sky. Though no one admitted doing it themselves, they acknowledged that there were those in the neighborhood crowd who had fired guns into the air. None of these witnesses revealed anything that made them important enough to transport to the station for another round of questioning. Ballard copied their addresses and phone numbers into her notebook and told them to expect follow-up contact from Homicide investigators.
Ballard then signaled Finley and Watts into a huddle to ask them about first impressions of the crime. They told her the victim was nonresponsive upon arrival and appeared to have been hit by a falling bullet. The wound was at the top of the head. They said they were mostly occupied with crowd control, keeping people away from the victim and creating space for the paramedics.
As she was wrapping up with them, Ballard got a call from Moore, who was at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.
“The victim’s family is all here, and they’re about to get the word that he didn’t make it,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
I want you to act like a trained detective, Ballard thought but didn’t say.
“Keep the family there,” she said instead. “I’m on my way.”
“I’ll try,” Moore said.
“Don’t try, do it,” Ballard said. “I’ll be there in ten. Do you know if they speak English?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay, find out and text me. I’ll bring somebody in case.”
“What’s it looking like over there?”
“Too early to tell. If it was an accident, the shooter didn’t stick around. And if it wasn’t, I’ve got no camera and no witnesses.”