Ballard realized where she recognized him from. He was on the video that had followed the report on the Dancers shooting on the newscast she had watched in the station on Friday. She was just about to ask a question about the case, when a waitress came over and asked if Ballard wanted something to drink. She ordered an iced tea. When offered a menu, she said she wasn’t eating and the waitress went away.
“You sure?” Carr asked. “I ordered the fish tacos.”
“I’m not hungry,” Ballard said.
“Well, I’ve been running all day and need the fuel. Besides, you told me to get them.”
“This isn’t a date, Carr. Get to your questions. What do you want?”
Carr raised his hands in surrender again and Ballard noted it as a habit.
“I want to know about that last interaction between you and Chastain,” he said. “But first I need background. You two were former partners, correct?”
“Correct,” Ballard said.
Carr waited for more but soon realized that Ballard was not going to give more than one-word answers — unless he found a way to change that.
“How long did you two work together?” he asked.
“Almost five years,” Ballard said.
“And that ended twenty-six months ago.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re the one who beefed Olivas, aren’t you?”
Once again the blue pipeline had betrayed Ballard. What had transpired between Olivas and Ballard was a personnel matter that was supposed to be confidential. But just as the blue suiters in Hollywood Division roll call knew the story, so, obviously, did the detectives in Major Crimes.
“What’s that have to do with this?” Ballard asked.
“Probably nothing,” Carr said. “But you’re a detective. You know it’s good to know all the facts. The word I got is that when Chastain came to see you at Hollywood Station early Friday morning, things got tense.”
“And that’s based on what? He filed a report?”
“It’s based on a conversation he had afterward with a third party.”
“Let me guess. Olivas.”
“I can’t discuss that. But never mind what Chastain said. How would you characterize the meeting at Hollywood Division?”
“I wouldn’t even characterize it as a meeting. He came to pick up a witness who had come in and I had interviewed. His name was Alexander Speights. He took a photo on his phone that captured the exact moment of the first shot at the Dancers. Kenny came to collect both.”
“Kenny?”
“Yeah, we were partners once, remember? I called him Kenny. We were very familiar with each other, but we didn’t fuck, if that was going to be your next question.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Well, good for you.”
“What was the confrontation about? His quote to a third party afterward was ‘She’s still pretty mad about things.’”
Ballard shook her head, annoyed. She could feel anger boiling up. She instinctively looked over the railing next to the table and down at her dog. Lola was lying on the concrete, tongue out, watching the procession of people going by on the boardwalk. The crowd was filtering out and off the beach post-sunset.
Lola had been through a lot before Ballard had rescued her. Abuse, starvation, fear — but she persevered and always maintained her calm — until there was a legitimate threat to herself or her owner.
Ballard composed herself.
“Am I okay discussing personnel matters since you believe they are somehow significant to your investigation?” she asked.
“I think yes,” Carr said.
“Okay, then the so-called confrontation occurred when Ken Chastain offered a half-assed apology for totally fucking me over in my harassment complaint two years before. Put that in your report.”
“He said he was sorry. For what?”
“For not doing the right thing. He didn’t back me and he knew he should have. So here we are two years later and I’m out of RHD and working the late show in Hollywood, and he apologizes. Let’s just say the apology wasn’t accepted.”
“So this was just an aside. Nothing to do with the witness or the Dancers investigation.”
“I told you that at the beginning.”
Ballard leaned back as the waitress brought her iced tea and Carr’s tacos. She then squeezed the lemon into her glass as he began to eat.
“You want one of these?” Carr offered.
“I told you, not hungry,” Ballard said.
His starting to eat gave her time to think. She realized that she had dropped her own agenda for the conversation. She had been put on the defensive, largely through her own anger, and had lost sight of what she needed to accomplish with this interview — that is, get more information than she gave up. She suspected that Carr had pushed things in this direction purposely, knocking her off stride at the top of the interview with questions even he knew weren’t germane. It made her vulnerable to the questions that were. She looked at Carr crunching down on a taco and knew she had to be extra cautious now.
“So,” Carr said, his mouth full of food. “Why’d you call Matthew Robison?”
There it was. Now Carr was getting down to business. Ballard realized that he was here to deliver a message.
“How do you know I called Matthew Robison?” she asked.
“We’ve got a task force of eight investigators and two supervisors on this,” Carr said. “I don’t know how every piece of intelligence or evidence is procured. All I know is that you called him last night — several times — and I want to know why. If you don’t want to answer, then maybe we will book that room over at Pacific Division and have a sit-down there.”
He dropped a half-eaten taco to his plate. Things had suddenly gotten very serious.
“I called Robison to check on him,” Ballard said. “I felt responsible. I gave Speights to Chastain, and Speights gave him Robison. Now Chastain is dead. I went to Kenny’s house. They wouldn’t let me get close but I picked up some intel, that the last thing they knew about Kenny was that he was out Friday night, trying to wrangle a witness. I know what ‘wrangle a witness’ means and I thought about Robison. I figured he was the guy Kenny — sorry, Chastain — was trying to wrangle. So I called and left messages and he hasn’t called me back. That’s it.”
She had chosen her words very carefully so as not to reveal her extracurricular activities, including hacking her dead former partner’s computer files. For all she knew, Carr was taping her while she was taping him. She needed to make sure she said nothing that would bring Internal Affairs down on her.
Carr used a napkin to wipe guacamole off the corner of his mouth and then looked at her.
“Are you homeless, Detective Ballard?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” she asked indignantly.
“You list that place two hours up the freeway as your home on personnel records. And it’s on your driver’s license too. But I don’t think you’re there that much. That lady up there didn’t seem to know when you were coming back.”
“That ‘lady’ doesn’t give up information to strangers, badge or no badge. Look, I work the late show. My day begins when your day ends. What’s it matter where I sleep or when I sleep? I do my job. The department requires me to have a permanent residence and I have one. And it’s not two hours up the coast when I drive it. Do you have any real questions?”
“Yes, I do.”
Carr picked up his plate and handed it to a busboy who was walking by their table.
“Okay,” he said. “For the record, let’s go over your activities Friday night.”
“You want my alibi now?” she asked.
“If you have one. But like I said at the top, you are not a suspect, Detective Ballard. We have the trajectory of the shot that killed Chastain. You would’ve had to be standing on a step stool to make the shot.”