It was a key piece of information, and the fact that Beaupre had volunteered it made it all the more convincing. Ballard kept moving.
“Let’s talk about the brass knuckles,” she said. “What do you know about them?”
“I mean, I knew he had them,” Beaupre said. “But I didn’t think he’d ever use them. He had all kinds of weapons — stick knives, throwing stars, metal knuckles. He called them metal knuckles because technically not all of them were brass.”
“So he had multiple pairs?”
“Oh, yeah. He had a collection.”
“Did he have duplicates? The pair that were seized during his arrest said good and evil on them. Did he have another pair like that?”
“He had a bunch of them, and most said that. That was his thing. He said he would’ve had that tattooed on his knuckles — good and evil — except that he’d probably lose his job.”
Ballard knew it was a big get. Beatrice was giving her the building blocks of a case.
“He kept his weapons in the house?”
“Yeah, in the house.”
“Guns?”
“No guns. He didn’t like guns for some reason. He said he liked ‘weapons with edges.’”
“What else is in the house?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been there in a long time. I know this, though — he put all his money into buying the house because he said real estate was better than putting money in the bank, but that meant he didn’t have much left over to furnish the place. A couple of those bedrooms were completely empty, at least when I lived there.”
Ballard thought about the room she saw off the lower deck. Beaupre stood up.
“Look, we wrap at midnight,” she said. “You want to hang and watch or come back then, we can talk more. But I need to go. Time is money in this business.”
“Right,” Ballard said. “Okay.”
She decided to take a shot in the dark.
“Did you keep a key?” she asked.
“What?” Beaupre said.
“When you got divorced, did you keep a key to the house?
A lot of people who go through a divorce keep a key.”
Beaupre looked at Ballard with indignation.
“I told you, I wanted nothing to do with that man. Back then or now. I didn’t keep a key, because I never wanted to go near that place again.”
“Okay, because if you did, I might be able to use it. You know, in an emergency. The guy who did the damage to my victim, it wasn’t the kind of thing he’ll do only once. If he thinks he got away with it? He’ll do it again.”
“That’s too bad.”
Beaupre stood next to the door to usher Ballard out. They moved down the hallway, and when they passed by the alcove where the snacks were, Ballard saw a woman who was naked except for thigh-high boots, pausing over a choice of candy bar.
“Bella, we are shooting,” Beaupre said. “I’m going back now.”
Bella didn’t respond. Beaupre led Ballard to the front door and ushered her out, offering her good luck in her investigation. Ballard handed her a business card with the usual request to call if anything else came to mind.
“The DMV lists this as your home address,” Ballard said. “Is that true?”
“Isn’t a home the place where you eat and fuck and sleep?” Beaupre said.
“Maybe. So no other place?”
“I don’t need another place, Detective.”
Beaupre closed the door.
Ballard started her car but then opened her notebook and started writing down as much as she could remember from the interview. Head down and writing, she was startled by a sharp rap on the car window. She looked up to see Billy, the doorman in the beanie. She lowered the window.
“Detective, Shady said you forgot this,” he said.
He held out a key. It was not on a ring. It was just a key.
“Oh,” Ballard said. “Right. Thank you.”
She took the key and then put the window back up.
22
Ballard made her way to the 101 freeway and headed south toward downtown. She drove with internal momentum. She still didn’t have a shred of direct evidence but the interview with Beatrice Beaupre pushed Thomas Trent further across the line that separated person of interest and suspect. He was now Ballard’s one and only focus and her thoughts were exclusively on how to build a prosecutable case.
She was just taking the curve into the Cahuenga Pass when her phone buzzed, and she saw it was Jenkins. She connected her earbuds and took the call.
“Hey, partner, just checking in before heading in. I got any holdovers from you?”
Jenkins was on shift by himself for the next two nights. It was supposed to be Ballard’s weekend.
“Not really,” she said. “Hopefully you’ll have a quiet watch.”
“I wouldn’t mind sitting in the bureau all night,” Jenkins said.
“Well, at least for the first hour or so. I have the car.”
“What? You’re supposed to be up in Ventura, surfing. What’s going on?”
“I just came from an interview with the ex-wife of the suspect on the Ramona Ramone case. It’s him, no doubt. He’s our guy. Calls his crib the upside-down house, just like the victim said to Taylor and Smith.”
“All right.”
She could tell by his tone and the way he drew out the words that he was not as convinced.
“He also collects sets of brass knuckles,” she added. “With good and evil on them. You can see the letters in the bruising on Ramona. I went back to check and take pictures.”
Jenkins was silent at first. This was new information to him and it also was an indication of her obsession with the case. Finally, he spoke.
“You have enough for a search warrant?”
“I’m not there yet. But the victim was transferred to County, which I don’t think they could do if she was still in the coma. So I’m headed there, and if she’s awake, I’m going to have her look at a six-pack. If she makes the ID, then I’ll bring the package to McAdams in the morning and come up with a plan.”
There was only silence from Jenkins as he apparently dealt with having been left on the platform as the train sped by without stopping.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You want me to divert and meet you at County?”
“No, I think I’ve got it covered,” Ballard said. “You get in and take roll call, see what’s going on. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back with the car.”
County-USC used to be a dire place but in recent years it had gotten a face-lift and a paint job and it was no longer as cheerless as it had once been. Its medical staff were no doubt as dedicated and skilled as the crew at any private hospital in the city but, like with most giant bureaucracies, everything always came down to budget. Ballard’s first stop was at the security office, where she showed her badge and attempted to persuade a nighttime supervisor named Roosevelt to put extra eyes on Ramona Ramone. Roosevelt, a tall, thin man nearing retirement age was more interested in whatever was on his computer screen than in what Ballard was selling.
“No can do,” he said bluntly. “I put someone on that room, I gotta take him off the ER door, and no way those nurses down there will let me do that. They’d skin me alive if I left them unprotected like that.”
“You’re telling me you got one guy in the ER and that’s it?” Ballard said.
“No, I got two. One inside, one out. But ninety-nine percent of our violence happens in the ER. So we have two-step protection: one guy on the walk-ins, another to handle those that come in the back of an ambulance. I can’t lose either one.”
“So meantime my victim is up there naked — no protection at all.”
“We have security in the elevator lobbies, and I float. If you want extra protection up on that room, then I would invite you to ask the LAPD to provide it.”