She pulled a short board out of the first slot and took it over to an upside-down ironing board she used as a waxing and cleaning stand. The board was a six-foot Biscuit by Slick Sled with pink rails and a purple paisley deck. It was her first board, bought for her by her father when she was thirteen, and chosen for the vibrant colors rather than the surfing design. The colors were faded now by years in sun and salt but it still made tight turns and could pound down the face of a wave as well as a newer model. As she got older, more and more it seemed to be the board she pulled from the rack.
From day one with it, Ballard had always liked the process of cleaning and waxing the board and preparing for the next day’s outing. Her father had taught her that a good day of surfing started the night before. She knew detectives at Hollywood Division who spent hours shining their shoes and oiling their leather holsters and belts. It demanded a certain focus and concentration and took them away from the burden of cases. It cleared their minds and renewed them. For Ballard, waxing a surfboard did the same trick. She could leave everything behind.
First she took a wax comb out of the toolbox on the nearby workbench and started stripping the old wax off the deck. She let it all flake to the concrete floor to pick up later. The last step of the process was the cleanup.
Once she got most of the old wax peeled off, she grabbed the gallon jug of Firewater off a shelf over the workbench. She poured the cleaning solvent onto a rag and wiped down the board’s deck until it held a shining reflection of the overhead light. She stepped over and hit the wall button that opened the garage door so the chemical smell of the cleaner would dissipate.
She came back to the board, dried it with an old terrycloth robe, and then grabbed an unopened cake of Sex Wax off the shelf. She carefully applied a base and then a thick top coat to the deck. She had always surfed goofy foot — right foot forward — and was sure to double down on wax on the tail section, where she would plant her left heel.
Every surfer was particular about how they combed their wax. Ballard always followed her father’s lead and combed front to back, leaving grooves that followed the waterlines.
“Go with the flow,” he would say.
When she was finished, she flipped the board over on the stand to finish the job with the most important part of the whole process: cleaning and slicking the surface of the board that would meet the water.
She first leaned down and studied the integrity of an old fiberglass patch near the nose. The board had gotten dinged in a surf bag on a trip to Tavarua Island in Fiji. In twenty years it had been all over the world, and her father’s patchwork was the only blemish. She saw that fibers from the patch were beginning to fray and she knew she needed to take the board into a glass shop soon. But it would be good for at least one more day at the beach.
She next grabbed a surf key out of a can on the bench and tightened the keel fin. Finally, she poured more Firewater onto the board and cleaned the entire surface. She dried it, and it was good to go. It was so slick and shiny, she could see herself in it when she tilted the board up to move it to her van.
She also saw sudden movement coming from behind her. Before she could react, a black plastic bag came down over her head and was pulled tight around her neck. She dropped the board and started to struggle. She grabbed at the plastic and the hands that held it tight behind her head. Then a thickly muscled arm came around and formed a vise on either side of her neck. A forearm was driven into the back of her neck, pushing her further into the V hold. Locked in the vise, she felt her feet come off the ground as her attacker leaned back and used his chest as the fulcrum upon which to lift her.
Soon she was kicking at air, and her hands could find nothing to grab on to.
And then the darkness took her.
26
Ballard opened her eyes and tried to raise her head. There was dim light coming from behind her. She tried to get her bearings and instinctively knew she had been drugged. When she turned her head, her vision sloshed like water in a bucket and then caught up and steadied. She squeezed her eyes shut and then reopened them. Things didn’t change.
She realized she was naked, and there were several points of pain across her body. A gag was drawn tightly across her mouth and pulled back between her teeth. And she couldn’t move. She was sitting in a wooden straight-backed chair. Her wrists were down by her hips, bound to the back posts of the chair. She had been bound so tightly and for so long that all feeling was gone from her fingers. A belt wrapped her torso and held her securely to the seat back. Her ankles were attached to the front legs of the chair.
She tried to remember what had happened. Had she been beaten? Had she been raped? She found it hard to control her anxiety, and the harder she tried to breathe through the gag, the more her chest expanded against the belt that cut into her ribs just beneath her breasts.
She raised her head again and took in the space. To her left she saw her blurred reflection in a full-length wall mirror. The bindings on her wrists and ankles were black plastic zip ties.
There was also a small table to the left, with nothing on it but a key. At the far end of the room, the floor-to-ceiling curtains were closed and she could see light leaking in around the edges but could not tell if it was sunlight, moonlight, or artificial light. She saw her clothes in a pile on the floor near the curtains. It looked like they had been torn or cut from her body.
She knew where she was. The lower room of Thomas Trent’s upside-down house. She was now seeing it from the other side of the glass. The grim realization of that and of the situation she was in punched an awful dread into her chest. She flexed against her bindings but couldn’t move.
She started breathing through her nose. The passage was unobstructed and she took in long, deep pulls of air. She knew that the more oxygen she got into her blood, the sooner the poison — whatever she had been drugged with — would be gone. Her mind raced as she tried to remember what had happened. She brought up images of the surfboard and the garage. She had been grabbed from behind. She remembered being choked and felt a physical revulsion at the memory.
Tutu. Had her grandmother been taken or hurt? How did Trent even know about Ventura?
She remembered talking to Trent about the car while she was driving out. He had called and she had turned down the invitation to the dealership. Was the call a hoax? Had he been following her? How did he find out that she was a cop?
There seemed to be only one answer to these questions and it was like a second punch of dread to the chest.
Beatrice.
Ballard realized she had read the ex-wife wrong. Beatrice had told Trent about her.
But that still didn’t account for Ventura, for the jump from the customer named Stella to Ballard. Ballard had said nothing to Beatrice about going to the dealership and actually speaking to Trent.
She then recalled the call on the PCH and remembered telling Trent that she was out of town. He mentioned the surf truck. Had he tracked her through her van? She flexed against the bindings once more and still couldn’t move.
She then heard his voice, and it chilled her.
“Don’t bother, Renée. You can’t break those.”
Ballard looked into the mirror but could not see him anywhere in the room. Then he stepped out from an alcove and came up alongside her. He walked past and then turned to look down at her. With two hands he roughly pulled the gag down over her chin and left it hanging around her neck.