“Was he big?” Tuttle asked. “Was it rough?”
She asked the questions matter-of-factly and without a hint of judgment.
“Uh, both,” Ballard said. “Sort of.”
“Okay, and when was the last time before that?” Tuttle asked.
Aaron, the lifeguard.
“A while,” Ballard said. “At least a month.”
Tuttle nodded. Ballard averted her eyes. When would this be over?
“Okay, so the bruising could be from Saturday morning,” Tuttle said. “You hadn’t had sex in a while, your tissues were tender, and you say he was big and not too gentle.”
“Bottom line is, you can’t tell if I’ve been raped,” Ballard concluded.
“No definitive indication internally or externally. Nothing came up on the pubic comb, because you don’t have a lot down there to comb. Bottom line, I couldn’t go into court and say under oath one way or the other, but I know in this case, that doesn’t matter. It’s just you. You need to know.”
“I do.”
“I’m sorry, Renée. I can’t tell you for sure. But I can introduce you to someone here you can talk to and she may be able to help you come to terms with not having an answer. She may be able to help you move on from the question.”
Ballard nodded. She knew that the same territory would likely be covered in the psych exam she would undergo the next day at BSU.
“I appreciate that,” she said. “I really do and I’ll think about it. But right now what I think I need most is a ride. Can you call a car service and vouch for me? My wallet and phone are up in Ventura. I need to get up there and I don’t have a car.”
Tuttle reached out and patted Ballard on the shoulder.
“Of course,” she said. “We can do that.”
29
Ballard got to Ventura and her grandmother’s house by four p.m. She retrieved her wallet from her bedroom and used a credit card to pay the driver who had taken her up the coast. She tipped him well for not talking during the journey and for letting her rest her head against the window and fall into a dreamless sleep. Back inside the house, she locked the door and hugged Tutu in a long embrace, reassuring her that she was fine and that everything was going to be all right. As promised the night before, Tutu had gone to bed after doing the dishes. She had slept through Ballard’s abduction from the garage and only learned of it when the police arrived to make sure she was okay.
Ballard then hugged her dog and this time it was she who was reassured, by Lola’s calm and stoic presence. She finally went into the hallway bathroom. She sat on the floor of the shower and let the spray come down on her until she emptied the house’s hot-water tank.
As the water stung her shoulders and penetrated her scalp, she tried to come to terms with what had happened in the past twenty-four hours and the fact that she would never know exactly what had been done to her. More than that, she also examined for the first time the fact that she was a killer. It didn’t matter whether it was justified, she was now a part of the population that knew what it was to take a life. She had known from day one at the academy that she might one day use her weapon to kill someone, but this was somehow different. This was something that could never have been anticipated. No matter what she had repeatedly told the investigators, she had killed as a victim, not as a cop. Her mind kept flashing back to those moments during the struggle with Trent when she had gone at him like a prison assassin with a shank.
There was something inside her she didn’t know she had. Something dark. Something scary.
She had not one micron of sympathy for Trent, and yet she was beset by conflicting emotions. She had survived what no doubt was a kill-or-be-killed situation, and that thought brought a life-affirming euphoria. But the exhilaration was short-lived as questions intruded and she was left wondering if she had gone too far. In the internal courtroom, legal thresholds like I feared for the safety of myself and others held no meaning. They were not evidence of anything. The jury delivered its verdict based on evidence never shared outside the confines of the guilty mind. Inside, Ballard knew that Thomas Trent, no matter the size and content of his evil, should still be alive.
The thought of Trent’s death gave way to the unanswered questions: How did he know she was a cop? How did he find her in Ventura? The fact that he had turned against Beatrice Beaupre in the end told Ballard that she was not the source. She once again reviewed, as well as she could remember, her conversations with Trent at the car dealership, during the test-drive, and while she was driving to Ventura. She recalled nothing that could have revealed her as a law enforcement officer. She wondered if it had been the firm handshake she had used to elicit a response of pain in him. Was that the tell? Or was it her questions about the bruises that followed?
She then thought about the van. Trent had seen the van when she pulled into the dealership. Had he somehow been able to run the plate and get her true identity and the address of the house in Ventura? He worked at a car dealership, where DMV transactions were carried out dozens of times every day. Perhaps Trent had a source, a friendly DMV clerk who registered new plates and had access to the registrations on existing ones. During the abduction Trent spoke about her tan lines and her ethnic origins, revealing a fascination with her that was established during the dealership visit. Maybe, Ballard realized, Trent began stalking her because she was an intended target, not because she was a cop targeting him.
Again, the bottom line was that Trent was dead. Ballard might never get an answer to her questions.
She didn’t notice that the water had gradually turned cold until her body began to shake with chills. Only then did she get up and get out.
Lola sat dutifully at the door of the bathroom.
“Come on, girl.”
Ballard padded down the hallway to her room in bare feet, a large white towel wrapped around her body. She closed the door to her bedroom and noticed that Tutu had finished the laundry she had started the night before in the garage. Her clothes were neatly folded on the bed, and Ballard was overjoyed at the prospect of putting on fresh and clean things.
She put on a bra and underwear. But before getting dressed further, she checked her phone, which was charging on the bedside table, where she had left it. The screen said she had eleven new voice-mail messages. She sat on the bed and started playing them one by one.
The first two messages were from Jenkins and had been left before they had connected at the crime scene. He had gotten word about the investigation into an officer-involved death on Wrightwood Drive and wanted to know if she was okay. The second message was to let her know he was going to the crime scene to find her.
The next message was from an academy classmate Ballard maintained ties with. Rose Boccio had heard on the blue pipeline that Ballard was at the center of an officer-involved death being investigated in Studio City.
“Balls!” she said, using Ballard’s academy nickname. “Thank god you’re all right. Call me. We need to talk.”
The fourth message was similar. It was from Corey Steadman of RHD. Another friend hoping Ballard was okay.
The fifth caller was Rob Compton, parole agent and sometime lover. He evidently was not aware of what was going on with Ballard and was not calling about her abduction or killing of Thomas Trent.
“Hey, Renée, it’s Robby. Listen, we got a hot one. An ATF agent called me about the stolen Glock we recovered from our boy Nettles. Pretty interesting stuff. Hit me back, okay?”
It took Ballard a moment to place what Compton was talking about. The events of the past day had been so acute that they had completely crowded other cases and memories from her mind. Then she remembered. Christopher Nettles, the one-man crime wave. Compton had put in an ATF request on the three presumed stolen weapons recovered from Nettles and his room at the Siesta Village motel.