Ballard disconnected and sat frozen at the desk. She had started the theory that the Dancers shooter was a cop. Now that theory was a monster and had Chastain in its sights.
She wondered how long it would be before Carr found out that the backup gun on her ankle was a Ruger 380.
37
Ballard calmed herself. The Ruger on her ankle was on the department’s short list of approved backups. She and probably a thousand other cops owned one.
She then started overthinking it, wondering if Carr already knew she had one and the purpose of the phone call was to see if she’d bring it up voluntarily. Her keeping quiet may have landed her on the suspect list.
“They are really thinking a cop did the Dancers thing?”
Ballard swiveled in her chair and saw a detective named Rick Tigert sitting at the desk directly behind hers. She had not realized that he could have overheard her half of the conversation with Carr.
“Look, don’t repeat that anywhere, Rick,” she said quickly. “I thought you had left.”
“I won’t, but if it’s true, the department’s going to be dragged through the shit once again,” Tigert said.
“Yeah, well, some things can’t be helped. Look, I don’t know if it’s true, but just keep it to yourself.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Ballard turned back to her temporary desk and started opening the interoffice envelope that she had found in her mail slot. The previous recipient had his name crossed out on the address line, just above Ballard’s name. It said Feltzer/ FID. The envelope contained copies of the search warrant return executed at Thomas Trent’s house the day before. Feltzer had made good on his coerced promise to share. The return was the document submitted to the court that had authorized the warrant. The law required law enforcement to report back to the judge so that there was an outside authority standing vigilant against unlawful search and seizure. The returns were usually very detailed about every item taken during a search. Feltzer had also supplemented this with a stack of crime scene photos of each item seized in the place where it was found.
Ballard tried to put the Chastain matter out of her mind for the time being by jumping back onto the Trent case. She studied the list of items taken from the house on Wrightwood. Most were common items that served a purpose in a household or workshop but could take on sinister qualities when in the possession of a suspected serial sex offender. Things like duct tape, zip ties, pliers, a ski mask. The zinger was the collection of brass knuckles from a drawer in a bedside table in the master bedroom. There was no further description of them, so Ballard immediately flipped to the photos and found the shot of four pairs of brass knuckles in the drawer. Each set was of unique design and materials, but all carried the same words on the impact plates. GOOD and EVIL. Ballard assumed that one of the sets was the weapon that Ramona Ramone had been tortured with.
While she didn’t need the brass knuckles to solidify the case against Trent, especially since no case would be moving forward, there was still a silent moment of clarity, fulfillment, and knowledge that she had followed the correct trail in her investigation. Her only regret was that she had no one to share the moment with. Jenkins wasn’t coming in for another six hours and he had never been invested in the case anyway. Only Ballard had been committed to it.
She noticed that Feltzer had included copies of all the crime scene photographs, so she slowly leafed through the stack of 8 x 10s. It was a photo tour of the house, and Ballard was reminded that she had never seen the entire place. She was struck by the normalcy of it. Spare and out-of-date furnishings were in every room. The only piece that allowed her to date the photos as reasonably contemporary was the flat-screen television on the living room wall.
The last photos in the stack were of the lowest room in the upside-down house. And these included shots of Trent in situ — as he had been found. There was more blood on him and the floor than Ballard had remembered. His eyes were half-lidded. She spent a long time studying the photos of the man she had killed. She only pulled her eyes away when her cell phone started to buzz. She looked at the screen. It was Towson.
“Have you checked the website?” he said. “It’s up. It’s good.”
“Hold on,” she said.
She pulled up the Times website on her screen. The story wasn’t the main selection on the home page but it was the third story listed. She opened it, noted that it had Jerry Castor’s byline, and quickly read it. She was pleased with what she saw. Especially the money paragraph.
Sources within the department said early reports that questioned Ballard’s actions did not include the entire raft of evidence and circumstances reviewed. It is expected that the department’s Force Investigation Division will make a determination that Ballard acted bravely and used justifiable force when she stabbed Trent with a splintered piece of wood in an effort to save her life and that of another victim abducted by the suspect. The FID’s findings will go to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which will make a final determination on the detective’s actions.
“Yeah, it’s good,” Ballard said. “What do you think?”
“I think we made a mistake,” he said. “We should have told Feltzer you wanted a promotion to captain too. He gave us everything we wanted! In fact, I checked on your van and they said you can pick it up tomorrow. They’re finished with it.”
She hadn’t known he was going to do that. His taking that initiative suggested to Ballard that things were maybe going to get awkward with Towson.
“Thank you very much, Dean,” she said. “For all of it. You really turned this around.”
“Wasn’t me,” he said. “You made this about the easiest case I’ve ever handled.”
“Well, good. And by the way, I gave your card to Trent’s victim — the one who brought me into the case. I told her she should go after the equity in that house and to call you.”
“Well, I’m much obliged. And you know, Renée, this is now a closed matter, as far as my involvement. That means it would not be a conflict if we were to stay in touch — you know, socially.”
There it was. The awkward overture. It was routine to get hit on by men in the department as well as the larger field of the justice system. That was how she and Compton had hooked up — a shared experience leading to something more. She had been feeling Towson’s interest growing since the interview at his town house Sunday morning. The problem was, she did not return his interest, especially after the ordeal she had just been through.
“I think I want to keep this on a professional level, Dean,” she said. “I may need your legal services in the future and I like how you handled this — a lot.”
She hoped that puffing him up on a professional level would allow the personal rejection to go down easier.
“Well, of course,” he said. “Whatever you need, Renée. I’m here for you. But think about it. We could always have both.”
“Thank you, Dean,” she said.
After ending the call, Ballard went back to the photos, studying once again the shots of Trent’s body and the room on the bottom floor of the upside-down house. Seeing the body and the blood allowed her to go back to it and go over it in her mind’s eye. She relived the steps she took, the escape from her bindings, and then the attack. She cupped her right hand around her left wrist. It was the one she had first freed, and it had suffered the deepest laceration from the zip tie. The photos made her feel the pain again. But it was earned. It was sacrifice. She could not articulate it even to herself, but going through it again in her head and not second-guessing anything was therapeutic. It was needed.