“Oh, shit. Did they get a profile off it?”
“Yeah, a case-to-case hit. Same thing four months before. Hot prowl, girls from Chapman, and he left his DNA on a photo that was on the refrigerator. But no match to anybody in the database.”
“So did Maddie and the girls move out?”
“No, they’re all two months from graduation and don’t want to deal with moving. We put on extra locks, cameras inside and out. Alarm system. The local cops put the street on twice-by a shift. But they won’t move out.”
“So that freaks you the fuck out.”
“Exactly. Both hot prowls were on Saturday nights, so I’m thinking that’s this guy’s night out and maybe he’s going to come back. So I’ve been going down and sitting on the place the last two Saturday nights. Me and this knee. I sit in the back seat with my leg up across the seat. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw something but I’m there.”
“Hey, if you want company, I’m there too.”
“Thanks, that means a lot, but that’s my point. Don’t miss your sleep. I remember last year...”
“What about last year? You mean the case we worked?”
“Yeah. We both had sleep deprivation and it... affected things. Decisions.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, I don’t want to get into it. You can blame it on me. My decisions were affected, okay? Let’s just make sure we get sleep this time.”
“You worry about you and I’ll worry about me.”
“Got it. Sorry I even brought it up.”
He picked up his cane off the chair and headed toward the door. He was moving slow. Ballard realized she would look like an ass if she walked quickly ahead of him and then out.
“Hey, I’m going to hit the restroom,” she said. “Talk later?”
“Sure,” Bosch said.
“And I really mean that about your daughter. You need me, I’m there.”
“I know you mean it. Thanks.”
10
Ballard walked to the Police Administration Building so she could use a computer to run down some of the names on her list. This would be a routine stop for most detectives from the outer geographic stations. There were even desks and computers reserved for “visiting” detectives. But Ballard had to tread lightly. She had previously worked in the Robbery-Homicide Division located in the PAB and had left for the midnight shift at Hollywood Station under a cloud of suspicion and scandal. A complaint to Internal Affairs about her supervisor sexually harassing her led to an investigation that turned the Homicide Special unit upside down until the complaint was deemed unfounded and Ballard was sent off to Hollywood. There were those still in the PAB who did not believe her story, and those who viewed the infraction, even if true, as unworthy of an investigation that threatened a man’s career. There were enemies in the building, even four years later, and she tried to maintain her job without stepping through its glass doors. But to drive all the way from downtown to Hollywood just to use the department’s database would be a significant waste of time. If she wanted to keep momentum, she had to enter the PAB and find a computer she could use for a half hour.
She made it through the lobby and onto the elevator unscathed. On the fifth floor she avoided the vast homicide squad room and entered the much smaller Special Assault Section, where she knew a detective who had backed her through all the controversy and scandal. Amy Dodd was at her desk and smiled when she saw Ballard enter.
“Balls! What are you doing down here?”
Amy used a private nickname derived from the stand Ballard had made during the past troubles in RHD.
“Hey, Doddy. How’s it hanging? I’m looking for a computer to run names on.”
“I hear there are plenty of open desks in homicide since they trimmed the fat over there.”
“Last thing I want to do is set up in there. Might get stabbed in the back again.”
Amy pointed to the workstation next to hers.
“That one’s empty.”
Ballard hesitated and Amy read her.
“Don’t worry, I won’t talk your ear off. Do your work. I have court calls to make anyway.”
Ballard sat down and went to work, putting her password into the department database and then opening her notebook to the list of names from the Hilton case. She quickly located a driver’s license for Maxwell Talis in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which was not a welcome piece of information. Yes, Talis was still alive, but Ballard was working this case on her own and with Bosch, not as an official LAPD investigation. An out-of-town trip was not in the equation. It meant she would have to reach Talis by phone. This was disappointing because face-to-face interviews were always preferable. Better tells and better reads came out of in-person sit-downs.
The news did not get any better as she moved down her list. She determined that both Sandra and Donald Hilton were dead. They had passed — Donald in 2007 and Sandra in 2016 — without knowing who had killed their son or why, without any justice for his life and their loss. To Ballard it didn’t matter that John Hilton had been a drug addict and criminal. He had talent and with that he had to have had dreams. Dreams of a way out of the life he was trapped in. It made Ballard feel that if she didn’t find justice for him, no one ever would.
Next on the list was Margaret Thompson and Bosch was handling that. Vincent Pilkey was the next name and it was another dead end. Pilkey was one of the dealers whom Hunter and Talis never connected with to interview, and now she never would either: Pilkey was listed as deceased in 2008. He was only forty-one at the time and Ballard assumed he met an untimely death by violence or overdose, but she could not determine it from the records she was accessing.
Ballard’s luck changed with the next name down: Dennard Dorsey, the dealer Hunter and Talis did not talk to because he was also a snitch for Major Narcotics. Ballard ran his name on the computer and felt a jolt of adrenaline kick in as she learned that not only had the snitch somehow survived the last thirty years, but he was literally two blocks away from her at that very moment: Dorsey was being held in the county jail on a parole violation. She checked his criminal history and saw that the last decade was replete with drug and assault arrests, the accumulation eventually landing him in prison for a five-year term. It seemed pretty clear from the history that Dorsey’s usefulness as a snitch had long since ended and he was without the protection of his handlers at Major Narcotics.
“Hot damn!” she said.
Amy Dodd leaned back in her chair so she could see around the partition between their work spaces.
“Something good, I take it?” she asked.
“Better than good,” Ballard said. “I found a guy and I don’t even have to get in my car.”
“Where?”
“Men’s Central — and he’s not going anywhere.”
“Lucky you.”
Ballard went back to the computer, wondering if the dice would keep tumbling her way. She pulled up the hold for parole violation and got a second jolt of adrenaline when she saw the name of the PO who had filed the violation and pickup order on Dorsey. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and called Rob Compton on speed dial.
“You,” Compton answered. “What do you want?”
It was clear from his brusqueness that Compton still hadn’t gotten past their last interaction. They’d had a casual off-duty relationship that blew up on-duty when Compton and Ballard disagreed on strategy regarding a case they were working. Compton bailed out of the car they were arguing in and then bailed out of the relationship they’d had.