“First of all, I didn’t know this guy who was interviewing me,” Brazil said. “I called him Detective Vitalis — you remember that stuff in the green bottles? And for a while — until they confirmed my alibi — I thought they were going to try to blame me and make it a fag-on-fag crime. So I told him what I told him.”
“Which was a lie?”
“No, not a lie. But it wasn’t everything, you know? I worked for a company that did craft services. You know, brought all the food and snacks and stuff for whatever production we were on. Sometimes we were at the studio and sometimes we were out filming on location, like on the streets somewhere. And I always told John where we would be and he’d come by and I’d sneak him some food, you know? And that’s why he came to the studio that day. He was hungry. He must’ve had no money and wanted something to eat. But giving my name at the guard shack at Archway wouldn’t have worked. It was our first time on that lot and they didn’t know me from Adam.”
Ballard nodded. It was always good to get the fuller story, but sometimes the more you knew, the more you saw conflicts with other information.
“So, if he had no money for food and tried to come to you, how did he have money to go down to that alley to buy drugs?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Brazil said. “Maybe he had something to trade. Maybe he stole something. He did that sort of thing, you know?”
Ballard nodded. It was possible.
“All I know is that if he came to find me it was because he had no money,” Brazil said. “I need to go to the bar.”
While he was gone, Ballard decided to take the interview in other directions when he got back. This time she had to wait a while as Brazil delivered drinks to his one table, then took their food orders and went back to the kitchen.
“You know, I like you,” he said when he returned. “You are not like Detective Vitalis was at all.”
“I assume you mean Detective Talis?” Ballard said. “I had a hard time with him too.”
“No, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t because of his name. He had his hair hard-parted on the side and then very slick and in place. I could smell the Vitalis because that’s what my father always used.”
“Was his name Hunter?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Hunter. I remember because there was a bar on the boulevard back then called The Hunter. Their slogan was ‘Where the hunter meets the hunted.’ Anyway, he was a jerk.”
“He’s dead.”
“Well, he seemed old even back then.”
“Were you and John lovers or just roommates?”
“Oh, so we’re getting personal.”
“Part of the job. Sorry.”
“We were both, you could say. Nothing serious but sometimes things would happen.”
“Did he have anybody else?”
“Oh, yeah, he had his unattainable fantasy. We all do.”
“Who was his?”
“John went to prison, you know. His parents wouldn’t get him a good lawyer and he ended up with a three-year sentence. He fell in love with somebody there who protected him. But that was only there. There are guys who do what they need to do in prison and then on the outside it’s a different story. They go from gay love to gay hate. You see it all the time. It’s self-denial.”
“Did he ever tell you this guy’s name?”
“No. I mean, I don’t remember if he did. It didn’t matter because it was over. His lover got out and went back to straight life.”
“But John hung on to the fantasy?”
“Yeah, the dream. He sat around drawing pictures of the guy.”
“Pictures?”
“The guy posed for him or something in prison and Johnny was a pretty good artist. It was the one thing he could do well. He was drawing all the time. On napkins, loose papers, anything. He kept a notebook of drawings from when he was in prison.”
“Did you ever tell any of this to Detective Vitalis?”
“No, he never called me back after that first interview. When I wasn’t useful to him as a suspect, I wasn’t useful.”
“Is this what you were trying to reach him about? The man in prison?”
“No, I wanted him to call my boss back and say I wasn’t a suspect. I got fired because of what he told them — that I would sneak Johnny food every now and then. He told them and I got fired. They thought I was a suspect, and it wasn’t fair.”
All Ballard could do was nod. She didn’t doubt the story for a moment. Hunter and Talis had put together an incomplete murder book on an incomplete investigation. They had been steered away from the truth or turned away on their own. Either way, it was no surprise that they left other victims and casualties in their path.
“Don’t be like them,” Brazil said.
“I’m not,” she said.
22
Ballard got to the station early for her shift and walked into a detective bureau she had never seen so crowded so late in the day. Several dayside detectives were at their desks, working phones and computers. Something had happened. She saw her boss, Lieutenant McAdams, standing by one of the detectives and reading over his shoulder as he typed on a keyboard.
She walked over.
“L-T, what’s happening?”
McAdams turned around.
“Ballard, what are you doing in so early?”
“Was going to get an early start. I had some leftover paperwork and wanted to get it in before roll call. Never know what will happen after that.”
“Paper on what?”
“Oh, just some follow-up stuff on the crispy critter we had the other night. Arson wanted the photos I took on my phone. And then they never sent me their report. So, I’m asking for that, seeing if they got an ID. What’s going on here?”
“We had some hillbilly decide to rob the cash pickup at the In-N-Out on Sunset. Dipshit takes off and realizes he can’t get out of the parking lot because the drive-through line’s clogging the entrance. He ditches the car and runs up to Hawthorne, where he tries to jack a UPS truck, not knowing the driver’s in the back with the packages. The truck takes off, the guy in the back surprises him, they get into a fight for control, and the truck hits three parked cars.”
“Wow.”
“I’m not done yet. Then this guy jumps out of the truck and is still going, but now he’s got the UPS guy and somebody that was in one of the parked cars running after him. He goes north again, tries to cross Hollywood, and is run over by a TMZ tour bus. You know how much paperwork this has generated, Ballard? I’ve got four guys running OT and two are borrowed from Wilshire. So I hope you weren’t planning to hit me up for a greenie on your crispy critter, are you?”
A greenie was an overtime request card.
“No, L-T. No OT.”
“Good, because this is going to break the bank, this deployment, and we still have eight days to go.”
“Don’t worry. You need me to do anything on it?”
She felt she had to offer even though she wanted no part of the case.
“No, we’ve got it covered,” McAdams said. “You just take care of your crispy critter and whatever else comes up tonight. By the way, nothing on a new partner for you yet, but Captain Dean at Wilshire says they can continue to take care of Hollywood Division on the nights you’re off.”
“Great,” Ballard said. “But I don’t mind working alone, L-T. I’ve got patrol backing me up whenever I need it.”
She turned away and looked for a desk to use. The one she had been using lately was currently occupied by its dayside owner. She picked a spot farthest away from the other detectives’ activity and sat down to work.
Ballard wasn’t sure how she felt about McAdams’s mention of his efforts to team her with a partner. Her last partner had retired four months earlier and had been on an extended bereavement leave before that. All told, Ballard had already been working alone for seven months. Though the job had always entailed two detectives splitting up seven nights, it had been different these last months truly working by herself. There had been moments of sheer terror, but for the most part she liked it better than having to be with a partner or constantly report every move she was making to him. She liked that the watch commander kept only a loose string on her. And her true supervisor, McAdams, never knew what she was up to for sure.