Ballard realized that the story she had spun for McAdams about the crispy critter had an element of truth to it. She had not received a report from the Fire Department arson team on the man who had died in his tent on Cole Avenue. This prevented her from completing her own report.
She found Nuccio’s card in the bottom of her backpack and then opened up her LAPD e-mail account on the desktop computer. She composed and sent Nuccio a message asking for the victim’s ID and official cause of death and any other pertinent details, including whether the homeless man’s next-of-kin had been located and informed of the death. She was not expecting to hear back from Nuccio until at least the next working day. She knew the arson guys were nine to fivers unless they were called out or were running with a case.
But her cell phone rang a minute after she sent the e-mail.
“Ballard, it’s Nuccio.”
“I just sent you an e-mail. I need—”
“I read it. That’s why I’m calling. You can stand down. RHD is taking it.”
“Wait, what?”
“We’re calling it a suspicious death after all and that’s the protocol. Robbery-Homicide Division handles it.”
“What’s suspicious about the death?”
“A few things. First of all, the dead guy has some juice, believe it or not. From a rich family down in San Diego. So that’s going to sharpen the focus on this.”
“What’s his name? Who is he?”
“His name is Edison Banks Jr. and his father had a shipyard or something down there and got rich on Navy contracts. He died last year and this kid in the tent inherited a bundle but probably didn’t know it. Five years ago, his father got tired of his shit, gave him ten grand in cash and kicked him out of the house. He was twenty. The family never heard from him again. I guess he used up the money and has been up here on the streets ever since. There’s a younger brother and now he gets all the dough.”
“And you’re saying that makes this suspicious?”
“No, I’m saying that makes us want to check all of the boxes on this. And in doing that, it got suspicious.”
“How?”
“Two things. One is the autopsy. The blood-alcohol screen was off the chart. Came back with a three-six BAC. That’s like triple the drunk driving limit.”
“More like quadruple. But he wasn’t driving, Nuccio.”
“I know that, but this kid is five-eight, a hundred forty pounds, according to the autopsy. That much booze and he wouldn’t be driving or anything else. He’d be down for the count.”
Ballard didn’t bother schooling Nuccio on how blood-alcohol content was not skewed by body size or weight.
“Doesn’t matter how drunk he was, he still could’ve kicked the heater over in his sleep,” she said.
“Maybe,” Nuccio said. “Except we examined the heater, too. It’s got a float valve that cuts off fuel supply to the flame if the device is more than forty-five degrees off level. It’s a safety feature. So kicking it over actually puts the flame out. It doesn’t start a fire.”
“And you tested it?”
“Several times. And it doesn’t leak. Only way to spill the fuel is to unscrew the cap and turn it on its side. But the cap was screwed on. So, it’s suspicious. This guy’s in the tent passed out, somebody for whatever reason crawls into the tent, unscrews the cap, and dumps out the heating oil, screws it back on and gets the hell out. Then lights a match, throws it in, and whoosh. Poor guy never knew what hit him. That’s the only way it would work and that adds up to suspicious. RHD is taking it by protocol.”
Ballard was silent as she considered what Nuccio had described. She saw it like a movie in her mind.
“Who has it at RHD?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know,” Nuccio said. “I talked to Captain Olivas about it and there’s a big powwow tomorrow at eight. I’ll find out who he assigned it to then.”
Of course, it was Olivas. RHD teams took the big cases. Ballard had been on one of those teams once. Until defending herself against Olivas cost her the job.
“Okay, Nuccio, I’ll see you there tomorrow,” she said.
“What?” Nuccio said. “No. This was informational only. It’s not your case, Ballard. RHD has it, and besides, you don’t even know where the meeting is.”
“I know that you go to RHD. RHD never comes to you. I’ll see you there.”
She disconnected the call. She wasn’t sure she would go to the meeting — it was her goal in life to never be in the same room with Olivas again — but she needed Nuccio to think she was coming. That would rattle him and it would rattle Olivas when he was told. That’s what Ballard wanted.
23
Ballard spent the first hour after roll call trying to get a line on Edison Banks Jr. He had no criminal record and his driver’s license had expired three years earlier and not been renewed. Ballard pulled up the DMV photo and estimated it was taken seven years earlier, when the license was issued. It showed a blond-haired surfer type with thin lips and green eyes. Ballard printed it even though she knew that it would probably be useless in terms of showing it to people who might have known Banks in recent years.
Next, she started working the phone, calling shelters, soup kitchens, and homeless outreach centers in the Hollywood area. There weren’t many of them and not all of them operated twenty-four hours. She was looking for any sort of connection to Banks that she could have in her back pocket if she crashed the RHD meeting in the morning. She didn’t expect to be allowed to stay on the case — that was a given with Olivas the captain in charge — but if she could come up with information that kick-started the investigation or gave it a direction, then her actions on the night of the body’s discovery might not be judged so harshly. She knew that Olivas would take any opportunity to second-guess her decisions, and she was vulnerable to criticism on this one: she had passed off what might have been determined to be a homicide to the LAFD arson squad, and that shouldn’t have happened. She should have been the one to inform RHD, not the Fire Department.
At the end of an hour she had nothing. Banks had apparently steered clear of places where names and photos are taken in exchange for a bed, a hot meal, or a bar of soap. Or he was using an alias. Either way, he had successfully stayed off the grid. It clearly suggested that Banks had been hiding his trail and didn’t want his family to find him.
She grabbed the DMV photo off the printer and a rover from the charging station before heading down the hallway to the watch office. She told Lieutenant Washington that she was going out to conduct a second-level canvass of the area, now that the death had been ruled suspicious.
“Arson deaths go to RHD,” Washington said.
“I know,” Ballard replied. “There’s a meet tomorrow at eight. I just want to finish my report and pass it on. There’s a few people out there we missed the other night and now’s the time to get them. They scatter at sunup.”
Washington asked if she wanted backup and she declined. The presence of uniformed officers would not be conducive to getting information from the denizens of the Hollywood night.
She first cruised around the city park and slowly along Cole to check things out. She saw no activity, except for a few inhabitants of the encampment who were still awake and sitting on the curb or on folding chairs and smoking and drinking by themselves.