“Cut ties.”
“Exactly. Get rid of him. But they don’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows something. He knows something that could bring the house down.”
“So what you’re getting at here is that this law firm set up these hits. Manley was part of it and they don’t want him running around loose,” Ballard said.
“We have no evidence of that, but, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“A female hit man they probably connected with through their organized-crime clientele.”
“Woman.”
“What?”
“Hit woman.”
The waiter brought their sand dabs and Bosch and Ballard didn’t speak until he was gone.
“Didn’t the original detectives on Montgomery track that woman down?” Ballard asked. “Looks like she was wearing a juror badge.”
“They went to the jury pool and talked to her,” Bosch said. “She said she didn’t see anything.”
“And they just believed her?”
“She told them she was wearing earbuds and listening to music. She didn’t hear the judge get attacked behind her. They bought it, dropped her right there.”
“But also, wouldn’t she have had blood on her? You said the judge was stabbed three times and she’s wearing a white blouse.”
“You’d think so, but this was a pro hit. Montgomery was stabbed three times under the right arm. In a wound cluster the size of a half dollar. The blade cut the axillary artery — one of the three main bleeders in the body. It’s a perfect spot because the arterial spray is contained under the arm. The assassin walks away clean. The victim bleeds out.”
“How do you know so much about this?”
Bosch shrugged.
“I had training when I was in the army.”
“Do I want to hear why?”
“No, you don’t.”
“So then what do we do now about this hit woman?”
“We go find her.”
46
The first move they made was to find out whether Laurie Lee Wells was Laurie Lee Wells. Bosch had pulled the witness report on Wells out of the murder book files and shared it with Ballard. The report was written by Orlando Reyes, who had conducted the interview. It said he had routinely run Wells’s name through the NCIS database and had found no criminal record. This was expected; L.A. County did not allow people with criminal records to serve on juries. No follow-up was noted in the report.
Ballard and Bosch drove up to the Valley and the address on the report after finishing their sand dabs. With Bosch driving, Ballard looked up Laurie Lee Wells on IMDb and other entertainment databases and determined that there was a legitimate actress with the name who had had limited success in guest appearances on various television shows over the past years.
“You know there’s a TV show on HBO about a hit man who wants to become an actor?” Ballard said.
“I don’t have HBO,” Bosch said.
“I watch it at my grandmother’s. Anyway, Laurie Lee Wells was on it.”
“So?”
“So it’s weird. The show is about a hit man wanting to be an actor. It’s a dark comedy. And here we have an actress who might be a hit woman.”
“This isn’t dark comedy. And I doubt Laurie Lee Wells the actress is the Laurie Lee Wells we’re looking for. Once we confirm that, we need to figure out how and why her identity was taken and used by our suspect.”
“Roger that.”
Laurie Lee Wells the actress lived in a condominium on Dickens Street in Sherman Oaks. It was a security building, so they had to make first contact through an intercom at the gate — never the best way to do it. Ballard had the badge, so she handled the introduction. Wells was home and agreed to see the two investigators. But then she did not buzz the gate unlocked for nearly three minutes, and Bosch guessed she was cleaning up — hiding or flushing illegal substances.
Finally, the gate buzzed and they entered. They took an elevator to the fourth floor and found a woman waiting by an open door. She resembled the driver’s license photo they had pulled up earlier. But Bosch realized immediately she was not the woman they had studied on the videos. She was too short. This woman was barely five feet tall; even four-inch stilettos would not make her as tall as the woman who hit the five-ten mark on the door of Mako’s.
“Laurie?” Ballard said.
She wanted to keep the interview friendly, not adversarial, and going with first names was prudent.
“That’s me,” Wells said.
“Hi, I’m Renée and this is my partner, Harry,” Ballard said.
Wells smiled but looked a long time at Bosch, not able to hide her surprise at his age and the fact that he wasn’t doing the talking.
“Come on in,” she said. “I hate to say this because I’ve actually played this part in a TV show, but ‘What’s this about?’”
“Well, we’re hoping you can help us,” Ballard said. “Can we sit down?”
“Oh, sure. Sorry.”
Wells pointed to the living room, which had a couch and two chairs clustered around a fireplace with fake logs in it.
“Thank you,” Ballard said. “Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. You are Laurie Lee Wells, DOB February twenty-third, 1987, correct?”
“That’s me,” Wells said.
“Have you been on jury duty any time in the last five years?”
Wells furrowed her brow. It was a question from left field.
“I can’t — I don’t think so,” she said. “The last time was a long time ago.”
“Definitely not last year?” Ballard asked.
“No, definitely not for a long time. What does it—”
“Were you interviewed last year by two LAPD detectives investigating a murder?”
“What? What is this? Should I call a lawyer or something?”
“You don’t need a lawyer. We think someone was impersonating you.”
“Oh, well, yes — that’s been going on for almost two years now.”
Ballard paused and sent a glance toward Bosch. Now they were the ones thrown a curveball.
“What do you mean by that?” Ballard finally asked.
“Someone stole my ID and has been impersonating me for two years,” Wells said. “They even filed my taxes last year and got my return, and it’s like nobody can do anything about it. They ran up so much debt I’ll never be able to buy a car or get a loan. I have to stay here because I already own it, but now my credit is shit and nobody will believe it’s not me. I tried to buy a car and they said no way, even though I had letters from the credit-card companies.”
“That’s terrible,” Ballard said.
“Do you know how your identity was stolen?” Bosch asked.
“When I went to Vegas,” Wells said. “My wallet got stolen when I was at a show. Like pickpocketed or something.”
“How do you know it happened there?” Bosch asked.
Wells’s face turned red with embarrassment.
“Because I was at one of those shows where men are the dancers,” she said. “I had to pay to go in — it was a bachelorette party — and then when I wanted to get my wallet out to give a tip to the dancers, it was gone. So it happened there.”
“And you reported it to the LVPD?” Ballard asked.
“I did, but nothing ever happened,” Wells said. “I never got anything back, and then somebody started applying for credit cards in my name and I’m fucked for the rest of my life. Excuse my language.”
“Do you happen to have a copy of the crime report?” Ballard asked.