Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly (15)

Before heading into the station, Ballard parked her van on Selma a half block from the Moonlight Mission. Through the iron bars of the gate surrounding the back parking area she could see John the Baptist’s van. It meant he was presumably home.

Bosch had gotten a look inside the van during the traffic stop and had shared the cell phone photos he had taken. There had been nothing of an incriminating nature. Not that they would have expected it after nine years. But she had noticed that the parking enclosure at the rear of the mission house gave the van close access to the back door. If the van was backed in, a body could be transferred from it and into the house quickly with only a split-second exposure outside. Additionally, she was curious about the stand-alone garage on the other side of the parking apron. Both times she had seen the van, it had been in the driveway and not in the garage. Why wasn’t the garage used? What was in there that prevented the van from being parked inside?

Ballard’s instinct about John McMullen was that he wasn’t the guy. He had seemed sincere in his defense and his complaint during their confrontation early that morning. Detectives develop a sixth sense about character and often had to rely on these fleeting takes to judge people. She had shared her take on McMullen with Bosch as they drove away following the roust. Bosch didn’t disagree but said the preacher still needed to be cleared beyond a quick search of his van before they moved on.

Now she was sitting in her own van, looking at the Moonlight Mission and needing to get a look inside. She could wait and do it with Bosch but she had no idea when he would be available. She had sent him a text checking on his status but had gotten no reply.

Ballard’s rover was in its charging slot back at the station. She didn’t like the idea of going in alone and without that electronic link to the mother ship, but the option of waiting made her even more uncomfortable. Seeing the drowning man and being reminded of her father had put her on edge. She needed to crowd out those thoughts and knew that making this move would do it. Work was always the distraction. She could lose herself in the work.

She pulled her phone and called the inside line to the watch office. It was almost five and the PM watch shift was on. A lieutenant named Hannah Chavez picked up the call.

“It’s Renée Ballard. I’m following up on something from the late show and don’t have a rover with me. Just wanted to let you know I’m going to be code six at the Moonlight Mission at Selma and Cherokee. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, can you send a backup?”

“Roger that, Ballard. But while I got you, you handled the DB up in the hills the other night, right?”

“Yeah, that was me. It was accidental.”

“Right, what I heard. But we just got a B and E call from that location. The burglary table has checked out for the day and I was going to shelve it till tomorrow but now I’m thinking—”

“You might want me to handle it.”

“Read my mind, Ballard.”

“Not really, but I’ll cruise over after I clear the mission.”

“I’ll tell my guys to hang till you get there.”

“How’d we get the call?”

“The family had arranged for some bio cleaners to get in there after the death. They apparently found the place ransacked and called it in.”

“Roger that. Remember, back me up in an hour if I don’t hit you back.”

“Moonlight Mission—you got it.”

Ballard climbed out of the driver’s seat and into the back of her van. Last week’s dry cleaning was on hangers on an equipment hook. She changed into what she considered her third-string work outfit, a chocolate Van Heusen blazer with a chalk pinstripe over the usual white blouse and black slacks. She emerged from the back of the van, locked it, and headed down the street to the mission.

She just wanted to take a look around inside, get a sense of the place, and maybe brace McMullen again. The direct approach was called for. She walked in through the front gate and up the steps to the porch. A sign on the door said WELCOME, so she opened it and entered without knocking.

Ballard stepped into a wide entry area with arched passages to rooms to the right and left and a wide, winding staircase in front of her. She walked into the center and waited a moment, expecting McMullen or someone else to appear.

Nothing.

She looked through the archway to the right and saw that the room was lined with couches, with a single chair in the middle, where the facilitator of a group discussion might sit. She turned to check the other room. Banners with Bible quotations and images of Jesus hung side by side on the far wall. At the center of the room was what looked like a free-standing sink with a crucifix rising from the porcelain sill where a faucet was intended to be.

Ballard stepped into the room and looked into the sink. It was half filled with water. She looked up at the banners and realized that not all the images were of Jesus. At least two featured drawings of the man she had met that morning.

Ballard turned to go back into the entrance hall and almost walked into McMullen. She startled, stepped back, and then quickly recovered.

“Mr. McMullen,” she said. “You snuck up on me.”

“I did not,” McMullen said. “And in here I am Pastor McMullen.”

“Okay. Pastor McMullen.”

“Why are you here, Detective?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Ballard turned and gestured toward the sink.

“This is where you do your work,” she said.

“It’s not work,” he said. “This is where I save souls for Jesus Christ.”

“Well, where is everybody? The house seems empty.”

“Each night I seek a new flock. Anyone I bring in to feed and clothe must be on their own by this time. This is just a way station on the journey to salvation.”

“Right. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Follow me.”

McMullen turned and headed out of the room. His heels kicked up from under his robe and Ballard saw that he was barefoot. They went around the staircase and down a short hallway into a kitchen with a large eating space taken up by a long picnic table and benches. McMullen stepped into a side room that might have been a servant’s pantry when the house was originally built but now served as an office or perhaps a confessional. It was spartan, with a small table and folding chairs on either side of it. Prominent on the wall opposite the doorway was a paper calendar with a photo of the heavenly skies and a verse from the Bible printed on it.

“Please sit,” McMullen said.

He took one chair and Ballard sat opposite him, leaving her right hand down by her hip and her weapon.

She saw that the wall behind McMullen was lined with cork. Pinned to it was a collage of photos of young people wearing layers of sometimes ragged clothing. Many had dirty faces, some were missing teeth, some had drug-glazed eyes, and all of them comprised the homeless flock that McMullen brought to his baptismal font. The people on the wall were diverse in gender and ethnicity. They shared one thing: each smiled for the camera. Some of the photos were old and faded, others were covered by new shots pinned over them. There were first names and dates handwritten on the photos. Ballard assumed these were the dates of their acceptance of Jesus Christ.

“If you are here to talk me out of a complaint, then you can save your words,” he said. “I decided that charity would be more useful than anger.”

Ballard thought about Bosch’s saying that it would be suspicious if McMullen did not make a complaint.

“Thank you,” she said. “I was coming to apologize if we offended you. We had an incomplete description of the van we were looking for.”

“I understand,” McMullen said.

Ballard nodded at the wall behind him.

“Those are the people you’ve baptized?” she asked.

McMullen glanced behind him at the wall and smiled.

“Just some of them,” he said. “There are many more.”

Ballard looked up at the calendar. The photo showed a gold and maroon sunset and a quote:

Her eyes scanned down to the dates and she noticed that a number was scribbled in each day’s square. Most were single digits but on some days the number was higher.

“What do the numbers mean?” she asked.

McMullen followed her eyes to the calendar.

“Those are the numbers of souls who receive the sacrament,” he said. “Each night I count how many people took the Lord and Savior into their hearts. Each dark sacred night brings more souls to Christ.”

Ballard nodded but said nothing.

“What are you really doing here, Detective?” McMullen asked. “Is Christ in your life? Do you have faith?”

Ballard felt herself being pushed onto the defensive.

“My faith is my business,” she said.

“Why not proclaim your faith?” McMullen pressed.

“Because it’s private. I don’t…I’m not part of any organized religion. I don’t feel the need for it. I believe in what I believe. That’s it.”

McMullen studied her for a long moment before repeating a question.

“What are you really doing here?”

Ballard returned the penetrating look and decided to see if she could draw a reaction.

“Daisy Clayton.”

McMullen held her eyes but she could see he was not expecting what she had said. She could also see that the name meant something to him.

“She was murdered,” he said. “That was a long—Is that your case?”

“Yes,” Ballard said. “It’s my case.”

“And what does it have to do with—”

McMullen stopped short as he apparently answered his own question.

“The stop this morning,” he said. “The detective looked in my van. For what?”

Ballard ignored his question and tried to steer things in the direction she wanted to go.

“You knew her, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, I saved her,” he said. “I brought her to Christ and then he called her home.”

“What does that mean? Exactly.”

“I baptized her.”

“When?”

McMullen shook his head.

“I don’t remember. Obviously before she was taken.”

“Is she on the wall?”

Ballard pointed behind him. McMullen turned to study the collage.

“I think—Yes, I put her up there,” he said.

He got up and moved to the corked wall. He started pulling pins and tacks and removing the outer layers of photos, which he gently put down on the table. In a few minutes he had taken off several layers and then stopped as he studied one.

“I think this is Daisy,” he said.

He pulled down the photo and showed it to Ballard. It depicted a young girl with a pink blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair had a streak of purple and was wet. Ballard could see some of the banners from the baptism room in the background. The photo was dated by hand four months before Daisy Clayton’s murder. Instead of writing her name she had drawn a daisy on the corner of the photograph.

“It’s her,” Ballard said.

“She was baptized into the grace of Jesus Christ,” McMullen said. “She’s with him now.”

Ballard held up the photo.

“Do you remember this night?”

“I remember all of the nights.”

“Was she alone when you brought her here?”

“Oh, well, that I don’t remember. I would have to find my calendar from that year and look at the number on that date.”

“Where would the calendar be?”

“In storage. In the garage.”

Ballard nodded and moved past McMullen to look at the photos still on the corked wall.

“What about here?” she asked. “Are there others who were baptized the same night?”

“If they allowed their pictures to be taken,” McMullen said.

He stepped next to Ballard as they scanned the images. He started taking down photos and checking the dates on the back, then pinning them back up to the side of the collage.

“This one,” he said. “It has the same date.”

He handed Ballard a photo of a dirty and disheveled man who looked to be in his late twenties. Ballard confirmed that the date on the back matched the date of Daisy’s baptism. The name etched in marker on the print said Eagle.

“Another,” he said.

He handed her another photo, this one of a much younger man, with blond hair and a hard look in his eyes. The dates matched and the name on this print was Addict. Ballard took the print and studied it. It was Adam Sands, Daisy’s supposed boyfriend and pimp.

“Looks like that’s it for that date,” McMullen said.

“Can we go look for the calendar?” Ballard asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I keep these photos?”

“As long as I get them back. They’re part of the flock.”

“I’ll copy and return them.”

“Thank you. Follow me, please.”

They went outside and McMullen used a key to open a side door on the free-standing garage. They entered a space crowded with stored furniture and wheeled racks of clothing. There were also several boxes stacked against the walls, some with the years marked on them.

Fifteen minutes later, McMullen unearthed the 2009 calendar from a dusty box. On the date corresponding to the photo of Daisy, the calendar recorded seven baptisms. Ballard then took the calendar and flipped it four months forward to look at the date when Daisy was abducted and murdered. She found no number in the calendar square for the date of the murder or the two days after it.

McMullen saw the empty spots on the calendar at the same time Ballard did.

“That’s funny,” he said. “I almost never take a night off from my work. I don’t—Oh, I remember now. The van had to have been in the shop. It’s the only reason I would miss so many days in a row.”

Ballard looked at him.

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“Of course,” McMullen said.

“You think you have any record of that? Which shop it was, what was wrong with the van?”

“I can look. I think this was a transmission problem back then. I remember I took it to the place on Santa Monica by the cemetery. Santa Monica and El Centro. On the corner. It begins with a Z but I can’t remember the name.”

“Okay. You take a look at your records and let me know what you find. Can I keep this calendar? I’ll copy and return it.”

“I guess.”

Ballard could have photographed the photos and the calendar but she needed to take the originals in case they became evidence in the investigation.

“Good,” she said. “I need to go now. I have a call I need to respond to.”

She pulled out a business card and handed it to McMullen.

“If you find the receipt for the transmission overhaul or remember anything about Daisy, give me a call.”

“I will, I will.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

Ballard walked out of the garage and down a walkway to the front gate. She trusted her instincts that John the Baptist was not the killer of Daisy Clayton, but she knew she still had a long way to go before he was in the clear.