A white box truck with CCB painted on its side was parked in front of the Hollywood Boulevard house where the woman whose face was eaten by her cat had been found. There was also a patrol car and two blue-suiters standing on the street with a man in a white jumpsuit. This time there was no space for Ballard, who was still driving her own van, so she drove by, gave a wave, and parked in front of a garage two doors down. Few houses on the edge side of the hills had driveways. The garages were right at the curb, and blocking one involved risking the potential ire of a homeowner, especially when the culprit was not obviously a police vehicle.
She walked back to the house in question and had to introduce herself to all three waiting men. She had little experience with day watch blue suiters. These two were named Felsen and Torborg. Both were young and cut with military precision and bearing. Ballard recognized the name Torborg and knew him by reputation. He was a hard charger nicknamed Torpedo, who had accumulated several one-day suspensions for overaggressive enforcement and behavior. Female cops referred to these as testosterone timeouts.
The man in the jumpsuit was named Roger Dillon. He worked for CCB, a biohazard cleaning service. He had reported the burglary. Though he had told his story to Felsen and Torborg, he was prompted to repeat it to the detective, who would actually compose the burglary report.
Dillon said the dead woman’s niece in New York hired his firm to clean and decontaminate the house after her aunt’s body was removed and the premises were cleared as a possible crime scene. She overnighted him her key but it didn’t arrive until the early afternoon, delaying his getting to the house to perform the job. He was under a deadline because the niece, whom Ballard had identified during the death investigation as Bobbi Clark, was due to arrive the following morning. She planned to stay in the house while she organized services and took stock of the property she would be inheriting as the dead woman’s only living relative.
“So, I get here and I don’t even need the key, because the door’s unlocked,” Dillon said.
“Unlocked and open?” Ballard asked. “Or unlocked and closed?”
“Unlocked and closed but so you could see that it wasn’t pulled all the way. I pushed on the door and it opened.”
Ballard checked his hands.
“No gloves on?” she asked. “Show me where you touched the door.”
Dillon moved up the short walkway to the front door. Ballard turned back to Felsen and Torborg.
“Hey, I don’t have my rover with me,” she said. “Can one of you call the watch office and tell them I’m code six here and to cancel the one-hour backup at Moonlight Mission? I forgot about it.”
“Got it,” Felsen said as he keyed his shoulder mic.
“Moonlight Mission?” Torborg said. “Talking to John the Baptist? I knew that freak would act out someday. What did he do?”
“Just talking to him about a cold case,” Ballard said. “It wasn’t much.”
She turned and followed Dillon to the door. Since Torborg obviously knew John McMullen, she wanted to talk to him about his interactions and impressions of the street preacher, but she had to deal with Dillon and the case at hand first.
Dillon was tall and his white coveralls seemed to be a size too small. The cuffs on the pants just ticked the top of his work boots and the overall picture to Ballard was of a boy who had outgrown his clothes. Dillon, of course, was no boy. Ballard pegged him in his midthirties. He had a handsome, clean-shaven face, a full mane of brown hair, and a wedding ring on his finger.
He was poised at the door, his finger running a clockwise circle around a spot shoulder-high on it. Ballard pulled a pair of gloves from her blazer pocket and started putting them on.
“You pushed it open and went in?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dillon said.
She opened the door and held her hand up to signal him to enter.
“Show me what you did next,” she said.
Dillon pulled an air-filtering mask up from around his neck and over his mouth as he entered. Ballard looked back at Felsen and Torborg. Felsen had just finished the radio call to the watch commander.
“Can you see if the print car is available and get an ETA?” she asked.
“Roger that,” Felsen said.
“And don’t leave,” she added. “I need you guys here.”
“The L-T’s already asking when we can clear,” Felsen said.
“Tell her I need you here,” Ballard said sternly.
She entered the house after Dillon. The odor of decay still hung in the air but it had dissipated since she had worked the death case two nights before. Still, she wished she had her air mask, but it was in her kit in her city ride. Along with her hermetically sealable coveralls. She knew her third-string suit would be toast after one wearing. Luckily, the suit she had dropped off at the dry cleaners the day before would be ready in the morning.
“Walk me through it,” she said. “How’d you know it was a break-in? The place was already pretty messed up.”
Dillon gestured over her shoulder to the front wall of the living room. Ballard turned and saw that the three side-by-side prints of red lips were gone. When Ballard had called Bobbi Clark to report that her aunt was dead, Clark had asked specifically about the well-being of the prints, mentioning that they were the work of Andy Warhol and were rare APs—artist’s prints—that were worth over six figures each and even more when combined as a series.
“Ms. Clark told me to be careful of these red lip paintings that were supposed to be in the living room,” Dillon said. “So, I come in and no red lips. I called you guys because this is why I rarely go into a house by myself. I don’t want to get accused of anything. We usually work in twos but my partner’s on another job and this lady Clark really wanted this done today. When she gets here, she doesn’t want to see blood or anything else. She told me about what the cat did.”
Ballard nodded.
“Is it your company or you just work for the company?” she asked.
“It’s mine,” Dillon said. “Two trucks, four employees, available twenty-four-seven. We’re a small shop. You wouldn’t think it, but it’s a competitive business. A lot of companies cleaning up after murders and bad things.”
“Well, this wasn’t a murder. How’d Ms. Clark come to hire you from New York?”
“Recommendation from the M.E. I give out a lot of business cards. And gifts at the holidays. People recommend me. I’ll give you a stack of cards if you’ll take them.”
“Maybe later. I don’t do many crime scenes like this. Not a lot of murders in Hollywood these days and I’m usually on graveyard.”
“They had that five-spot last year at the Dancers. I got that one. Worked four days cleaning up that mess and then they never reopened the joint.”
“I know. I was there that night.”
Dillon nodded.
“I think I saw you on TV for that,” he said.
Ballard decided to get back on track.
“So, you come in, you see the prints are gone. Then what?” she asked.
“I backed out and called you guys,” Dillon said. “Then I waited about an hour for them and then they waited an hour for you. I’m not getting any work done and Ms. Clark lands at ten tomorrow morning.”
“I’m sorry about that, but we have to conduct the investigation—especially if we’re talking about a major theft. We’ve hopefully got a print car coming soon and we’ll need to get yours so we can exclude them. I’m going to ask you to step outside now and wait with the officers while I work in here.”
“How long before I can go to work?”
“I’ll get you cleared as soon as possible but I don’t think you’re getting in here today. Someone will have to do a walk-through in as-is condition with Ms. Clark after she arrives.”
“Shit.”
“Sorry.”
“You keep saying that but I don’t make money on sorries.”
Ballard understood his concerns as the owner of the company.
“I’ll tell you what, get me some of your cards, and I’ll keep them handy down the line.”
“I’d really appreciate that, Detective.”
Ballard followed him out of the house and asked Felsen about the print car. He said the ETA was fifteen minutes and Ballard knew from experience that all waiting times on the print car should be doubled. The car was assigned to the entire West Bureau and was operated by a latent-print tech who responded to all needs, ranging from property capers to violent crimes. It was safe to say the print car tech never stopped working.
Technically, Ballard was supposed to follow a protocol in which she would first study the crime scene and look for likely spots where the suspect could have left prints. Only upon finding possibilities should she call for the print car. But in reality, when it came to property crimes, the practice was the opposite. Delaying in calling the print car added up to long waits. She always called first to get her case in line and then started looking at the scene. She could then call the car off if she didn’t find any likely deposits.
Ballard knew she was pushing her luck with Dillon but took a shot anyway at asking if he had a spare breathing mask. He surprised her by saying yes.
He walked to the back of his truck and rolled up the door. The interior was stuffed with wet vacuums and other equipment. He pulled a box of throwaway masks out of a drawer in a tool chest and handed her one.
“The filter in there is good for a day,” he said. “That’s it.”
“Thank you,” Ballard said.
“And I’ve got my cards right here.”
He reached into another drawer and took out a stack of about ten business cards. He gave them to Ballard, who saw that the small print under CCB was the company’s formal name: Chemi-Cal Bio Services. She put the cards in her pocket and thanked Dillon, even though she knew her opportunities to recommend his services would be few.
She left him there and went back inside the house, pulling on the breathing mask as she went. She stood in the living room and took in the place, observing and thinking. The removal of the source of decomposition—the body—would explain the decrease in noxious odor. But Ballard had been in houses like this before in the days after death and she believed that more than the removal of the body had helped the process. She concluded that she was looking for an open window.
She moved to the far wall of glass and soon realized that the panels were on tracks that disappeared into a wall. The panels could be pushed into the wall, creating a wide opening onto the rear deck and giving the house an indoor-outdoor style. She slid open the first glass panel and stepped out onto the deck. She saw that it ran the length of the house behind the guest bedroom and the master. On the far end of the deck sat a rectangular air-conditioning unit. It had been removed from the wall below a window and left there. It must have been the burglar’s access point and the opening from which some of the decomp stink had escaped.
Ballard walked down the deck to look at the opening. It was at least two feet tall and three wide. The AC unit looked relatively new. The homeowner had probably added it to provide extra cooling in the bedroom during the hottest weeks of summer.
Ballard had the point of entry. Now the question was, how did the burglar get to it? The house was cantilevered over the steep hillside. She stepped to the guardrail and looked down. That was not the way. It would have been too difficult a trek, requiring ropes and hoists. That kind of planning conflicted with the fact that the air conditioner had been left out of its wall slot. This indicated the sloppy work of an opportunist, not a planner.
She looked up. The roof of the deck was supported in four places by ornate black ironwork that formed a repeating pattern of tree branches crossing between two risers. Whether intentional or not, each one created a makeshift ladder down from the roof.
Ballard stepped back into the house and went out the front door. Dillon was leaning against his truck. When he saw her, he straightened up and spread his arms wide questioningly.
“Where’s the print car?” he asked. “When am I going to get out of here?”
“Soon,” Ballard said. “Thank you for your patience.”
She pointed to his truck.
“But in the meantime, I saw you had a ladder on the wall inside your truck,” she said. “Could I borrow it for a few minutes? I want to get on the roof.”
Dillon seemed happy to have something to do, especially if it further indebted the LAPD to him.
“No problem,” he said.
While Dillon got the ladder, Ballard stepped out into the street and walked along the front of the house. The design of the structure was all geared toward the view out the other side. That’s where the deck, windows, and glass doors were. This side, which was just three feet from the curb, was drab and monolithic save for the front door and one small window to the master bathroom. This fortresslike design was softened with alternating concrete planters containing bamboo stalks and vine-entwined lattices. Ballard studied the latticework and saw places where the vines had been damaged by someone using the connections as foot- and handholds for climbing. It was another improvised ladder.
Dillon banged an extension ladder against the house. Ballard looked over and he gestured with his hand: all yours.
While Dillon held the ladder steady, Ballard climbed to the flat roof. She walked toward the back edge, looking for footprints in the gravel or any other evidence of a burglar. There was nothing.
She got to the far edge and looked out at the view. It was getting dark and the setting sun was turning the sky red and pink. She knew it would be a good sunset at the beach. She momentarily thought of Aaron and wanted to check in on him to see if he had any news on the man he had pulled out of the riptide.
Turning her attention back to the case at hand, she was now sure she had found the burglar’s path. He had climbed up the lattice in the front, crossed the roof and climbed down the ironwork on the back deck. After removing the air conditioner, he had entered and taken the three prints off the wall as well as whatever other property might be missing. At that point, he simply walked out the front door with the stolen goods, leaving the front door slightly ajar.
There were elements of genius mixed with naïveté. All aspects of the caper told her it had occurred under cover of darkness. That meant the burglary had happened on the night right after the discovery of the victim’s death. Someone had acted quickly, most likely with knowledge of the artwork in the house and its value—as well as its owner’s death.
She turned in a circle, scanning the immediate neighborhood. She knew it was a city of cameras. Finding them was always high on any investigative protocol. Nowadays you looked for video before witnesses. Cameras didn’t lie or get confused.
Hollywood Boulevard curved in and out along the mountain’s edge. The house she stood on was at a sharp bend around a blind curve. Ballard spotted a house on the curve that had a camera ostensibly aimed at a side stairway down to a landing below street level. But she knew that depending on the camera’s angle, there was a chance its field of view included the roof she stood on.
The print car arrived as Ballard was descending the ladder, again with Dillon holding it steady for her. She first walked the tech through the house and deck, pointing out as possible spots for latents the wall where the three Warhols had been located as well as the AC unit left on the back deck. Then she stepped out front and introduced Dillon, asking the tech to take his prints first for exclusionary purposes. She thanked Dillon for his time and the use of his ladder and told him he was clear to leave as soon as he was printed.
“You sure I’m not going to be able to do the cleaning tonight?” he asked. “I’ll wait around.”
“It’s not possible,” Ballard said. “Ms. Clark is going to have to do the walk-through with somebody from dayside burglary. We don’t want the place cleaned before that.”
“Okay, thought I’d try.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No worries. Make sure you use those cards.”
He gave a little wave and went to the back of his truck to close it. Ballard headed down the street in the direction of the camera she had spotted. Ten minutes later she was talking to the owner of the home around the blind curve and looking over his shoulder at the video playback from the camera located on the side of his house. It had a full but digitally murky capture of the entire roof of the home that had been burglarized.
“Let’s start at midnight,” Ballard said.