Superior Court Judge Carolyn Wickwire was Ballard’s go-to. She wasn’t always the night-call judge but she liked Ballard and had given her a cell number, telling her she could always call day or night. Wickwire had been a cop, then a prosecutor, and was now a judge in a long career inside the justice system. Ballard guessed that she had persevered through her own share of misogyny and discrimination every step of the way. Though Ballard had never mentioned the obstacles she herself had encountered and overcome, some were known in the law enforcement community, and she believed Judge Wickwire was aware of them and empathized. There was a kinship there and Ballard wasn’t above using it if it helped move things along on a case. She called Wickwire from the building’s entry vestibule and woke her up.
“Judge Wickwire, I’m sorry to wake you. It’s Detective Ballard, LAPD.”
“Oh, Renée, it’s been a while. Are you all right?”
“Yes, it has, and I’m fine. But I need to get a telephonic search warrant approved.”
“Okay, okay. Just hold on a minute. Let me get my glasses and wake up a bit.”
Ballard was put on hold. While she waited, Herrera came over, having just run Prada’s name through the MDT terminal in her patrol car.
“Can you talk?”
“While I’m on hold. Anything?”
“Just some TVs back in New Jersey and New York. Nothing serious.”
Traffic violations. Ballard knew they would not help her get a search warrant approval from the judge.
“Okay,” she said. “I still need you to stick around if I get this. Can you find out if there’s an on-site manager?”
“Roger that,” Herrera said.
She headed off just as Wickwire came back on the line.
“Now, what do we have here, Renée?”
“This is a missing persons case but I think there’s foul play involved and need to get into the missing man’s condominium and the common areas of the building. It’s complicated because a person of interest in the disappearance is the missing man’s roommate.”
“Are they a couple or just roommates?”
“Just roommates. Separate bedrooms.”
“Okay. Tell me what you got.”
Ballard recounted her investigation, putting the facts in an order that would intrigue the judge and build toward a conclusion of probable cause. She said Jacob Cady had now been missing for forty-eight hours and was not responding to any communication, ranging from his cell phone to his business website. She told the judge that the man living in Cady’s condo had given a false name but left out Prada’s explanation that he was in the process of legally changing it. She said Prada had expressed a reluctance to cooperate, leaving out that he had been awakened by her at one a.m.
Lastly, she mentioned the rug and her suspicion that it had been moved to cover up something.
When she was finished, Wickwire was silent as she digested Ballard’s verbal probable cause statement. Finally, she spoke.
“Renée, I don’t think you have it,” she said. “You have some interesting facts and suspicions but no evidence of foul play here.”
“Well, I’m trying to get that, Judge,” Ballard said. “I want to find out why the rug was moved.”
“But you have the cart before the horse here. You know I like to help you when I can, but this is too thin.”
“What would you need? The guy’s not texting or tweeting, he’s not driving his car, he’s not handling his business. It looks like he left all his clothes behind. Something’s clearly happened.”
“I’m not arguing that. But you have no indication of what happened. This guy could be on a nude beach down in Baja where he doesn’t need a change of clothes. He could be in love. He could be in a lot of things. The point is, there’s a person living in his domicile and you do not have the right to search that domicile without probable cause.”
“Okay, Judge, thank you. I’m probably going to call you back after I get what you need.”
She disconnected the call. Dyson was standing there.
“No on-site management,” she said.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “See if you and Herrera can get down into the garage and take a look around.”
“Did you get the warrant?”
“No. I’m going up for my flashlight. If you don’t hear from me in about ten, come on up.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard took the elevator back to three and knocked on Jacob Cady’s door. After a few moments she heard movement inside and then Prada’s voice through the door.
“Oh my god! What?”
“Mr. Prada, can you open the door?”
“What do you want now?”
“Can you open the door so we don’t have to talk so loudly? People are sleeping.”
The door was flung open. The anger was clear on Prada’s face.
“I know people are sleeping. I want to be one of them. What is it now?”
“I’m sorry. I left my flashlight. I think it might be in Jacob’s closet. Could you get it?”
“Jesus Christ!”
Prada turned and headed toward the hallway that led to both of the condo’s bedrooms. Ballard noticed that Prada had now put on a T-shirt with a pink silhouette of a whale on it.
The moment Prada was out of sight, Ballard moved into the living room and went to the coffee table. She grabbed her flashlight from where it was partially hidden by the torso sculpture and pocketed it. She then stepped back and lifted a cushioned chair off the corner of the area rug. She put the chair down quietly on the wood floor, then stooped and flipped the corner of the rug back as far as was possible, laying it over the coffee table.
Ballard squatted down and looked at the floor. The gray-washed wood had been bleached of its stain in a pattern of semi-circular swipes. Someone had scrubbed this area of the floor with a powerful cleanser. Ballard noted the seams between the planking. It was a tongue and groove floor, meaning that there was a good chance that residue from whatever had been cleaned up could have seeped down into the subflooring.
Ballard felt the heavy footfalls of Prada approaching. She flipped the carpet back down, then stood and quickly swung the chair back into place just as he entered the room.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s not there.”
“Are you sure?” Ballard said. “I know I had it in that closet.”
“I’m sure. I looked. You can look if you want to.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Ballard pulled the rover off her belt and keyed it twice before speaking into it.
“Six-Adam-Fourteen, did one of you pick up my flashlight in the apartment?”
Prada threw his hands up in dismay.
“Couldn’t you have asked them first before waking me up again?” he said.
Ballard kept her hand depressed on the rover so that she was still transmitting.
“Calm down, Mr. Prada,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask you one last question and then I’ll get out of your hair?”
“Whatever,” Prada said. “Just ask it and go.”
“What happened to the living room rug?”
“What?”
Ballard had seen the tell when she asked the question. A moment of surprise in his eyes. It was Prada who had moved the rug.
“You heard me,” she said. “What happened to the rug?”
“The rug is right there,” Prada said, like he was talking to an imbecile.
“No, that’s the dining room rug. See, it still has the marks from the legs of the table. You moved it in here because you got rid of the rug that was in this spot. What happened to it? Why’d you have to get rid of it?”
“Look, I’ve had enough of this. You can ask Jacob all about the rugs when he comes back and you see that there’s nothing wrong.”
“He’s not coming back. We both know that. Tell me what happened, Tyler.”
“That’s not my name. My name is—”
Prada suddenly charged across the room at Ballard, raising his hands like claws as he aimed for her throat. But Ballard was ready, knowing her words might push him toward extreme measures. She turned and pivoted, sidestepping the rush like a bullfighter while bringing her hand holding the rover up and behind his back. She drove the heel of the radio into his spine and tripped him with her leg. Prada went down face-first into the corner of the room. Ballard dropped the radio and pulled her sidearm. She planted a foot on his back and pointed her weapon at his head.
“You try to get up and I’m going to put a hole in your spine. You’ll never walk again.”
Ballard felt him tense and test the pressure of her foot. But then he relaxed and gave up.
“Smart boy,” she said.
As she was cuffing him and reciting the rights advisory, she heard the elevator door open and then running steps as Herrera and Dyson rushed down the hall.
Soon they were in the condo and by Ballard’s side.
“Get him up and put him in a chair,” Ballard ordered. “I’m going to have to call homicide.”
The two officers moved in and grabbed Prada by the arms.
“He was going to kill me,” Prada suddenly announced. “He wanted my business, everything I’ve worked for. I fought him. He fell and hit is head. I didn’t want him to die.”
“And that’s why you rolled him up in a rug and dumped his body somewhere?” Ballard asked.
“No one would have believed me. You don’t believe me now.”
“Did you understand the rights I recited to you?”
“He was going to cut me into pieces.”
“Stop talking and answer the question. Do you understand the rights I just recited? Do you want me to say them again?”
“I understand, I understand.”
“Okay. Where’s Jacob Cady’s body?”
Prada shook his head.
“You’ll never find it,” he said. “I put it in a dumpster. It’s wherever the trash goes. And it’s what he deserves.”
She stepped out into the hallway to call Lieutenant McAdam, the head of the Hollywood Division detective bureau and Ballard’s real boss, even though she rarely saw him. She had to directly inform him of any case of this magnitude. She took a guilty pleasure in waking him up. He was a strict nine-to-fiver.
“Hey, boss, it’s Ballard,” she said. “We’ve got a homicide.”