By the time Ballard was released by the detectives from Major Crimes it was almost six and she had not slept in more than twenty-four hours. With her next shift starting in five hours it was not worth driving down to the beach or out to her grandmother’s house in Ventura in rush-hour traffic. Instead, she drove south to Hollywood Station. She left her city ride in the parking lot, got a change of clothes out of her van, and then took an Uber to the W Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. She knew from many previous stays there that they gave a deep law enforcement discount, had a dependable room service menu, and were liberal about checkout time. There was a cot at the station in a storage room known as the Honeymoon Suite, but she knew from experience she couldn’t sleep there. Too many intrusions. She wanted comfort, food, and solid sleep in the limited time she had.
She got a room with a northern view of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Capitol Records Building, and the Hollywood sign. But she closed the drapes, ordered a salad with grilled chicken, and took a shower. A half hour later she was eating on the bed, bundled in an oversize bathrobe, her wet hair slicked back and down her neck.
Her laptop was open on the bed and distracting her from what was now less than four hours of available sleep time. But she couldn’t help herself. She had downloaded the GRASP files from the thumb drive Professor Calder had given her that morning. She had told herself she would make only a quick survey of the data before going to sleep but the shower had helped push back her fatigue and she became transfixed.
What had drawn her attention initially was that there was a murder in the division just two nights before Daisy Clayton was abducted and murdered. This case was quickly cleared by arrest, according to the data.
Ballard was unable to enter the department’s database remotely but was able to access two brief Los Angeles Times reports on the case in the newspaper’s murder blog, which documented every murder that occurred in the city. According to the first story, the killing had occurred in a tattoo parlor on Sunset called ZooToo. A female tattoo artist named Audie Haslam was murdered by a customer. Haslam owned the shop and was working a solo shift when someone entered, pulled a knife and robbed her. Haslam was then walked into a back room used for storage and stabbed multiple times during a brutal struggle. She bled out on the floor.
Ballard’s excitement over a possible connection to the Clayton case was quickly doused when she read the second story, which described the arrest of the suspect, a motorcycle gang affiliate named Clancy Devoux, the following day after police matched a bloody fingerprint from the scene to him. Devoux had several vials of ink and an electric tattoo needle in his possession. Investigators found the victim’s fingerprints on the vials. They also found a fresh tattoo of a skull with a halo scabbing over on Devoux’s forearm. He had apparently come into the shop as a customer and the robbery-murder occurred after Haslam had given him a tattoo. It was not clear if the murder was an impulsive act brought on by something Haslam did or might have said or Devoux’s plan all along.
According to the follow-up report, Devoux was being held without bail in the Men’s Central Jail. That meant he was in custody on the night Daisy Clayton was taken. There was no way he was a suspect in the second murder. Deflated, Ballard still made a note to pull the murder book on the case. Her thinking was that there might be names in the book of people who were in Hollywood at the time and who might have information on the Clayton case. It was a long shot, she knew, but one that might need to be taken.
There were five rapes reported in the four-day span of the GRASP data and Ballard paid careful attention to these as well. She pulled up whatever information she could on her laptop and determined that two of the rapes were classified as assaults by strangers. The other three were considered rapes by acquaintances and not the work of a predator stalking women he didn’t know. One of the stranger cases occurred the day before the Clayton murder and one occurred the day after. It appeared from the digest summaries in the GRASP data that they were not the work of one man. There had been two sexual predators.
Ballard typed the case numbers from the murder and the two rapes into a file request form and emailed it to the archives unit. She asked for expedited delivery of the files but knew that the priority would be low because she was looking for cold files—a closed murder case and two rapes that were now beyond the seven-year statute of limitations.
After sending the email, Ballard felt her excitement wane and her fatigue return. She closed her laptop and left it on the bed. After setting her phone to sound an alarm in three hours, she slipped under the bedcovers, her robe still on, and fell immediately to sleep.
She dreamed that someone was following her but disappeared each time she turned around to look behind her. When the alarm woke her, she was in a deep stage-four sleep and disoriented as she opened her eyes and didn’t recognize her surroundings. It was the thick terry cloth of the robe that finally brought it all back and she realized where she was.
She ordered an Uber and got dressed in the fresh clothes she’d brought from her van. The car was waiting when she took the elevator down and walked out to the hotel’s entrance.
Harry Bosch’s abduction made the sergeant’s report at roll call. It was mentioned since it had occurred in his home, which straddled the line between Hollywood and North Hollywood divisions, and that home was now posted with uniformed and plainclothes officers from Metropolitan Division in an attempt to dissuade Tranquillo Cortez from sending more men to abduct Bosch again.
Otherwise the briefing was short. A cold front had moved across the city from the ocean, and lower temperatures were one of the best crime deterrents around. Sergeant Klinkenberg, a longtime veteran who kept himself in shape and wore the same size uniform as he did on graduation day from the academy, said things were slow out on the streets of Hollywood. As the troops were filing out, Ballard made her way against the flow of bodies heading to the door and up to Klinkenberg, who remained behind the lectern.
“What’s up, Renée?” he asked.
“I missed the last couple of roll calls,” Ballard said. “I just want to check to see if you guys put out the BOLO I gave Lieutenant Munroe about the guy named Eagleton.”
Klinkenberg turned and pointed to the wall where there was a corkboard covered with Wanted flyers.
“You mean that guy?” he said. “Yeah, we put that out last night.”
Ballard saw her flyer for the man who called himself Eagle on the board.
“Any chance you can give it another pop next roll call?” she asked. “I really want this guy.”
“If it’s as slow as tonight, then no problem,” Klinkenberg said. “Get me another stack and I’ll put it out.”
“Thanks, Klink.”
“How’s Bosch? I know you were involved in that.”
“He’s good. He got roughed up and cracked a few ribs. They finally persuaded him to stay the night at Olive View up there. With a guard on the door.”
Klinkenberg nodded.
“He’s a good guy. He got a rough deal around here but he’s one of the good ones.”
“You worked with him?”
“As much as a blue suiter can work with a detective. We were here at the same time. I remember he was a no-bullshit kind of guy. I’m glad he’s okay and I hope they catch the fuckers who grabbed him.”
“They will. And when they do, he and whoever was part of it will go away for a long time. You grab one of us, you cross a line, and that message will go out loud and clear.”
“There you go.”
Ballard went downstairs to the detective bureau, where she set up at a desk near the empty lieutenant’s office. The first thing she did was go online and connect to the live cams at the pet-care center where she had left her dog. It had been more than twenty-four hours since she had seen Lola and she missed her greatly. Ballard had always thought that when she rubbed the dog’s neck or scratched her hard head, she got more fulfillment out of it than Lola did.
She located her on one of the camera screens. She was sleeping on an oval bed. A smaller dog had pushed in and curled up on the bed with her. Ballard smiled and immediately felt the pang of guilt that came every time she caught a case that took over her schedule and required leaving Lola at pet care for extended periods. She had no qualms about the level of care. Ballard checked the cameras often and paid for extra things like walks around the Abbot Kinney neighborhood. But Ballard could not help wondering if she was a bad pet owner and if Lola would be better off being put up for adoption.
Not wanting to dwell on the question, she killed the connection and went to work, spending the next two hours of her shift going through the FI cards put aside for special attention and backgrounding the individuals who had caught the notice of patrol officers in Hollywood in the months surrounding the murder of Daisy Clayton.
At shortly after two a.m. she got her first callout of the night and spent the next two hours interviewing witnesses to a brawl that had broken out at a bar on Highland when the bouncer had attempted to clear the place at closing time and a group of four USC students had objected because they still had full bottles of beer. The bouncer was cut across the back of the head by one of those bottles and was treated at the scene by paramedics. Ballard took his statement first, but he could not say for sure which of the four students had wielded the bottle he was struck with. After securing his confirmation that he wished to press charges against his attacker, the LAPD released him to the paramedics, who transported him to Hollywood Presbyterian. Ballard next spoke to a bartender and the establishment’s manager before moving on to the students.
The students were locked two apiece in the back seats of patrol cars. Ballard had purposely put the two boys who looked the most scared together and had secretly left her digital recorder on the front seat where they couldn’t get it. It was a ploy that every now and then produced an unintended confession.
When she pulled the recorder out this time, she got the opposite of a confession. Both of the young men were angry and scared that they were going to be arrested when neither of them had thrown the bottle at the bouncer.
That left the two in the other car, whom Ballard had not covered with a recorder. She took them out one at a time to be interviewed. The first student denied that he had instigated the brawl or hit the bouncer with the bottle. But when confronted with the twenty-six-beer bar tab they had amassed, he acknowledged that he had overconsumed and was talking trash to the bartender and the bouncer when closing time was announced. He apologized to Ballard for his behavior and told her he was willing to do it to the bar’s staff as well.
The interview with the last student went differently. He announced that he was the son of a lawyer and was fully aware of his rights. He said he would not be waiving his rights or talking to Ballard without an attorney present.
When finished, Ballard conferred with Sergeant Klinkenberg, who was the on-site patrol supervisor.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Somebody’s gotta go for this, right? Otherwise, these little college pissants will just come back up here and do it again.”
Ballard nodded as she looked down at her notebook to get the names right.
“All right, you can kick Pyne, Johnson, and Fiskin loose,” she said. “Book Bernardo—he’s got the shaved head and thinks his lawyer dad will save him. And make sure the three you let go aren’t driving.”
“We already asked,” Klinkenberg said. “They Ubered.”
“Okay, I’ll paper it as soon as I get back to the barn and drop it by the jail.”
“It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Likewise, Klink.”
Back at the bureau it took Ballard less than an hour to write up the incident report and the arrest warrant for Bernardo. After leaving the paperwork with the records clerk, she checked the watch office clock and saw she was down to the last two hours of her shift.
She was dead tired and looking forward to sleeping five or six hours at the W. The thought of sleep reminded her of the dream she’d had in which she felt there was someone following her. It made her turn around as she walked down the empty back hallway to the detective bureau.
There was no one there.