From the San Fernando Courthouse it was only a block’s walk back to the old jail where Bosch did his file work. He covered the distance quickly, a spring in his step caused by the search warrant in his hand. Judge Atticus Finch Landry had read it in chambers and asked Bosch a few perfunctory questions before signing the approval page. Bosch now had the authority to execute the search and hopefully find the bullet that would lead to an arrest and the closing of another case.
He took the shortcut through the city’s Public Works yard to the back door of the old jail. He pulled the key to the padlock as he moved toward the former drunk tank, where the open-case files were kept on steel shelves. He found that he had left the lock open and silently chastised himself. It was a breach of his own as well as departmental protocol. The files were to be kept locked up at all times. And Bosch liked to keep the matters on his desk secure too, even during a forty-minute search-warrant run to the courthouse next door.
He moved behind his makeshift desk—and old wooden door set across two stacks of file boxes—and sat down. Immediately, he saw the twisted paper clip sitting on top of his closed laptop.
He stared at it. He had not put it there.
“You forgot that.”
Bosch looked up. The woman—the detective—from the night before at Hollywood Station was straddling the old bench that ran between the freestanding shelves full of case files. She had been out of his line of sight as he came into the cell. He looked over at the open door where the padlock dangled from its chain.
“Ballard, right?” he said. “Good to know I’m not going crazy. I thought I had locked up.”
“I let myself in,” Ballard said. “Lock picking 101.”
“It’s a good skill to have. Meantime, I’m kind of busy here. Just got a search warrant I need to figure out how to execute without my suspect finding out. What do you want, Detective Ballard?”
“I want in.”
“In?”
“On Daisy Clayton.”
Bosch considered her for a moment. She was attractive, maybe midthirties, with brown, sun-streaked hair cut at the shoulders and a slim, athletic build. She was wearing off-duty clothes. The night before, she had been in work clothes that made her seem more formidable—a must in the LAPD, where Bosch knew female detectives were often treated like office secretaries.
Ballard also had a deep tan, which to Bosch was at odds with the idea of someone who worked the graveyard shift. Most of all he was impressed that it had been only twelve hours since she had surprised him at the file cabinets in the Hollywood detective bureau and she already appeared to have caught up to him and what he was doing.
“I talked to your old partner, Lucy,” Ballard said. “She gave me her blessing. It is a Hollywood Station case, after all.”
“Was—till RHD took it,” Bosch said. “They have standing now, not Hollywood.”
“And what’s your standing? You’re out of the LAPD. Doesn’t seem to be any link to the town of San Fernando that I could see in the book.”
In his capacity as an SFPD reserve officer for the past three years, Bosch had largely been working on a backlog of cold cases of all kinds—murders, rapes, assaults. But the work was part-time.
“They give me a lot of freedom up here,” Bosch said. “I work these cases and I also work my own. Daisy Clayton’s one of my own. You could say I have a vested interest. That’s my standing.”
“And I have twelve boxes of shake cards at Hollywood Station,” Ballard said.
Bosch nodded. He was even more impressed. She had somehow figured out exactly what he had gone to Hollywood for. As he studied her, he decided it wasn’t all a tan. She had a mix of races in her skin. He guessed that she was probably half white, half Polynesian.
“I figure between the two of us, we could get through them in a couple nights,” Ballard said.
There was the offer. She wanted in and would give Bosch what he was looking for in trade.
“The shake cards are a long shot,” he said. “Truth is, I’ve run the string out on the case. I was hoping there might be something in the cards.”
“That’s surprising,” Ballard said. “I heard you’re the kind of guy who never lets the string run out—your old partner called you a dog with a bone.”
Bosch didn’t know what to say to that. He shrugged.
Ballard got up and walked toward him down the aisle between the shelves.
“Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it isn’t,” she said. “I’m going to start looking through the cards tonight. Between calls. Anything in particular I should look for?”
Bosch paused but knew he needed to make a decision. Trust her or keep her on the outside.
“Vans,” he said. “Look for work vans, guys who carry chemicals maybe.”
“For transporting her,” she said.
“For the whole thing.”
“It said in the book the guy took her home or to a motel. Some place with a bathtub. For the bleaching.”
Bosch shook his head.
“No, he didn’t use a bathtub,” he said.
She stared at him, waiting, not asking the obvious question of how he knew.
“All right, come with me,” he finally said.
He got up and led her out of the cell and back to the door to the Public Works yard.
“You looked at the book and the photos, right?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Everything that was digitized.”
They walked into the yard, which was a large open-air square surrounded by walls. Along the back wall there were four bays delineated by tool racks and workbenches where city equipment and vehicles were maintained and repaired. Bosch led Ballard into one of these.
“You saw the mark on the body?”
“The A-S-P?”
“Right. But they got the meaning of it wrong. The original detectives. They went down a spiral with it and it was all wrong.”
He went to a workbench and reached up to a shelf where there was a large, translucent plastic tub with a blue snap-on top. He brought it down and held it out to her.
“Twenty-five-gallon container,” Bosch said. “Daisy was five-two, a hundred and five pounds. Small. He put her in one of these, then put in the bleach as needed. He didn’t use a bathtub.”
Ballard studied the container. Bosch’s explanation was plausible but not conclusive.
“That’s a theory,” she said.
“No theory,” he said.
He put the container down on the floor so he could unsnap the top. He then lifted the tub up and angled it so she could see into it. He reached inside and pointed to a manufacturer’s seal stamped into the plastic at the bottom. It was a two-inch circle with the A-S-P reading horizontally and vertically in the center.
“A-S-P,” he said. “American Storage Products or American Soft Plastics. Same company, two names. The killer put her in one of these. He didn’t need a bathtub or a motel. One of these and a van.”
Ballard reached into the container and ran a finger over the manufacturer’s seal. Bosch knew she was drawing the same conclusion he had. The logo was stamped into the plastic on the underside of the tub, creating a ridged impression on the inside. If Daisy’s skin had been pressed against the ridges, the logo would have left its mark.
Ballard pulled her arm out and looked up from the tub to Bosch.
“How’d you figure this out?” she asked.
“I thought like he did,” Bosch said.
“Let me guess, these are untraceable.”
“They make them in Gardena, ship them to retailers everywhere. They do some direct sales to commercial accounts but as far as individual sales go, forget it. You can get these at every Target and Walmart in the country.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
Bosch snapped the top back on the tub and was about to return it to the high shelf.
“Can I take it?” Ballard asked.
Bosch turned to her. He knew he could replace it and that she could easily get her own. He guessed it was a move to draw him further into a partnership. If he gave her something, then it meant they were working together.
He handed the tub over.
“It’s yours,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
She looked at the open gate to the Public Works yard.
“Okay, so I start tonight on the shakes,” she said.
Bosch nodded.
“Where were they?” he asked.
“In storage,” Ballard said. “Nobody wanted to throw them out.”
“I figured. It was smart.”
“What were you going to do if you found them still in the file cabinets?”
“I don’t know. Probably ask Money if I could hang around and look through them.”
“Were you just going to look at cards from the day or week of the murder? The month maybe?”
“No, all of them. Whatever they still had. Who’s to say the guy who did this didn’t get FI-ed a couple years before or a year after?”
Ballard nodded.
“No stone uncovered. I get it.”
“That make you change your mind? It’ll be a lot of work.”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
“Well, I’m gonna go. Might even go in early to get started.”
“Happy hunting. If I can come by, I will. But I have a search warrant to execute.”
“Right.”
“Otherwise, call me if you find something.”
He reached into a pocket and produced a business card with his cell number on it.
“Copy that,” she said.
Ballard walked off, holding the container in front of her by the indented grips on either side. As Bosch watched, she made a smooth U-turn and came back to him.
“Lucy Soto said you know Daisy’s mother,” she said. “Is that the standing you said you had?”
“I guess you could say that,” Bosch said.
“Where’s the mother—if I want to talk to her?”
“My house. You can talk to her anytime.”
“You live with her?”
“She’s staying with me. It’s temporary. Eighty-six-twenty Woodrow Wilson.”
“Okay. Got it.”
Ballard turned again and walked off. Bosch watched her go. She made no further U-turns.