Dark Sacred Night - Ballard and Bosch #1;Renée Ballard #2

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch nodded. He wondered about Ballard and how she knew where to find him. His guess was that Lucia Soto had told her.

  He knew he would find out soon enough.

  7

  Bosch got home early. He smelled cooking as soon as he opened the door, and found Elizabeth Clayton in the kitchen. She was sautéing chicken in butter and garlic.

  “Hey,” Bosch said. “Smells good.”

  “I wanted to make you something,” she said.

  They awkwardly hugged while she was in front of the stove. When Bosch first met her, she was an addict trying to bury her daughter’s murder under a mountain of pills. She had had a shaved head, weighed ninety pounds, and would have willingly traded sex for thirty milligrams of guilt- and memory-blurring oxycodone.

  Seven months later, she was clean and had put on twenty pounds, and her sandy-blond hair was long enough to frame the pretty face that had emerged during recovery. But the guilt and memories were still there at the edge of darkness and threatening every day.

  “That’s great,” he said. “I’m going to clean up first, okay?”

  “It’ll be a half hour,” she said. “I have to boil the noodles.”

  Bosch walked down the hallway, past Elizabeth’s room, and into his own. He took off his work clothes and got into the shower. As the water cascaded down on his head, he thought about cases and victims. The woman cooking his dinner was a victim of the fallout that comes from murder, her daughter taken in a way too horrible to contemplate. Bosch thought he had rescued Elizabeth the year before. He had helped her through addiction and now she was straight and healthy, but the addiction had been what buffered reality and kept that contemplation away. He had promised her he would solve her daughter’s killing but now found that he could not talk to her about the case without causing her the kind of pain she used to vanquish with pills. He was left with the question of whether he had rescued her at all.

  After showering he shaved, because he knew it might be a couple days before he got the next chance. He was finishing up when he heard Elizabeth call him to dinner.

  In the months since Elizabeth had moved in, Bosch had returned the dining room to its rightful purpose. He had moved his laptop and the files from the cases he was working into his bedroom, where he had a folding table set up. He didn’t think she should be constantly reminded of murder, especially when he wasn’t around.

  She had place settings across from each other at the table and the food on another plate between them. She served him. There were two glasses of water. No alcohol.

  “Looks great,” Bosch said.

  “Well, let’s hope it tastes great,” she said.

  They ate silently for a few minutes and Bosch complimented her. The chicken had a good garlic kick that tasted great going down. He knew it would kick back later on but didn’t mention that.

  “How was group?” he asked.

  “Mark Twain dropped out,” she said.

  She always referred to others in her daily group therapy meetings by code names drawn from famous people they reminded her of. Mark Twain had white hair and a bushy mustache. There was a Cher, an Albert (as in Einstein), an OJ, a Lady Gaga, and a Gandhi, who was also referred to as Ben, as in Ben Kingsley, the actor who won an Oscar for portraying him.

  “Permanently?” Bosch asked.

  “Looks like it,” she said. “He had a slip and went back into lockdown.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah. I liked hearing his stories. They were funny.”

  More silence passed between them. Bosch tried to think of something to say or ask. The awkwardness of the relationship had grown to be the main part of it. Bosch had long known that inviting her to use a room in his house had been a mistake. He wasn’t sure what he had thought would come of it. Elizabeth reminded Bosch of his former wife, Eleanor, but that was only a physical resemblance. Elizabeth Clayton was a badly damaged person with dark memories to work through and a difficult path ahead.

  It had been only a temporary invitation—an until-you-get-on-your-feet thing. Bosch had converted a large storage room off the hallway into a small bedroom and furnished it with purchases from Ikea. But it had been almost six months and Bosch was unsure that Elizabeth would or could ever stand on her feet alone again. The call of her addiction was always there. The memory of her daughter was like a malignant ghost that followed her. And she had nowhere to go, except maybe back up to Modesto, where she had lived until her world fell apart with a midnight call from the LAPD.

  Meantime, Bosch had alienated his daughter, who had not been consulted before he extended the invitation. She was away at college and came home less and less already, but the addition of Elizabeth Clayton to the household served to stop all visitation. Now Bosch saw Maddie only when he ventured down to Orange County to grab a quick breakfast or late dinner with her. On the last visit, she had announced that she planned to stay the summer in the house she rented with three other students near campus. Bosch took the news as a direct reaction to having Elizabeth in his house.

  “I have to work tonight,” Bosch said.

  “I thought you said you had that search warrant thing tomorrow morning,” Elizabeth said.

  “I do but this is something else. It’s about Daisy.”

  He said nothing further until he could gauge her response. A few moments went by and she didn’t try to change the subject.

  “There’s a Hollywood detective who’s interested in the case,” he said. “She came to me today and asked questions. She’s on the late show and is going to work it when she has time.”

  “‘The late show’?” Elizabeth asked.

  “That’s what they call the midnight shift at Hollywood Division, because of all the crazy stuff that happens there in the middle of the night. Anyway, she found some old records I’d been looking for: cards where patrol officers took names of people on the street, people they stopped or were suspicious of.”

  “Was Daisy one of them?”

  “Probably, but that’s not why I want to see them. I want to see who else was floating around Hollywood at that time. It could lead to something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, there are twelve boxes of them. We’ll do what we can tonight and then I have the search warrant in the morning. It could be a couple nights going down there.”

  “Okay. I hope you find something.”

  “The detective—her name is Ballard—asked about you. She said she might want to meet with you. Would that be okay?”

  “Of course. I don’t really know anything that can help but I will talk to anybody about Daisy.”

  Bosch nodded. It had been more than they had said about the case in weeks and he worried it would send Elizabeth into a dark spiral of depression if he pushed it further.

  He checked his watch. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock.

  “I might take a nap for a couple hours before I head down there,” he said. “That okay?”

  “Yes, you should,” she said. “I’ll clean all this up and try to be quiet.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I doubt I’ll sleep. I’ll just rest.”

  Fifteen minutes later Bosch was on his back, looking up at the ceiling in his bedroom. He could hear the water running in the kitchen and the dishes being stacked in the rack next to the sink.

  He had set an alarm but knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  Ballard

  8

  Ballard got to Hollywood Division three hours before her eleven p.m. shift started so she could begin work on the shake cards. She first entered the main station, grabbed the late show rover out of its charger, and took it with her back across the parking lot to the outbuilding, where she had left the boxes lined in the hallway. There was nobody in the gym or martial arts training room. She found a work space in one of the storage rooms where wooden desks predating the last renovation of the station were still stored. Despite what Bosch had said earlier, Ballard was tempted to go right to the box of field interv
iew cards from the time of the Daisy Clayton murder. Maybe she would get lucky and an obvious suspect would emerge from a 3 x 5 card. But she knew that Bosch’s plan was the right one. To be thorough she should start at the beginning and move chronologically forward.

  The first box of shake cards had dates beginning in January 2006, fully three years before the Clayton murder. She put the box on the floor next to the desk she was using and started pulling out four-inch stacks at a time. She gave each card a quick glance front and back, focusing on the location and time of the stop, checking to see if the interviewee was a male, and then examining the details further if warranted.

  It took her two hours to get through the first box. Out of all the cards she examined, she put aside three for follow-up and discussion with Bosch and one just for herself. In the process, she reaffirmed her long-held belief about Hollywood being a final destination for many of society’s freaks and losers. Card after card contained records of interviews with individuals who were aimlessly roaming the streets, looking for whatever grim opportunity presented itself. Many were outsiders trying to buy drugs or sex, and the police stop was designed to dissuade them. Others were permanent denizens—whether predators or prey—of the Hollywood streets with no seeming plan to change their situation.

  Along the way, Ballard got to know something about the cops who conducted the field interviews. Some were verbose, some were profoundly grammatically challenged, some used codes, like Adam Henry (asshole), to describe the citizens they were interviewing. Some obviously didn’t care to write FI cards and kept things to a minimum. Some were able to keep their sense of humor despite the circumstances of their job and the view it gave them of humanity.

  The blank side of the card was where the most telling information was found and Ballard read these mini-reports with an almost anthropological interest for what they said about Hollywood and society at large. She put one card aside for herself simply because she liked what the officer had written.

  Subject is a human tumbleweed

  Goes where the wind blows him

  Will blow away tomorrow

  Nobody will miss him

  The officer was named on the cards as T. Farmer. Ballard found herself looking for his FI cards so she could read more of his elegiac street reports.

  The three cards she set aside for follow-up were all for white males who were deemed “tourists” by the officers who made the stop. This meant they were outsiders who came into Hollywood to look for something, in the case of these three men, most likely sex. They had not committed any crime when stopped and interviewed, so the officers were circumspect in what they wrote. But it was clear from the location, time, and tenor of the interviews that the officers suspected the men were trolling for prostitutes. One man was on foot, one man was in a car, and the third was in what was described as a work van. Ballard would run their names and license plates through the computer and law enforcement databases to see if there was any record or activity that warranted a closer look.

  Ballard was halfway through the second box when her rover squawked at exactly midnight. It was Lieutenant Munroe.

  “I missed you at roll call, Ballard.”

  She was not required to attend roll call but she appeared so often that it was noticed when she didn’t.

  “Sorry about that. I’m working on something and I lost track of time. Anything I should know?”

  “No, all quiet. But your boyfriend from last night is here. Should I send him back?”

  Ballard paused before keying the mic and answering. She assumed her visitor was Bosch. She knew that complaining about Munroe calling him her boyfriend would be a complete waste of time and would cost her more than she would gain from it.

  She keyed the mic.

  “I’m not in detectives. Hold my ‘boyfriend’ there. I’ll come get him.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Hey, L-T. We have a PO on Hollywood roster named T. Farmer?”

  If Farmer was still in the division, he must work dayside now. She knew everybody on the night shifts.

  It was a few moments before Munroe responded.

  “Not anymore. He went EOW right before you got here.”

  End of watch. Ballard suddenly remembered that when she was reassigned to Hollywood three years earlier, the whole division was mourning the death of one of its officers. It had been a suicide. She now realized it had been Farmer.

  Ballard felt an invisible punch to the chest. She keyed the mic.

  “Copy that.”

  9

  Ballard decided to keep the review of the field interview cards close to the source. She brought Bosch to the storage room and set him up at one of the old desks, where it was less likely that other Hollywood officers would see him working with her and raise questions about it. She called Lieutenant Munroe on the private watch office number and told him where she would be if needed.

  Bosch and Ballard decided to split reading duties rather than have Bosch back-read the cards Ballard had already gone through. It was the first sign of trust between them, a belief that each could rely on the other’s assessment of the cards. And it would make the process faster.

  Ballard was at a desk positioned perpendicular to Bosch’s and this allowed her to watch him head-on, while he would have to turn and be more obvious about attempting to observe her. At first she surreptitiously kept an eye on him and in doing so ascertained that his process was different. His rate of putting cards aside for further consideration was far quicker than hers. At some point, he noticed that she was watching him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said without looking up from his work. “I’m employing a two-step approach. First a big net, then a smaller net.”

  Ballard just nodded, a bit embarrassed that she had been caught.

  She soon started her own two-step process and stopped paying attention to Bosch, realizing that she was only slowing her own work down by watching him. After a long stretch of silence and after putting a large stack of cards into the no-interest pile, Ballard spoke.

  “Can I ask you something?” she began.

  “What if I said no?” Bosch replied. “You’d ask anyway.”

  “How did Daisy’s mother end up living in your house?”

  “It’s a long story, but she needed a place to stay. I had a room.”

  “So this is not a romantic thing?”

  “No.”

  “But you let this stranger stay in your house.”

  “Sort of. I met her on an unrelated case. I helped her out of a jam and then I found out about Daisy. I told her I’d look into the case and she could use the room I had while I investigated. She’s from Modesto. I assume that if we close this thing, I’ll get my room back and she’ll go home.”

  “You couldn’t do that if you were with the LAPD.”

  “There’s a lot I couldn’t do if I were still with the LAPD. But I’m not.”

  They both went back to the cards but almost immediately Ballard spoke again.

  “I still want to talk to her,” she said.

  “I told her that,” Bosch said. “Anytime you like.”

  A half hour went by and they both managed to finish off the cards in their respective boxes. Bosch went out into the hallway and brought a fresh box in for Ballard and then repeated the process for himself.

  “How long can you do this?” Ballard asked.

  “You mean tonight?” Bosch asked. “Till about five thirty. I have a thing at six up in the Valley. It may run through most of the day. If it does, I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  “When do you sleep?”

  “When I can.”

  They were ten minutes into their next boxes when Ballard’s radio squawked. Ballard responded and Munroe told her that a detective was requested on the burglary of an occupied dwelling on Sunset Boulevard.

  Ballard looked at the stack of FI cards in front of her and radioed back.

  “You sure they need a detective, L-T?”

  “They asked. You in
the middle of something or what?”

  “No, I’m rolling now.”

  “Roger that. Lemme know what you’ve got out there.”

  Ballard stood up and looked at Bosch.

  “I need to go and I can’t leave you here,” she said.

  “You sure?” he asked. “I’ll stay here and keep chopping wood.”

  “No, you’re not LAPD. I can’t leave you here unsupervised. I’d take a hit for that if someone came in and found you here.”

  “Whatever. So, what do I do, go with you?”

  Ballard thought about that. It would work.

  “You can do that,” she said. “Take a stack of those with you and sit in the car while I check this call out. Hopefully, it’s not a long one.”

  Bosch reached down into the box next to his desk and used two hands to pull out a good-size stack of cards.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The burglary call was less than five minutes from the station. The address was familiar to Ballard but she did not place it until they arrived and saw that it was a strip bar called Sirens on Sunset. And it was still open, which made the question of burglary a bit baffling.

  There was one patrol car blocking the valet zone. Ballard pulled in behind it. She knew two units had already responded and assumed the other car was in the alley behind the station.

  “This should be interesting,” Bosch said.

  “Not for you,” Ballard said. “You wait here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I hope this is just bullshit and I’ll be right back out. Start thinking about code seven.”

  “You’re hungry?”

  “Not right now but I’m gonna need a lunch break.”

  Ballard grabbed the rover out of the console charger and got out of the car.

  “What’s open?” Bosch asked.

  “Almost nothing,” she said.

  She closed the door and headed toward the front door of Sirens.

  The interior entry area was dimly lit in red. There was a pay station with a bouncer and cashier, and a velvet-roped channel that led to an arched doorway to the dance floor. Ballard could see three small stages outlined in red below faux Tiffany atrium ceilings. There were women in various stages of undress on the stages but very few customers. Ballard checked her watch. It was 2:40 a.m. and the bar was open until 4. Ballard badged the bouncer.