Michael Connelly: The Late Show

Ballard noticed a length of string around the dead woman’s neck. It wasn’t a chain or any kind of jewelry. It was twine. If there was a pendant, she couldn’t see it because the string disappeared behind a tangle of blood-matted hair. Ballard checked the door and then looked back at the victim. She pulled the string free of the hair and saw that there was a small key tied to it. Seeing a scalpel on a tray of surgical instruments, she grabbed it and cut the string, then pulled it free. She took a latex glove from her coat pocket and placed the key and string inside it in lieu of an evidence bag.

After pocketing the glove, Ballard studied the victim’s face. Her eyes were slightly open and there was still a rubber airway device in her mouth. That bothered Ballard. It distended the woman’s face and she thought it would have embarrassed her in life. Ballard wanted to remove it but knew it was against protocol. The coroner was supposed to receive the body as it was in death. She had already crossed the line by taking the key but the indignity of the rubber airway got to her. She was reaching for it when a voice interrupted from behind.

“Detective?”

Ballard turned and saw that it was one of the paramedics who had brought the victim in. He held up a plastic bag.

“This is her apron,” he said. “It has her tips.”

“Thank you,” Ballard said. “I’ll take it.”

He brought the bag to her and she held it up to eye level.

“Did you guys get any ID?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” the paramedic said. “She was a cocktail waitress, so she probably kept all of that in her car or a locker or something.”

“Right.”

“But her name’s Cindy.”

“Cindy?”

“Yeah, we asked back at the club. You know, so we could talk to her. Didn’t matter, though. She coded.”

He looked down at the body. Ballard thought she saw sadness in his eyes.

“Wish we had gotten there a few minutes earlier,” he said. “Maybe we could have done something. Hard to tell.”

“I’m sure you guys did your best,” Ballard said. “She would thank you if she could.”

He looked back at Ballard.

“Now you’ll do your best, right?” he said.

“We will,” she said, knowing that it would not be her case to investigate once RHD took over.

Shortly after the paramedic left the room, two hospital orderlies entered to move the body so that the operating room could be sterilized and put back into rotation — it was a busy night down in the ER. They covered the body with a plastic sheet and rolled the gurney out. The victim’s left arm was exposed and Ballard saw the unicorn tattoo again on her wrist. She followed the gurney out, clutching the bag containing the victim’s apron.

She walked along the hallway, looking through the windows into the other operating rooms. She noticed that Ramón Gutierrez had been brought up and was undergoing surgery to relieve pressure from the swelling of his brain. She watched for a few moments, until her phone buzzed, and she checked the text. It was from Lieutenant Munroe, asking the status of the fifth victim. Ballard typed out an answer as she walked toward the elevator.

KMA — I’m heading to scene.

KMA was an old LAPD designation used at the end of a radio call. Some said it stood for Keep Me Apprised but in use it was the equivalent of over and out . Over time it had evolved to mean end of watch or, in this case, the victim’s death.

While riding down on the slow-moving elevator, Ballard put on a latex glove and opened the plastic bag the paramedic had given her. She then looked through the pockets of the waitress’s apron. She could see a fold of currency in one pocket and a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a small notepad in the other. Ballard had been in the Dancers and knew the club got its name from a club in the great L.A. novel The Long Goodbye. She also knew it had a whole menu of specialty drinks with L.A. literary titles, like the Black Dahlia, Blonde Lightning, and Indigo Slam. A notebook would be a requirement for a waitress.

Back at the car Ballard popped the trunk and placed the bag in one of the cardboard boxes she and Jenkins used for storing evidence. On any given shift they might collect evidence from multiple cases, so they divided the trunk space with cardboard boxes. She had earlier placed Ramón Gutierrez’s belongings in one of the boxes. She put the bag containing the apron in another, sealed it with red evidence tape, and closed the trunk.

By the time Ballard got over to the Dancers, the crime scene was a three-ring circus. Not the Barnum & Bailey kind, but the police kind, with three concentric rings denoting the size, complexity, and media draw of the case. The center ring was the actual crime scene, where investigators and evidence technicians worked. This was the red zone. It was circled by a second ring, and this was where the command staff, uniformed presence, and crowd and media control command posts were located. The third and outer ring was where the reporters, cameras, and the attendant onlookers gathered.

Already all eastbound lanes of Sunset Boulevard had been closed off to make room for the massive glut of police and news vehicles. The westbound lanes were moving at a crawl, a long ribbon of brake lights, as drivers slowed to grab a view of the police activity. Ballard found a parking spot at the curb a block away and walked it in. She took her badge off her belt, pulled out the cord wound around the rear clip, and looped it over her head so the badge would hang visibly from her neck.

Once she’d covered the block, she had to search for the officer with the crime scene attendance log so she could sign in. The first two rings were cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape. Ballard lifted the first line and went under, then saw an officer holding a clipboard and standing post at the second. His name was Dunwoody and she knew him.

“Woody, put me down,” she said.

“Detective Ballard,” he said as he started writing on the clipboard. “I thought this was RHD all the way.”

“It is, but I was at Hollywood Pres with the fifth victim. Who’s heading it up?”

“Lieutenant Olivas — with everybody from Hollywood and West Bureau command staff to the C-O-P sticking their nose in.”

Ballard almost groaned. Robert Olivas headed up one of the Homicide Special teams at RHD. Ballard had a bad history with him, stemming from her assignment to his team four years earlier when he was promoted to the unit from Major Narcotics. That history was what landed her on the late show at Hollywood Division.

“You seen Jenkins around?” she asked.

Her mind was immediately moving toward a plan that would allow her to avoid reporting on the fifth victim directly to Olivas.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Dunwoody said. “Where was that? Oh, yeah, they’re bringing a bus in for the witnesses. Taking them all downtown. I think Jenkins was watching over that. You know, making sure none of them try to split. Apparently it was like rats on a sinking ship when the shooting started. What I heard, at least.”

Ballard moved a step closer to Dunwoody to speak confidentially. Her eyes raked across the sea of police vehicles, all of them with roof lights blazing.

“What else did you hear, Woody?” she asked. “What happened inside? Was this like Orlando last year?”

“No, no, it’s not terrorism,” Dunwoody answered. “What I hear is that it was four guys in a booth and something went wrong. One starts shooting and takes out the others. He then took out a waitress and a bouncer on his way out.”

Ballard nodded. It was a start toward understanding what had happened.

“So, where is Jenkins holding the wits?”

“They’re over in the garden next door. Where the Cat and Fiddle used to be.”