Michael Connelly: The Late Show

While she didn’t need the brass knuckles to solidify the case against Trent, especially since no case would be moving forward, there was still a silent moment of clarity, fulfillment, and knowledge that she had followed the correct trail in her investigation. Her only regret was that she had no one to share the moment with. Jenkins wasn’t coming in for another six hours and he had never been invested in the case anyway. Only Ballard had been committed to it.

She noticed that Feltzer had included copies of all the crime scene photographs, so she slowly leafed through the stack of 8 x 10s. It was a photo tour of the house, and Ballard was reminded that she had never seen the entire place. She was struck by the normalcy of it. Spare and out-of-date furnishings were in every room. The only piece that allowed her to date the photos as reasonably contemporary was the flat-screen television on the living room wall.

The last photos in the stack were of the lowest room in the upside-down house. And these included shots of Trent in situ — as he had been found. There was more blood on him and the floor than Ballard had remembered. His eyes were half-lidded. She spent a long time studying the photos of the man she had killed. She only pulled her eyes away when her cell phone started to buzz. She looked at the screen. It was Towson.

“Have you checked the website?” he said. “It’s up. It’s good.”

“Hold on,” she said.

She pulled up the Times website on her screen. The story wasn’t the main selection on the home page but it was the third story listed. She opened it, noted that it had Jerry Castor’s byline, and quickly read it. She was pleased with what she saw. Especially the money paragraph.

Sources within the department said early reports that questioned Ballard’s actions did not include the entire raft of evidence and circumstances reviewed. It is expected that the department’s Force Investigation Division will make a determination that Ballard acted bravely and used justifiable force when she stabbed Trent with a splintered piece of wood in an effort to save her life and that of another victim abducted by the suspect. The FID’s findings will go to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which will make a final determination on the detective’s actions.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Ballard said. “What do you think?”

“I think we made a mistake,” he said. “We should have told Feltzer you wanted a promotion to captain too. He gave us everything we wanted! In fact, I checked on your van and they said you can pick it up tomorrow. They’re finished with it.”

She hadn’t known he was going to do that. His taking that initiative suggested to Ballard that things were maybe going to get awkward with Towson.

“Thank you very much, Dean,” she said. “For all of it. You really turned this around.”

“Wasn’t me,” he said. “You made this about the easiest case I’ve ever handled.”

“Well, good. And by the way, I gave your card to Trent’s victim — the one who brought me into the case. I told her she should go after the equity in that house and to call you.”

“Well, I’m much obliged. And you know, Renée, this is now a closed matter, as far as my involvement. That means it would not be a conflict if we were to stay in touch — you know, socially.”

There it was. The awkward overture. It was routine to get hit on by men in the department as well as the larger field of the justice system. That was how she and Compton had hooked up — a shared experience leading to something more. She had been feeling Towson’s interest growing since the interview at his town house Sunday morning. The problem was, she did not return his interest, especially after the ordeal she had just been through.

“I think I want to keep this on a professional level, Dean,” she said. “I may need your legal services in the future and I like how you handled this — a lot.”

She hoped that puffing him up on a professional level would allow the personal rejection to go down easier.

“Well, of course,” he said. “Whatever you need, Renée. I’m here for you. But think about it. We could always have both.”

“Thank you, Dean,” she said.

After ending the call, Ballard went back to the photos, studying once again the shots of Trent’s body and the room on the bottom floor of the upside-down house. Seeing the body and the blood allowed her to go back to it and go over it in her mind’s eye. She relived the steps she took, the escape from her bindings, and then the attack. She cupped her right hand around her left wrist. It was the one she had first freed, and it had suffered the deepest laceration from the zip tie. The photos made her feel the pain again. But it was earned. It was sacrifice. She could not articulate it even to herself, but going through it again in her head and not second-guessing anything was therapeutic. It was needed.

She almost didn’t hear her name being called from the other side of the squad room. She looked up and saw Danitra Lewis waving a clipboard at her from just outside McAdams’s office. Lewis was the division’s records and property clerk. Ballard knew that at the end of each day, Lewis dropped off evidence logs in the lieutenant’s in-box so that he would be apprised of the comings and goings on different cases.

Ballard got up and went over to see what she wanted.

“What’s up, Danitra?”

“What’s up is I need a disposition on the property you got in my locker. You can’t just leave it there forever.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m saying you’ve got that bag sittin’ in one of my boxes since last week.”

“The one going to Chastain at RHD? He was supposed to take it Friday.”

“Well, like I’m saying, it’s still in that locker, and it’s got a hold for you on it, not him. I need you to come get it. I need the space.”

Ballard was confused. The evidence bag contained the belongings of Cynthia Haddel, the waitress gunned down in the Dancers massacre. Ballard knew that she was an ancillary victim but it didn’t make a lot of sense to her that Chastain had not taken the property bag early Friday morning when he had been at the station. She had told him about it. But even if Chastain hadn’t taken the bag because his hands were full with the witness Zander Speights, it should have been transported by courier Monday morning to Property Division downtown and held for him there.

That was the procedure. But Lewis was saying that none of that had happened. That the bag was on hold for her.

“I don’t know what’s going on with that, but I’ll go check it in a few minutes,” Ballard said.

Lewis thanked her and left the squad room.

Ballard went back to the desk she was using, stacked the photos and the search warrant return together, and put them back into the interoffice mailer so that they would not be lying around on display. She then locked the envelope in her file cabinet and headed back to the property room.

Lewis was gone and the room was empty. Ballard opened the locker in which she had put the brown paper bag that contained Cynthia Haddel’s personal effects. She took the bag out and carried it over to the counter. The first thing she noticed was that the bag was double taped. A second layer of red evidence tape had been applied over the first, meaning the bag had been opened and resealed since Ballard had placed it in the locker early Friday morning. She assumed that Chastain had done this. She next checked the property transfer label and saw that this, too, was new. Handwritten instructions on the label said to hold the property for Detective Ballard at Hollywood Division. Ballard recognized the handwriting as Chastain’s.

Ballard grabbed a box cutter off the counter, cut through the tape, and opened the bag. From it she pulled the plastic evidence bags she had placed inside the paper bag the morning after Haddel’s murder. She noticed that one of these was also double taped. It had been opened and resealed.