Michael Connelly: The Late Show

“I understand that, sir,” Jenkins said, his own voice a notch or two above its usual measured tone. “We will get statements from all of you just as soon as possible. Five people are dead. Think about that.”

The frustrated man made a dismissive hand gesture and turned back to a bench. Someone else cursed and yelled, “You can’t just keep us here!”

Jenkins did not respond but the truth on a technical level was that they could hold all patrons from the club until the investigators sorted out who was a potential witness and who might be a suspect. It was flimsy because common sense dictated that none of these people were suspects, but it was valid.

“You okay?” Ballard asked.

Jenkins turned around like he thought he was about to be jumped, then saw it was his partner.

“Barely,” he said. “I don’t blame them. They’re in for a long night. They’re sending a jail bus for them. Wait till they see the bars on the windows. They’ll really go apeshit then.”

“Glad I won’t be here to see it.”

“Where are you going?”

Ballard held up the evidence bag containing Cynthia Haddel’s property.

“I have to run by the hospital. They found more of her stuff. I’ll be back in twenty, we’ll do the notification, and then it will be all over except for the paperwork.”

“Next-of-kin will be a breeze compared to dealing with these animals. I think half of them are coming off highs. It’s going to get uglier once they’re all downtown.”

“And not our problem. I’ll be back.”

Ballard hadn’t told her partner the real reason she was returning to the hospital, because she knew he would not approve of her true plan. She turned to go back to the car but Jenkins stopped her.

“Hey, partner.”

“What?”

“You can lose the gloves now.”

He had noticed she still had crime scene gloves on. She held one hand up as if noticing the gloves for the first time.

“Right,” she said. “As soon as I see a trash can.”

At the car, Ballard kept the gloves on while she secured Cynthia Haddel’s property in the same cardboard box that contained her tip apron. But first she removed Haddel’s cell phone and slipped it into her pocket.

It was ten minutes back to Hollywood Presbyterian. She was banking on the fact that the shooting and mass casualties at the Dancers had slowed the operations of the coroner’s office and that Haddel’s body would still be waiting for pickup. She confirmed that was so when she got back to the ER and was led to a room where there were actually two covered bodies awaiting transport to the coroner. She asked the attendant to see if the doctor who had attempted to resuscitate Haddel was available.

Ballard had kept her gloves on. She now pulled back the sheet on one of the bodies and saw the face of a young man who had wasted to no more than a hundred pounds. She quickly re-covered the face and went to the other gurney. She confirmed it was Haddel and then moved down the gurney to the victim’s right hand. She pulled out the cell phone and pressed the pad of the dead woman’s right thumb to the home button on the screen.

The phone remained locked. Ballard tried the index finger and that failed to open the phone as well. She moved around the gurney and went through the process again with the left thumb. This time the phone unlocked, and Ballard had access.

She had to take one of her gloves off to manipulate the screen. She wasn’t concerned with leaving fingerprints because the phone was property, not evidence, and likely would never be analyzed for latent prints.

Having an iPhone herself, she knew the phone would relock soon if the screen didn’t remain active. She went into the GPS app and scrolled through previous destinations. There was a Pasadena address and Ballard clicked on it and set up a route there. It would keep the screen activated even as Ballard ignored the directions and went her own way. The phone would remain unlocked and she’d have access to its contents after leaving the hospital. She checked the battery level and saw that it was at 60 percent, which would give her more than enough time to go through the phone. She muted the phone so the GPS app would not be audibly correcting her when she did not follow its directions to Pasadena.

She was pulling the sheet back over the body when the door opened and one of the ER doctors looked in.

“I heard you asked for me,” he said. “What are you doing in here?”

Ballard remembered his voice from the elevator ride up to the OR.

“I needed to get a fingerprint,” Ballard said, holding up the phone in further explanation. “But I wanted to ask you about another patient. I saw that you also worked on Gutierrez — the assault victim with the skull fracture? How is the patient?”

She was careful not to speak in terms of gender. The surgeon wasn’t. He went with anatomy.

“We did the surgery and he’s still in recovery,” he said. “We are inducing coma and it will be a waiting game. The sooner the swelling goes down, the better chance he has.”

Ballard nodded.

“Okay, thanks,” she said. “I’ll check back tomorrow. Did you happen to take any swabs for a rape kit?”

“Detective, our priority was keeping the victim alive,” the doctor said. “That can all come later.”

“Not really. But I understand.”

The doctor was about to leave the doorway, when Ballard pointed to the other gurney in the room.

“What’s the story there?” she asked. “Cancer?”

“Everything,” the doctor said. “Cancer, HIV, complete organ shutdown.”

“Why’s he going downtown?”

“It’s a suicide. He pulled his tubes, disconnected the machines. I guess they have to be sure.”

“Right.”

“I need to go.”

The doctor disappeared from the doorway and Ballard looked at the other gurney and thought about the man using his last ounces of strength to pull the tubes. She thought there was something heroic in that.

In the car she moved off the GPS screen on Cynthia Haddel’s phone and opened the list of favorite contacts. The first one was labeled “Home” and Ballard checked the number. It was a 209 area code and she expected that it was the number of the home where Haddel had grown up, in Modesto. There were four other favorite contacts, all listed by first name only: Jill, Cara, Leon, and John, all with L.A. area codes. Ballard figured she had enough to get to Haddel’s parents if the number marked “Home” didn’t work.

She next pulled up the texting app and checked that. There were two recent communications. One was to Cara.

Cindy: Guess who just scored a 50 on a round of martinis?

Cara: You go girl.

Haddel responded with an emoji showing a happy face. The text before that began with a question from someone who wasn’t on her favorites list.

DP: How are you fixed?

Cindy: I think I’m good. Maybe tomorrow.

DP: Let me know.

There were no previous messages, indicating it was either a new acquaintance or the earlier exchanges had been deleted. There were several other text conversations on the app but none of the others were active in the hours since Haddel had come to work. Ballard pegged Cara as most likely Haddel’s best friend and DP as her drug supplier. She moved on to the e-mail file and found that the incoming messages were largely generic notifications and spam. Haddel apparently didn’t do much in the way of e-mailing. Haddel’s Twitter feed was as expected. She followed a number of entertainers, primarily in the music business, the Dancers’ own account, the LAPD’s Hollywood Station feed regarding crime alerts, and the former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

The last app Ballard opened was the phone’s photo archive. It said there were 662 photos. Ballard thumbed through the most recent and saw many photos of Haddel involved in activities with friends, working out, at the beach, and with cast and crew members on sets where she had found work as an actress.