Майкл Коннелли - Dark Sacred Night

“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 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 interview 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.”

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.